April 20, 1998

Public ceremony remembering Dean McHenry set for Saturday, April 25

Founding Chancellor Dean McHenry

By Jim Burns

A public ceremony celebrating the life of Dean E. McHenry will be held on Saturday, April 25, on the University of California campus he helped found in the 1960s. McHenry's family and the campus have planned the memorial, which is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. at the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum, one of the founding chancellor's favorite settings on campus.

Chancellor of UCSC from 1961 to 1974, McHenry died on March 17 in Santa Cruz at the age of 87.

Before serving as UCSC's first chancellor, McHenry was a respected political scientist at UCLA in the 1940s and '50s and a coauthor of California's Master Plan for Higher Education in 1960, a blueprint that defined--and ultimately helped bring about--a multitiered system of public higher education that was accessible to all state residents.

McHenry's appointment to the "survey team" that drafted the Master Plan and his subsequent selection as UCSC's founding chancellor were made by Clark Kerr. The former UC president, a longtime friend and colleague of McHenry's, will participate in the April 25 event.

Other speakers include Chancellor Greenwood, who will serve as master of ceremonies; one of McHenry's four children, Henry McHenry, a professor of anthropology at UC Davis; Hal Hyde, UCSC's first vice chancellor for business and finance; Herman Blake, the founding provost of UCSC's Oakes College and current director of the African American Studies Program at Iowa State University; UCSC alumnus Allan Goodman, a municipal court judge in Culver City in southern California; and Lorette Wood, former mayor and city council member of Santa Cruz.

A public reception will follow the memorial.

Parking will not be available at the Arboretum for the ceremony, but spaces will be designated in the campus's East Remote parking lot. Buses will shuttle people between East Remote and the Arboretum.

In the event of rain, the April 25 ceremony will be moved indoors to UCSC's East Field House.

For more information about the event, call (408) 459-2501.

Dean McHenry is survived by his wife of 63 years, Jane; four children, Sally MacKenzie of Kansas, Dean McHenry Jr., of Claremont, California, Nancy Fletcher of Texas, and Henry McHenry of Davis; nine grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

Go to a full-length story and a series of photos of Dean McHenry

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