Search for celebrities on Ancestry.com!August 7, 2001
Wayne Thompson
Kenwood resident Wayne Thompson, a former city administrator whose advocacy helped bring about the Oakland Coliseum and the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, died Wednesday.
Thompson, who worked 20 years in city government before switching to private industry and becoming vice president of the Minnesota-based firm that operates Target and Mervyn's stores, was 85.
He retired to Oakmont in 1999 and subsequently had a house built in Kenwood.
Thompson was born in St. Paul, Minn., and grew up in Oakland. He earned a degree in public administration and political science at the University of California at Berkeley, and during World War II served a tour of duty with the Navy.
After he war, he was hired as Richmond's assistant city manager. He became the nation's youngest city manager at age 27 when, in 1944, his boss died and he was named successor.
During his 10 years as Richmond city manager, Thompson battled post-war unemployment caused by the closure of four major shipyards, and he pushed for the construction of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, which was completed in 1957.
He was chosen as Oakland's city manager in 1954, a post he kept for 11 years.
"He was most most proud of bringing professional sports teams to Oakland," said a daughter, Christine Thompson Lee of Kenwood. "He thought sports were extremely important to the morale of the citizens."
Thompson headed Oakland's drive to build the sports complex that became home to the Golden State Warriors, the Oakland Raiders and the Oakland Athletics.
In 1965, he left Oakland and became senior vice president of Dayton Hudson Corp. in Minneapolis. While he was with the department-store firm, he served on national management review task forces under two presidents: Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter.
Thompson left Dayton Hudson in 1981 and returned to Oakland, where he became chief executive of the Merritt Hospital Foundation and the Merritt Peralta Medical Center.
In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his wife, Ann Thompson of Kenwood; a son, Wayne Charles Thompson of Pacific Grove; his sister, Bette Eastman of San Francisco; and two grandchildren.
Services on Monday in Oakland were followed by Interment at the city's Mountain View Cemetery.
Roy D. Chapin Jr.
Roy D. Chapin Jr., who retired in Geyserville after serving as chairman and chief executive of American Motors Corp., died Sunday of heart failure in Michigan. He was 85.
For the past dozen years, he and his wife, Loise, had enjoyed spending most of the year at their 200-acre ranch in Geyserville.
Described by friends as always smiling and neighborly, he was a kind-hearted rancher who once bought a burro to keep an old horse company when the horse's stall mate died of old age.
Chapin was born in Grosse Pointe, Mich., in 1915. His father was one of the founders of the Hudson Motor Car Co.
As a 1937 Yale University graduate, Chapin entered the automotive industry as an experimental engineer with Hudson in 1938. Following the merger of Nash-Kelvinator and Hudson in 1954, he became assistant treasurer and a director of American Motors. Chapin subsequently served as treasurer, vice president and executive vice president before becoming AMC chairman and chief executive in 1967.
Over the next decade, Chapin was instrumental in introducing many successful lines of cars. In 1970, he spearheaded the acquisition of Jeep Corp. from Kaiser Industries.
"My father's efforts to integrate Jeep into AMC were a major factor in the success of today's sports utility vehicle market," said his son, William R. Chapin. "AMC dealers were the first with a line of SUV products starting in the early 1970s."
Chapin retired as chairman and CEO in 1977 but continued in a leadership role at AMC as chairman of the board for an additional year and served as a director until 1987.
In addition to his career at AMC, Chapin also served on the boards of Whirlpool Corp., American Natural Resources Corp., Coastal Corp. and Gould Corp.
Long active in the field of conservation, he served as a trustee of a number of organizations dedicated to the preservation of natural resources, including the Atlantic Salmon Federation, Ducks Unlimited, the Ruffed Grouse Society and Trout Unlimited. He was also active with the Boy Scouts of America, and served as president of the Fontinalis Club.
Chapin's hobbies included hunting and fishing and book collecting. He was assisted in his ranch management duties by Oreo, the family's Jack Russell terrier.
Chapin is survived by his wife, Loise of Geyserville, Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich., and Nantucket, Mass.; sons, Roy D. III, William R. and Christopher K.; daughter Penny Chapin de Estrada; stepson, Robert L. Wickser, Jr.; stepdaughters, Alexandra Balantine, Lita Toland and Hope Wickser; six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. He is also survived by brothers John C. and Daniel; and sisters Joan C. Hutton and Marian C. Higbie.
A funeral service is planned for 4:30 p.m. Saturday at St. Paul's Church, 209 Matheson St. in Healdsburg. A memorial service at Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich., will be held at a future date.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that contributions be made to the Atlantic Salmon Federation, P.O. Box 807, Calais, Maine.
June 19, 2001
Jackie Morehouse
Jackie Morehouse used art to communicate beyond his disability, so effectively that his strong, bright abstracts that were exhibited in shows and galleries drew many serious collectors who were unaware of the artist's mental limitations.
Morehouse, 78, died Thursday at a Santa Rosa convalescent hospital. He had continued to work on his drawings and paintings through the Becoming Independent art program until a year ago when he became ill and was diagnosed with colon cancer, said his long-time instructor Michael Rinaldini.
Artistic ability ran in the family. The late Bill Morehouse of Bodega, Jackie's younger brother, was a nationally known landscape artist who taught at the San Francisco Art Institute and was chairman of the art department at Sonoma State University.
Until his illness Jackie Morehouse lived in a group home but went daily to the Becoming Independent Art Works studios in Santa Rosa to paint and draw. A client of Becoming Independent since 1982, he always wore a hat, usually as wildly colored as his artwork, and did his best work after eating a snack, preferably tapioca pudding.
Born John Leroy Morehouse in Salida, Colo., he was disabled since birth from a condition his family believed came from a thyroid deficiency.
It wasn't until his 60s, however, that he started drawing, according to another brother, Keith Morehouse, who lives in Falmouth, Mass.
"Going to Becoming Independent and doing his art was Jack's life," Keith Morehouse said.
His instructor Rinaldini worked with Morehouse for almost 10 years, but said, "He was self-inspired. When he was doing his art is when he most expressed himself. All we really did was provide him the materials and minimal instruction. Jackie had a natural talent and he was driven to create art."
Becoming Independent plans to hold an art memorial in the future to showcase the artist's collected works, but there will be no memorial service. His ashes will be buried in a family plot in New Brunswick, Canada.
Memorial contributions may be made to Becoming Independent Art Works, 1425 Corporate Center Parkway, Santa Rosa.
June 15, 2001
John Attilio Calegari
Bartender and professional hobnobber John Attilio "Til" Calegari welcomed patrons for decades to his taverns in Santa Rosa and Sonoma Valley. When he quit working, this was his idea of retirement:
Blessed with good health and the gift of gab, he went nearly every day to Sebastiani Vineyards near Sonoma and hailed tourists as a volunteer greeter. Visitors from around the world remarked that their trip wouldn't have been complete without Calegari's hospitality, directions and Wine Country lore.
Calegari was 91 when he died Wednesday in Sonoma.
For more than a quarter century, starting in the 1940s, Calegari owned and operated a tavern -- Til's Cork and Bottle -- on Mendocino Avenue near College Avenue in Santa Rosa.
There were about 30 watering holes in downtown Santa Rosa back then.
"It was different in those days," said one of his daughters, Debbie Young of Santa Rosa. She remembered her dad's bar as a social place whose regular clients included many of the town's judges and attorneys.
Calegari, who was born in San Francisco but came to Santa Rosa as a child, was in his element pouring, talking, laughing and listening from behind the bar. "He sure liked to talk to people," said Florence Calegari, his wife of 38 years.
The barkeep, who before going into business for himself worked at the Til Two bar at Third Street and Santa Rosa Avenue, sold the Cork and Bottle in 1963 and moved to Sonoma Valley. For about the next 10 years he ran Til's, a tavern in Boyes Hot Springs.
He wasn't retired long when he started showing up more and more frequently at Sebastiani Vineyards, greeting visitors as they arrived in tour buses and cars. The Sebastianis eventually printed some business cards identifying Calegari as the winery's Honorary Goodwill Ambassador.
Visitors from across the nation and around the globe wrote and thanked him for enhancing their visit to Wine Country.
When he wasn't making visitors feel at home at Sebastiani Vineyards, Calegari enjoyed an occasional bicycle ride or round of golf.
In addition to his wife and daughter Young, he is survived by his son, Tim Calegari, and daughter Tamara Garrigan, both of Santa Rosa; six grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Monday at Parent-Sorensen Mortuary & Crematory in Petaluma.
Mary Lee Higgins
Mary Lee Higgins, a consummate English teacher who left the classroom four years ago to become an assistant principal at Rohnert Park's Rancho Cotate High School, died Thursday.
Higgins, a resident of Santa Rosa for nearly three decades, was 61.
She worked for more than 25 years at Rancho Cotate, primarily teaching English, before being named assistant principal in 1997. Complications from a long struggle with cancer forced her to retire this past winter.
Fellow Assistant Principal Laurie Fong said that as a teacher, Higgins brought English alive.
"She read literature aloud to her students so they could get the cadence and the excitement," said Fong. "She loved the language and was extremely literate, and she conveyed that to her kids."
Fong said the qualities that served Higgins as an administrator were her astonishing intellect, sense of humor and attention to detail.
"She was the most organized person I ever met," Fong said. "She knew everything, remembered everything. You need somebody like that on your staff when everybody else forgets."
Higgins was the eldest of seven children born to a couple in Wyoming. "I think she developed a love of children through her family life," said a sister, Laura Krall of Ventura.
Higgins earned a degree in English from Mundelein College in Chicago and a master's in management from Sonoma State University. At the time of her death, she was working toward a doctorate at UC Berkeley.
She started her teaching career in Iowa in 1962. She taught also in Illinois and in Southern California before coming to Santa Rosa in the early 1970s.
She taught briefly at Petaluma's Kenilworth Junior High before joining Rancho Cotate in 1972. She left the high school for a year to work as a Fulbright Exchange Teacher in Ontario, Canada.
Other professional honors presented to Higgins included a Mensa regional scholarship in 1990. In 1994, she placed first in an essay contest with a piece on how she would improve public schools.
Higgins took a break from teaching from 1988 to 1992, then returned to Rancho Cotate. From 1992 to 1997, she worked also at Sonoma State, teaching and acting as an adviser to future teachers.
Dedicated chiefly to her students, she also enjoyed reading, her family, her friends and her two cats.
Her death came at the Palliative Care Unit of North Coast Health Care Centers.
In addition to her sister Krall, she is survived by her mother, Agnes Hendricks Higgins of Oxnard, and siblings Molly LaChance, Kathleen Nigh, Andrew Higgins and Michael Higgins, all of Ventura.
A memorial service will be held at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Daniels Chapel of the Roses in Santa Rosa.
June 4, 2001
Ernest Saunders, a familiar face to Healdsburg residents during 40 years as a business owner, died Tuesday. He was 94.
June 3, 2001
Edna M. Joost
Longtime Santa Rosa resident Edna M. Joost died Thursday at home, with her family at her side.
Joost, 90, died 11 days shy of her 67th wedding anniversary to John Joost.
The couple relocated from San Francisco to Sonoma County in 1947.
Over the years, their house became a gathering spot for picnics, polka dances and social events with the German Club and the Redwood Empire Camera Club.
The couple was a fixture at polka dances at Little Switzerland in El Verano and Heidelberg on Old Redwood Highway.
"They had lots and lots of friends," said daughter Linda Mori of Healdsburg.
The couple also owned commercial property in Santa Rosa, including Joosts' Roseland Center on Sebastopol Road, current site of a beauty salon and stores selling western wear, paint and statues.
Edna Joost was from a pioneer family. Her grandfather was a 49er who homesteaded in Placer County and her mother also mined for gold.
Joost was born and raised in Alameda and moved to San Francisco, where she met her future husband. They eloped to Reno in 1934.
In Sonoma County, Joost was a homemaker, Cub Scout den mother and supporter of the Fremont Elementary School PTA.
In addition to her daughter and her husband, she is survived by children Karl Joost of Santa Rosa and Donna Lynn of Boulder, Colo.; seven grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
Memorial services are pending.
Donations are suggested in her name to Heartland Hospice, 825 Sonoma Ave. Santa Rosa 95404.
Imogene Coca
Imogene Coca, the elfin actress and satiric comedian who co-starred with Sid Caesar on television's classic "Your Show of Shows" in the 1950s, died Saturday. She was 92.
Coca died of natural causes at her Westport, Conn., residence, said longtime friend Mark Basile.
"She was a humanist," Basile said. "Her humanity was so strong, so giving. She made people want to be with her."
Coca's saucer eyes, fluttering lashes, big smile and boundless energy lit up the screen in television's "Golden Age" and brought her an Emmy as best actress in 1951. Although she did some broad burlesque, her forte was subtle exaggeration.
A talented singer and dancer, her spoofs of opera divas and prima ballerinas tiptoed a fine line between dignity and absurdity until she pushed them over the edge at the end.
With Caesar, she performed skits that satirized the everyday -- marital spats, takeoffs on films and TV programs, strangers meeting and speaking in cliches.
"All the wonderful times we shared together meant the world to me. It was a pleasure to work with her. I will miss her dearly," Caesar said in a statement released Saturday in Beverly Hills.
Coca and Caesar complemented each other marvelously.
"The chemistry was perfect, that's all," Coca once said. "We never went out together; we never see each other socially. But for years we worked together from 10 in the morning to 6 or 7 at night every day of the week. What made it work is that we found the same things funny."
Show business came naturally to Coca, who was born in Philadelphia on Nov. 18, 1908. Her father was an orchestra conductor, her mother an actress and vaudeville dancer; she was their only child.
She began piano lessons at age 5, singing lessons at 6 and dancing class at 7. She made her stage debut as a dancer at 9 and did a solo singing stint in vaudeville at age 11.
Coca's last Broadway appearance was in 1978 in "On the Twentieth Century," a lavish musical based on Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's show-business farce and set on the Twentieth Century Limited luxury train as it sped from Chicago to New York.
She was marriage in 1935 to Robert Burton. Burton died in 1955, and five years later she marriage actor King Donovan. He died in 1987.
Coca had no immediate family.
June 2, 2001
Jim Ghilotti
A memorial Mass for engineering contractor Jim Ghilotti will be said June 8 at 10 a.m. at St. Francis Solano Catholic church, 469 Third Street West, Sonoma.
A reception will follow at Ramekins, 450 West Spain St., Sonoma.
Ghilotti, 46, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound Wednesday in Inglewood. He is survived by his wife, Diane, and a teen-age son and daughter.
Ghilotti was the co-founder, vice president and general manager of Ghilotti Construction Co., the third-largest construction company in Sonoma County.
The third-generation construction executive also was the driving force behind Measure B, the unsuccessful effort in March 2000 to pass a sales tax to widen Highway 101.
In October, he lost a race for a seat on the Sonoma City Council.
Irma Arigoni
Irma Arigoni, a longtime Sonoma County resident and former dairy rancher who was known to family and friends for her caring ways, indomitable spirit and generosity, died Friday in a Petaluma convalescent hospital. She was 96.
She had been in failing health for the past 14 months.
She was born Irma Biasca in Prosito in the Canton of Ticino in Switzerland. She came to the United States in 1930 and settled in Marin County. There she met her husband, Tony Arigoni, also a native of Switzerland who, like many Swiss people, knew about cows.
Tony Arigoni worked on North Bay dairies until the couple could start their own dairy. For more than 20 years they operated dairies in Petaluma and Bennett Valley before retiring to a home in southwest Santa Rosa.
"Feeding the calves on the dairy was my mother's big job," said daughter Lydia Camozzi of Petaluma.
After retiring from the dairy business, Arigoni did baby sitting, not because she needed the money but because she wanted to help young working families. She became a grandmother and a friend to families in her care.
"She was a godsend to us. We were young, poor and struggling with two kids and Irma came into our lives," said Judy Handley of Santa Rosa.
She said Arigoni was always there with homemade soup, pies, jams and bouquets of her home-grown flowers. She played dolls with Handley's daughter and caught worms with her son.
"This woman was such an example of strength and honor, possessing all the qualities one would ever want in a grandmother and friend," Handley said.
Arigoni also did volunteer work by visiting the elderly and crafting handmade towels for church bazaars. She loved gardening and even in her 90s would climb into the ditch in front of her home to hoe weeds.
In addition to her daughter Lydia Camozzi, she is survived by daughter Dorie Telucci of San Jose; her sisters, Regina Biasca and Miriam Barassa, both of Switzerland, and by 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
She was preceded in death by her son, Dante Arigoni, and her foster son, Walter Bernasconi.
A funeral Mass will be said at 10:30 a.m. today at St. Sebastian's Catholic Church in Sebastopol. Entombment is at Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Petaluma.
The family suggests memorial contributions to Catholic Charities, P.O. Box 4900, Santa Rosa 95404.
June 1, 2001
Memorial services are planned at 11 a.m. June 9 at Double Decker Bowling Alley in Rohnert Park for Joann B. Dempsey, an avid bowler who participated in the Wednesday night "Reno League."
May 31, 2001
Joseph Schultz of Petaluma, a retired California Cooperative Creamery worker who pursued many interests but none more fondly than making his signature barbecued chicken at family gatherings, died Tuesday.
