John Babin, longtime resident of Dana Point, passed away on 27 December, 1999. He was 87 years of age. Born in 1912 to an old Quebec family that had received a land grant from the king of France, John Babin's youth was spent living in Paris, France, during part of the year, and Canada the rest of the year. He had a wild, dissolute youth, much of which passed in a haze of alcohol and women. However, at the time of his death he had been a devout member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and had not had a drink in over 40 years.

He fought with the Free French in north Africa during World War II, after which he became a civil engineer. One of his earliest accomplishments was the design and construction of one of the first plants for the manufacture of penicillin. He got married and moved to Mexico, where John was arrested for writing a bad check, for which he was imprisoned 7 years. During that time he met the assassin of Trotsky, as well as other interesting characters. At first he was kept in a prison near Mexico City, but he was regarded as so incorrigible by his guards that he was transferred to the Mexican version of a Devil's Island. There he was allowed to have his wife live with him. On several occasions he was offered escape routes via pleasure boaters who visited the area as tourists, but because his wife was in bad health, John refused all offers of escape. When his wife's condition worsened she was allowed to return to the mainland, and soon after she was no longer there, he did escape. John had a son by his first wife, who was born with a congenital heart defect, who only lived to the age of 18 years. John's marriage to his first wife ended in divorce.

About 1957 John met Doris Vandenberg, nee Andres, the wife of the conductor Willie Vandenberg. They fell in love, and after Doris received an amiable divorce from her first husband, she and John were wed. John and Doris Babin had two children, and while Doris was pregnant with their first child, their son (also named John), John had accepted employment with a firm doing business in the Belgian Congo, at the time it became independent. John soon befriended Patrice Lumumba, the prime minister of the Congo, and became acquainted with the under-handed dirty-tricks the Belgians were conducting to limit the effects of Congolese independence. Prior to granting the Congo independence the Belgians had created private corporations which they proceeded to vest with ownership of the natural resources of the Congo, so that the government of the Congo would be virtually broke upon inception. This would create a state of dependence in the Congo whereby the Congolese would be forced to rely on their the old Belgian masters.

In a plan to break through this strategem Lumumba gave John a cache of diamonds, to go to Paris to get equipment, mainly trucks. The Belgians, upon discovering this effort, began spreading false rumors that John was a diamond thief and smuggler, a report which made its way to John's mother in Canada, who nearly had a heart attack. John was not a diamond smuggler, but the rumor made all the people he had to do business with nervous, so he was not able to help Lumumba. Soon after his return to the Congo, the Belgians, with the assistance of the CIA, murdered Lumumba, and word went out that John Babin was wanted for arrest. John and Doris only narrowly escaped with the aid of the Crown Prince of the Wattusi.

John Babin specialized in satellite communications, and he worked for some of the biggest corporations in that field. With his wife and two children in tow, he worked in Bogota, Colombia, and in Bangkok, Thailand. In the 1970s he worked in Iran, installing satellite communications, as well as Saudi Arabia, after which he semi-retired in Dana Point, California. Doris' parents had been living in Dana Point since about 1960, and in 1970 she and John also bought a home in Dana Point.

John and Doris separated in 1980, but remained good friends until the day of John's death. John died of complications from pneumonia, and a broken hip, in South Coast Medical Center in Laguna Beach, California. John's years in retirement were very difficult for him, because he was a vital person every day of his life; however, forty years of heavy smoking took its toll, reducing his lung capacity to almost half. The last ten years of his life, John's constant companion was a tank of oxygen on wheels.

John is survived by his wife, Doris Babin, and his son, John Thomas King Babin of Capistrano Beach, and a daughter, Dorian Babin of San Francisco, and three grandchildren.

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