Sonoma County’s living fabric: Remembering those who died in 2016
EDITOR'S NOTE: The Press Democrat is taking the last 10 days of the year to review the news stories that marked our lives and shaped our region in 2016. For a complete list of the stories, click here.
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Sonoma County and the North Coast experienced good days and bad in 2016, and on some of the sadder ones reflected on the deaths of people who helped shape the region's character and personality.
Among those who passed away this year were an immigrant who became one of Sonoma County's busiest and most widely respected elected officials.
The combat veteran and police officer who pleased some and piqued others with the great cross of whitewashed stones that he carved into a grassy hillside. The eminent and beloved attorney who quietly contributed to the lives and prospects of local children.
The country boy who became a newspaper editor and influenced Sonoma County's growth through the boom years of the 1970s and '80s.
The Santa Rosa native who moved to San Francisco and knew she had to act when she realized why her all neighbors were white, just as she was.
Here are memories of some who shared this place, and to whom we said farewell this past year.
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Jack DeMeo, gentleman attorney
Everybody knew that Santa Rosa-born Jack DeMeo was one of the region's smartest, hardest working and most genuinely endearing attorneys, and one of its finest breeders of thoroughbred horses.
But it is unknowable how many children and adults hereabout and beyond live happier, more productive lives because of DeMeo's quiet generosity, leadership and encouragement.
The 56-year lawyer and race horse owner - regarded by law school friend, former San Francisco mayor and Assembly speaker Willie Brown as “a superstar in every way” - for decades promoted greater educational opportunities and improved care for children.
Among the many beneficiaries of DeMeo's donations of creative and financial resources were the Valley of the Moon Children's Home, Cardinal Newman and Elsie Allen high schools, the Sonoma County Fair and Chop's Teen Club, constructed near Railroad Square as a gift from his late uncle, Charles “Chop” DeMeo.
“He literally changed lives,” said Laura Colgate of the Valley of the Moon Foundation. “He was a rock.”
Jack DeMeo died Oct. 6 at the age of 82.
Art Volkerts, newspaper editor
In the 1920s and '30s, a kid named Arthur Volkerts fished and swam and explored and made boyish mischief in the wilds of western Sonoma County.
By the time the native of greater Sebastopol became a newsman with The Press Democrat in 1948, he was familiar with pretty much every nook and swale, and he knew or knew of a great percentage of the nearly 100,000 people who called Sonoma County home at the time.
Volkerts became editor of the PD in 1972 and exercised his considerable influence through a period of tremendous growth and change throughout the region that he loved.
He cultivated extraordinary tomatoes and vegetables on the family ranch in Hessel that he worked and savored with his wife of 78 years, Tess.
Art Volkerts was 96 when he died at home on Oct. 22. Tess Volkerts passed away six weeks later, on Dec. 3, at the age of 95.
Betty Burridge, saint of birds
Betty Burridge believed life was for the birds. Some of the best aspects of life, at any rate.
Her profession was physical therapy, but her passion was nature. Burridge cherished birds for their beauty and all their fascinating traits, and also for their canary-in-the-coal-mine role as living gauges of the health of the environment.
For decades, she and fellow Madrone Audubon Society members Ernestine “Ernie” Smith and Martha Bentley exerted great influence and persuasion in their quest to defend birds and their ecology from plans for further development in and around Sonoma County.
“In these times of rapid growth and development within Sonoma County, wildlife habitat is disappearing every day,” Burridge said 30 years ago. “Each of us can recall fields where hawks used to soar, that now are shopping centers; farm ponds where ducks and shorebirds lingered, that since have been drained.”
Burridge was a stalwart of the Audubon Society's ambitious Sonoma County Christmas Count and was renowned for the exhaustive labor of love that was her “Sonoma County Breeding Bird Atlas: Detailed Maps and Accounts for Our Nesting Birds.”
She died in Santa Rosa on March 24. She was 84.
Eeve T. Lewis, county clerk
Germany-born Eeve T. Lewis, the daughter of a woman who fled the Soviet occupation of her native Estonia, wore many hats.
Elected to the post of Sonoma County clerk in 1978 at the age of 31, Lewis assumed the responsibilities of clerk of the Superior Court, clerk to the Board of Supervisors, county recorder, county assessor, registrar of voters, public administrator, public guardian and public conservator.
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