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 1980s
| 1981Mark Withrow, a Department of State diplomatic security service officer assigned to the San Francisco Federal Building, was recognized by Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Consular Affairs Maura Harty for his contribution to the San Francisco Passport Agency during the summer 2007 surge in passport applications.
(appeared in the Summer 2008 issue) • John Wellington died in April at age 49 due to complications from a short illness. After graduating from UC Davis, he spent his engineering career in the microwave industry, serving most recently as a manager with Communications & Power Industries in Palo Alto. He was also a drummer with many musical groups, most notably the California Repercussions, which he co-founded in the early ’80s, as well as several rock bands, orchestras and local musical theater. Survivors include his wife, Eva (Blasburg) Wellington ’83, and his children, Eric and Roxanne.
(appeared in the Summer 2008 issue) • Paul Harris wrote a book, Diary From The Dome (Vantage Press), about his harrowing experience in the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina. Harris, who works at UC San Diego's Geisel Library, said he wrote the book primarily for therapeutic reasons and will donate 5 percent of any profits to New Orleans organizations.
(appeared in the Fall 2008 issue) • Paul Harris wrote a book about his experiences with Hurricane Katrina titled Diary from the Dome. He was trapped in the Superdome with other evacuees when the hurricane struck New Orleans. Harris recently retired from working at the UC San Diego library for 21 years, most recently as manager of the information desk. He now lives in Eureka Springs, Ark.
(appeared in the Winter 2009 issue) • Marilyn Woolkalis, Ph.D., died of ovarian cancer in June 2008 at her home in Rosemont, Pa. She was 57. When she joined the physiology faculty at Philadelphia's Thomas Jefferson University in 1992, she concentrated her research on vascular endothelium, the cell layer lining blood vessels. After her diagnosis in 2005, she turned her focus to the signals controlling the growth of ovarian cancer cells. After becoming acutely ill, her primary goal was to see her daughter, Julia, graduate from high school, which she did via a video recording. Survivors include her husband, George Gerton, Ph.D. '80, her daughter, her mother, Mary Louise Woolkalis, and a brother, David Woolkalis.
(appeared in the Winter 2009 issue) • Bruce Chan, J.D., was appointed a San Francisco County Superior Court judge by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in January. Chan had served as a commissioner for the San Francisco County Superior Court since 2004 and before that as chief counsel for the California State Assembly Committee on Public Safety.
(appeared in the Spring 2009 issue) • LESLIE COOKSY, an associate professor of education at the University of Delaware, recently established a graduate program in evaluation—the study of the quality and effectiveness of human service organizations, programs and policies. The new program is an interdisciplinary collaboration of three departments in the College of Human Services, Education and Public Policy.
(appeared in the Summer 2009 issue) • JONATHAN MAYHEW had two books published last April—Apocryphal Lorca: Translation, Parody, Kitsch (University of Chicago Press) and The Twilight of the Avant-Garde: Spanish Poetry 1980-2000 (Liverpool University Press). Mayhew was recently promoted to full professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Kansas, Lawrence.
(appeared in the Summer 2009 issue) • Theresa Gibney recently retired as program manager and technology strategist for Hewlett-Packard’s ink supplies business after working various levels of engineering and management for 26 years. She is currently a senior utility analyst with the Public Utility Commission in Salem, Ore.
(appeared in the Fall 2009 issue) • Laurie Tharin Engelbeck is a school psychologist at the Issaquah School District near Seattle, Wash. She recently became an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Counseling and School of Psychology at the College of Education at Seattle University.
(appeared in the Winter 2010 issue) • Donald Dacany
By Elizabeth Stitt
Occupation: Retired associate warden of San Quentin
Prison life: Twenty-nine years is a long to time to spend in jail for anyone. What got Donald Dacanay ’81 out was retirement. This past December, he turned in his badge as associate warden of the death row inmates after working his way up from officer. “Everyday was not the same,” Dacanay said. “Anything could happen.”
The hook: As a fresh college graduate, Dacanay didn’t plan on working at one of the United States’ most well known prisons. His friend told him of a job as an officer at San Quentin after Dacanay wasn’t able to find work with his applied behavioral science degree. “I said, ‘You gotta be crazy. I ain’t working for no prison.’” However, seeing the bills pile up in his mailbox that afternoon, he caught a ride out to San Quentin the next morning to take the written and oral exams and was offered a job that week. “My plan was to pay some bills and get the heck out of there,” he said. On his first day as an officer, he walked the gun rails, looking down into the prison’s upper yard and saw a sea of hundreds of prisoners dressed in denim, yelling up at him and the other 20 new hires. “I thought this is going to be an interesting place, so I guess I was hooked.”
The job: Dacanay had to learn quickly on how to work at the prison. “You’re always on your guard, because you don’t know what’s going to happen to you. You have to learn the environment.” He did everything from feeding inmates in their cells to chairing classification committees which determined inmates’ programs, transfers and parole credits. “It’s a good place to work,” he said. “If I ever said that to people, they’re going to think I’m off my rocker.”
Dacanay met his wife Rachelle on the job in prison. They attended the academy together, and in 2007 she retired as a counselor II specialist at the prison. They live in Fairfield.
“It’s a historical and interesting place. I guess that’s what kept me here so long—to be tied into the history of the place.”
(appeared in the Spring 2010 issue) • Michael V. Nelson, M.A., of Denver died last July. A retired Air Force major, he was 61. Burial was at the Air Force Academy Cemetery in Colorado Springs, Colo. Survivors include his wife, Charlene.
(appeared in the Spring 2011 issue) • Vicki (Gee) Norton, Ph.D. ’90, a partner in Duane Morris’ San Diego law office, has been named co-head of the firm’s newly formed Life Sciences and Biotechnology division. Norton’s practice focuses on biotechnology and chemical patent counseling and litigation.
(appeared in the Spring 2012 issue) • After 23 years with the Florida Forest Service, Mark Davis, M.S., is now manager of a Rayonier Corp. forest regeneration center in Glennville, Ga., that produces 23 million pine seedlings annually.
(appeared in the Spring 2013 issue) • Kelly (Hyde) Fehr joined Cameron MacAllister Group this spring as principal consultant, specializing in business development for the firm’s architecture, engineering and construction clients. She previously worked at HOK as vice president of business development for science and technology.
(appeared in the Summer 2013 issue) • Patricia Troxel, M.A., a respected Central Coast theater artist and teacher, died in April after a four-year battle with breast cancer. She was 56. She directed dozens of plays at the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts Theaterfest. She was also active with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Utah Shakespeare Festival. She was an English faculty member at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where she taught dramatic literature, playwriting and Shakespeare, from 1990 until her retirement in 2010. After earning her UC Davis degree, she earned a doctorate from Princeton University.
(appeared in the Summer 2013 issue) • Ron Lewis, a professor of animal and poultry sciences at Virginia Tech, received a university award for excellence in technology-assisted teaching. He and two colleagues developed CyberSheep, a Web-based game where players apply principles in quantitative genetics to a virtual sheep breeding cooperative. Undergraduate and graduate students from 25 universities have played the game.
(appeared in the Fall 2013 issue) • John J. “JJ” Maloney, M.S., of Essex Junction, Vt., died at home in May after a lengthy illness. He was 55. He worked as an IBM engineer for 29 years.
(appeared in the Fall 2013 issue) • Tamara (Hupe) Skov is a real estate agent with boutique brokerage Santa Barbara Living. A resident of Santa Barbara since 1990, she previously worked as director for contributor services at United Way, director of development at Sansum Clinic and, most recently, executive director of the Visiting Nurse and Hospice Care Foundation.
(appeared in the Summer 2014 issue) • President Barack Obama nominated Leslie Bassett in June to be the next U.S. ambassador to Paraguay. A career member of the Foreign Service, Bassett has been deputy chief of mission in Seoul, South Korea, since 2012. She served previously as the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassies in Manila, Philippines, Mexico City, and in Gaborone, Botswana. Her career also includes service in Colombia, Israel, South Africa, El Salvador and Nicaragua. In addition to her UC Davis degree, she holds an M.A. from Johns Hopkins University and an M.S. from the National War College. (appeared in the Fall 2014 issue) |