Starlight, Star Bright: A Father and Son in the Night

October 19, 2026
Birch Bay, Washington

Thirty-three years ago, on October 10, 1993, for his 87th birthday, my father, Dr. George Hill Hodel, purchased a commemorative star registration in his name for a star in the constellation Aquila.

Nearly four weeks later, on November 6, 1993, as a present for my 52nd birthday, he gifted me a commemorative registration naming a second star, this one in the constellation Leo Minor, Steven Kent Hodel.

Five Decades—From Lap to Light Years

1943 Calendar entry by Dorothy Hodel showing scheduled Nov. 7 Hodel family photo shoot with Galka Scheyer.

Left to Right:
George and Duncan
Steven, Kelvin, Michael Hodel               

 No “Coincidences” for the Jung at Heart

In 2001, in the early days of my investigation, I met with the then-current owners of the Sowden House, who were kind enough to allow me to search the basement of our former home. During that search, I found and photographed a large shipping crate my father had used to send items he purchased in China during his 1946 UNRRA assignment, as well as a few boxes containing old medical books, including an annual calendar from 1943.

In that book were entries by both my mother and father, including the above entry by my mother scheduling a Hodel family photographic session with Galka Scheyer for November 7, 1943, the day after my second birthday. In the family photograph shown above, I am seated on my father’s lap.

Fast forward almost fifty years to the day—star date November 6, 1993—and we have my father’s gift of the Steven Kent Hodel star registration in Leo Minor, following the registration of his own George Hill Hodel star in Aquila less than a month earlier.

Looking back now, I find a remarkable synchronicity in those two gestures, separated by half a century.

Father and son, captured together in a photograph, were together again fifty years later—this time with our names placed among the stars.

The photograph depicts a son’s innocence—total unknowing.

The star registration came long before my investigation. Only now, looking back at both, do I see them through the knowledge of what I would later uncover.

Star light, star bright,
The first star I see tonight;
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have the wish I wish tonight.