From David Cole DS45:
I am most aware of [Ed’s] service in Japan after the war. He was on the staff of the Supreme Commander for Asia and the Pacific, otherwise known as SCAP, the head of which was Douglas MacArthur. Ed, who had majored in Economics at Cornell, I believe, played a critical role in managing the food support program for feeding the Japanese people in the immediate postwar years. The program that he developed gradually morphed into the US PL480 program for supplying surplus food all around the world. I believe that he was brought back to Washington to help design and manage that program and then found his way into the State Department where he had a truly distinguished career.
Ed was also the Economic Counselor at the US Embassy in Seoul in the latter part of the 1950s. He was very successful in reaching out to Korean officials and academics who were involved in formulating the country’s economic policies. He met regularly with these folks and probably hosted the meetings at his home. They dubbed themselves “The Thinkers Group” and I worked with many of them when I was the lead economist with the US Aid Mission in Seoul in the mid-1960s. Ed was confronted by the push back from the Sygman Rhee’s government and was not able to make much headway in actually changing policies, but he did influence the future policy makers with whom I worked in the much more receptive government in the mid-1960s during the early years of President Park.
Ed Cronk played a very important role, probably helped save hundreds of thousands of lives in postwar Japan, and more that I am not aware of. God bless him.
An Interview with Ed by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project is reproduced in the Deep Springs Archive.
The following material is reproduced from The Frederick News Post. Please visit the original article for additional information.
Edwin Monroe Cronk was born in Minneapolis, MN, on May 20, 1918, and died on September 1, 2020. Born to William F. Cronk and Edith Hanson, he grew up in Minneapolis and graduated from Central High School. He was a Troop #33 Eagle Scout.
Ed attended Deep Springs College (class of ’36) and then Cornell University (class of ’41). He married Dorothy Montgomery in 1943. During World War II, Ed served in the Air Force from 1942-1946 in the Pacific Theater. As part of the rebuilding of Japan after the War, Ed became Chief of the Japanese Financial Trade from 1951-1956 and was subsequently recruited into the Foreign Service. His tours of duty in the Foreign Service included Korea, Germany, and Australia, with a final assignment as Ambassador to the Republic of Singapore from 1972-1975.
After his retirement from government service, Ed accepted the position of Dean and Director of Deep Springs College, where he served with dedication from 1976-1980. In his words, “Deep Springs is, in many respects, like an extended family. Most of us develop an affectionate relationship with the institution and the people who shared with us the experience of living, working, and studying here. Names of people associated with the founder, and others who preceded us, became familiar and are like cousins or distant uncles whom we may not have met that are, nonetheless, part of the Deep Springs family. These relationships are for me, and I think for most of us, one of the very special things about the college.”
After serving as Director, he then served as a Trustee of the College including serving as Chair of the Board for 3 years. He also was in charge of a department at Goodwill. For his lifelong service to humanity he received the rarely awarded Deep Springs Medal.
He and wife Dorothy called Washington, D.C., home for many years until moving into a retirement community in Frederick, Maryland. Ed was preceded in death in 2008 by Dorothy, his wife of 66 years, and is survived by daughter MaryEd (Hartnell) of Sydney, Australia (and husband Anthony); son James of Surprise, Arizona (and wife Sally); daughter Nan (Cronk-Walker) of Frederick, Maryland (and husband Kenneth); 8 grandchildren; and 12 great-grandchildren. Ed lived a long and fulfilling life; he worked hard and played hard, laughed easily, was a friend to everyone and a terrific father.
Photos of Ed Cronk circa 1936 provided by Mary Ed Hartnell née Cronk
The following material is reproduced from Desert News. Please visit the original article for additional information.
Mark W. Cannon was born August 29th, 1928 and passed away from natural causes at age 92 on November 26th, 2020.
He was a lifelong active and enthusiastic member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Those who knew him will remember his interest in missionary work and upbeat, optimistic attitude.
Mark received his PhD in Political Economy and Government in 1960 from Harvard University. He had an enduring passion for family history work and genealogy, especially that of his Grandfather George Q. Cannon, which was reflected in the topic of his PhD thesis.
Professional highlights include serving as Chief of Staff for Congressman Henry Aldous Dixon from 1956 – 1961 and as Chairman of Brigham Young University’s Political Science Department from 1961-64. He also served as Administrative Assistant/Counsel to the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1972 – 85. A project that brought him special joy was working as Staff Director on the Commission of the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution from 1985 – 88. He also volunteered as Chairman of the National Advisory Council for the Brigham Young University Marriott School of Management from 1984 – 1986.
Mark leaves behind his loving and devoted wife, Betty Schomann Cannon. He is survived by three children, Lucy Critchley (Robert), Mark D. Cannon, Kristen Brown (Kirby), seven grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.
The material below is reproduced from The Union of Nevada County. Please visit the original article for additional information.
William Frank Waina, Jr. (Bill), passed away peacefully at the age of 88 on Monday, November 9, 2020, in Grass Valley, California. He was born on March 26, 1932, to William Frank and Averista Baird Waina of Greensburg, Pennsylvania. He is survived by his brother Richard Baird Waina and his wife Carole Segars of Celina, Texas, and his daughter-in-law Amanda Michel Waina of Grass Valley. He was preceded in death by his wife of 54 years, Jacquelyn Nay and his 2 sons, Michael Lee Waina and Roger William Waina.
Bill graduated from Greensburg High School in 1950 where he played trombone in the marching band. He went to Deep Springs College in California for their 3-year program combining academics, student self-government, and manual labor on a ranch. He then joined the United States Army and was stationed at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina, serving honorably from 1953 to 1956. After marrying Jacquelyn Nay in 1957 they made their home in Palo Verdes, California, where he earned a degree in accounting from UCLA. Bill became a CPA and rose to Partner in Deloitte Haskins & Sells.
Opting for the slower lifestyle of northern California, Bill and his family moved to the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. There in Grass Valley he was the chief financial officer of Performance Learning Systems, Inc. He was a quiet, kind man who loved his family, animals and outdoor activities such as boating and skiing.
Ulric “Rick” S. Haynes, Jr., a former Trustee of Deep Springs and Withrow lecturer, died of COVID-19 in August at the age of 89. He had retired to Florida after a long career as a diplomat, public servant, businessman, educator, and advisor and friend to people of all ages. He served on the National Security Council staff during the Johnson administration; taught in a Freedom School in Mississippi during the Civil Rights movement; represented the Cummins Engine Company in Tehran under the Shah; and was the United States Ambassador to Algeria from 1977 to 1981. In the last capacity he was on the team that negotiated the freedom of American hostages in Tehran. (Algeria mediated the negotiations.)
Rick spent the back half of his career in education, as president of SUNY-Old Westbury and later dean at Hofstra. His transition to academia was a stroke of luck for many young people with whom he interacted without pretense or condescension. If you wanted to know about the world but knew nothing of it, meeting Rick could yield reading suggestions, introductions, jokes, anecdotes, frank assessments of politicians foreign and domestic, and the friendship of a man whose generosity was overwhelming and instinctive. A conversation with Rick could end with his arranging your meeting with the leader of the resistance to French rule in the Casbah of Algiers, or telling you how the Black Panther fundraiser in Tom Wolfe’s essay “Radical Chic” (1970) really went down. (Rick was there, and Wolfe quoted him pungently.)
Rick came to Deep Springs in April 1998 as a guest speaker, at the introduction of his friends William vanden Heuvel DS4TK, Robert F. Gatje, DS4TK, and Ed Wisely, DS4TK. He lectured in Algeria and foreign relations to a student body (SB) that was — like many SBs before it — not previously engaged in discussion of international affairs, at least not of the modern era. (The Peloponnesian War, maybe, bot not the policies of the Carter administration.) He connected students with opportunities abroad and introduced them to acquaintances who could nurture their interests. The Trustees invited him, with student encouragement, to join the board, and he accepted. He served until 2004, devoting himself to the internationalization and diversification of the SB.
His contributions to Deep Springs came 50 years late. That was not his fault. Rick had wanted to apply as a student in 1948, but he was black, and Deep Springs did not admit black students. His contributions are noted with affection, and with sadness and embarrassment that they could not have come earlier. —Graeme Wood, DS97
Rick Haynes pronounced my name — ‘Christian Von Nicholson?’ — with a voice for radio and a diplomat’s formality. When I first heard him over the receiver in a phone booth at the San Francisco Zen Center, I thought I was in trouble. It was actually the opposite of trouble. Rick was a Dickensian benefactor ex machina, and he had taken an interest in me.
I had dropped out of Deep Springs after my first year and spent the next two years clinically depressed. When the call came through in September 1998, I was wearing dark sweats and flip flops, a kind of pre-monk studying meditation and considering a career as a bodhisattva. Rick was a Deep Springs trustee, and he had a way of rescuing strays.
For several years he played a crucial part in my life, leading me from the Zen Center through Guatemala to the American University of Paris, where he had ties as a Hofstra dean. He did the same, using different paths, for many others.
There were few places where Rick did not know someone.
His network extended to Bangladesh, where I had gone to study microfinance at Grameen Bank and was traveling from village to village to see its system of social pressure and support in action. Rick wanted to open my eyes to the possibilities of the place, and suggested I meet an old friend. This friend led a group that sang ragas late into the night, sitting on the floor of a small room with white-washed walls. They invited singers from the Indian state of West Bengal to come back and teach Bangladeshis their techniques, since many musicians in east Bengal had been killed in the war of independence.
Rick had a high tolerance for that mixture of ambition, curiosity and naïveté that marks a certain type of Deep Springer in their 20s. He listened well, and made you feel like you were in on whatever joke he was weaving.
His stories made subtle points — about how the world works, or could be made to work, when things fall apart and the skills of diplomats are tested. They were parables of particular interest to Deep Springers, who train in acrimony during SB meetings, and to whom Rick could offer lessons in resolution.
When Rick was ambassador in Algiers, he and his wife turned the canteen of the US Embassy into the place to gather, even as his deft, welcoming manner made him a magnet for human intelligence. During that time, the US had no official ties to the PLO. But Rick maintained contact by attending diplomatic soirees. He and an accomplice would face one another in conversation, while drifting toward a pair of Palestinian officials doing the same dance, until finally he and his counterpart could speak directly back to back, while seeming to speak with someone else entirely. His goal was to break an impasse with a group that mattered to US interests, and he did so with suave flexibility toward the rules.
With his death, the country has lost a public servant, Deep Springs a friend, and younger generations a mentor. He will be sorely missed. —Chris Nicholson DS95
The following article, written by David Cole, DS45, appeared in the Washington Post and in the Fall 2020 Deep Springs Newsletter
Gregory B. Votaw, 92 years old, an economist who dedicated his life to world economic development, alleviation of world hunger, and peace activism, died Friday night August 28 2020. He passed peacefully with his three children at his side in a retirement community in Adamstown, MD. He was a resident of Bethesda, MD for more than 55 years and enjoyed spending summers with his daughter and her family in Steamboat Springs, CO. He was born in Chester, PA in 1928. He is survived by three children and six grandchildren: Stephen Gregory Votaw of Arlington, VA, and his son Daniel G.J. Votaw of Santa Fe, NM; Michael Albert Votaw and his wife Elizabeth S. Votaw of Potomac, MD and their children Alexandra Votaw, Anna Votaw, and Michael Todd Votaw; and Lisa Votaw Olson and her husband Brian Olson of Steamboat Springs, CO and their children Taylor Delgado Olson and Abby Marie Olson. His wife of many years, Carmen Delgado Votaw, a prominent Puerto Rican women’s equal rights and civil rights activist and lobbyist from Yabucoa, PR, died of breast cancer in February 2017.
In the Quaker tradition of his father, Ernest N. Votaw, and after seeing several high school classmates at Westtown School in Chester, PA perish in World War II, he became a peace activist, pacifist, and conscientious objector. Never running away from a moral fight or responsibility, he was active in the peace movement in Chicago in the 1950’s. As a conscientious objector, rather than leave the country or risk being jailed for refusing to fight, he volunteered to serve in Korea in the Christian Missionary Service supporting the civilian corps of the U.S. Army for two years during the Korean War.
He graduated from Deep Springs College in California, earned a master’s degree in Economics from the University of Chicago, and completed the equivalent of a PhD in economics at Lincoln College at Oxford in England. He was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society His professional career began as an economic consultant for the Government Development Bank of Puerto Rico in San Juan, PR. There he met his wife Carmen, and they married in 1960. The Votaws moved to Tehran, Iran where Greg served as an economic development consultant with the Harvard Advisory Group in the early 1960’s. Their first child, Stephen G. Votaw, was born overseas in 1962.
They moved to Bethesda, MD in 1963 when Greg began working at the World Bank. They lived in Bethesda, MD for more than 55 years and were active in the community, the Montgomery County Democratic Party, and their church- St. Luke’s Episcopal of Bethesda, MD. Greg and Carmen were very involved with St Luke’s Church since its early years in the 1960’s. They were devoted to St. Luke’s open, progressive, and socially conscious mission. Greg served on the church’s Vestry leadership and was involved in numerous programs. Their son, Michael Albert Votaw, was born in 1964 and their daughter, Lisa Votaw Olson, was born in 1967.
Dedicated to economic development and improvement of the world and the lives and livelihoods of its people, he worked for the World Bank from 1963 to 1978 as an economist, country director, regional director- Africa, and regional director- East Asia and Pacific. There he managed financing and planning for major infrastructure and industry development projects in India, Bangladesh, Korea, the Philippines, Japan, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Each of his three children, in turn, were able to accompany him on trips while he performed his work with the World Bank. Thus, they were given a firsthand taste of his wide-ranging world travels- through Africa, East Asia, Australia, and Europe.
Always thoughtful and generous, he took time to lead and support many progressive causes including The Hunger Project, Christian Missionary Service (during the Korea War), Samaritan Ministry, the 1818 Society (for World Bank retirees), and the Gala Hispanic Theater. He was a dedicated fan attending hundreds of his grandchildren’s lacrosse, basketball, softball, baseball, and soccer games, and dozens of their musical and theater performances.
Mr. Votaw lost his older brother, Albert N. Votaw, in the terrorist bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983. He had followed in Albert’s footsteps attending high school at the Westtown School in Chester, PA and then Deep Springs College in California. After his brother’s death, he was like a father and grandfather to Albert’s four children- Claire Votaw, Susan Votaw West, Cathy Votaw, and Mrzy Votaw- and their families.
Greg was loved by everyone he met. He was kind and caring and sought the best in everyone he met. In many ways, he was a silent hero who led by the example of his deeds. He will be missed by all who knew him. In his later years, he was thankful for those who cared for him, completing a life full of grace, while rarely complaining despite physical ailments that accumulated over time, including total blindness from glaucoma and chronic back pain. He worked to complete crossword puzzles into the last week of his life (with help from his children due to his blindness).
Earlier in retirement, he enjoyed spending summers in Steamboat Springs, CO where he loved attending outdoor concerts and enjoying the beautiful mountains and scenery of Colorado with his daughter and her family. In his honor, he would be grateful for everyone to look for ways to lend a helping hand, to be generous with your smiles, to be open and willing to understand another person’s point of view, and to seek the best in everyone you meet. He believed that in the end what is most important is not your accomplishments and what you do with your life, but rather how you make others feel. He will certainly be missed for the many ways he filled our lives with love and light.
In a final act of service, he donated his body to the Maryland State Anatomy Board to support medical students and scientific research. A memorial service will be conducted through St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Bethesda, MD at a later date. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to The Heifer Project, Deep Springs College, Gala Hispanic Theater, or St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Bethesda, MD.
David Webb DS53 (CB56 TA56) died in September 2019. David was the former distinguished research curator emeritus of vertebrate paleontology and a University of Florida professor. Webb served as curator from 1964 to 2003 and authored more than 100 scientific publications covering a broad range of topics. Much of his research focused on the Great American Biotic Interchange – the migration of animals between North and South America – and the evolutionary family tree of mammals with cloven hooves, with a focus on camels. He was known as a prolific scholar, a fieldwork enthusiast, a beloved mentor and a popular speaker. After retirement, in addition to continuing his professional work, David and his wife Barbara operated a bed and breakfast ranch in southwestern Montana. (This memorial kindly provided by Matthew Trail in the Telluride Newsletter, spring 2020.)
Mikhail was a traveler to the last. He wasn’t ever on vacation—or at least, he wasn’t ever only on vacation. He always found a way to create a role, or a job, or a plan. He was traveling to help solve big problems, from the Klamath tribal land in Oregon to Jamaica to Mauritius to Mali—working there on internet accessibility—and back to New York City and Boston, trying to solve the problem of managing medical information here at home, and around the world several times. At the end, Thailand.
He was in Thailand, I think, working on resource management and sustainability, with an eye towards a more equitable future. He was also, I’m sure, swimming and diving every day. He loved to be in the water. (There was a time, when he lived on Roosevelt Island, that Mikhail was scuba diving, alone, in the East River. That’s commitment.) In terms of the specifics of the work in Thailand, I’m not entirely certain I have the description correct. He had set out to improve the world more than once, and none of us would have been surprised if it didn’t come together this time. All the same, none of us would have been too surprised if this, in fact, was it—if he had been at the forefront of something big, seeing further than we had.
I don’t mean to suggest that Mikhail was in any way unreliable. Mikhail did what he said he would do. He was a loyal friend. He was, deep down, unchanging. But still, you were never quite sure you had got him pinned down. Even when you first met him, at that moment of first impressions, all those years ago. Did he really love Aerosmith all that much? Or could that be a pose, partly something to do with growing up outside Boston, like pretending to like the Red Sox, but partly, maybe, something more. Something to do with confounding the expectations of white kids there, in that place, in the early 1980s. Maybe by the time you met him in the valley it had become a fully-inhabited deep cover. But maybe loving something can become a kind of iconoclasm in itself; the thing coming to represent freedom. And Mikhail was free. So Aerosmith: yes. Let’s go with yes. He really loved Aerosmith.
In the moment-to-moment movement of conversation with Mikhail one thought suggested another, and if you could keep up, and stay nimble, you passed the ball back and forth while running ahead together. His demeanor changed when this began to happen, his eyes narrowing and shining at once, the intellect coming to bear. He was wonderfully adept at this: a kind of collaborative thinking, a process of being at play. Like all true play, fundamentally serious; an expression and reflection of life. He was a joy to be around, especially if you could conjure the strength to relax your grip on your own preconceptions, whatever they might be in that moment, and join him in the dance. Perhaps Mikhail’s playfulness, this quality of improvisation, is legible in the larger pattern of his life. Led him to the kinds of work he did, his method in that work, and to his various passions. The movement of a body in water.
Mikhail was impatient with the settled and predictable.
*****
The authorities in Thailand report that Mikhail died of a heart attack. They report little else. The circumstances are either unknown or undisclosed. The island, Koh Tao, has become notorious for the unexplained deaths of tourists and foreigners. Mikhail’s death was in April of last year. Covid lockdowns were just beginning. Travel was impossible. News reached the Deep Springs family only at the beginning of this year. We are all still processing the shock.
Mikhail was without doubt doing what he loved. I hope that we’re correct in thinking that his last work had to do with water as a resource for equity and social justice; there would be poetry in that. But no matter. He was, in any case, doing his work. He was at the ocean. He was at home.
*****
I think of Mikhail walking the fields at Deep Springs, his shoes sodden, squelching, as he moved the lines with laser-guided precision.
Covered in grease and soot after a fight with the Main Building’s boiler.
Or on the way to class, fully inhabiting the Deep Springs drag: head-to-toe in Carhartts and blood, his hair matted with hay, a stack of books under his arm. Wild-eyed with ideas.
Later, he was a connoisseur of various kinds. I think of him sharing music, listening thoughtfully, waiting and watching to see if you heard what he heard. Three or four empty Guinness bottles on the table and—why on earth were we drinking bottled Guinness?—one of the very early Staple Singers recordings, with Pops Staples on lead vocals. His voice, and the nearly ascetic reserve of the instrumentation, cutting through the haze of the late hour, perfect and powerful. (“. . . Ease me down with a Golden Chain.”) Mikhail shaking his head slowly, looking away.
Or picture Mikhail some other night out in Manhattan, listening with the same intensity, his head cocked to the side, as the sommelier describes a bottle of wine, or the waiter a complicated dish. In this look he makes visible something else: a touch—or really, more than a touch—of humorous skepticism.
I think of Mikhail in Jamaica, stopping the car for Jerk Chicken at a roadside shack in the mountains. I think of him in India, showing off the city he always called Bombay, and never ‘Mumbai.’ (He would want you, after you finish reading this, to look up the story of its renaming, its political aims.) His habit of looking beyond the surfaces of things, seeing the hidden scaffolding. Another Bombay example: each evening, young lovers sit together on the city’s beaches, looking out at the Arabian sea, their heads leaning in, almost touching. “Romeos and Juliets,” Mikhail points out; forbidden by their families and the social strictures to see one another at home, in their parents houses, or, really, anywhere else at all. This, delivered with judgment, but also with equanimity and with sympathy.
Later, we will make the long holy pilgrimage through hill stations to the source of the Ganges—more water!—high in the Himalaya.
Mostly, I think of Mikhail talking and thinking, his face alight, his hands in emphatic gesture. He could be a trickster. He delighted not only in the improvisatory collaborative mode of conversation, but also in conversation as a game of hide-and-seek, which was riveting, but also, at times, maddening. It was both a form of control and a freedom. In his very lightest moods, he was an absurdist of the first order.
And finally this, not to be forgotten: while juggling ideas—while doing almost anything, in fact—Mikhail practiced a comic physical repertoire. An actor, asked to characterize it, would describe its basis as ‘Over Indicating.’ Might, perhaps, make reference to the era of the silent-movie greats. The comedy and sophistication of this performance came from Mikhail’s self-awareness and precise control; it could be quite subtle. He expected you to get that joke and to hear the ideas at the same time. He never actually winked, but you would swear he had. There was always that, with Mikhail: the surface, the current below.
He was a great clown, but nobody’s fool.
He was Not To Be Underestimated. He made that clear.
He was also, when it mattered most, willing to brave total honesty. About himself. About this world.
He was adored. Mikhail was here, and we were with him. We saw him.
He is survived by his father and his brother, and his Deep Springs family mourns with them.
— James Gibbs, DS ‘89
David and Jane Steidel were the co-managers of the Deep Springs farm operation from April 1988 until May 1993. By the time I arrived in the valley in 1991, they, along with their son Karl, the tow-headed wonder baby, were such a core part of the community that it is impossible for me to imagine Deep Springs without them. Dave Steidel died unexpectedly this January of a heart attack, and I know that many of us who were lucky enough to share the Valley with him are mourning that loss, but none more than Jane and Karl. Our hearts go out to them both.
Farmer Dave was many things; wry, patient, dynamic, blunt, and dedicated. He was a real center of my experience and that of many other students. I loved working in the garden under his and Jane’s supervision, and most of my strongest lessons and deepest satisfactions as a student happened in that little plot of earth. Farmer Dave was passionate about growing food and being a good steward of the land, and it was important to him to transition the farm operation to being CCOF certified organic. He was more passionate about growing food for people than he was for animals, which led him to plow under part of field #2 in order to grow a whole pile of potatoes, over 100 varieties in a genetic preservation project he had inherited from Rex and Susan Mongold, farm mentors of his who lived in Fish Lake Valley. That was the kind of project that really excited him—positioning the college to be part of some of the larger conversations that were happening in sustainable agriculture at the time. And a lot of those potato varieties were pretty cool. Everybody I know who had one of the labor positions that worked closely with Dave—Irrigation, Garden, Farmer’s Ass.—speaks of it as one of their favorite labor positions. Dave was a good dude.
In addition to farming, Dave had a deep love of music that he shared with the community on Farmer Dave’s Farm Hour (and a Half), broadcast on pirate radio from the lower power station. It is certainly because of Dave that a strong portion of the SB knew all of the patter on Nanci Griffith’s live album “One Fair Summer Evening” by heart, and that our time in the valley had a soundtrack of music as rich with integrity and love for the earth as the man who shared the music with us. I’m listening to that album now and am struck both by how much it is of its time and how it speaks of who Dave Steidel was—which is to say that there was this sense of optimism and passion and a romantic attachment to this world we live in, a belief that even though there might be some trouble in the fields, as the song goes, that if we love each other and work together and hold on for a little while longer, it’s all going to work out in the end. I’ll be the first to admit that these lessons are hard to remember in our current moment, one marked more by fear than by hope, one where we could be doing a better job at lifting each other up. Listening to these old songs and thinking about Dave is making me sad, but it’s also reminding me of his core values. So here’s to you, Farmer Dave. Thank you for all of the lessons. Thank you for being such a strong example of what it is to live with integrity, dedication, and passion. And thank you for still showing us the way forward.
– Brendan Taaffe DS91
https://www.plumasnews.com/life-tributes-for-the-week-of-1-22-20/
David Schuman was born to Marie and Stanton Schuman on May 8, 1944, in Glencoe, Illinois. He was the second of four children. His father, a real estate attorney in Chicago, and his mother, a homemaker, encouraged his early love for speed skating, which took, and for camping, which did not. He attended Central School, where some of his deepest friendships were forged. By 1962, when he graduated from New Trier High School, he had to choose between trying out for the US Olympic Team (one of whose eventual members he had just beaten on the short track) and leaving speed skating behind for an undergraduate education at Stanford University. He chose Stanford, where he met fellow student Sharon Johnson during their study abroad program in Florence, Italy.
Graduating in Psychology in 1966, David had to talk fast to convince San Francisco State College to admit him to their M.A. Program in a completely different discipline, English Literature; but he did, earning an M.A. with honors in1969, just after he and Sharon married in 1968. He continued his studies at the University of Chicago, where he earned the Ph. D. degree in 1974. He then taught English literature at University of Santa Clara, University of Louisiana in New Orleans, and Deep Springs College, where one summer he butchered an entire cow. Along the way he published several short stories.
In 1981, despite his success teaching the poetry of Hopkins, Hardy, Yeats and Eliot, David defected from literature to law. His joke was that when he graduated yet again at the age of 40, his plan was to become simultaneously a rising star and a grey eminence. By that time two children — Rebecca (1976) and Ben (1979) — had been born. The family moved to Eugene, where he entered the University of Oregon Law School, graduating with honors in 1984. After law school he served as judicial clerk to the Hon. Hans Linde of the Oregon Supreme Court and then as an assistant attorney general in the Appellate Division of the Oregon Department of Justice.
In 1987, he joined the Oregon Law faculty, where he taught constitutional law, criminal procedure, legislation, and administrative law, earning the Ersted Award for Distinguished Teaching. From 1994 to 1996 he also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. His writing included scholarly articles in law reviews throughout the United States; op-ed articles in The Washington Post, The Oregonian, and The Chronicle of Higher Education; and a number of indignant letters that he generally did not send.
In 1997, he was appointed by Attorney General Hardy Myers to be his Deputy Attorney General, a post he held until 2001. At his swearing in, his twenty-year-old daughter made a list of “Things to Do” on the white board: “take nap, buy/drink Diet Coke, send daughter $ money $, check if Glenwood mail-order burrito is in,” and “pull strings to get Ben out of jail.” As Deputy, David supervised division chiefs and advised the Attorney General, elected officials including the Governor, and state agencies. He also represented the state in defense of statutes and constitutional provisions.
In 2001 he returned briefly to the Oregon Law faculty, before Governor Kitzhaber appointed him to the Oregon Court of Appeals, where he was re-elected twice and served until 2014, authoring over 600 opinions. In 2014, he received the David Frohnmayer Award for Public Service and retired from the bench, returning to the UO Law School faculty, where he taught until his death.
Throughout his life David was an avid athlete, completing the Portland Marathon twice and taking hundreds of long bicycle rides, up to 100 miles. Summers often included trips back to Italy where he and his wife had 10-day adventures by bicycle. For their fiftieth anniversary, they took 10 members of the family to Italy for a custom bike trip, including trailers for infants. Back in Eugene, rain or shine, David stayed in shape throughout the year by riding almost daily. On Saturday, October 5, he was nearing the end of a long ride, when he collided with another bicyclist on the riverfront path in Eugene. His injuries led to his death, October 8, at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in Springfield.
David will be remembered not just for his public service, his intellectual achievements, his mentoring of young lawyers, and his love of family, but for his integrity, his generosity, his sense of justice, his humility, and his wicked wit. He loved nothing more than dinner at a great restaurant with friends or family.
He is predeceased by his parents and his brother Sam (Nancy) Schuman. He is survived by his sister Sarah (Stanley) Dietzel, his brother Joe Schuman, his wife Sharon, his son Ben (Lani Hoang) Schuman, his daughter Rebecca Schuman (Waldemar Rohloff) and three grandchildren: Milly Schuman (6), Halina Schuman-Rohloff (4), and Sage Schuman (2). A public celebration will take place at the UO Law School, at 3:00 pm, Saturday, October 19. In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made to Food for Lane County, the Jewish Federation of Lane County, or the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics at the University of Oregon.
David’s memorial service will be live-streamed by the Univeristy of Oregon Law School on Saturday the 19th at 3pm PST. Here’s the link:
https://law.uoregon.edu/explore/live-stream-page
Thank you Sharon for this wonderful remembrance.
David and Sharon lived in the valley from 1974 to 1981, and their involvement with Deep Springs students, alumni, and staff continued for many years. They brought stability, intellectual rigor, and moral leadership to the college at a time when we needed it. Their children Rebecca and Ben were both born in the Valley.
We are collecting material about the Schumans for a longer remembrance to be published in the Newsletter. If you have something to submit, please send it to Brad Edmondson DS76 at brade@lightlink.com.
Sharon has complied David’s writings in a book (Voice for Justice, 2021) which can be pre-ordered here.