Yvette Fallandy, former top administrator at Sonoma State, French professor, dies at 94

Yvette Fallandy, a scholar of religious drama and professor of French literature who served in the 1970s as vice president of academic affairs at Sonoma State University and who maintained her devout Catholic faith amid her outspoken criticism of conservative local diocesan leadership, has died at the age of 94.

Fallandy, who clashed with university presidents and a Catholic bishop, died Jan. 15 at a Santa Rosa hospital. She had been hospitalized a day earlier with severe asthma, a condition she had since birth. The cause of her death was not announced.

“When Yvette fiercely embraced issues dear to her, she could be a formidable crusader,” Marian Alladio and retired Monsignor James Gaffey said in a eulogy for their friend.

“She was a very wise woman,” said Vivian Fritz, a retired SSU kinesthesiology professor and former colleague. “I can’t say it was quiet wisdom. She let you know what she thought. She was not bashful.”

Fallandy’s interests ranged from extraordinary French cuisine, adopting stray animals and passions for classical music and fast cars.

Yvette Marie Fallandy grew up in a Santa Monica home surrounded by lawns and tall trees, learning both French and English and absorbing French culture from her American parents.

To demonstrate her American roots, Fallandy adopted Mickey Mouse as a mascot in her childhood and even as an adult had a Mickey Mouse watch, telephone and toaster that burned Mickey’s silhouette onto a piece of bread.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in French from UCLA in 1948 and a master’s degree from the University of Oregon in 1950. Her doctorate, from UCLA in 1957, according to SSU, was in romance languages and literature, with a dissertation on a series of 14th century French religious dramas. She taught at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and Mills College in Oakland as a professor of French literature.

In 1964, she joined the nascent faculty at what was then Sonoma State College, three years after it opened and two years before it moved to the 215-acre campus at the east edge of Rohnert Park.

Tasked with establishing a program in French studies, Fallandy also became faculty adviser of Catholic students and hosted the first student Masses in her small apartment. Her office was the bedroom and bath of an apartment building.

At the time, Fallandy appreciated the campus vibe of “happy egalitarianism” in which faculty, staff and administrators worked and played together, she wrote in a recollection of her early years at the college.

A rupture came when the founding president, the late Ambrose Nichols, was pressured to resign in 1970 and Fallandy was named chair of the faculty’s presidential selection commission.

University trustees appointed Earl Jones, a political ally of S.I. Hayakawa, who had gained notoriety for suppressing student protest at San Francisco State University. Fallandy led a campaign to reject the appointment and Jones subsequently declined a permanent position.

Fallandy held the rank of vice president for academic affairs, starting in 1970 and until at least until 1974, according to the university, although other news reports indicated she served until 1977, when she was fired from the post by the new campus leader, Peter Diamandopoulos, the school’s fifth president.

As he riled the faculty with layoffs and his own selected replacements, Fallandy helped encourage the Association of University Professors to censure the university under Diamandopoulos’ administration, a jolt that prompted state trustees to force his resignation in 1983.

The SSU website notes Fallandy “played an instrumental role in freeing Sonoma State from the tyrannical President Peter Diamandopoulos.” Fallandy also served as dean of students at the college and as chair of the humanities division.

Her relationship with the Santa Rosa Catholic Diocese had also been uneven.

A longtime parishioner at the Cathedral of St. Eugene, Fallandy was — in Monsignor Gaffey’s estimation — a “devout and committed” Catholic who “agitated for transparency and gender equality” within a church that does not ordain women as priests.

“I believe that the Catholic Church should be as inclusive as they possibly can,” Fallandy said in a 2011 interview.

She served as a lay adviser to former Bishop Daniel Walsh, who retired in 2011 after serving as head of the six-county diocese with about 178,000 Catholics since 2000.

"I am happy for him," Fallandy said, crediting Walsh with leading the diocese through a difficult period. "He surely will be missed."

She was less sanguine about his successor, Bishop Robert Vasa, who she labeled as ultraconservative in 2015.

Vasa released a revised code of conduct for Catholic school employees that year requiring conformity with the church’s moral code, including its objection to contraception, abortion and same-sex marriage.

Fallandy said she was confounded by the “utter preoccupation” of celibate male Catholic leaders who are “so caught up in sexuality.”

Retirement from a 34-year tenure at Sonoma State in 1998 gave Fallandy more time to plan and lead tours of France, focusing on Paris and haute cuisine, including preparation of a blood sausage called “boudin” — a mélange of hearts, livers and kidneys that cannot be preserved.

Her home on Bennett Ridge southeast of Santa Rosa produced “perhaps the best French provincial cooking” in the county, Gaffey and Alladio wrote.

They also recalled her affinity for animals that included adopting as many as five rescue dogs at one time and a house and garage full of cats, both tame and feral.

She held season tickets to the San Francisco opera, symphony and ballet. She also delighted in driving fast cars, especially Ford Mustangs with a stick shift.

Fallandy was preceded in death by her parents and brother Martin. Survivors include three nephews and a niece and numerous grandnephews and grandnieces.

No plans for a service have been finalized.

The Yvette Fallandy Scholarship fund, established in 1999 in recognition of her retirement, provides scholarships for high performing SSU students with financial need.

Memorial gifts to the fund may be made at www.sonoma.edu/give by choosing the endowments tile, selecting scholarship endowments and choosing the Yvette Fallandy Scholarship Endowment Fund.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.