Search for celebrities on Ancestry.com!June 10, 2004
Ruggles memorial
A memorial service for Petaluma poet Eugene Ruggles has been scheduled for 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday at Petaluma's Phoenix Theater.
The event has been dubbed "A Celebration of the Life of Eugene Ruggles."
A Ruggles Memorial Fund has been created at Petaluma's Exchange Bank to benefit the education of his grandchildren.
Ruggles, 68, died last week at the Petaluma Hotel, where he had lived for 15 years. In 1977, he received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for a collection of poems titled "Lifeguard in the Snow."
Born in Michigan, Ruggles moved to San Francisco in 1965 and immersed himself in the city's poetry scene and such causes as the American Indian and anti-Vietnam War movements.
June 9, 2004
Catherine Valverde
Catherine Valverde was "absolutely the backbone of our family," said her daughter, Pearl Valverde Wigaard of Santa Rosa.
"She was little, but she made everybody else strong," her daughter said.
A 15-year breast cancer survivor, Catherine Valverde died June 1 in Santa Rosa of natural causes. She was 88.
A family-oriented woman who loved spending time with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Valverde was a crossword enthusiast and avid gardener.
"She enjoyed being a homemaker," said her daughter. "She also liked taking gambling trips to Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe."
Born in Illinois on Nov. 8, 1915, she and her father were in the restaurant business in Chicago before moving to Alameda when she was 18. A year later, in 1934, they moved to Santa Rosa and opened a fruit market. Her brother and sister, Dante and Anita DeLaurentis, eventually joined them in their business.
It was while working at the fruit market in Santa Rosa that the former Catherine DeLaurentis met her future husband, Daniel Valverde, with whom she spent more than 65 years before his death in 2000.
In addition to her daughter, Valverde is survived by son Daniel Valverde Jr. of Santa Rosa, six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Services will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday at Daniels Chapel of the Roses, 1225 Sonoma Ave., Santa Rosa. Entombment will be private. The family suggests memorial donations to a favorite charity.
George Soles
George Soles, a bushy and philosophical denizen of the street credited in the late 1980s and early '90s with pricking Sonoma County's conscience about the homeless, died Sunday after a struggle with cancer. He was 64.
Soles lived beneath a downtown Santa Rosa bridge for much of the time that he organized homeless people and urged them to agitate for a year-round shelter, affordable housing and an end to police sweeps of their encampments.
As early as 1990 he advocated the creation of a year-round shelter -- one he hoped would be operated by homeless people -- at the former Naval Air Station west of Santa Rosa. Just this year, the Santa Rosa City Council approved the creation of an 80-bed shelter in a building there.
Soles could be strident; early in 1991 a Press Democrat columnist chided him for making personal attacks against members of the City Council. He also was engaging and compassionate, and many people working downtown enjoyed chatting with him on the sidewalk or in Old Courthouse Square.
Bernie Schwartz, the owner of a luggage shop across Fourth Street from the square, said, "There will never be anyone as articulate as George for the disenfranchised."
A native of Rochester, N.Y., Soles learned about life on the street at a young age. He ran away from his family's home in Vermont at age 13, working for a time in a traveling carnival.
His history of activism for people without shelter dated back to at least 1966, the year he arrived in San Francisco. He went to work for the Haight-Ashbury Switchboard, which found places to stay for the young people who flooded into the city.
About 20 years later, Soles moved to Santa Rosa and helped create the Sonoma County Homeless Union. He urged homeless people to become a political force and press for shelter and medical care.
Nick Baker, who manages Catholic Charities' Homeless Services Center, said Soles' advocacy played a role in the creation of 10 transitional beds at the Morgan Street center.
Over the years Soles took on other causes, at one point traveling to Chiapas, Mexico, to support indigenous people in their conflict with the Mexican government.
"He was not your middle-class peace activist," said friend Mary Moore, a veteran activist from Camp Meeker. "When he worked with the homeless he was homeless. He was totally devoted to making the world a better place."
For the past several weeks, Soles was under hospice care at a convalescent hospital in Oakland. His daughter, Lena Hoffman of Oakland, said that when she went to see him Saturday he was not in his pajamas, but had asked the nurses to dress him; he was ready to move on.
He is survived by his daughter, who said she will plan a memorial with her father's Sonoma County friends.
Charles Winslow
Charles James Winslow, a 27-year military man who was fluent in both German and Russian, died of heart failure May 31 at the Veteran's Administration Hospital in San Francisco. He was 76.
"His duties in the Army included acting as an interpreter," said his sister-in-law, Linda Armour, of Atlantic Beach, Fla. "He was stationed in Germany twice. He attended language school in Monterey and Germany."
Born in Hickory Corners, Mich., Winslow was raised on a farm and initially volunteered for one tour of duty in the Army, thinking he'd return to live out his life in rural Michigan.
"As it turned out," said his sister-in-law, "he felt the military life suited him. He served in Korea and had two tours of duty in Vietnam."
Winslow retired from the service in 1974 and lived in Sonoma County for 30 years, working part of that time as a real estate agent.
He was Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Maryland, where he received his bachelor's degree. He earned his master's from Boston University through night classes while stationed in Germany.
Winslow enjoyed the outdoors and loved walking on the beach.
Winslow is survived by his wife of 52 years, Mary Lou Winslow of Santa Rosa; son Leon Winslow of Olympia, Wash.; daughters Jeanne W. Durbin of Fresno, Sandra J. Stone of Blaine, Wash., and Carol A. Winslow of Kirkland, Wash.; and five grandchildren.
Memorial services were held at the Neptune Society's Chapel of the Chimes in Santa Rosa. The family suggests memorial donations to the American Diabetes Association or the American Heart Association.
Robert Quine, punk rock guitarist
Robert Quine, a noted guitarist of the New York rock scene of the 1970s and '80s who played with Richard Hell, Lou Reed and others, died last week in his home in Manhattan. He was 61.
He was found dead by the police on Saturday, said James Marshall, a friend. The police found a note and said they believed the death was a suicide but are awaiting a medical examiner's report.
In the loud world of New York punk, where crude simplicity trumped most conventional notions of musical skill, Quine stood out as a stylish virtuoso. His guitar was first heard on "Blank Generation," the 1977 album by Richard Hell and the Voidoids.
Besides his work with the Voidoids and Reed, Quine played with Marianne Faithfull, Material, James Chance, Tom Waits, Brian Eno and John Zorn. In the '90s he played extensively with Matthew Sweet and Lloyd Cole.
June 8, 2004
Mary Sarris
A woman of infinite grace and indomitable spirit, Mary Elizabeth Sarris of Santa Rosa overcame hardships that would have crushed a lesser person and emerged from them wiser and more compassionate than before.
Her beloved brother, John Mape, was shot down in Vietnam in 1966, missing in action until his remains were found in 1999. Her 19-year-old daughter, Mary Anne Sarris, was murdered by a serial killer in 1976. A son, Patrick Sarris, died of leukemia in 1982.
"With every blow that came, she got bigger as a human being and more sensitive and more aware," said her son, Greg Sarris of Los Angeles. "She had this indomitable spirit and this indomitable grace."
Sarris died May 29 of complications from gall bladder surgery. She was 81.
Sarris was born in Holland, Mich., and came with her family to San Mateo at age 16. She attended a Catholic high school and then graduated from Notre Dame Women's College in Belmont.
She marriage George Sarris in 1945 and subsequently moved with him to Santa Rosa.
The Sarrises adopted one son, Greg, and then had three children of their own before the unhappy marriage exacted its toll. The couple divorced in 1964.
Mary Sarris had been a full-time housewife and mother, and had never worked before. She received no financial support from her ex-husband after the divorce.
To survive, she took a job selling men's clothing and later, women's accessories, at J.C. Penney's, where she worked for 19 years.
She sometimes struggled to make ends meet. Old friends spurned her after the divorce. But she never complained and always found the time to counsel her children and give small amounts of money to those in need, Greg Sarris said.
"She had a strong Catholic faith, and she also had a real sense of fate. It was part of that generation," Greg Sarris said. "She believed that you deal with what you are dealt."
She encouraged him when he sought out his birth parents, Greg Sarris said. When he learned his birth father was part American Indian, she supported his successful effort to gain federal recognition of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria.
As she grew older, she increasingly spoke out in support of the poor, the homeless, the Mexican day laborers and American Indians, Sarris said.
"In difficulty, with what life throws us, we can fold or grow stronger, and she chose to grow. That's the lesson," Sarris said.
In addition to son Greg, Sarris is survived by son Stephen Sarris of Santa Rosa, two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Services were held at St. Rose Catholic Church, where Mary Sarris was a parishioner. She was buried at Calvary Catholic Cemetery. Donations in her memory may be made to Hanna Boys Center, P.O. Box 100, Sonoma 95476.
Kathie Yardas
Singing was a lifelong passion for Kathie Yardas, whose soprano voice soared as a member of a church choir in Novato and later as a member of the Marin Chapter of Sweet Adelines, the Pacific Empire Chorus and various quartets.
"She sang with her whole soul," said her daughter, Candace Johnson of Weston, Fla. "Her voice was beautiful, clear and rich."
Her family was by her side when she died Friday at her Petaluma home, having finally ended her extended battle with ovarian cancer. She was 76.
Born Katherine Kehl Redin on April 19, 1928, in Chicago, she graduated from Maine Township High School in 1946. In 1950, she graduated from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where she pledged the Delta Gamma sorority and majored in vocal music.
"My mother had a wonderful, calming quality," said her daughter. "She had an enthusiastic, loving, cherishing attitude. She was a very supportive person."
Married and the mother of three children, Yardas and her family moved in 1964 to Novato, where she was involved in numerous social organizations, became a piano teacher and sang in her church choir. She also nurtured a large garden of flowers and flowering shrubs, and was a member of the Novato Garden Club.
Later, she went to work for an area optometrist and eventually launched a 20-year career as a vision therapist.
"She was an adventurer," said her daughter. "She loved travel, especially to visit her children and grandchildren. She even took up camping late in life."
During the 1970s, she joined Sweet Adelines, divorced, moved to Petaluma and began singing with the Pacific Empire Chorus. During a remission of her cancer, she volunteered with Sutter VNA and Hospice's thrift store.
"She gave so much to so many people," said her daughter. "She's a bright spirit who lives in all who knew her."
In addition to her daughter, she is survived by son David Yardas of Truckee, daughter Christine Yardas-Lancaster of Boise, Idaho, brother Tom Redin of Ventura, and six grandchildren.
A memorial service will be at 11 a.m. June 19 at Wickersham Park, at the corner of Fourth and G streets, in Petaluma. Arrangements are by Adobe Creek Funeral Home.
The family suggests memorial donations to Sutter VNA and Hospice, 1110 North Dutton Ave., Santa Rosa 95401.
Steve Lacy, jazz saxophonist
Steve Lacy, a leading soprano saxophonist in the modern era of jazz and one of the few jazz musicians awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called "genius grant," has died. He was 69.
Lacy died Friday of cancer at New England Baptist Hospital in Boston, according to a statement from the New England Conservatory of Music, where he taught.
Comfortable in various musical forms, Lacy played Dixieland and avant-garde, and with his own groups often incorporated beat poetry, the writings of Herman Melville and obscure Islamic verse.
"He was a distinctive player and a true original in this music," jazz critic Nat Hentoff told the Los Angeles Times on Monday. "He had an enormous appetite for the music and an ability to keep surprising himself by exploring new avenues."
Influenced by such diverse forces as New Orleans-style saxophonist Sidney Bechet and groundbreaking pianist and composer Thelonious Monk, Lacy developed a beauty and clarity of tone, a keen melodic sense and an ability to keep his music uncompromising and fresh.
Born Steven Lackritz in New York City, he showed early promise in music as he studied piano and clarinet. He switched to soprano saxophone, a seldom played instrument, after hearing a Bechet recording.
After study at the Manhattan School of Music and what is now the Berklee College of Music in Boston, he worked with some of the leading Dixieland practitioners of the 1950s.
His musical direction took a detour in the mid-1950s when he was challenged by avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor to experience his boundary-breaking notions of harmony and structure. Lacy's -- he changed his name in 1952 -- two years with Taylor's band informed his musical direction for the rest of his career.
In the late 1950s, Lacy also recorded with the noted composer/pianist Gil Evans and pianist Mal Waldron and worked with them intermittently into the 1980s.
From the mid-'60s onward, Lacy was associated with the free-jazz movement and, finding little work in America, lived, wrote and recorded for much of the next four decades in Europe, primarily France, where he was awarded the Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1989 and in 2002, Commander of the Order.
His MacArthur Fellowship was awarded in 1992. He returned to the United States and took the teaching post at the New England Conservatory in 2002.
He marriage Swiss singer and cellist Irene Aebi, who survives him, and she became a key part of his bands.
June 7, 2004
Steven Hockert
Steven Dale Hockert, a salesman for juice company Odwalla Inc. and a former real estate agent, died Tuesday of pancreatic cancer at his Healdsburg home. He was 33.
Hockert was born May 30, 1971, in Fresno and moved to Sonoma County with his family in 1978. He attended Healdsburg Elementary and Healdsburg Junior High schools before graduating from Healdsburg High School in 1989.
As a tackle for Healdsburg High's varsity football team, Hockert competed in a North Coast Section final game at Oakland Coliseum, recalled his father, Rick Hockert of Healdsburg.
Hockert later studied at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo, and lived with his maternal grandmother, Jeanne Lichty, in nearby Morro Bay.
"They took care of each other," Hockert's father said. "They were very close."
Hockert had worked a little more than a year for Odwalla, the beverage company founded in Santa Cruz, when he was hospitalized in December. Doctors soon learned of his cancer, and his illness prevented him from returning to work.
In northern Marin County where Hockert called on stores that sold Odwalla drinks, "he was very popular on his route," his father said.
"We got cards from a lot of his customers."
Hockert also worked for a short time as a real estate agent, and formerly was employed at Healdsburg's Tayman Park Golf Course.
An avid athlete, Hockert became a 10-handicap golfer who traveled twice a year with his father and two buddies to courses in destinations such as Monterey, Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas.
Though he never married, Hockert served as best man three times in friends' weddings.
"He was the kind of person who always tried to treat other people the way he wanted to be treated," Rick Hockert said of his son.
In addition to his father, Hockert is survived by his mother, Susan Hockert, and brother, Terry Hockert, both of Healdsburg. He also leaves uncles Michael Hockert and Greg Hockert of Fresno, and an aunt, Justy Hockert of Fresno.
A memorial service will be Tuesday, 2 p.m., at Villa Chanticleer in Healdsburg.
Francis Brunn, acclaimed juggler
Francis Brunn, who cared little that he was often described as one of the half-dozen best jugglers of the 20th century, because his art, he said, transcended mere juggling, died on May 28 at a hospital in Frankfurt, Germany. He was 81.
The cause was complications of heart surgery, said his sister Lottie Chirrick, herself a famous juggler.
Brunn, who lived in Manhattan, brought new twists, often quite literally, to an art that goes back at least to ancient Egypt and Greece, and showed them off to audiences from the Palace Theater to the White House. After he performed before the queen of England in 1963, The Evening Standard called his show "almost painfully exciting."
When the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus brought him to America in 1948, he became the first juggler ever to work the center ring as a solo headliner.
At the beginning of his career, Brunn, a former gymnast, was celebrated for lightning speed in juggling a dozen objects simultaneously. But later, he perfected an austere but demanding minimalism. He was fascinated by controlling just one ball, and virtually compelled audiences to share this fascination.
Especially if the one-ball trick was to defy gravity by making the ball travel from his toe up his entire body by moving only his legs and torso.
In another dazzling trick, Brunn would spin a ball on his right hand and hold another ball on the back of his neck. He rolled the ball down his back and kicked it with his heel over his head to a dead-on balance with the spinning ball.
Large numbers of objects posed scant problem. He was believed to be the first juggler in the world to put up 10 hoops.
"Trying to describe Brunn's act is like trying to describe the flight of a swallow," Francisco Alvarez wrote in "Juggling: Its History and Greatest Performers."
Brunn did not hope for applause.
"I do not consider myself doing tricks," he said in an interview with the New York Times in 1983. "There is one movement for eight minutes. It's supposed to be, let's say, like a ballet.
"It would be impossible for me to start in the middle. I would love if the audience is so fascinated that nobody applauds in the end."
June 6, 2004
Loren Vernon
Loren Edward Vernon, a World War II veteran and Sonoma Valley beekeeper for 55 years, died Friday of congestive heart failure. He was 82.
Vernon was born in the tiny town of Vineburg, just south of Sonoma, in 1921.
He graduated from Sonoma High School in 1939 and served in the Army Air Corps in Europe during the war.
Upon his return, he was a planner and estimator at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, where he worked for 40 years.
Vernon met his wife, the former Mary Nerney, at a Sonoma bowling alley in 1946 and they were marriage the following year. They had four children.
Vernon had an active sideline as a beekeeper. He sold honey from his MacArthur Street home and talked about beekeeping to school children.
"People are always interested in bees," his wife said. "But they don't want to get close to them like he did."
Vernon was a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Sons in Retirement. He was an avid fisherman and bowler.
In addition to his wife, Vernon is survived by two daughters Nancy Garner and Marilyn Vernon, both of Sonoma; two sons, Thomas Vernon of Sunnyvale and Robert Vernon of Boyes Hot Springs; and five grandchildren.
A private inurnment will be at Mountain Cemetery.
Donations in Vernon's honor can be made to the United Anglers of Casa Grande, 933 Casa Grande Road, Petaluma 94954.
