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Class Notes Archive 1931-2014: Winter 2010

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1939Ruth (Thomas) Boswell of El Cerrito, who attended UC Davis in the late 1930s, died in March. She was 89. She is survived by her son, Laurence, and his wife, Sandra; her grandchildren, Ken and Emily Wenzler; and her great-grandchildren, Ashlee Ware, Nigel Boswell and Olivia and Elena Wenzler. Her husband of 57 years, Richard Boswell, died in 1999.
1940Guy Leggitt, a Cal Aggie Athletics Hall of Fame member for basketball and baseball, died in July at a Carmichael hospital at age 93. He played semiprofessional baseball in the Pacific Coast and Old Valley leagues, and also was inducted into the Sacramento Area Softball Hall of Fame. He worked more than 35 years for Sacramento’s Golden State Milk Co., which was later bought by Foremost-McKesson. He was an avid fisherman, hunter and horseshoe player. In his later life, he took up shuffleboard, once playing in a tournament in Japan. Preceding him in death were his first wife, Dolores, and their infant son, John Glenn; second wife, Crescent; and two brothers, Ray and Glenn. Survivors include his daughter, Penny Marie Hill; sister, Betty Campbell and her husband, Ed; numerous nieces and nephews; and his ‘’adopted daughter,’’ Amy Levi, and her husband, Larry, of Yuma, Ariz.
1950Richard Keene Stearns, who attended UC Davis and played on the football team in the early 1950s, died last October in Cameron Park from pancreatic cancer at age 76. He served in the U.S. Army as a sergeant during the Korean War. After the war, he went into business and eventually became a vice president for a company in the Bay Area. He is survived by his wife of 46 years, Janet Katsules, his children, Jeffrey and Lorinda, his grandchildren, Madelyn and Zachary, and his brother, Harry Jr.
1954Kenneth Lee Simpson, M.S. ’60, Ph.D. ’63, a World War II veteran, died in July in Burke, Va., after a long illness. He was 78. Upon completing his post doctorate in Wales, Simpson joined the University of Rhode Island as a food scientist in 1964. His research on vitamin A helped improve public health in developing countries. He retired in 1995. Mr. Simpson enjoyed woodworking, gardening and serving his church where he taught Sunday school and was a member of the elder’s board. He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Jill; children, Pamela Winchell, Valerie Criman and Andrew; sister, Marion Williams; and 10 grandchildren.
1962Carl Abbot Jr., a retired food scientist, died last July in Idaho at age 75. After graduating from UC Davis, he worked for Dole Fruits and Nuts as a microbiologist conducting research on nuts and was in charge of quality control. In 1977 he married Mary Grady in Reno, Nev., and a few years after his retirement in 1998, the couple moved to Lake Cocolalla, Idaho. Mr. Abbot enjoyed building furniture, traveling, hunting and reading. Along with his wife, he is survived by seven children, Ed, Linda, Lori, James, Jennifer, Jim and Roy; 12 grandchildren; 12 great grandchildren; sister, Lila Olson; and his aunt, Evalyn McIntire. He was preceded in death by his son, Ron.
1966John 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. • 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.
1967Joanne (Simonds) Powell retired in June after 30 years of being the curator of education at the North Carolina Maritime Museum, where she conducted and supervised school and public programs on the state’s coastal ecology and maritime history. In 2008, she was named the Marine Educator of the Year by the National Marine Educators Association. When Powell retired, North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue awarded her The Order of the Long Leaf Pine certificate with the rank of Ambassador Extraordinary. She lives with her husband, Allyn, in Gloucester, N.C.
1968Max Zurflueh recently retired after 35 years at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. He was an intern training director and professor of psychology. He also served as the president of Southeastern Massachusetts Psychological Association and adjunct faculty at Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, Antioch University New England and Suffolk University. He lives in Dartmouth, Mass., with his wife, Carol. His email address is mzurflueh@umassd.edu. • Robert Fontaine was featured as an alumni spotlight. Robert Fontaine By Elizabeth Stitt Occupation: Senior epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and resident adviser to the U.S. Field Epidemiology Training Program in Beijing. Fighting diseases: When there’s an outbreak of an infectious disease, people usually run away from it. Robert Fontaine ’68, M.D. ’72, runs toward it. As a scientist for the CDC since 1973, Fontaine has chased the likes of encephalitis in New Hampshire, hepatitis A in Minneapolis and smallpox in India. “We get challenged with the most difficult public health problems imaginable.” Like father, like son: Fontaine knew at an early age he wanted to go into disease control. He was exposed to epidemiology as a boy from his father, Russell Fontaine, who worked for the California Department of Public Health in the 1950s and then spent much of his career controlling malaria in Latin American, Asian and African countries before accepting a mosquito research position with the UC system at Davis. A friend of China: Like his father, Fontaine has traveled the globe, helping the public health systems in the Middle East, Central America and Asia. After the SARS breakout in 2003, he has been the adviser to Chinese doctors, training them to contain, investigate and eventually eradicate diseases—most recently the H1N1 and H5N1 flu viruses. For helping better public health in China, in 2007 he received the Friendship Award—the highest honor given by the Chinese government to a foreigner. And for Fontaine, the feeling is mutual—after more than six years in China, Fontaine doesn’t want to leave any time soon. “I’ll be there two more years. The CDC will have to pull me out.” When he’s not overseas, Fontaine and his wife of 28 years, Karla, live in Atlanta, Ga. They have three sons—one of whom is working on his Ph.D. at UC Davis in electrical engineering. “It’s one of the most interesting jobs around. There’s always something going on. If something new doesn’t come up and hit you in the face, you have plenty of opportunities to find, prevent and control other human diseases.”
1969John Lauck, M.S., Ph.D. ’72, died at his Green Valley home in July after a long illness. He was 66. After graduating, he worked for Chevron Chemical Co., starting as a research entomologist and leaving as vice president of worldwide agrochemicals. In the mid-1980s he created Western Ag Research, where he tested and evaluated agrochemicals until his retirement in 2000. He enjoyed traveling to Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, golfing, making wine and fishing. He is survived by his wife of 44 years, Elaine; children, Greg and Cher; brother, Richard; and three grandchildren.
1973Mike Bellotti was appointed athletic director at University of Oregon, where he was the head football coach for 14 seasons. Bellotti guided the Ducks to 12 post-season appearances, six bowl championships, two Pacific-10 Conference titles, a school-record of 11 wins in a season, a No. 2 national ranking in 2001 and a Top-25 national finish on six occasions in the past 10 years.
1976April Halprin Wayland wrote her sixth children’s book, New Year at the Pier—a Rosh Hashanah Story (Dial). In addition to writing, she has been teaching at the UCLA Extension Writers Program for more than a decade. She is married to Gary Wayland and their son, Jeff, is a sophomore in the marching band at UC Berkeley. • Joan Mcomber is executive director of Bridges Academy, a boarding school for at-risk teen boys in central Oregon, which she co-founded in 1997. She has been a family therapist since 1989.
1978Thomas Mouzes was named a shareholder of McDonough Holland & Allen’s real estate practice group, where he focuses on bankruptcy and commercial law. He previously managed his own law firm, Hauser and Mouzes. • John Watson was named chairman and chief executive of the Chevron Corp. effective Dec. 31. He has been at the company for the past 29 years and has served as vice president since April.
1980Eli Simon, professor of acting at UC Irvine, has written The Art of Clowning Around (Palgrave Macmillan), about clowning techniques. He has also created Clownzilla, a clown show that toured in China and South Korea last summer. • Fumiomi Takeda, Ph.D., received the 2009 Federal Laboratory Consortium Mid-Atlantic Regional Excellence in Technology Transfer Award for developing the rotating cross-arm trellis and cane training system for blackberries. He has worked for USDA–Agricultural Research Service at Appalachian Fruit Research Station in Kearneysville, W.Va., since 1982 as research horticulturist and lead scientist for a small fruit research program. • Nancy Rupp Tibbitts, M.A. ’83, a coordinator and adviser at the UC Davis Internship and Career Center, took her own life near Auburn in October at age 51. She worked at UC Davis for more than 26 years, helping fellow Aggies find internships and careers in agriculture. She co-owned the Tibbitts Farming Co. with her husband of 22 years, George Tibbitts. Along with her husband, she is survived by her children—George, a sophomore at San Diego State, Alexandra, a freshman at San Diego State, and Carson, a sixth-grader at St. James Catholic School in Davis.
1981Laurie 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.

1939Ruth (Thomas) Boswell of El Cerrito, who attended UC Davis in the late 1930s, died in March. She was 89. She is survived by her son, Laurence, and his wife, Sandra; her grandchildren, Ken and Emily Wenzler; and her great-grandchildren, Ashlee Ware, Nigel Boswell and Olivia and Elena Wenzler. Her husband of 57 years, Richard Boswell, died in 1999.

1940Guy Leggitt, a Cal Aggie Athletics Hall of Fame member for basketball and baseball, died in July at a Carmichael hospital at age 93. He played semiprofessional baseball in the Pacific Coast and Old Valley leagues, and also was inducted into the Sacramento Area Softball Hall of Fame. He worked more than 35 years for Sacramento’s Golden State Milk Co., which was later bought by Foremost-McKesson. He was an avid fisherman, hunter and horseshoe player. In his later life, he took up shuffleboard, once playing in a tournament in Japan. Preceding him in death were his first wife, Dolores, and their infant son, John Glenn; second wife, Crescent; and two brothers, Ray and Glenn. Survivors include his daughter, Penny Marie Hill; sister, Betty Campbell and her husband, Ed; numerous nieces and nephews; and his ‘’adopted daughter,’’ Amy Levi, and her husband, Larry, of Yuma, Ariz.

1950Richard Keene Stearns, who attended UC Davis and played on the football team in the early 1950s, died last October in Cameron Park from pancreatic cancer at age 76. He served in the U.S. Army as a sergeant during the Korean War. After the war, he went into business and eventually became a vice president for a company in the Bay Area. He is survived by his wife of 46 years, Janet Katsules, his children, Jeffrey and Lorinda, his grandchildren, Madelyn and Zachary, and his brother, Harry Jr.

1954Kenneth Lee Simpson, M.S. ’60, Ph.D. ’63, a World War II veteran, died in July in Burke, Va., after a long illness. He was 78. Upon completing his post doctorate in Wales, Simpson joined the University of Rhode Island as a food scientist in 1964. His research on vitamin A helped improve public health in developing countries. He retired in 1995. Mr. Simpson enjoyed woodworking, gardening and serving his church where he taught Sunday school and was a member of the elder’s board. He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Jill; children, Pamela Winchell, Valerie Criman and Andrew; sister, Marion Williams; and 10 grandchildren.

1962Carl Abbot Jr., a retired food scientist, died last July in Idaho at age 75. After graduating from UC Davis, he worked for Dole Fruits and Nuts as a microbiologist conducting research on nuts and was in charge of quality control. In 1977 he married Mary Grady in Reno, Nev., and a few years after his retirement in 1998, the couple moved to Lake Cocolalla, Idaho. Mr. Abbot enjoyed building furniture, traveling, hunting and reading. Along with his wife, he is survived by seven children, Ed, Linda, Lori, James, Jennifer, Jim and Roy; 12 grandchildren; 12 great grandchildren; sister, Lila Olson; and his aunt, Evalyn McIntire. He was preceded in death by his son, Ron.

1966John 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. • 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.

1967Joanne (Simonds) Powell retired in June after 30 years of being the curator of education at the North Carolina Maritime Museum, where she conducted and supervised school and public programs on the state’s coastal ecology and maritime history. In 2008, she was named the Marine Educator of the Year by the National Marine Educators Association. When Powell retired, North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue awarded her The Order of the Long Leaf Pine certificate with the rank of Ambassador Extraordinary. She lives with her husband, Allyn, in Gloucester, N.C.

1968Max Zurflueh recently retired after 35 years at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. He was an intern training director and professor of psychology. He also served as the president of Southeastern Massachusetts Psychological Association and adjunct faculty at Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, Antioch University New England and Suffolk University. He lives in Dartmouth, Mass., with his wife, Carol. His email address is mzurflueh@umassd.edu. • Robert Fontaine was featured as an alumni spotlight. Robert Fontaine By Elizabeth Stitt Occupation: Senior epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and resident adviser to the U.S. Field Epidemiology Training Program in Beijing. Fighting diseases: When there’s an outbreak of an infectious disease, people usually run away from it. Robert Fontaine ’68, M.D. ’72, runs toward it. As a scientist for the CDC since 1973, Fontaine has chased the likes of encephalitis in New Hampshire, hepatitis A in Minneapolis and smallpox in India. “We get challenged with the most difficult public health problems imaginable.” Like father, like son: Fontaine knew at an early age he wanted to go into disease control. He was exposed to epidemiology as a boy from his father, Russell Fontaine, who worked for the California Department of Public Health in the 1950s and then spent much of his career controlling malaria in Latin American, Asian and African countries before accepting a mosquito research position with the UC system at Davis. A friend of China: Like his father, Fontaine has traveled the globe, helping the public health systems in the Middle East, Central America and Asia. After the SARS breakout in 2003, he has been the adviser to Chinese doctors, training them to contain, investigate and eventually eradicate diseases—most recently the H1N1 and H5N1 flu viruses. For helping better public health in China, in 2007 he received the Friendship Award—the highest honor given by the Chinese government to a foreigner. And for Fontaine, the feeling is mutual—after more than six years in China, Fontaine doesn’t want to leave any time soon. “I’ll be there two more years. The CDC will have to pull me out.” When he’s not overseas, Fontaine and his wife of 28 years, Karla, live in Atlanta, Ga. They have three sons—one of whom is working on his Ph.D. at UC Davis in electrical engineering. “It’s one of the most interesting jobs around. There’s always something going on. If something new doesn’t come up and hit you in the face, you have plenty of opportunities to find, prevent and control other human diseases.”

1969John Lauck, M.S., Ph.D. ’72, died at his Green Valley home in July after a long illness. He was 66. After graduating, he worked for Chevron Chemical Co., starting as a research entomologist and leaving as vice president of worldwide agrochemicals. In the mid-1980s he created Western Ag Research, where he tested and evaluated agrochemicals until his retirement in 2000. He enjoyed traveling to Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, golfing, making wine and fishing. He is survived by his wife of 44 years, Elaine; children, Greg and Cher; brother, Richard; and three grandchildren.

1973Mike Bellotti was appointed athletic director at University of Oregon, where he was the head football coach for 14 seasons. Bellotti guided the Ducks to 12 post-season appearances, six bowl championships, two Pacific-10 Conference titles, a school-record of 11 wins in a season, a No. 2 national ranking in 2001 and a Top-25 national finish on six occasions in the past 10 years.

1976April Halprin Wayland wrote her sixth children’s book, New Year at the Pier—a Rosh Hashanah Story (Dial). In addition to writing, she has been teaching at the UCLA Extension Writers Program for more than a decade. She is married to Gary Wayland and their son, Jeff, is a sophomore in the marching band at UC Berkeley. • Joan Mcomber is executive director of Bridges Academy, a boarding school for at-risk teen boys in central Oregon, which she co-founded in 1997. She has been a family therapist since 1989.

1978Thomas Mouzes was named a shareholder of McDonough Holland & Allen’s real estate practice group, where he focuses on bankruptcy and commercial law. He previously managed his own law firm, Hauser and Mouzes. • John Watson was named chairman and chief executive of the Chevron Corp. effective Dec. 31. He has been at the company for the past 29 years and has served as vice president since April.

1980Eli Simon, professor of acting at UC Irvine, has written The Art of Clowning Around (Palgrave Macmillan), about clowning techniques. He has also created Clownzilla, a clown show that toured in China and South Korea last summer. • Fumiomi Takeda, Ph.D., received the 2009 Federal Laboratory Consortium Mid-Atlantic Regional Excellence in Technology Transfer Award for developing the rotating cross-arm trellis and cane training system for blackberries. He has worked for USDA–Agricultural Research Service at Appalachian Fruit Research Station in Kearneysville, W.Va., since 1982 as research horticulturist and lead scientist for a small fruit research program. • Nancy Rupp Tibbitts, M.A. ’83, a coordinator and adviser at the UC Davis Internship and Career Center, took her own life near Auburn in October at age 51. She worked at UC Davis for more than 26 years, helping fellow Aggies find internships and careers in agriculture. She co-owned the Tibbitts Farming Co. with her husband of 22 years, George Tibbitts. Along with her husband, she is survived by her children—George, a sophomore at San Diego State, Alexandra, a freshman at San Diego State, and Carson, a sixth-grader at St. James Catholic School in Davis.

1981Laurie 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.

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