TIGERWIRE Photo by Marc Campos
the Army, Don worked in real estate before owning several South Bay bars and restaurants. He was proudest of his partnership with Ray Cobb in the Raintree, which a longtime friend once called “the hottest nightclub in the South Bay.” Survivors include his wife of 21 years, Mary; children Donette, Scott, and Suzanne; stepdaughters Lynn Elias and Mandy Parkes; and five grandchildren. Wayne S. Dryden ’59 died July 18, 2016, in Tennessee. A native of San Marino, Wayne was a member of Phi Gamma Delta while at Oxy and later practiced family law. He is survived by daughters Brooke and April and five grandchildren. George Spangler ’59 died Nov. 9, 2016, in Huntington Beach. George played four years of football at Oxy and was a member of the men’s physical education fraternity, Phi Epsilon Kappa. He enjoyed a long career of teaching and coaching, 38 years of which were spent at Newport Harbor High School. George was a member of the Newport Beach Lifeguard Department for 40 years and met his wife, Linda, while working as a tower guard in summer 1957. George was an avid outdoorsman and enjoyed camping, hiking, and hunting with family and friends. In addition to his wife, he is survived by sons John and Jason and four grandsons. Linda Lesh ’60 died April 28, 2017, in Ladera Ranch. After Oxy, Linda got her teaching credential at Long Beach State, and she taught elementary school in El Monte and Glendale for over 30 years. She also sang in the choir and played in the hand bell choir at First Baptist Church of Pasadena. Linda loved to travel, whether doing a mission trip to an Alaskan orphanage or to the Holy Land and Greek Isles with her mother and friends, or a dream trip to Ecuador. Her favorite trip, however, was backpacking or pack mule camping into the back country of Mammoth/June Lakes every summer to hike, fish, or just commune with nature, taking photos which she would later paint in watercolor. Thomas T. Triggs ’60 died March 5, 2016, in Huntington Beach. He was a longtime vice president of Bank of Hawaii in Honolulu. Survivors include his wife, Faye. Howard L. Rosenfeld ’61 died March 17, 2017, in Pasadena. Hal graduated from USC School of Medicine in 1965. He was boardcertified in plastic surgery in 1979, and served on the medical staff of Huntington Hospital in Pasadena for 36 years, where he also was a member of the hospital’s ethics committee. He was active in the state and county medical associations, a mediator for the L.A. Superior Court, and an expert reviewer
for the California Medical Board. He enjoyed spending time tending and exhibiting his bonsai trees. As a member of the L.A. Opera Docs, he combined his love of music with his medical expertise when called on to treat injured or ill cast members. He is survived by daughter Ariel and son Samuel. Graef “Bud” Crystal M’62 died April 18, 2017, in Las Vegas. After more than four decades of making a good but quiet living advising clients such as American Express and General Electric, Bud became the foremost critic of excessive compensation, such as the alleged excess of the employment contract that he’d helped the Walt Disney Co. negotiate with Hollywood super-agent Michael Ovitz. In a 1996 article for Slate, Bud explained he had warned then-CEO Michael Eisner he would put his critic hat back on if the contract became an issue, which its $140million severance provision later did. As a Bloomberg News columnist on executive pay for eight years starting in 2000, Bud prepared yearly reports identifying the most overpaid top executives, based on models he developed that compared compensation with a company’s size and performance. He received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from UC Berkeley and a master’s degree in the same subject from Occidental. He focused on pay packages as an adjunct professor at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and was the editor of the Crystal Report on Executive Compensation and the author of six books. Bud is survived by his wife, Sue, and a daughter and two sons from his previous marriage. Duane Hostetter ’62 died March 27, 2017, in Georgetown, Texas. He is survived by wife Sharon and two children. R. Terrell Jones ’62 died Feb. 20, 2017, in Thousand Oaks. Terry was a member of SAE and the tennis team and senior class president. Edwin A. Millar ’62 died May 25, 2017, in Rosemead. Prior to attending Oxy, he served in the Air Force, where he was a base choir director in England. Ed sang in the Glee Club at Oxy and was a member and chapter president of Kappa Sigma. After Oxy he worked for Sears as a supervisor in the maintenance and repair division. Ed was choir director at the Church of the Lighted Window in La Cañada Flintridge and the Community Christian Church in Huntington Park and was lead tenor at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles. He also sang in the choir at Oneonta Congregational Church in South Pasadena and was a leader in the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches. Ed is
Aram Nersissian, associate professor of chemistry, died May 26 of pancreatic cancer. He was 58. Nersissian was a graduate of Lomonsov Moscow State University, one of Russia’s most prestigious universities, and received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the Institute of Biochemistry of the Armenian Academy of Sciences. He was awarded a Humboldt Postgraduate Fellowship at Munich University, where he was one of the original contributors to the NIH gene bank. After joining the Occidental faculty in 2004, Nersissian continued his research as a regular participant in the Undergraduate Research program. One of his students, William Reeves ’16, was honored last year by the American Society of Hematology for a novel anticoagulant Reeves and his student colleagues discovered under Nersissian’s guidance. Nersissian served as chair of the chemistry department and was working on student recommendations up to a week before his death. In his own work, he developed a new method to manufacture a human blood coagulant by substituting a small segment of the human gene with the analogous segment from the Japanese puffer fish. His new gene produced a protein that exhibited dramatically enhanced clotting activity relative to commercially availably drugs, a protein that has drawn significant interest from pharmaceutical companies for its potential to create a new clinical therapy for hemophilia. Nersissian is survived by his wife, Aroussiak, sons Miran and Tigran, daughter-in-law Stephanie Tardif ’10, and granddaughter Julia.
survived by wife Gay, three children, and two grandsons. Stephen R. Kinkade ’67 died Feb. 11, 2017, in San Rafael. He was a CPA with his own firm in Novato. Alan R. Tabrum ’69 died Jan. 2, 2017, in Wilkins Township, Pa. An avid paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Alan published many papers and discovered and named several species of small mammals. Survivors include his wife, Jenny, and son, Jeffrey. Alexander A. Silva Jr. M’70 died April 25, 2017, in Southport, N.C. Alex received his master’s in urban affairs and wore many hats throughout his career. He was a
speechwriter for vice presidential candidate Edmund Muskie in 1968, “advance man” for the visiting Chinese ping-pong team in 1972, a political appointee by President Carter as deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for equal opportunity, focusing on the Women at Sea program, and special assistant to the comptroller general at the General Accounting Office. He is survived by his wife, Donna, and daughters Samantha and Laura. William A. Dorvall ’82 died May 1, 2017, in Huntington Beach. He majored in economics at Oxy and was a member on the track team. He worked as a portfolio manager. SUMMER 2017 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE 63