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.

Asked what she liked most about her job(s), she often replied that it was a joy to administer the oath of citizenship to immigrants like herself. She would tell naturalized Americans, “You can get to be county clerk.”

Lewis served seven terms, retiring early in 2007 and indulging her love of Maui even as she dealt with the limitations imposed by a rare form of leukemia. Friends wore Hawaiian finery to the celebration of Lewis' 69 years of life, which ended on April 5.

Peter Mondavi Sr., wine pioneer

As a boy growing up in Lodi in the lean, tough 1930s, Peter Mondavi wielded a hammer and nails to make crates that his father used to ship wine grapes.

Immigrant Cesare Mondavi paid Peter and his brother and future rival, Robert, $1.25 for every 100 crates. Peter Mondavi reflected in 2013, “I guess you could say we were involved in grapes from Day 1.”

The Mondavis moved to Napa Valley, which Peter Mondavi helped to become world-renowned through his role in expanding and refining the vast Charles Krug Winery.

Mondavi died Feb. 20 at his home in St. Helena. He was 101.

David Grabill, housing champion

David Grabill could not look the other way.

When he saw what he perceived to be human beings suffering because of injustice, the Cleveland-born attorney looked deeper, and he acted.

Before becoming the pre-eminent advocate of affordable housing in and around Sonoma County, Grabill went to court to promote the rights of Native Americans, farm workers, coal miners and women seeking safe, legal abortions.

For decades, the rare public-interest attorney was the face of a small but resolute corps of activists determined to press government leaders on the North Coast to fulfill their legal mandates to promulgate affordable housing.

Decent shelter, he declared, “is a right, it's a necessity. It shouldn't be a privilege.”

Grabill had been ill for some time when he died June 11 at the age of 74.

John Downey, businessman-mayor

As a member of Santa Rosa's City Council from 1968 through 1975, tire store owner and future National Bank of the Redwoods co-founder John Downey kept clear of clashes of politics and personality, focusing instead on assuring that the city spent taxpayers' money responsibly.

Downey served two terms as mayor, grappling with the contentious issue of whether a shopping mall should be built downtown.

He was for it, which set him against fellow councilman and mall owner Hugh Codding.

Throughout his life, Downey spent some of his best moments casting for fish and peering at friends from behind a poker hand. He died June 9 at 91.

Eugene Shepherd, music man

There may never have been a violinist who had more fun than Eugene Shepherd.

For decades, the dapper and comical musician delighted his students at Santa Rosa's Cook Junior high school, joked and swapped stories on the tennis court with “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz and broadcast the magic of music as concertmaster of the Santa Rosa Symphony and founder of its high-reaching youth orchestra.

Summed up by Shepherd's daughter, Gina Rankin:

“He was funny, hardworking, dedicated, passionate about music and always smiling.”

Shepherd died in Santa Rosa on Dec. 15 at the age of 96.

Ben Pearson, wine guru

The term “Wine Country experience” evokes an array of mental images:

Sipping something delectable at a tasting room chic or funky.

Pedaling on a road that snakes through vineyards.

Lapping a napkin in anticipation of a world-class pairing of the delights of glass and plate.

For 20 years, high also among the experiences was to stand within Santa Rosa's cavernous Bottle Barn store and speak at leisure with Ben Pearson about his recommendations for a special wine or two.

Wrote Tim Fish in Wine Spectator, “Pearson, to my mind, was the sort of wine lover we should all strive to be. He liked all kinds of wines from all over the world ...

“He could speak as excitedly about an $8 fruit bomb as he would a luxury red Burgundy.”

A playful and down-to-earth purveyor of good wine, Pearson died too young, 56, while hiking on the weekend of July 16.

Pat Eliot, Sonoma Mountain defender

Pat Eliot wrung every last drop from life.

She'd ridden on horseback across Scotland and on the Iranian Steppe, climbed both Whitney and Shasta, and saw much of the world with her husband, Ted, a career Foreign Service officer.

But home for Pat Eliot was on Sonoma Mountain. The outdoorswoman and conservationist cherished the place, and through Sonoma Mountain Preservation, which she co-founded, did much to protect the mountain and its vistas.

Said Ted Eliot, “When you look up the mountain today, you won't see any houses.

And this is in perpetuity. It can only be changed by a vote of the people of Sonoma County and that is very unlikely.”

His wife and partner in myriad adventures for 65 years died Dec. 4 at the age of 87.

Arvo Kannisto, keeper of the cross

World War II combat veteran and career police officer Arvo Kannisto wore his love of Jesus Christ on his sleeve, pretty much literally.

The tattoo on the outside of his right wrist depicted a white cross within a red, Valentine-like heart.

It was a symbol of faith that 35 years ago Kannisto decided to expand upon. Hugely.

In 1981, Kannisto, then a sinewy and athletic retired San Francisco police command officer, hauled rocks into the shape of a cross on the steep, green hillside above his home in the St. Francis Acres neighborhood, off Sonoma Highway and Calistoga Road in east Santa Rosa.

Later he made the cross larger - 127 feet tall by 67 feet wide - and brightened the thousands of stones with whitewash.

Kannisto, equally capable of being charming and cantankerous, proclaimed that the landmark, adored by some who beheld it and despised by others, honored both his Lord and all of his fellow GIs sacrificed in history's most deadly war.

His cross now fades into the landscape.

Kannisto died Jan. 20 at the age of 97.

Jim DePriest, theater godfather

Jim DePriest exuded such kid-like glee to be on a stage as an actor or director or both, it boggles to imagine how the widely acclaimed godfather of Sonoma County theater contained his elation when he really was a kid living his dream.

“I've always loved the theater,” DePriest once said. “Never done anything else, really.”

How fortunate for Sonoma County that after a quarter-century in greater L.A., DePriest moved north in 1986. He created or co-founded the Main Street Theater in Sebastopol, Sonoma County Repertory Theater, the Sonoma County Shakespeare Festival, Windsor's Shakespeare Festival on the Green and the Cloverdale Performing Arts Center.

He plotted a role-seeking trip to Cuba not long before he died March 2 at 79.

Margaret Trafficante, fair housing activist

Santa Rosa native Margaret Griffith married Paul Trafficante in 1954 and a bit later settled with him in San Francisco's vast Parkmerced residential development.

There, something they witnessed incensed them.

It was clear to the Trafficantes that the managers of Parkmerced were not renting homes to African-Americans.

The couple organized fellow residents alarmed by the discrimination; the Committee of Parkmerced Residents Committed to Open Occupancy was created to correct the injustice.

Margaret Trafficante told a news reporter, “We were isolated from the richness of living with nonwhite people.”

Late in 1970, the Trafficantes and their neighbors filed a lawsuit that would go before the U.S. Supreme Court and become a landmark test of the fair-housing provisions of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1968.

Margaret Trafficante had been back living in her native Sonoma County for about 30 years when she died July 24 at the age of 91.