SF Chronicle: Those Who Left Their Mark in 2005
Hyfler/Rosner
January 1, 2006 Sunday
Those who left their mark
BYLINE: Marsha Ginsburg, Chronicle Staff Writer
They all lived their passions. A Nobel
Prize-winning-chemist. A toothpaste researcher. A beermaker.
An artist with Down syndrome. And a champion fog-caller.
There were also the community activists, the politicians,
the educators and the writers. They were famous, or they
were everyday people who strove to improve life.
The Bay Area lost hundreds of people over the past year to
everything from cancer to war to natural disaster. Some died
peacefully in their sleep. Some died tragically. Many
seemingly died before their time. Several made it past 100.
The oldest was 107.
Each of them, in large ways and small, left legacies in the
Bay Area. Herewith, then, is a selection of those
memorialized in The Chronicle between Christmas 2004 and
Christmas 2005. .
DR. WILLIAM JOSEPH DICKERSON and JANE DICKERSON of Mill
Valley were swept up in the December 2004 tsunami in
Thailand. Dr. Dickerson, 76, was a prominent Marin County
psychiatrist and Napa Valley grape grower, and his wife,
Jane, was a former "Clairol Girl" with a doctorate in
clinical psychology.
They were killed while vacationing at the Anantara Resort
and Spa on Khao Lak Beach, in Phang Nga, Thailand.
The couple, married in 1985, had traveled the world. While
Dr. Dickerson practiced in Kentfield, Mrs. Dickerson pursued
travel writing, working with publications in Chicago, London
and New York. She also was a consultant for luxury hotels
and resorts.
OLETA KIRK ABRAMS got more than mad when her foster daughter
was sexually assaulted in a Berkeley High School stairwell,
and then mistreated by police and doctors. She did something
about it. Ms. Abrams co-founded the nation's first rape
crisis center, Bay Area Women Against Rape.
More than three decades later, the Oakland-based nonprofit
agency receives more than 1, 000 emergency calls a year and
has been replicated around the world, most recently in
Croatia and Japan. Bill Danenhower, who met Ms. Abrams while
working as an investigator with the Oakland Police
Department's sexual assault unit, described her as his
unit's "right arm, our mother confessor and adviser." Ms.
Abrams died Jan. 8 from complications during a lung biopsy
at Alta Bates Summit Hospital. She was 77.
LILY HEARST, one of the Bay Area's oldest residents and a
spry centenarian, lived life to the fullest until she died
in her sleep Jan. 19 at 107.
Mrs. Hearst, who regularly played piano at her neighborhood
senior center, attributed her longevity to mountain climbing
as a young woman in Austria, exercise, a good diet, very
little alcohol and no cigarettes. As a young woman, Mrs.
Hearst was an ardent and adventurous mountaineer and skier
who defied convention by wearing ski pants instead of skirts
while on the slopes, said her son, John Hearst. "She had a
way of pushing herself into things and making herself known.
She was not a retiring, shy person," he said. "It's what
endeared people to her."
LT. DUSTIN M. SHUMNEY AND LANCE CPL. JOSEPH B. SPENCE, ages
30 and 24, were two young fathers among 31 Marines who
perished Jan. 26 in the crash of a CH-53E Super Stallion
helicopter in Iraq.
Lt. Shumney grew up in Benicia and was raising a family with
his wife, Julie. Lance Cpl. Spence grew up in Scotts Valley,
married his childhood sweetheart, Elisabeth, and was serving
in Iraq when his daughter was born. He saw his daughter once
by videophone. He never held her.
Both had been assigned to 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine
Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary
Force, Marine Corps Base Hawaii.
GLEN ROBINSON of Mill Valley in 1962 was the first African
American hired as a deputy U.S. marshal and later became the
first black to head a U.S. marshal's office in California.
Many Marin County residents knew Mr. Robinson through his
service on the Marin County Board of Education. He was first
elected to the board in 1965 and won re-election unopposed
for nearly 40 years, serving until his death.
Mr. Robinson died of pulmonary disease Jan. 26, nine days
short of his 50th wedding anniversary. He was 73.
LEONARD JOSEPH THOMPSON, a San Francisco native son, became
the city's fog-calling champion after catching the bug for
his strange new hobby in 1983. After hearing about the
contest for the San Francisco Fair & Exposition, he nabbed a
tape-recording of the distinctive two-tone foghorn sound of
the East Brother Light Station, and began a regimen of
mimicking it over and over. He won the competition, but lost
the following year. There was a consolation, though: He had
trained the person who won.
Mr. Thompson died Feb. 26 at his home in San Francisco. He
was 74.
JUDITH SCOTT was a self-taught Berkeley artist known for her
intricate and mysterious fiber art sculptures. Her work was
all the more remarkable because she had Down syndrome.
Ms. Scott's sculptures, noted for their elemental quality,
bursts of color and singular forms, have been shown in
galleries and museums around the world, and sell for as much
as $10, 000.
Ms. Scott died March 14 of natural causes at her sister's
home in Placer County. She was 61.
DR. DON ROSE'S trademark as one of the Bay Area's last Top
40 disc jockeys was the use of corny, one-liners to
entertain his listeners. His wacky sound effects turned him
into KFRC radio's most popular disc jockeys in the 1970s.
Mr. Rose ruled as the indomitable morning man at the station
from October 1973 until the station changed to a big-band
format in 1986.
Mr. Rose died in his sleep at his Concord home March 30
after months of battling pneumonia. He was 70.
ALAN DUNDES made a living out of folklore. He not only loved
telling stories, but also turned the subject into a major at
UC Berkeley, and eventually became nationally famous for his
knowledge of it. He was a widely regarded expert on
everything from fairy tales to ethnic jokes to Freud. The
affable and prolific Mr. Dundes left behind 12 books and
more than 250 articles on the subject.
He died March 30 after collapsing from an apparent heart
attack while teaching a graduate seminar. He was 70.
DR. BOYD STEPHENS was a man of few words who shunned
publicity. But when San Francisco's medical examiner spoke,
people listened.
As the city's chief coroner for more than three decades, he
was a nationally renowned expert who helped win convictions
in scores of homicide trials before he retired in 2004. Dr.
Stephens died April 2 at his home in Daly City after a long
battle with cancer. He was 65.
DALE MESSICK was the woman behind the woman. As the creator
of red-haired heroine Brenda Starr, Ms. Messick helped women
break into the male world of comic strips. The young
cartoonist from Indiana -- who lived in the Sonoma County
hamlet of Penngrove -- changed her name from Dalia early on
to disguise her gender from editors. Ms. Messick died April
5, a week before her 99th birthday.
EUNICE JACKSON-BULL was not just a giant Giants fan, but was
also so devoted that players took to calling her Mother. She
not only hemmed Willie Mays' pants, but also attended nearly
every Giants home game since 1960, including the season
opener against the dreaded Dodgers a week before she died.
Her dying wish was to see the orange and black win a World
Series, and she would tease the players to hurry up because
she was running out of time. She was easy to spot at games
because her hat was plastered with baseball cards and pins.
Ms. Jackson-Bull died April 12 at St. Mary's Hospital in San
Francisco. She was 94.
MARLA RUZICKA was a human-rights crusader devoted to helping
innocent victims of the war in Iraq and trying to right what
she saw as the wrongs in society. In middle school, the
young Lakeport student body president led a walkout during
the first Gulf War, and in high school started an
environmental club and lobbied for a girls' soccer team.
When the war in Iraq started, she created the Campaign for
Innocent Victims of Conflict to help compensate the victims
of war. By the time her short life ended, she had won allies
in both military and pacificist circles.
Ms. Ruzicka died April 16 in an attack by a suicide bomber
near the Baghdad airport. She was 28.
JOHN PATTON JR. spent his childhood on dusty farms in
Arkansas, but steadfastly held to his dream of singing at
New York's Carnegie Hall.
Mr. Patton knew by the time he was 6 that he wanted to be a
singer. After moving to Richmond in 1944, he pursued his
dream during high school, then went to New York City to
study music and performing arts at the prestigious Juilliard
School. He developed a decadeslong singing career that
turned him into one of the Bay Area's top tenors and enabled
him to sing for 60 years. He also became an accomplished
actor and teacher of African American history.
In 1965, he made his Carnegie Hall debut.
Mr. Patton died April 21 at his home in Richmond of a heart
attack. He was 75.
WILLIAM CHANNELL spent half a century in the field of law,
first as an Alameda County prosecutor, then as a three-term
judge in Contra Costa County and finally as a justice on the
First District Court of Appeal.
A resident of Lafayette for more than 50 years, Judge
Channell died May 5 after a long battle with Parkinson's
disease. He was 82.
CHARLES H. CURLEY, the San Francisco native and popular
former mayor of Larkspur, was a businessman and all-around
good guy to those who knew him. He was also a clown.
Seriously.
After retiring in 1977 as a business executive, he attended
Clown College at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse and
later did a few clown gigs in pediatric wards and
convalescent hospitals, before health problems forced him to
quit. He served 11 years on the Larkspur City Council,
starting in 1972.
Mr. Curley died at his Larkspur home on May 27 of
complications from emphysema. He was 69.
JUDITH EMILY GRUBER was a UC Berkeley political science
professor who led a campaign to help Cal's faculty and staff
juggle the demands of academia and family. By the time she
died, Professor Gruber had been instrumental in setting up
two child-care centers and seeing the groundbreaking for a
third.
She also created a policy allowing all professors to take
parental leave, including those on a tenure track, convinced
that women trying to advance in academia were being hindered
by the conflict between their work and family life. She was
awarded the university's highest honor, the Berkeley
Citation, and was the first to receive the university's
Faculty Distinguished Service Award.
Professor Gruber died at home June 1 of brain cancer. She
was 54.
PATRICK CHARLES ROBERTSON spent most of his life -- five
decades to be exact -- playing the blues in San Francisco
under the name of the "Brown-Eyed Alligator."
Playing his harmonica and strumming his guitar, Mr.
Robertson worked low-paying jobs by day, but jammed by night
at places like Biscuits and Blues and the Boom Boom Room.
Although Mr. Robertson often played and sang with well-known
blues musicians, he led a hard life and was living in a
Tenderloin single-room-occupancy hotel and struggling to get
by on federal disability payments when he died on June 6 of
cancer. He was 69.
CHET HELMS was a bigger-than-life figure during the 1960s
music scene, when he brought Janis Joplin to San Francisco's
Summer of Love in 1967 and ran the Avalon Ballroom.
After dropping out of the University of Texas in 1961, Mr.
Helms made his way to San Francisco and fell in love with
rock music after attending a Rolling Stones concert at Civic
Auditorium. He began hosting jam sessions in the
rosewood-paneled basement ballroom of a Haight-Ashbury
boardinghouse where he lived. Big Brother and the Holding
Company emerged from those parties, and Mr. Helms, the
band's manager, brought old college friend Joplin up from
Texas to be their singer.
He died June 25 after suffering a stroke. He was 62.
AMY CHAMBERLAIN's passion was cultural exchange. The San
Francisco triathlete led a program in which she shepherded
more than 300 Muslim students from all over the world who
came to the United States to study. The month before she
died, she led 200 of them on a trip to the White House.
After her death, Ms. Chamberlain was honored with trees
planted in her honor in 14 different countries.
She died in a drowning accident on the American River east
of Auburn. She was 32.
VERONA DAWSON SEITER survived the Nazi blitzkrieg on London
during World War II and grew up to lead a productive life
that included a career as a prominent stage actress and
mother of four.
In an award-winning acting career spanning four decades, she
worked every corner of Bay Area theater, including
appearances in such notable repertory companies as the New
Shakespeare Company, the San Francisco Repertory Company,
the Berkeley Shakespeare Theater, the Magic Theater and the
Exit Theater. Ms. Seiter died Aug. 4 after drowning in a
swimming pool. She was 68.
WILLIE "WOO WOO" WONG was a small man with a big goal who
beat the odds to become one of San Francisco's biggest
basketball names in the 1940s and among the finest Chinese
American players ever.
He stood just 5-foot-5 and weighed only 125 pounds in his
playing days, but he more than held his own on the court.
Nicknamed "Woo Woo" by a sportswriter because he said that's
what the crowd chanted every time Willie scored, Mr. Wong
blossomed at Lowell and Poly high schools, turning into a
dead-eye shooter, even scoring 40 points in one game. He
then was recruited by the University of San Francisco, and
in 1950 was considered the most complete player on the team.
Mr. Wong died Sept. 5 of leukemia at Kaiser Permanente
Hospital in Fremont. He was 79.
JERRY R. JUHL, the Emmy-award-winning head writer for the
Muppets, gave life to some of the world's most cherished and
enduring childhood characters.
The onetime puppeteer who gave up "wiggling dollies" and
instead spent more than three decades writing the gags and
creating the personality quirks that made the Muppets
internationally famous, started his labor of love at age 8.
He saw some puppets in a store window and begged his mother
to buy him one. He met Muppets creator Jim Henson at a 1961
puppeteer convention. Eventually, Mr. Juhl would become the
head writer for Sesame Street, typing scripts for favorites
Oscar the Grouch, Big Bird, Elmo and Bert and Ernie, not to
mention Cookie Monster. He received two Emmy Awards for his
work.
Mr. Juhl died Sept. 27 in Mendocino County of complications
from pancreatic cancer. He was 67.
SIDNEY EPSTEIN was devoted to, in a word, teeth. The
longtime San Francisco dentist participated in early studies
of novocaine and helped research dental cleaning agents.
For 50 years, he practiced dentistry at an office near Union
Square. But he was also a dental researcher who was awarded
grants by the American Dental Association to study
toothpastes and other dentifrices, and to develop a machine
to measure the abrasiveness of various teeth-cleaning
compounds. The machine is displayed in the association's
museum in Chicago. Dr. Epstein died Oct. 19 in San
Francisco. He was 91.
HENRY TAUBE was a Nobel Prize-winning Stanford University
professor who probed the mystery of how electrons behave in
chemical reactions.
Professor Taube found chemistry fascinating as well as fun.
Sometimes he would wager a bottle of wine over a chemical
theory. "Each new insight into how the atoms, in their
interactions, express themselves in structure and
transformations provides a thrill," he said in his speech
accepting the 1983 Nobel Prize for chemistry. Professor
Taube died Nov. 16 at his home on the Stanford campus. He
was 89.
PAT MORITA was for years a well-known entertainer on the San
Francisco scene.
His big break in show business came when he played Arnold,
the diner owner, for two seasons on the hit '70s sitcom
"Happy Days." But he became an internationally recognized
star when he landed the role of the calm and perennially
wise teacher in the "Karate Kid" movies. He was nominated
for an Academy Award, and continued his career as one of the
most prominent comic actors from the Bay Area.
Mr. Morita died Nov 24 of natural causes at his Las Vegas
home. He was 73.
DOUG MURPHY, mild-mannered and serious on the air, and a
laugh a minute when off, was one of the Bay Area's most
well-liked news anchors. Over 23 years at television station
KPIX, he was a reporter, news and sports anchor and weather
forecaster.
Mr. Murphy died from smoke inhalation Dec. 4 after a fire in
his Lafayette home. He was 55.
DAVID SAXON was president of the University of California
during the 1970s when money was short, but he remained a
tireless advocate for public higher education.
Earlier in his career, he was a physics scholar who rose
through academia at UCLA to head two of the nation's most
prestigious universities -- UC and MIT.
Mr. Saxon died Dec. 8 in Los Angeles after a long illness.
He was 85.
MINNIE WARD was devoted to improving her neighborhood, even
when her life was at stake.
Mrs. Ward was fiercely devoted to the Ocean View-Merced
Heights-Ingleside Terrace neighborhood in the southwestern
corner of the city. She campaigned to improve the area's
schools, fix the branch library and build a recreation
complex. The area had become tough and dangerous in the
1980s and '90s.
Mrs. Ward and her late husband, Lovie, were determined to
take back the neighborhood. They founded the OMI Action
group, dedicated to fighting crime and cleaning up the
community. The criminals took action one night in 1991 and
riddled the Wards' home with bullets, but it only deepened
the couple's resolve. By 2004, the neighborhood had cleaned
itself up, and the children could return to the parks and
the streets.
Mrs. Ward died Dec. 8 in her home. She was 70.
JOSEPH L. OWADES was a biochemist who stumbled into beer
making.
Decades later, he would become the "godfather of the brewing
industry," developing the formulas for many of the nation's
leading beers, inventing the now-ubiquitous light beer and
introducing the microbrewery to America. He was also a
nationally known brewmaster, training virtually every brewer
of note in the country.
Mr. Owades became the leader in the microbrewing industry
after he moved to San Francisco in 1982. He created the
formulas for Samuel Adams, Tuborg, New Amsterdam Beer,
Pete's Wicked Ale and Foggy Bottom Beer, among others. Mr.
Owades died Dec. 16 of heart failure at his Sonoma home. He
was 86.