Dan Markwyn, retired Sonoma State professor, champion of Sonoma County historical causes, dies at 90

When Dan Markwyn first stepped onto Sonoma State College as a temporary instructor in 1967, both he and the initial phase of a campus erected in a field at the cloddy eastern fringe of Rohnert Park were light on history and standing and gravitas.

Several decades later, Sonoma State University had grown greatly in size and esteem. And Markwyn was celebrated as a history professor extraordinaire: brilliant, supremely knowledgeable, doggedly committed to honoring even painful historical truths, funny and a master at conveying information and insight — and the love of learning.

Markwyn had served as chair of both the History Department and the faculty, and had received the Distinguished Professor Award, when he retired in 2000. He remained a near-celebrity contributor to the school’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and an array of history-focused community organizations that include the Museum of Sonoma County and the county Historical Society.

An insatiable reader, avid baseball fan and longtime resident of Santa Rosa, Markwyn died at home Aug. 21. He turned 90 in May.

Among the many lives he influenced was that of Eric Stanley, the Museum of Sonoma County’s associate director and its curator of history. Stanley credits Markwyn with setting him on the path to his life’s work.

“He was the best teacher I ever had,” Stanley said. He had declared himself a history major at Sonoma State when, 30 years ago, he took his first class with Markwyn and quickly affirmed his academic and career focus.

Stanley said that as a student he could not have hoped to achieve the intellectual capacity of someone like Dr. Markwyn, “but you get a feeling for how they think.” Stanley’s written notes for other professors’ lectures might be a rambling mishmash of quotes and dates and phrases, but his notes tracking a talk by Markwyn could be neatly ordered by topics and subtopics.

Stanley said it was Markwyn who recommended the subject of his master’s thesis: the Carrillo Adobe, the ruins of Santa Rosa’s first nonnative residence. “That really connected me to local history, and everything I did moving forward,” he said.

Markwyn later worked innumerable volunteer hours advising, assisting and supporting Stanley, other local champions of local history and the Museum of Sonoma County, which occupies Santa Rosa’s stately former post office building on Seventh Street.

“He was a historian by trade and a mentor by avocation,” said Margie Purser, a colleague of Markwyn at both SSU and the county museum, and in numerous community endeavors.

“He wasn’t going to write 100 books, but he launched probably 100 careers.”

Daniel William Markwyn was born May 10, 1933, in Denver. He grew up in Colorado and in Southern California. Upon graduation from high school in 1950 he enrolled at Colorado A&M, predecessor to Colorado State University.

He dropped out in 1953 to join the Marine Corps. When he was shipped to Korea, an armistice had replaced warfare with an uneasy peace.

“He was near the DMZ and armed, but not in combat,” said his daughter, Abigail Markwyn of Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Markwyn served three years with the Marines and was honorably discharged as a sergeant. He resumed his formal education, earning a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1961.

He taught junior high and high school for a while, then left education to test retail work at a Broadway department store in Southern California. Choosing to return to academia, he enrolled at San Jose State College, which awarded him a master’s degree in history.

Markwyn had some free time before moving on to Cornell University to pursue his Ph.D, so in 1967 he took a temporary post at the fledgling Sonoma State College.

In a retrospective he wrote a dozen years ago, he recalled the moment he arrived at the school in his VW Bug. He saw that “the roughly 200-acre campus was dominated by two massive poured-concrete buildings, Stevenson and Darwin halls, at its center.”

As he beheld the minimalist, remote college, he wrote, he wondered “how the place connected to nearby communities.”

He’d not had much of an opportunity to answer the question when he completed his one semester of work and departed, sensing “no reason to believe that I would ever see Sonoma State again.”

Then 34, he moved on to New York State and a doctorate in history program at Cornell University. A fellow Ph.D. candidate, Margaret Josephine “Jo” Rummell, will always remember how the two of them met.

“We would sit next to each other at a table in a rather small seminar,” she said.

They eventually spoke, then hit it off. They married in 1969.

The following year, Dan Markwyn earned his Ph.D. in early American history. Setting out to become a history prof, he wrote to Sonoma State College to request a letter of recommendation. Instead, the History Department offered him a teaching post.

The Markwyns moved that year, 1970, to Sonoma County and settled into a house in Santa Rosa. Dan Markwyn returned to Sonoma State and was in awe of how it had matured just since ‘67.

He taught pre-Civil War U.S. history and, later, California history. And he began his evolution into a professor, mentor and faculty leader widely regarded as without parallel.

“He had a profound effect on me,” said Katherine Rinehart of Petaluma, who took a class with Markwyn in 1989 — and knew she would become a historian.

Rinehart recalls taking an exam from Markwyn. After class she was walking down the hall when she heard, “Katherine! Katherine!”

It was Dr. Markwyn, eager to tell her how impressed he was by what she’d done on the exam.

“That was a turning point for me,” said Rinehart, who went on to become one of Sonoma County’s busiest and most respected historians. She managed the Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library and the county Archives, and is now a consulting historian.

She said that beyond being “incredibly smart” and a born teacher, Markwyn possessed a twinkle-eyed mischievousness, he was a stickler for accuracy and he was hugely generous with his time and knowledge.

Margie Purser was office neighbors with Markwyn through much of the time she was a professor of anthropology at SSU. She said, “He had very strong ideas about, among other things, not flinching or looking away when history made you uncomfortable.

“What Dan had was a sense that if you took on being something called a historian, part of being what you signed up for was making sure the stories got told with truth and integrity and honesty, no matter what the consequences of the stories were.”

Away from Sonoma State, Markwyn helped to found the Luther Burbank Home & Gardens in Santa Rosa, the Friends of the Carrillo Adobe and the Historical Society of Sonoma County. He was a pillar of the Museum of Sonoma County.

Not long after his 90th birthday in May, he suffered a fall that triggered a decline in his health. He was at home with his wife and daughter on Aug. 21 when his son-in-law, Kevin Guilfoy, and three of his grandchildren — Harry and Molly Guilfoy and William Markwyn — came to see him.

He was not responsive. Then, Jo Markwyn said, “He suddenly smiled at the kids. It was the only change in expression I’d seen in a couple of days.”

Shortly after his grandchildren left, Professor Markwyn breathed his last breath.

In addition to his wife of 54 years in Santa Rosa and his daughter in Wisconsin, he is survived by his son, Christopher Markwyn of Madison, Wisconsin, and six grandchildren.

His family plans to host a service in the future.

Memorial contributions are suggested to the history collection of the Museum of Sonoma County, 425 Seventh St., Santa Rosa 95401, or museumsc.org/donate.