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ALUMNI
Henry Ramsey Jr. ’60, prominent judge and educator, died in Berkeley on March 15 after a stroke. He was 80. Ramsey grew up in Rocky Mount, N.C. After serving in the Korean War, Ramsey was stationed at March Air Force Base. Astonished at the possibilities that he discovered were open to him in California, he used money from the G.I. bill to enter Howard University, a historically black institution in Washington, D.C. In 1957, after a year at Howard, he transferred to UC Riverside. He graduated from UCR in 1960 with a degree in philosophy and earned his law degree from UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law. He fondly spoke about his experiences as a student at UCR, and later established the Henry Ramsey Jr. Revolving Emergency Loan Fund to help undergraduate students with short-term financial emergencies. “As a young student, I needed this kind of emergency assistance on an occasion or two,” he recalled. After law school, Ramsey served as a Contra Costa County prosecutor — helping to integrate the office — and as a trial lawyer in private practice. He was a member of the faculty at Boalt Hall from 1971 to 1980. During his tenure there, he served
on the Berkeley City Council from 1973 to 1977. He served as an Alameda County Superior Court judge from 1981 to 1990 before serving as dean of the Howard University School of Law for the next five years. He has served as chairperson of the American Bar Association section of legal education and admissions to the bar. He is a life member of the American Law Institute and was the recipient of the 2000 Robert J. Kutak Award for promoting understanding between legal education and the active practice of law. Ramsey is survived by four sons; two daughters; his wife, Eleanor; and seven granddaughters. His first wife, Evelyn, died in 2010.
Robert Poole, M.A. ’64, mathematics professor. March 2014. H. Leonard Francis ’68, avocado expert. March 2014. Robert Luxmoore ’69, environmental scientist. January 2014.
FACULTY Carol A. Downey, former lecturer in the English department, died March 18 after a long illness. She was 63. Downey was born in New York City on March 28, 1950. She moved to California and lived for many years in Huntington Beach, where she raised two children and worked as a psychiatric nurse. After her children were grown, she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English literature at California State University, Long Beach. In 2010, she earned a doctorate in English literature at the Claremont Graduate School. She taught English composition, Shakespeare and early modern
studies at CSULB, California State University, San Bernardino, and UCR. She is survived by her brother Frederick; two children, Alan Downey of Orange, and Valorie Bell (Jeff) of Huntington Beach; and five grandsons: Alexander, Ethan, Ollie, Theo and Nico. Donald Carroll Erwin, emeritus professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, died Feb. 22. He was 93. Erwin’s career at UCR began about the time of the university’s founding. He received his Ph.D. in plant pathology from the University of California, Davis, in 1953 and soon after joined the Department of Plant Pathology at UCR as a junior plant pathologist. He became a professor in 1966 and later served as department chair. He retired in 1991. His research specialties involved the causes and control of diseases that affect alfalfa, flax, cotton and other crops. He was known internationally as an expert on the biology of Phytophthora, a cause of many plant diseases and published extensively on that and other topics. Erwin’s honors included a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Pacific Division of the American Phytopathological Society. Herbert L. Baird Jr. died of heart failure in his sleep on Dec. 23, 2013. He was 90. A U.S. Army Purple Heart Veteran of World War II, Herb served from the beginning of the war and was wounded while serving as a medic supporting Allied troops during the “Battle of the Bulge” in Belgium. After his recovery he was sent back to the front lines in Germany where he
participated in the final grueling march to the end at the Elbe. At the end of the war, Herb returned to California and enrolled at Pomona College under the G.I. bill to study Romance Languages; he was a gifted linguist and ultimately earned his Ph.D. in medieval Spanish literature from University of Chicago. A professor of foreign languages and literature, Herb started his teaching career at UCR before he moved to the Western Washington University where he taught languages and literature until his retirement as associate professor emeritus in 1985. Austin Turk, professor of sociology, died on Feb. 1. He joined the faculty at UCR in 1988 and in the years since fulfilled many roles in that department, including a period as chair. He served on the CHASS Executive Committee, the Committee on Charges, the Law and Society Program Committee and a host of other boards and committees. In the community of Riverside, he was an avid supporter of the California Museum of Photography and the Citizens’ University Committee, and he also volunteered with the Riverside Police Department. Turk’s scholarly career spanned more than five decades. He was a Fellow and Past President of the American Society of Criminology, and had also been Chair of the Criminology Section of the American Sociological Association. His 1969 book “Criminality and the Legal Order” is considered a classic in the field. He is survived by his wife, Dr. Ruth-Ellen Grimes.
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