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.
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