Class Notes Archive 1931-2014
Class Notes are searchable back to our spring 2000 issue. You can browse the notes by decade (click on a decade to view its class notes):
Class notes from the 1960s
| 1966Dave Veith has written a novel, DeLancey's Stapler: Love, Lust, Duty, Doom, Rage, Revelation and Pizza (AuthorHouse), based on his adventures at UC Davis when he lived in Aggie Villa and when "guys had to sign out the girls from their dorms" and female students "wore nylon stockings to the pizza parlor," a period that Veith wrote about for UC Davis Magazine's fall 1997 issue. More information about the book is available at www.DaveVeith.com. Veith is retired and lives with his wife in Northern California. (appeared in the Fall 2008 issue) • GEORGE DRAKE, M.A. ’67, Ph.D. ’70, mathematics department lecturer ’72-’77, recently won the San Francisco Writers Conference contest for nonfiction writing. After 25 years of teaching mathematics at Lake Tahoe Community College, Drake is now retired and has begun a new career writing on issues related to the environmental crisis. He invites old colleagues and students to contact him at [gwdrake@intheserviceofgaia.com]. (appeared in the Summer 2009 issue) • PETER GARROD is the dean of the graduate division at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, while KEN TOKUNO ’69, M.S. ’73, is his associate dean. Both resided in Bixby Hall while living on the UC Davis campus, wound up as faculty at Manoa, the university system’s flagship campus, and married women from the islands. On top of that, both men’s fathers went to UC Berkeley in the late 1930s and lived in the same co-op while earning bachelor’s degrees in Agricultural Economics. Sadly, neither could convince his children to attend UC Davis. (appeared in the Summer 2009 issue) • John Blossom recently co-hosted the four-part series “Disaster Preparedness for Health Professionals” on UCTV, www.uctv.tv/disaster. Blossom is a professor of clinical family and community medicine at UC San Francisco’s medical school program and founder of the California Preparedness Education Network. (appeared in the Winter 2010 issue) • Robert Richardson of Salem, Ore., and Kona, Hawaii, died in Honolulu, last September. He was 65. He grew up in Honolulu before his family moved to San Francisco, where he attended high school. After he graduated from UC Davis, he worked as a bull rider for a rodeo before going into agriculture, eventually becoming vice president of International Sales for Northrup King in Minneapolis, Minn. His job took him to countries such as Colombia, Israel, Honduras and the former Soviet Union. In 1993, he moved to Oregon, worked in the seed business and was the president of the Oregon Seed Trade Association. He retired in 2005. He was a descendant of Hawaiian chiefess Kekuiapoiwa, mother of Hawaii’s first king, Kamehameha I. He is survived by his partner, Susan Fitts; sister, Ivy Kanoeaulani Richardson; children, Storm and Kelly Richardson Lepai; and his grandchildren, Sydney and Gavin Lepai. (appeared in the Winter 2010 issue) • Jackson Hills died in June at his home in Davis at 66. Born in San Francisco, Hills moved to Davis in 1951 where his father, Jack, was a Cooperative Extension Agronomist. He traveled after college, going to Puerto Rico with the Peace Corps and London in 1969, where he was inspired by counter culture cinema. After returning to Davis, he co-wrote two screenplays: The Legend of Putah Slim, an Old Western satire, and Starvation, a musical about the San Francisco punk rock movement. In the late 1970s, Hills enrolled in the Computer Learning Center of San Francisco, and went on to work for the state government, San Francisco State University and then UC Davis until his retirement in 2004. He is survived by his wife of 27 years, Susan Whitehouse, whom he met while she was a UC Davis postdoctoral fellow; his sons, Tristan and Dylan; and his sisters, Velma, Christine, Cynthia and Diane. (appeared in the Fall 2010 issue) • Michael Gillin, M.A., Ph.D. ’70, was recently named a fellow of the American Society for Radiation Oncology. He is a professor and chief of clinical services in radiation physics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. (appeared in the Winter 2011 issue) • Artwork by CLAIRIN UPTON (CLARA SAPRASA) was featured on the Art History Channel show Artists of the 21st Century in May. She has also been invited to participate in the Florence Biennale contemporary art fair in Italy in December. (appeared in the Summer 2011 issue) • Christine (Moore) Shoemaker, a professor at Cornell University, was elected in February to the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest honors given to an engineer in the United States. Her research focuses on finding cost-effective, robust solutions for environmental problems by using optimization, modeling and statistical analysis. At Cornell, she holds the position of Joseph P. Ripley Professor of Engineering, given for excellence in research and teaching. (appeared in the Summer 2012 issue) • Dave Veith wrote his second novel, Whose Woods These Are: A Rapunzel O’Hara Mystery (Xlibris, 2012), about an adventurous female reporter and a town with a lethal 25-year-old secret. Veith’s first novel, DeLancey’s Stapler (AuthorHouse, 2008), recalled life at UC Davis at the onset of the Vietnam War. He and his wife live in Northern California and have four children and two grandsons. (appeared in the Summer 2012 issue) • Harvey Robinson is president of the Retired Public Employees Association of California. He worked at CalPERS for 29 years in its Benefit and Services Division and Long-Term Care Program. (appeared in the Fall 2012 issue) • Mike Taylor, J.D. ’69, attorney for the Tulalip reservation in the Washington state, received the 2012 Northwest Indian Bar Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his more than 40 years representing the Tulalip and other tribes. (appeared in the Fall 2012 issue) • James Ganzer Cred., ’68, a Stockton attorney and former teacher, died in June at age 68. He was an Eagle Scout and former president of the Davis Teachers Association. (appeared in the Fall 2012 issue) • Don McBride is retired from a 35-year career with Pacific Bell, Bel Labs, AT&T and Telcordia Technologies. He hosted a reception in June for his son, Tom, Ph.D. ’11, and new wife, Brooke Babineau ’03, Ph.D., ’09, at Putah Creek Lodge on campus. Tom, a third generation Aggie, is currently doing postdoctoral work on Alzheimer’s disease at The Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, while Brooke is an autism researcher at UC San Francisco. (appeared in the Winter 2013 issue) • David Fredrickson, M.A., Ph.D. ’73, a longtime professor of archaeology at Sonoma State University, died in August at a Walnut Creek care home. He was 85. He founded Sonoma State’s anthropology department and was noted for his collaboration with Native Americans in excavating their historic sites. He also was a guitar-playing folk singer; his repertoire of Old West songs were recorded by the Smithsonian Institution’s Folkways program. The Society for California Archaeology honored him with a Mark Raymond Harrington Award for Conservation Archaeology in 1988 and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993. (appeared in the Winter 2013 issue) • Eugene “Gene” Martin died in his Los Gatos home in October after battling mesothelioma for nearly two years. He was 67. He spent his career as an electrical engineer at IBM and Hitachi, but his passion was steam railroads. He had a room-size HO-gauge model railroad layout, helped restore a retired Southern Pacific locomotive, worked on historic trolleys at History Park San José and was building a ride-on steam engine. He is survived by his wife, Mary Brence Martin ’66, and two sons, including Scott ’99. (appeared in the Winter 2013 issue) • Judy (Coontz) Fields wrote her second book, The New E.A.T. and Be Healthy weight-loss guide released last December by her company, Nutrition for You (judyfields.com). A registered dietitian for 44 years, she has offices in Fair Oaks and Vacaville. She earned a master’s degree in health systems leadership at the University of San Francisco in 1987. (appeared in the Summer 2013 issue) • Joan (Bauslaugh) Gundlach, a retired nurse, died in April in Post Falls, Idaho. She was 70. (appeared in the Fall 2013 issue) • Robert “Rob” Smith, of Fairfield, died at age 69 on November 12. He was a former Benicia restaurateur and Concord real estate broker. (appeared in the Spring 2014 issue) • Michelle “Micki” Mahoney Aronson, a Eureka labor and delivery nurse, died Feb. 24. She was 69. (appeared in the Summer 2014 issue) |