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 1970s
| 1972DAVID SEABORG founded the World Rainforest Fund, a nonprofit organization dedicated to saving rainforests worldwide. He is an evolutionary biologist and a writer. He recently finished writing his first book of poetry, Honor Thy Sowbug, which he started 15 years ago. He lives in Walnut Creek. (appeared in the Summer 2009 issue) • Robert August Gorse Jr., Ph.D., died suddenly at his Saline, Mich., home last September. He was 67. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from San Diego State University. In 1975 he completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin and then worked at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill. He worked 1978–2002 for Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn, Mich., where he contributed to the success of the Auto-Oil Air Quality Improvement Research Program in the early 1990s. He was a fourth-degree member of the Knights of Columbus and a volunteer at the St. Louis Center and Boysville. Surivors include his wife of 32 years, Shirley, stepson, Rob, daughter, Sandee, grandchildren, brothers, John, Mike and Pat, and his first wife, Mary ’68. A brother, Jim, preceded him in death. (appeared in the Spring 2010 issue) • Cynthia Charters, M.A. ’81, was the featured artist at the Los Rios College Federation in Sacramento in February. She displayed more than 20 pieces, including miniature paintings, etchings and larger prints spanning the 20 years of her artistic career. (appeared in the Summer 2010 issue) • Scott and Cathy (Horne) Leiber have established the Leiber Family Foundation in memory of Scott’s cousin, Judith Krug, a librarian and anti-censorship activist who co-founded Banned Books Week. Seeking to promote “freedom through literature,” the foundation has helped establish a children’s library in a hospital and mobile libraries for battered women’s shelters in Pennsylvania. The foundation also shipped books for American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Scott is a Wells Fargo financial adviser in Bethlehem, Pa., and Cathy has been working part time with him since her retirement from Philip Morris International six years ago. They have two sons, David and Daniel. (appeared in the Summer 2010 issue) • Shekhar Bhadsavle, M.S. ’72 by Nadine Elsibai Occupation: Farmer in Malegaon, a small Indian village east of Bombay. Prideful work: In India, rural lives are accorded little status. But dignity, believes Bhadsavle, is as important as food and shelter. So he has made changing people’s perspectives about farming his life goal. His ancestors farmed in the area for 200 years, and his father, a freedom fighter who recognized the importance of the rural villages, instilled in him a love of nature and country life. Life on the farm: Bhadsavle has received many awards for his successful 16-hectare farm (about 40 acres), where he combines aquaculture, agroforestry (growing bamboo and mahogany) and rice and dairy farming with a thriving agro-tourism business. A water-buffalo ride and pond-side cottages attract visitors to his farm, supplementing the family’s income as well as demonstrating the dignity inherent to the rural life. Sharing success: Bhadsavle and his wife, Anuradha, wrote the first book in India on agro-tourism, titled Krishi Paryatan. And Bhadsavle regularly shares his experiences by speaking on television and radio and at schools. “Our farm has become very popular not only amongst the guests from cities, but also amongst farming youth who hope to get a dignified income from farming.” (appeared in the Winter 2006 issue) • Cynthia Charters, M.A. ’81, showcased her large-scale paintings in August at Fort Bragg. (appeared in the Fall 2010 issue) • In October, a nonprofit organization founded by Scott and Cathy (Horne) Leiber dedicated a library for soldiers at Camp Phoenix in Kabul, Afghanistan. The new library is named after Scott’s late cousin, Judith Krug, who defended the First Amendment as the director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom with the American Library Association. She died in 2009 (appeared in the Winter 2011 issue) • David Carle wrote Introduction to Earth, Soil, and Land in California (UC Press). He was a California state park ranger for 27 years and, since retiring in 2000, has written nine books (see users.qnet.com/~carle.) His next book, about water, will be co-authored by his wife, Janet (Broughton) Carle ’75, and involves a world trip along the 38th parallel, beginning at their home at Mono Lake. Their blog is paralleluniverse38n.blogspot.com. (appeared in the Winter issue) • Brenda (O’Flaherty) Franklin, David Johnson, Dave Lane, Judy (Venes) Lane, Steve Hansen ’73 and Rick Brown ’74 reunited in Davis last September, the day after the UC Davis football team played UC Berkeley. The group had not been together for more than 30 years. They plan to reunite again next year. Franklin, an account manager for bioscience company Chr. Hansen, attended the football game the previous day with her husband, a Cal graduate. Johnson has retired as a deputy director at the California Department of Boating and Waterways. Lane is a partner and attorney at Farmer Smith & Lane’s insurance coverage and litigation law firm in Sacramento. Venes Lane is a partner and periodontist at the Capital Periodontal Group in the Sacramento Area. Hansen is a pharmaceutical consultant in Ottowa, Canada. And Brown is a partner and tax accountant in Rocklin. (appeared in the Winter 2011 issue) • William “Bill” Cloer, a fourth-generation Porterville-area farmer, died of rare mantle cell lymphoma last February at age 65. He started classes at UC Davis in fall 1964, but left to join the Navy after his draft deferment expired. In the Navy, he worked in electronic surveillance from his base assignment in Rota, Spain, as well as from slow reconnaissance planes and Navy jets catapulted from aircraft carriers. After his discharge, he returned to UC Davis and completed his undergraduate studies in plant sciences and took graduate courses. He grew a variety of stone fruit including plums, apple-pears, jujubes, prunes and quince until his lymphoma diagnosis in 2000. A longtime member of the Visalia Racing Pigeon Club, he developed his own line of racing pigeons. He also loved hiking remote areas of the High Sierra. Survivors include his parents, C. William and Harriet Cloer; sister, Carla Cloer; daughter, Molly; son, Jacob, and three granddaughters. He was buried at Vandalia Cemetery in Porterville with military honors. (appeared in the Winter 2011 issue) • Susan Van Kirk Taylor died in September in Simi Valley at 60. A pediatric physical therapist for 35 years, she spent 25 years working for the Simi Valley Hospital Child Development Center. She enjoyed the outdoors, music, teaching Sunday school, leading church youth groups and supporting charities. She is survived by her husband, Craig; children, Erin and Kenneth; daughter-in-law, Jacqueline; mother, Phoebe; and brother, John. (appeared in the Winter 2011 issue) • Author David Carle’s first novel, Mono, was released last November by Phalarope Press. The book tells the story of a biologist who surveys the Mono Lake basin in the eastern Sierra in the 1930s and falls in love with a woman whose family lost its farm after construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. A retired California state parks ranger, Carle has written several nonfiction books exploring relationships between people and California’s environment. (appeared in the Spring 2011 issue) • Nancy Seyden, M.S. ’75, who helped transform UC Davis attitudes regarding people with disabilities, died in January from respiratory failure at age 63. Ms. Seyden, who had dealt with the Guillian-Barré neuromuscular condition since she was 12, worked after graduating as a staff member at the campus Services to Handicapped Students (now the Disability Resource Center). In 1993, she was recruited by Professor Emeritus William Fowler to be a research associate with the Research and Training Center in Neuromuscular Diseases, where she supervised interns and helped research neuromuscular medicine. She and three other UC Davis staff and disability activists, Buz Dreyer, Diane Adams and Connie Burton, created the Forum on Disabilities Issues. They helped start Disability Awareness Week in the early 1990s. Ms. Seyden also created the library of disability resources in the Women’s Resources and Research Center library. She retired in 2008, and enjoyed knitting and submitting her creations to the Yolo County Fair. She also volunteered for Yolo Reads and was an education docent for Yolo Basin Foundation, which teaches school children about wildlife and conservation. She is survived by her husband, Peter Thy, a project scientist in the Department of Geology. (appeared in the Spring 2011 issue) • DELIA (CARLSON) RALSTON retired from the John Deere Product Engineering Center after 32 years as an electrical engineer. She lives in Waterloo, Iowa. (appeared in the Summer 2011 issue) • Carmen (Castillo) Cody ’72 died at a Sacramento hospital in April after a brief illness. She was 60. After graduating, she enjoyed a brief singing career in Spain with the bands Zapata and Carnivales, then worked 33 years with the state Department of Social Services, Child Support Division. Survivors include her husband of 30 years, James; daughter, Melissa Cody Bell; son, Kellen Cody; brother, Ricardo Castillo. (appeared in the Summer 2011 issue) • Jane Straus ’76 of Mill Valley—a grammar expert, life coach and author—died in February after a two-year battle with brain cancer. She was 56. She wrote The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation, a best seller, which led to the creation of her award-winning website, GrammarBook.com; and Enough is Enough—Stop Enduring and Start Living Your Extraordinary Life. She also spoke at seminars, made guest appearances on ABC’s View From the Bay and other television shows, and hosted her own radio show, Ask Jane. She is survived by her husband of 23 years, Lester Kaufman; daughter, Zoe, 18; mother, Daisy; brother, Tom; and niece and nephew, Vivian Straus-Gehring and David Straus. (appeared in the Summer 2011 issue) • Physician John Axelson retired after 30 years in private practice in hematology and oncology in Jackson, Mich. He and his wife Lynn (Chetkovich) ’71 live in Brooklyn, Mich., and have three children and six grandchildren. They are currently serving as overseas ambassadors for Community Bible Study International in Burundi and Kenya. (appeared in the Fall 2011 issue) • Chris Cowing, D.V.M. ’74, is president-elect of the California Veterinary Medical Association. He owns Animal Cove Pet Hospital in Foster City and lives in San Mateo. (appeared in the Winter 2012 issue) • In April, Jan Lecklikner was named Defender of the Year by the California Public Defenders Association. She has worked for the San Francisco Public Defender’s office since 1984 and has been with the juvenile unit for six years. (appeared in the Winter 2012 issue) • David Carle has written a mystery, The Spotting Scope (Phalarope Press, 2012) his second novel after 12 nonfiction books. He draws on his 27-year career as a park ranger in this fictional story about a former ranger investigating a death in the Sierra Nevada. (appeared in the Summer 2012 issue) |