UCSC Review Winter 1996

In Memoriam

Four people who made significant contributions to the campus have died in recent months.

Page and Eloise Smith:

A nationally known historian and founding provost of UCSC's Cowell College, Page Smith, who was 77, died two days after his wife, Eloise Pickard Smith, in August. A noted artist and former director of the California Arts Council, Pickard Smith was 74. The couple had been married for 53 years.

Page Smith was a World War II Purple Heart veteran educated at Dartmouth College and Harvard University. Smith began his teaching career as a research associate at the Institute of Early American History and Culture in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1951. He taught history at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg and continued his career at UCLA, where he served as a professor of history from 1953 until coming to UCSC in 1964 as the founding provost of UCSC's first college.

After retiring from the campus in 1973, Smith continued to be active as a scholar and advocate for the homeless. He was a cofounder of Penny University, which presents weekly lectures and discussions for free, and the Prison Arts Project.

Smith was a prolific writer, authoring more than twenty books, including an award-winning biography of John Adams and an eight-volume "people's history" of the United States. His most recent books are Democracy on Trial: The Japanese-American Evacuation and Relocation in World War II; Rediscovering Christianity: A History of Modern Democracy and the Christian Ethic; and Killing the Spirit: Higher Education in America. He was also coauthor (with UCSC professor emeritus of biology Charles Daniel) of The Chicken Book: Being an Inquiry into the Rise and Fall, Use and Abuse, Triumph and Tragedy of Gallus Domesticus.

In September 1988, Smith began writing a weekly column on aging for Chronicle Features titled, "Time to Live." The syndicated column, which also appeared under the title of "Coming of Age," was published in papers across the country.

Eloise Pickard Smith was appointed director of the California Arts Council in 1976 by then-governor Jerry Brown. While on the council she launched an outreach program to bring arts to California state prisoners. In 1942, shortly before her marriage to Smith, she won one of five national scholarships to the Art Students League in New York City. Pickard Smith created her art using paint and found objects. A year ago, a retrospective of her works was exhibited simultaneously in six Santa Cruz galleries.

A lasting influence of both Page Smith and Eloise Pickard Smith on UC Santa Cruz is tangible at Cowell College where the Page Smith Library stands across the courtyard from the Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery.

Marion Younger:

Marion Stowell Younger, an active and early supporter of UCSC, died in November in Palo Alto at the age of 89. She grew up in San Francisco and moved to Santa Cruz after marrying Donald Younger, a prominent local attorney. The Youngers devoted many hours to making the UCSC chancellor, administrators, and faculty welcome in the community in the early years of the campus.

In 1973, the Younger family presented UCSC with 40 acres on the coast for a marine laboratory. The site included Younger Lagoon, which was to be preserved for student research. After her husband's death in 1976, Marion Younger continued to be a generous supporter of Long Marine Lab and the Institute of Marine Sciences.

Bernard Oliver:

Bernard "Barney" Oliver, a scientist and an inventor who was director of research at Hewlett-Packard for 40 years, died at his home in Los Altos Hills in late November; he was 79. Among Oliver's many interests was extraterrestrial intelligence, and he worked with Frank Drake, professor emeritus of astronomy and astrophysics, for many years on NASA's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project. He was also instrumental in securing funding for the project.

His contributions to UCSC included establishing the Priscilla Newton theater arts scholarship in 1991 in honor of his late wife and serving as an active member of the Natural Sciences Dean's Council.