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UC Davis Magazine

Class Notes Archive 1931-2014: Winter 2012

1958John Hardie, a pivotal administrator for UC Davis during a time of rapid campus growth, died in September in Davis at age 75. A former Associated Students president, he was hired in 1960 as the association’s business manager. He went on to hold a number of other positions, including the Cal Aggie Alumni Association’s first full-time manager, director of public ceremonies, assistant vice chancellor for university relations and, as special assistant to Chancellors Emil Mrak and James Meyer, director of campus development. He led a capital campaign in the 1970s that raised money to help build Recreation Hall (now the Pavilion). In 1990, he became a special assistant to directors of the UC Davis Medical Center. A supporter of Aggie sports, he volunteered as the football timekeeper during 1960–2006. Survivors include his wife of nearly 45 years, Marylee; daughter, Chris Mullally; son, Douglas; sister, Mary Jane Friedberger; and three grandchildren.
1959Jerry Reed, a retired Evangelical Covenant Church missionary, died of cancer in San Diego last April. He was 73. After earning his agronomy degree at UC Davis, he earned advanced degrees from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. He and his wife, Nancy (Bergmans) ’60, became career missionaries in 1965, spending 10 years in Ecuador and 12 years in Mexico City. In 1987, he joined the faculty at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago. He retired in 2004, but continued to do short-term missionary work in La Coruña, Spain, where his son, Rob, is a minister. Other survivors include a daughter, Kathy Matson, and son Dale.
1964Stan Holt, Ph.D., would like to get in contact with faculty and fellow alumni who remember him from his 1960–64 studies in the microbiology program. He can be reached at stanglous@yahoo.com.
1968Geraldo Arraes Maia, M.S., received the title of professor emeritus at Federal University of Ceará in Brazil in a September ceremony. During a career spanning more than four decades, the food scientist wrote 245 scholarly papers and 15 books, advised tropical fruit processors and helped establish fruit juice standards for the South American trade organization Mercosur.
1971Eric Davis, D.V.M. ’77, served as the California State Fair veterinarian last summer and is an associate veterinarian with the International Animal Welfare Training Institute at UC Davis. At the institute, he trains emergency responders in best methods for establishing emergency animal shelters, rescuing horses and handling loose livestock.
1972Chris 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.    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.
1973Longtime friends Crandall Mark, Steve McAdams and Ron Pauer organized a Homecoming reunion with former Tercero B Building and 1111 J Street Apartment roommates and neighbors in October. Ardi (Pedersen) Lane, Jim “Ruddy” Lane ’74, Don Foster ’74, April Lovvorn ’75, Barbara (Ham) Mockler ’76, Ken Mockler ’77, and Marilyn (Fratzke) Treusdell ’77 attended the game and dinner party—their first gathering in more than 35 years.
1975Jay Kerr, D.V.M. ’77, a veterinarian in the San Ramon area, became president of the California Veterinary Medical Association in July.    A novel by Hans Ostrom, Ph.D. ’82, Three to Get Ready, is being adapted into a film called Napa. Directed by Michael Kerr and starring Rose McGowan, the romantic thriller follows a female veteran who returns home from Afghanistan and becomes Napa sheriff. Ostrom co-wrote the screenplay and is expected to make a cameo appearance as a bartender. He teaches creative writing, African-American literature and rhetoric at the University of Puget Sound.
1976Irving Lubliner, Cred., M.A.T. ’88, was given tenure and promoted to full professor at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Ore., in September. A math faculty member there since 2006, he teaches future elementary and secondary math teachers. He was the keynote speaker at the 2011 Oregon Math Leaders and the Northwest Mathematics conferences. He also plays harmonica on Sarah Jane Nelson’s latest CD, Wild Women Don’t Get the Blues.    Mark Safarik is the host of two true-crime series, Killer Instinct and Dateline on Cloo, which premiered in September on Cloo, a new mystery-entertainment cable channel owned by NBCUniversal. Safarik is executive director of Forensic Behavioral Services in Fredericksburg, Va., and a retired FBI criminal profiler.
1977Scott Anderson made national headlines in October when he was ordained as the first openly gay minister in the Presbyterian Church. His ordination in Madison, Wis., marked his return to the ministry; in the 1980s, he studied at the Princeton Theological Seminary and served as pastor of two Sacramento-area churches, but came out to his congregation and resigned in 1990. He stayed active in the church and served the past eight years as executive director of the Wisconsin Council of Churches. He and his partner of 20 years, Ian MacAllister, live in Madison.    Michael Melancon retired from corporate life and was ordained last spring as a Zen Buddist chaplain. He studied at the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe., N.M., and now volunteers at end-of-life care facilities in Seattle. He previously served as vice president of human resources for ProBusiness and Cost Care companies.
1979Joyce Bezazian, a marriage and family therapist since 1983, created a short film, The Breakup, about a Sacramento Kings fan’s journey as the NBA team threatens to leave town. It debuted in October at the A Place Called Sacramento film festival, where it won the Audience Favorite award. As a therapist, she has appeared on Sacramento television and contributed to an advice column for the Davis Enterprise as well as an advice book for teenagers, If You Print This, Please Don’t Use My Name (1992).    John Hoffmire is the first director of the Saïd Global Entrepreneurship Network at Oxford University’s business school. He remains director of the Center on Business and Poverty, which he founded at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also serves as chairman of the nonprofit Progress Through Business.
1986Gunay (Ovunc) Evinch visited Turkey in October and narrowly missed the 7.2-magnitude earthquake that killed hundreds of people in Turkey’s eastern province of Van. A past president of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, he immediately began working on quake relief efforts with the assembly’s charitable Turkish Philanthropy Funds program ( http://tpfund.org). Evinch is an attorney in Washington, D.C., and lives in Potomac, Md. Richard Hill completed a six-week course on regional security at the Department of Defense Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu last June. The Southeast Asia section chief for a U.S. Marine Corps, Pacific, planning and policy division in Hawaii, Hill joined 80 other senior military and government leaders from 34 countries taking the course.   Gregory Bridenstine, M.A., an engineer and statistical expert, died unexpectedly at his home in Jacksonville, Fla., in September. He was 49. He worked the past 19 years for Johnson & Johnson’s contact lens division Vistakon, most recently as a research principal engineer. He often represented the company in technical discussions with the FDA. In addition to his UC Davis master’s degree in economics, he also completed a master’s degree in statistics at UC Riverside in 1987. Survivors include two sisters, two brothers, five nieces and nephews, and nine great-nieces and great-nephews, all from California.
1987Ray Schwartz, M.S., the rugby coach at John F. Kennedy High School in Sacramento, traveled to New Zealand this fall to watch the Rugby World Cup. He has worked for Geremia Pools for over 20 years, and recently began installing hybrid geothermal systems that use pools as a geothermal source to heat and cool homes. He and his wife, Kat Todd, live in Sacramento.
1991James “J.B.” Hay received the Kermit O. Hanson Award of Excellence for graduating first in his class at the Pacific Coast Banking School in Bellvue, Wash. He is a vice president for Farm Credit West in Bakersfield. He and his wife, Victoria Erikson ’95, M.S. ’01—whom he met on Picnic Day at an Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity barbecue—have three children from toddler to age 6. Hay recently termed off the Cal Aggie Alumni Association board of directors after six years of service.