| 1940Bruce Klein, a retired 3M salesman who attended UC Davis in 1938–40, died in July in Fresno at age 92. He was a U.S. Army veteran and Pearl Harbor survivor who also witnessed the end of World War II, from Lejima, Japan, where Japanese delegates stopped on their way to Manila to negotiate surrender terms with Gen. Douglas MacArthur. After the war, Klein raised cattle and sold animal feed and veterinary medicine for General Mills and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals before joining 3M, where he worked 20 years selling overhead projectors. |
| 1942June (Mehl) White, who attended UC Davis during 1941–42, died in April in Edina, Minn., at age 89. |
| 1950Edward Thiel, Cred., of Chowchilla, died in August at age 82. He was a lifelong farmer, an ordained Southern Baptist deacon and an avid aviator. A U.S. Army veteran of the Korean War, he served on governing boards of the California Corn Growers and other agricultural co-ops. |
| 1952Patricia Curtis Cosgrave, a retired home economics teacher, died in Modesto last March after a brief illness. She was 82. Survivors include her husband, Russel ’50, M.Ed. ’52. • Robert Stephenson, a longtime resident of Camarillo, died in October after a long illness at age 88. He was a Marine Corps veteran of World War II and retired strawberry grower. |
| 1954Eugene Cota-Robles, M.A., Ph.D. ’57, a UC Santa Cruz biology professor emeritus and administrator who oversaw affirmative action programs for the campus and the UC system, died in September in Naperville, Ill. He was 86. He was a noted microbiologist, higher education leader and advocate for minority students and faculty. He was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the National Science Board in 1978 and, after retiring, served as a special assistant to the director of the National Science Foundation. Survivors include daughter Feliciana Farran ’83 of Naperville, Ill. • Michael Treshow VI, Ph.D., a plant scientist whose research contributed to the identification of acid rain and discovery of the hole in the ozone layer, died in Salt Lake City in October. He was 86. A botany professor for 35 years at the University of Utah, he was an expert on the effects of air pollution on plants. |
| 1955Gary Frame, M.S. ’56, is a retired consulting animal nutritionist. Recently widowed, he lives in Green Valley, Ariz. |
| 1956James Draper Jr., a longtime resident of Shasta Lake, died of lung cancer in July. He was a U.S. Army veteran and enjoyed wood working. |
| 1957Betty (Martinsen) Hansen, Cred. ’58, a retired Petaluma home economics teacher, died in April. She was 76. • Robert “Bob” Loomis, a retired Army officer and South Carolina hypnotherapist, died in April at age 76. He served 23 years in the U.S. Army as an infantry, military police, intelligence and public affairs officer. He earned the Bronze Star Medal and Legion of Merit with one Oak Leaf Cluster, and retired in 1980 as a lieutenant colonel. After working as a financial adviser and college instructor, he earned a master’s degree in counseling and practiced as a clinical hypnotherapist until 2004. |
| 1960Bonnie Scheffler, a Santa Rosa resident who raised birds of all kinds, died in October after a battle with cancer. She was 73. She was a longtime member and a former president of the Redwood Empire Cage Bird Club; she and her husband raised emus for several years. |
| 1961Chuck Francis, a professor of agronomy and horticulture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, received the national Crop Science Teaching Award from the American Society of Agronomy in October. Last spring, he received the University of Nebraska’s Distinguished Educational Service Award. Francis has been married for 50 years to Barbara (Hanson) Francis ’61. • Paintings by John A. O’Connor, M.A.A. ’63, were featured in a retrospective exhibition this fall at the Thrasher-Horne Center for the Arts in Orange Park, Fla. The works span 1961–2012. O’Connor received the Florida Higher Education Arts Network’s Lifetime Achievement Award in May 2005. An art professor emeritus at the University of Florida, he founded oconnorartLLC, an art consulting company, in 2010. • Still friends after more than 50 years, seven alumni couples took a 14-day river boat cruise together in September, traveling from Budapest, Hungary, to Amsterdam: John ’61 and Katy (True) Bejarano ’65, Steve ’63 and Doris (Christiansen) Lewis ’62, Cred. ’63, Howard Gary ’62 and Pat (Boggess) Blair ’62, Bill ’64 and Kay (Lynch) Jones ’62, Bob ’63 and Ann (Grimes) Testa ’62, Mike and Pat (Jones) Smith, who attended in the late 1950s/early ’60s, and Terry ’63 and Diana (Winter) Witzel, who attended 1960–63. |
| 1965Phyllis (Davis) Giacomini, of Pine Grove, died unexpectedly last March at age 68. She lived many years in Humboldt County, where her husband, Tom ’62, Cred. ’65, was a coach at the College of the Redwoods. A former grade school teacher, she was an active volunteer at St. Bernard’s Catholic School in Eureka, teaching art in the elementary grades and running the bingo program for 17 years. Survivors, in addition to her husband of 45 years, include a daughter and son Jon ’94. |
| 1966Don 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. • 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. • 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. |
| 1967Caroline Turner, M.A. ’70, is president-elect of the Association for the Study of Higher Education. She is a professor and graduate coordinator for the Doctorate in Educational Leadership Program at California State University, Sacramento. |
