Doug Rossi’s lifelong love affair with sports began when he was a boy in the late 1950s in his parents’ backyard on 21st Street in Santa Monica, where he and his older brothers Jon and Chris played wiffle ball with avocado trees as their backstop. The boys loved baseball and would take long bus rides from Santa Monica to watch Dodgers games at the L.A. Coliseum. Doug’s abiding affection for the transcendent nature of Dodgers announcer Vin Scully’s voice started then as Doug began to discover his talents as a natural athlete with a love of competition, sportsmanship, and team camaraderie.
At Santa Monica High School, Doug added varsity basketball to his sports repertoire and continued playing through his years at Amherst College in Massachusetts. The spark of competitiveness that propelled his success in sports may have led him to law school at USC. Following graduation in 1979, Doug began a lifelong career at the storied Price, Postel & Parma law firm in Santa Barbara, where he first worked as a law clerk, and at the time of his death last June 2022, he had become the firm’s senior partner. He and his estate planning practice were highly respected throughout the region and beyond.
Santa Barbara was already home to Doug’s family when he and his new wife, Suzanne Sanders, arrived in 1979. Doug’s parents, Alex and Dale (Rhodehamel) Rossi, were both natives. Doug’s paternal grandparents had emigrated from northwestern Italy. They lived on East De la Guerra Street, where the Rossi boys enjoyed many holidays, always with their grandmother’s homemade chicken ravioli from her family recipe, which required a key ingredient: ground chicken feet. Doug’s Rhodehamel grandparents lived nearby on North Alisos Street, and at their country home — the historic Ballard Adobes/Stagecoach Station near Los Olivos. Doug’s maternal great-grandfather, James Sloan, came to Summerland as an agent for the Southern Pacific railroad in the 1890s and served as Santa Barbara’s mayor in the early 1920s.
Soon after Doug’s legal career started, he and Suzanne welcomed a daughter, Lauren, and two years later, a son, Christopher. Lauren believes Doug made her childhood “adventurous and magical” with adventures such as spelunking in the Sierra Nevada. She also recalled her father’s eclectic interests: “If you went to a museum with him, it would take a long time. He read every single label — in every exhibit.”
Years later, in 2001, Doug met and married a fellow Angeleno, graphic artist Kimberlee Haggin, with whom he would have two more children: Claire, Kim’s daughter from her first marriage, whom Doug adopted; and Kate. Of her dad, Claire recalled, “Growing up, I always knew that no matter what, everything would be okay — because we had him as our rock. Thinking of him will always bring me back to that feeling of safety, warmth, and unconditional love.”
Doug’s legal career could be stressful, and he found relief in swimming, basketball, and golf. He enjoyed golf, particularly at the Alisal and Glen Annie courses, where he played with professional colleagues. Lol Sorenson remembered Doug as “competitive, but never at the expense of sportsmanship and camaraderie” and for his “love/hate relationship with his five-iron.”
For more than 30 years, Doug spent most of his lunch breaks at the nearby Carrillo Street Gym playing pickup basketball, most often with his longtime friend, legendary local musician Spencer Barnitz, who describes those years of midday games as “always good, always competitive, where everybody played … politicians, lawyers, surfers, high school students … all the hardcore basketball players in town…. It felt like the center of the universe for a while.” He observed Doug was a “good rebounder … but he could play any position, typically the front line because of his size.” Lol Sorenson stated Doug was unequivocally “the best power forward in town.”
Gary Robinson, a fellow attorney, reminisced about his friend: “The one thing I will always remember about Doug is that he understood the key to building a successful relationship with a person is not so much what they think of you, but what they think of themselves when they are with you. Doug made you feel good about yourself. It wasn’t about him. You wanted to be with him because you always walked away feeling better about yourself.”
Doug and Kim had recently bought a home near Palm Springs in which they planned to spend more time as Doug began to share more of his workload with younger attorneys — while enjoying e-bike rides, pickleball, and golf at the Desert Willow course. He hadn’t been feeling well for a month or so when, on New Year’s Day in 2022, he went to the emergency room. Two days later, he was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer from which he died only six months later.
Looking back on their years of basketball together, Spencer Barnitz recollects an argument that broke out on the Carrillo Street Gym court when Doug was feeling older and retrospective.
Doug caught Spencer’s eye. “I’m really going to miss this.”
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