Sonoma County icons who died in 2015

Editors Note: As part of our year in review, we look back on a dozen prominent people who left a deep impact on Sonoma County before their deaths in 2015.

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Its almost as though Sonoma County lost its dad this year.

Henry Trione was for decades the wise and kind, mischievous and generous paternal figure the county frequently looked to for counsel, leadership and perhaps a buck or two, or a million, to seed the creation of Annadel State Park or whats now the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts, or to vitalize Santa Rosas Rose Parade.

Trione, who was 94 when he died Feb. 12, was the best known and most influential of more than a dozen of the prominent neighbors who left us in 2015.

Trione was born in a small apartment above his fathers bakery in the Humboldt County town of Fortuna. Hed recount in his memoir, “Footprints of the Baker Boy, that he learned to work when his dad, Vittorio, instructed him to report to the bakery early each morning and to open the oven doors for the bread baker and then shut them — quickly!

Henry Trione made a great deal of bread throughout his long life. He applied his uncanny entrepreneurial instincts to the mortgage, timber and wine businesses, and all along he freely shared his wealth, acumen and visionary optimism with the county he loved as though it was one of his children.

An effort is underway to add his name to that of Annadel because he was the beloved parks father, too.

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Don Clausen was born and died in Humboldt County. In between, he went to Washington, D.C., to make certain the Redwood Empire received its share of attention and dollars from the U.S. Congress.

From 1963 to 1983, the gregarious and plain-talking Republican kept his promise to constituents that hed be a congressman who “gets things done.

Clausens support was essential to the creation of Warm Springs Dam, Humboldt Bay Harbor and the Point Reyes National Seashore. He told of being proudest of his role in dedicating the Lady Bird Johnson Grove within Redwood National Park.

Clausen was a modest country boy at heart right up to his death in Fortuna on Feb. 7 at age 91. At his memorial service, son-in-law Robert Mendenhall recalled the congressman saying often, “Theres no telling how much good you can do if you dont care who gets the credit.

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Some of the young swimmers Marion Kane Elston coached felt grateful for the water on their faces because it concealed the tears.

Elston was tough. Throughout the nearly 60 years she coached the deceptively challenging sport of synchronized swimming, she pushed team members — whether beginning, peak performers or seniors — to train hard and long, and to excel.

They thanked her when they won more than 300 national and international titles.

As a child, Elston lived in San Francisco and discovered the joy of swimming on family excursions to the Russian River. Shed set speed records and made it to the qualifying finals of the Olympics when she came to Santa Rosas Rincon Valley in 1973, bought the Oak Park Swim and Racquet Club and opened there the Marion L. Kane International Synchro School.

When she died Aug. 10 at 81, shed taught generations of Sonoma County kids to swim and some of them to challenge themselves in the elegant sport of synchronized swimming.

Elstons four grown children say they must shut down Oak Park today to stem the recreation oasis budgetary hemorrhaging, but they hope that swimming lessons and synchro training will one day return to its landmark pools.

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A retail space on Broadway in downtown Sonoma had housed a hardware store when Chuck Williams took it over in 1956.

He put down a black-and-white checkerboard floor and replaced the hammers, drills, saws and such with essential tools for the aspiring home cook.

Such was the humble start of the upscale cookware and everything-for-the-home chain, Williams-Sonoma.

As he and his creation became fabulously successful, Chuck Williams would sometimes say, “If you love what you do, the world will fall in love with you.

Having sold Williams-Sonoma in 1978 while staying on as its public face, the gracious and soft-spoken Williams was 99 when he returned to Sonoma in 2014 to help open a new Williams-Sonoma outlet in the same spot where hed launched the tasteful enterprise 56 years earlier.

He died on Dec. 5 at his home in San Francisco, at the age of 100.

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Of course, Bob St. Clair had a big heart. When he played as an offensive lineman with the San Francisco 49ers through most of the 1950s and into the 1960s, St. Clair stood 6-foot-9 and weighed 265 pounds.

But the grandeur of the longtime Santa Rosa resident far surpassed his physical dimensions. The gentle and cheerful Pro Football Hall of Famer never declined a request for an autograph or passed up an opportunity to delight or be of service to others.

St. Clair left legions of fans and friends when he died in Santa Rosa on April 20. The big guy was 84.

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The town of Windsor named one of its parks after Nick Esposti. Perhaps no one would have been terribly surprised had Windsor dubbed itself the Town of Esposti.

Born just down the highway in Fulton in 1935, Nick Esposti was an early and avid advocate of the incorporation of a real town in the area that for decades was the rather ramshackle rural area known as Windsor.

About the time he was elected to represent north Sonoma County on the Board of Supervisors in 1978, Esposti predicted this about Windsor: “With good local control and planning, its going to be a super place in the future.

The town was incorporated in 1992 and made Supervisor Esposti its first Honorary Citizen.

Throughout his 16 years as a county supervisor, Esposti distinguished himself as a conservative voice with an engaged conscience and a reliably sunny disposition. He was 80 when he died at his home in Windsor on Oct. 2.

Successor Paul Kelley, whod also serve four terms, valued Espostis advice to him: “You dont have to agree, but listen. Do the right thing and youll be around for a long time.

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Party preparations were underway for Rita Carniglia Halls 90th birthday when the native and primary story-keeper of Santa Rosas historic Railroad Square/West End neighborhood died on March 10.

Among her recollections of the former Italian district was walking down West Sixth Street on a Monday, laundry day, and seeing that everyones clothesline was neatly laden, everything was in its place.

In each yard was a garden. “It was a quiet neighborhood, Hall once said. “It was a good place to raise􀀀children. All the holidays everybody did the same things. They had their big family dinners􀀀and family gatherings.

Halls father, son of immigrants Charles Carniglia, had been superintendent of California Packing Corporation. Much of Halls life as a child and young woman was centered at the companys Plant No. 5, the ruins of which stand still near Railroad Squares depot.

Hall had grown up in the Superintendents House on West Sixth and as an adult purchased and moved it. She ultimately relocated from the neighborhood with her late husband, Jack Hall, but she never uprooted from Santa Rosa nor lost her affection for what had been its Italian Town.

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Long before most Americans became involved in, or perhaps even aware of the pursuit of civil rights, George Houser rode defiantly with black friends on public buses in the south.

And long before most of his countrymen could define the word “apartheid, Houser was working actively to dismantle South Africas system of racial segregation.

Houser, who was 99 when he died Aug. 19 in Santa Rosa, never sought out acknowledgment for what he did as an original Freedom Rider in 1947 or as a committed opponent to apartheid as long ago as 1952. The Fellowship of Reconciliation praised the Methodist minister as “one of the most important yet least-heralded activists of the 20th Century.

Houser, who came to Sonoma County with his wife to be closer to a daughter in Cotati, once said “I believe one step is enough and you take it, as long as you have faith youre doing the right thing to begin with.

In October, the creator of Sebastopols new Living Peace Wall honored Houser by including him among the monuments first four honorees.

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The retail furniture business was good to Joe Martin, whod grown up milking and cleaning up after dairy cows, but in his mid-30s he itched for a new challenge.

Taking action before he could change his mind, Martin sold his furniture store in San Francisco and bought 100 acres of orchard near Kenwood. He planted 22 acres of chardonnay grapes and Sonoma Valleys first 60 acres of merlot grapes.

Martin sold fruit to wineries for several years before deciding to make his own wine. In 1979, he and partner Lloyd Canton opened a winery named for Martins favorite patron saint, the protector of animals and the natural world.

When Martin died on Feb. 26 at age 80, he left wine lovers across the nation broken-hearted but grateful that hed given up furniture sales to plant what became St. Francis Winery & Vineyards.

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What was the favorite wine of pioneer Dry Creek Valley vintner John Pedroncelli Jr.? The one in the bottle that was just uncorked.

“We like people to drink our wines, not put them away, Pedroncelli said only a few years ago.

Aged just 2 when his father moved the family onto a defunct northern Sonoma County winery in mid-Prohibition 1927, Pedroncelli would grow up to oversee the production of 66 consecutive vintages.

The wise and amiable Pedroncelli was key to his familys Pedroncelli Winery moving from bulk to fine wines, and expanding both its vineyards and Geyserville production space.

He told The Press Democrats Peg Melnik four years ago he loved making wine since he was 22 years old.

“The attention to detail and my love for food makes it great, Pedroncelli said. “I cannot imagine myself doing anything else.

He worked the 2014 harvest and was approaching his 90th birthday when he died at home on Jan. 4.

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The week before he passed away on May 19 at 84, John Crevelli wrote the last of many letters exhorting people in positions of authority to do right by the environment and the disenfranchised.

Specifically, his final letter urged the Windsor Town Council not to allow the felling of a cluster of mature oak trees to make way for more development.

Crevelli, who was born in Healdsburg and never lived too far from there, dedicated his life to preserving what he could of the natural world, hiking deeply into it, reading and teaching history, serving God and embracing each moment of life.

He taught for 34 years, first at Santa Rosa High School and mostly at Santa Rosa Junior College. His birth as a pioneer Sonoma County environmentalist was prompted by the plan by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to construct a nuclear power plant atop a seismic fault on Bodega Head.

Crevelli had just finished writing his final book, “Bill Kortum: A Fifty Year History of Environmentalism in Sonoma County, when his friend Kortum, often cited as the father of the environmental movement in the region, died a bit more than a year ago. Crevelli was beginning to market the book when he died five months later.

He remarked once that he knew there was a loving, forgiving God when he beheld the majestic beauty of the Sierras.

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Santa Rosa native Dan Bribiescas went to bed early on Saturday, Sept. 26. Hed been preparing for an adult-club soccer game the next day.

He died unexpectedly that night. His sudden passing at age 56 was a harsh blow to all of the men hed coached at Santa Rosa High School from the mid-1980s through 2001.

But they were comforted by the knowledge that Bribiescas had not only made them better soccer players, but better people.

You can reach Chris Smith at 521-5211 or chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD.