Earl Webster Fisher, Jr., co-founder and chairman emeritus of Stern Fisher Edwards Investment

Counsel, passed away in Santa Monica, Calif. on February 13, 2026. He was 90 years old. He is

survived by his wife Carol Radcliffe Fisher, his daughter Audrey Fisher, her wife Dessie Coale,

and many nieces, nephews, and cousins.

Earl leaves a legacy of lasting impact in the arts and business. During the 1960s, he was a

professional opera singer in Germany, and in 1968 returned home to Los Angeles to become a

successful stockbroker. In 1977, he co-founded the independent firm of Stern Fisher Edwards,

now nearing 50 years in business. In the 1980s he began a long relationship with the Idyllwild

Arts Academy. Earl is warmly remembered by colleagues in the investment and philanthropic

communities as a visionary who knew how to bring people together to turn aspirations into

reality.

Earl was born at Wilshire Hospital in Los Angeles on August 18, 1935, the second son of Earl

Webster Fisher, Sr., a partner in an investment firm, and Sofia (Brockmann) Fisher, who came to

the U.S. from Nicaragua. Earl, known to his friends as “Bud,” grew up in Studio City with his

brother George and attended Carpenter Avenue Grammar School and North Hollywood junior

and senior high school. Earl completed a BA at Pomona College in 1957 with a concentration in

international relations, sang in the college’s Glee Club, and played on the varsity baseball team.

His first job was quintessentially California: He became a summertime bellman at the Wawona

Hotel in Yosemite.

A devout Catholic, Earl’s passion for music started early in life. At 13, he began singing

Gregorian chant at St. Charles Catholic Church, his family’s church in North Hollywood, under

the direction of Paul Salamunovich, who would later become music director of the Los Angeles

Master Chorale. Earl attended Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara on a full

scholarship, and later studied opera as a graduate student at UCLA.

Earl met his wife Carol when they were college students, he at Pomona and she at Scripps

(studying fine arts and dance) and they were married at St. Charles in 1959. Earl was awarded a

Fulbright scholarship in 1961 to study opera in Germany, birthplace of his grandfather, Franz

Brockmann. The young couple moved first to Frankfurt am Main, where Earl attended the

Hochschule für Musik, then settled in the city of Coburg, where Earl became a lyric tenor at

Coburg Opera House in 1961. In the years that followed, he went on to sing with opera

companies in Heidelberg and Muenster. Their daughter Audrey was born in Germany in 1967,

and a year later, the family returned to California.

A generous patron of arts education, Earl played a leadership role in the creation in 1986 of the

Idyllwild Arts Academy, helping to transform what had been a summer program into a year-

round boarding high school. He served as president of the board of governors of the Idyllwild

Arts Foundation (which operates the Academy) for 10 years, and as a board member for a total

of 26 years. Giving back to his own alma mater, Earl served as Pomona College’s alumni

fundraising chairman for several years and as the 25th reunion fundraising chairman for the Class

of 1957. He was also a longtime volunteer with Catholic Big Brothers.

In 1982, Earl and Carol, an architect, purchased the famed Bradbury House, a Spanish Colonial

Revival adobe residence built in Santa Monica in 1922. Following the devastating 1994

Northridge Earthquake, they invested two decades of painstaking, technically innovative work to

repair and restore the historic home. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in

2010 and received a Preservation Award from the Los Angeles Conservancy in 2019.

In addition to music, Earl loved playing golf, hiking near the family’s summer cabin in Idyllwild,

photography, and writing. He published a memoir in 2013, Singing in the Pantheon, illustrated

with his artful black-and-white photographs of family, architecture, and landscapes captured at

home in California and during his many travels in Europe and Latin America. He nurtured close

ties with friends and extended family, particularly in Germany and Nicaragua. His first cousin,

Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, was a Maryknoll priest who became foreign minister of

Nicaragua. Earl actively engaged in philanthropy and politics throughout his life and encouraged

others to join him.

--

Donations in Earl’s memory can be made to:

KCRW, an NPR Member Station

https://join.kcrw.com/

Idyllwild Arts Foundation

https://www.givecampus.com/ca…

Saint John’s Hospital in Santa Monica.

https://saintjohnsfoundation.…

Send to someone

Share this obituary with others

https://everloved.com/life-of/earl-webster-fisher/obituary/

Copy