• Jared Wilburn and Elsie Baldwin ’06 were married last September in Sebastopol. Alumni Kyle Hayslip ’05, Tom Weldon ’05, Celeste Passani ’06, Erin Lang ’06, Jen Siemon ’07, Anna (LaSalle) Downing ’08 and Katie Demboski ’06 were in the wedding party. Jared and Elsie live in Carlsbad where Jared works as a mechanical engineer and Elsie teaches English at a local community college. • Jared Wilburn and Elsie Baldwin ’06 were married last September in Sebastopol. Alumni Kyle Hayslip ’05, Tom Weldon ’05, Celeste Passani ’06, Erin Lang ’06, Jen Siemon ’07, Anna (LaSalle) Downing ’08 and Katie Demboski ’06 were in the wedding party. Jared and Elsie live in Carlsbad where Jared works as a mechanical engineer and Elsie teaches English at a local community college.| 1942Robert Anderson—decorated World War II veteran, TV host and administrative law judge—died in La Jolla of heart failure in October at age 91. While at UC Davis, he was a quarterback for the football team and was recruited by three professional teams after college. Instead, he joined the U.S. Marines, serving as a fighter pilot in the Pacific Ocean theatre and fighting in the battles of Tarawa, Okinawa and Iwo Jima. In the 1950s, he worked as public relations manager for the state Department of Agriculture and hosted a magazine-format TV show, Farm and Home News. This led to his spinoff sports show, Sportfolio with Bob Anderson. In the 1960s, he announced UC Davis football games. Mr. Anderson also attended law school and became an administrative law judge for the Board of Equalization, overseeing sales tax cases in Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. He earned the nickname “Cowboy Judge” for wearing a hat and boots with his robe. His late wife, Ruth, was dean of women and later associate dean of students from 1962 to 1987; she died in 2006. He is survived by his daughters, Kristine Pyeatt of New Mexico, Katherine Dixon of Solana Beach and Candace Anderson of Davis; brother, James of Spokane, Wash.; six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. |
| 1950 David Fish of Alcove, N.Y., Stanley and Lorraine (Bissant) Henry ’51 of Boise, Idaho, and John Meserve ’51 of Palm Springs met last January in Las Vegas, where they hold their annual reunions. • William “Bill” Allewelt, a longtime food-processing industry executive and UC Davis supporter, died in October in Davis at age 84. He retired in 1985 as CEO of Tri Valley Growers, which grew under his leadership to become the state’s largest canning company. The San Francisco Business Times named him one of the Bay Area’s 100 most influential business people of the 20th century. He was later named interim CEO of Sun-Diamond Growers of California to lead the financial turnaround of the nut and fruit growers’ cooperative, and served until 2006 on the board of Diamond Walnut Growers. He remained active at UC Davis, building industry support for food science research and serving as a Cal Aggie Alumni Association board member and a UC Davis Foundation trustee. He was a benefactor of the Alumni and Visitors Center, the UC Agricultural Issues Center and the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, and a charter member of the Chancellor’s Club, a group of donors who give $1,000 or more in unrestricted gifts to the campus each year. He and his wife, Jean, also established scholarships at the Graduate School of Management and School of Medicine in memory of their son, Thomas. In addition to his wife of 61 years, survivors include daughters Susan Allewelt Rosenberg of Sacramento, Melanie Allewelt Hoff of Ann Arbor, Mich., Elizabeth Allewelt Smith ’89 of Davis; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandsons. |
| 1953Eugene “Gene” Luhdorff of Woodland, a pioneer of modern water irrigation techniques, died of complications of Guillain-Barré syndrome in August. He was 79. Starting at his family’s well drilling business, E.E. Luhdorff & Co, he developed methods for creating groundwater wells without sand. In the 1970s, he co-founded the water engineering and consulting firm, Luhdorff & Scalmanini, developed new crop irrigation methods and helped create an innovative drip watering system now used widely in Napa Valley vineyards. In the 1960s, he travelled to India with the Peace Corps to help drill wells for low-income villages. Additionally, he was a supervisor for water projects in South America and Asia, and he served as a consultant to U.S. irrigation studies in the Middle East. Mr. Luhdorff received the first Lifetime Achievement Award from the Groundwater Resources Association of California in 1998, served as president of the Associated Drilling Contractors of California, and was a board member of the National Water Well Drillers Association in the 1960s. He retired in 1991. He is survived by his twin sister, Elaine; wife, Jan; children, Mark and Karen; and grandchildren, Aubrey and Kevin. |
| 1957Harry Colvin Jr., Ph.D., an animal physiologist who won awards for his teaching and student advising during his 1965–90 tenure, died in October in Davis at age 88. An authority on digestion in cows, sheep and other ruminants, he received Fulbright awards to teach in Yugoslavia and Argentina. Among other honors, he received a campus Magnar Ronning Award for Teaching Excellence, won three outstanding adviser awards and was selected by students as grand marshal of the 1984 Picnic Day Parade. He was a World War II Army veteran who landed at Normandy Beach, participated in the Battle of the Bulge and received the Bronze Star for bravery and the Purple Heart for combat injuries.
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| 1966 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. |
| 1970Johannes “John” Stek, Ph.D., who became a mechanical engineering lecturer after a private-industry career in aerospace turbine design, died in Davis in September at age 95. A native of the Netherlands, he completed his doctorate at UC Davis while working full time at Aerojet. After retiring from there in 1980, he taught classes at California State University, Sacramento, and UC Davis until 1994. |
| 1972 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 • 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. • 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. • 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. |
| 1974Eric Lesser is landscape coordinator for the Inland Empire Utilities Agency in Chino in southwestern San Bernardino County. In 2007, he oversaw the layout and installation of native plants in a 22-acre wetlands and habitat park created with reclaimed water next to the agency’s headquarters. He is a California-registered landscape architect and International Society of Arboriculture-certified arborist. A resident of Riverside, he plays cello in local orchestras. |
| 1976Jennifer Stith is an associate professor and division director of education at the program of physical therapy at Washington University in St. Louis, as well as a psychotherapist at the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute. A 26-year resident of St. Louis, Smith lives on the Mississippi Bluffs. • Van Grace Chauvin Pinney, M.S., nurse of 33 years, died of cancer in August at 67 in Hot Springs Village, Ark. She spent 19 years as a public school nurse in Texas, where she won School Nurse of the Year in 1991 from the Texas Association of School Nurses. She taught nursing for 23 years at institutions such as the University of Texas-Austin and Arlington, University of Nevada-Reno and Texas Woman’s University. She was an accomplished sports car road racing champion, a professional clown and hot air balloon student pilot. She is survived by her husband, William Emery Pinney; stepchildren, Laura Pinney Munson and Marc Emery Pinney; sister, Jan Chauvin Lincoln; and grandchildren, Drew and Audrey Munson, and Eason, Amelia and Rex Pinney. • Anne (Jeffrey) Schneider, J.D., of Davis died in July of ovarian cancer at 62. She was a leading water-law attorney and conservationist. She started her law career with the state Water Rights Commission in 1977, where she wrote seminal papers on the state’s groundwater and instream-water uses, and went on to represent municipal water suppliers. For the past 20 years, she was a partner at Ellison, Schneider & Harris, which specializes in energy, water and land matters. She received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007 from the Water Education Foundation. Ms. Schneider was also an environment advocate, and served on numerous boards such as the Yosemite Association, the California Wilderness Coalition and the Putah and Cache Creek preservation group, Tuleyome. An accomplished mountain climber and bicyclist, she ascended mountains in New Zealand, China, Nepal, Scotland, Yosemite, the Sierra Nevada and the Swiss Alps, and competed in the long distance bicycle race in France, Paris-Brest-Paris. Survivors include her two sons and her former husband, Bob ’72. |
| 19781978 A short story and artwork by Gary Keith appear in the book Tequila Tales (available at http://tequilatales.com) with another short story selected for an upcoming edition of The Chiron Review. |
| 1980Joel Maybury, a U.S. Department of State foreign service officer since 1995, is serving as United States consul at the American Presence Post in Bordeaux, France. The consul’s responsibilities include commercial promotion, public diplomacy and American citizen services. • Mo Salman, M.P.V.M., Ph.D. ’83, is the recipient of the 2010 Penn Vet World Leadership in Animal Health Award. The prize, underwritten by the Vernon and Shirley Hill Foundation, comes with $100,000 in unrestricted funding. Salman is a professor at Colorado State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and founder of the university’s Animal Population Health Institute. In 2010, he helped the institute obtain a $15 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development to study the effects of climate change on livestock in developing countries. |
