GEORGE CRAMER, an EECS graduate student, died in August at age 24. The Staten Island native was an accomplished pianist and oboist who received the Wagner College Young Musician’s Competition Award in 2002 and played with the Richmond County Orchestra. He received his engineering bachelor’s from Cooper Union and was working on his master’s at Berkeley on a full scholarship. Also an avid biker and member of Faith United Methodist Church in Port Richmond, he had completed his thesis and moved to Sunnyvale, California, in search of a job. He will be awarded his master’s degree posthumously in December.

PAUL T. HARPER (B.S.’51 EE) of Los Altos, California, died last December. During his professional career he worked for Ampex, IBM, Lockheed and Pan Am. He served as a radio operator for Pan Am during World War II and was a member of the Naval Reserve. While at Lockheed he had several patents and started his own business based on a digital clock he invented.

ALEXANDER MOISENCO (B.S.’41 EE) died in July at age 93. He and his wife, Betty (Jenkins) Moisenco (B.A.’43 Political Science), had lived in Groveland, California, for 35 years but recently moved to Pleasant Hill, California, to be closer to family. Moisenco remained in close contact with his friends from Alka Hall, where he was once a resident, and had recently enjoyed a visit from Charles Auerbach (B.S.’42 Chemistry).

 

RICHARD G. ORCUTT (M.S.’51, Ph.D.’56 CE) of Reno, Nevada, died in May at age 85. He was a professor of engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno, from 1956 to 1985. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and in the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service during the Korean War. He also worked with Creole Petroleum Company in Venezuela as a public health monitor for the California Department of Health and as an offsite monitor of fallout from atomic bomb testing in Nevada. His hobbies included hiking in the Sierra and spending time at the cabin he built near Beckwourth, California.

CHARLES M. RICHARDS (B.S.’52 ME) of Los Gatos, California, died last November.

HOWARD V. SCHEFFEL JR. (B.S.’50 ME) of Paradise, California, died in May at age 79. He worked for Copco (now PacifiCorp) in Medford and Klamath Falls, Oregon, then enlisted in the U.S. Air Corps during World War II and was stationed stateside and in West Africa. He attended Cal on the GI Bill. Scheffel later owned and operated a motel in Santa Cruz, California, with his wife, Monica. In 1984 he retired to Paradise, where he enjoyed woodworking and star gazing.

THEODORE W. VAN ZELST (B.S.’44 CE) of Glenview, Illinois, died last July at age 86 after a brief battle with cancer. A leader in materials testing, Van Zelst was responsible for several inventions and designs still in use today, from the Alaska pipeline to the Aswan Dam. He was a pioneer in soil testing, which was little known at the time, and cofounded Soiltest Inc., which became the world’s largest provider of materials testing equipment for soil, rock, concrete and asphalt. He was named Chicago Engineer of the Year in 1988 by the American Society of Civil Engineers. He also received the 1989 Alumni Medal, Northwestern’s highest award, and Berkeley’s 2002 Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award (now the Berkeley Engineering Innovation Award). He was an outspoken advocate for education, the environment and public policy and was nationally known as the “father of chronic fatigue syndrome advocacy” for his efforts with wife Louann on behalf of the disease that affected one of their daughters.