In Memoriam

2025

Sir Ray Spears February 23, 1937 - December 25, 2025.

Ray Spears was born in Paris, Texas in 1937 and was raised in Dallas. He graduated from Highland Park High School in Dallas. During his teen years, he was active in Boy Scouts and high school sports. After high school graduation, Ray enrolled at Southern Methodist University, earning bachelor and master of business administration degrees. He then served in the Army, achieving the rank of first lieutenant.

During his business career, Ray was employed by Johnson & Johnson, American Hospital Systems, C.R. Bard, Redken, and Sebastian International.

Ray moved to the Bay Area in 1998 and lives in Clayton. He has a daughter, Sherri Gendron, and a son Scott.

Ray enjoyed golf, travel, and wine tasting.

Sir Verner (Vern) Laursen May 1, 1932 - October 14, 2025.

Verner Laursen's parents emigrated to the United States in 1929 and lived in Wisconsin. In 1932, they came to California to search for work and settled in Humboldt County where his mother had an aunt. Verner was born in May 1932 in Eureka. He went to school in Scotia and when he was in the sixth grade he transferred to a one room school with about fourteen children. He graduated from Fortuna High School and went to Humboldt State for two years before transferring to UC Berkeley, where he graduated with a degree in forestry.

After graduation, Verner was drafted into the Army where he was a topographic surveyor stationed at the Presidio. But he spent very little time in San Francisco because was on temporary duty in Iran. After his discharge, he went to work for Simpson Timber Company in Arcata and Klamath. In 1961, there was a reduction in staff and Verner found work with PG&E in San Francisco in their land department as a right of way agent. He retired in 1987 as a supervising right of way agent. Since then he has worked as a real estate consultant.

In 1966, Verner married Nadine Thompson, who was also from Humboldt County. They met through her aunt. They lived in Redwood City and moved to Concord in 1968. They have two sons, Eric and Dana, and two grandchildren. Eric worked for Hewlett Packard and lived in Roseville. Dana works at the Kaiser Hospital in Santa Clara.

Verner enjoyed golf, Mac computers, and genealogy. He and Nadine also loved to travel on cruises and tours. He said that when one is tracing your ancestors, you get to travel to the places where they lived. Verner found that his relatives in Denmark did not move very far as most stayed in Denmark and there are three generations in one parish.

Sir Randy Graham August 18, 1943 - October 14, 2025.

Randy Graham was born in New Albany, Indiana in 1943. He grew up in Clarksville, Indiana where he attended grade school and high school. Upon graduation from high school, Randy enrolled at the southeast campus of Indiana University in Jeffersonville, Indiana, where he met his future wife, Ann.

After two years in Jeffersonville, Randy transferred to the Indiana University campus in Bloomington, and earned a degree in zoology in 1966. He and Ann were married one month later. Randy also enlisted in the Navy upon graduation. However, before he reported for duty, he took a summer job with Joseph E. Seagrams in Louisville as a management trainee.

In January 1967, Randy reported for duty with the Navy in Pensacola, Florida in order to attend naval aviation officer candidate school. His first son, David, was born in Pensacola while he was in school. Randy was commissioned as an ensign upon graduation and began flight training, first in a T34 Mentor prop airplane and then in a jet trainer in Meridian, Mississippi. Ultimately, Randy was transferred to the surface Navy and served aboard the destroyer O’Hare in the Mediterranean. He was honorably discharged from the Navy as a lieutenant junior grade.

After leaving the Navy, Randy rejoined Seagrams in Louisville. His second son, Mark, was born in Indiana in 1970 while he worked for Seagrams. Seagrams later transferred Randy to New York. In May1974, Randy joined Avon Products in Suffern, New York, where his third son, Chris, was born. He left Avon to join Pepsi in New York and then joined L’Oreal in New Jersey. He left L’Oreal to join Nestle in Glendale in 1991. After a four year tour in Vevey, Switzerland, Randy returned to California. He retired from Nestle in 2003.

After living in Pasadena for 21 years, Randy and Ann moved to Walnut Creek in January 2020 to be closer to Chris and his family. Chris owns Beer Beer and More Beer, an internet business that sells beer making supplies and equipment. Randy’s son David lives in Kissimee, Florida, and works for Medieval Times, a dinner theatre while Mark lives in Pembroke, Massachusetts and works for Honeywell. Randy and Ann have six grandchildren.

Randy enjoyed golf, sailing (he had sailed to Bermuda and Hawaii), flying, traveling, biking, fishing, and gardening. He also became a ham radio operator in 2014, getting a technician’s license and then a general license and finally an extra license. His call sign was KG60TE.

Sir Dave Tucker September 12, 1939 - August 29, 2025.

Dave Tucker was born in San Francisco in 1939, not long before the outbreak of World War II. During the war, his father served in the military as the chief epidemiologist at Letterman General Hospital in the Presidio of San Francisco.

Dave graduated from Mission Adult High School in San Francisco and then earned an associate of arts degree from the City College of San Francisco and a bachelor of arts degree from San Francisco State University. He has also taken graduate courses at other universities.

From 1962 to 1968, Dave served in the Army Reserve with a six month tour of active duty upon enlistment as a specialist fourth class stationed at Fort Ord.

Dave worked as a senior petrochemical accountant at Chevron USA from 1971 to 1993. However, in 1958, when he was just 19 years old, he started Tucker Management Company, which he continues to operate. It engages in special loans to assist families, financial advising, taxation, home construction, and real estate ownership and management. During his career, he has worked for or consulted with banks, securities brokerages, businesses, research firms, tax preparers, and a food canning cooperative. One of the highlights of his career was representing the legal and financial interests of a bankrupt investment group which, after eight years of effort, returned eighty per cent of investors’ capital.

Dave has been married to Bev for over 50 years. They raised two sons and now have five grandchildren. They moved to Contra Costa County in 1968 and currently live in a Concord home that they purchased in 1978 unfinished and completed five years later. Dave’s main interests, beside his family, are finance, photography, art and music, and sightseeing and travel.

Sir Norm Baietti December 1, 1940 - June 2025.

Norm Baietti was born on December 1, 1940 in New York City and was raised in Flushing, New York. He graduated from Concordia Prep in Bronxville, New York in 1958 and then earned a bachelor's degree from Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana in 1962.

Norm was drafted into the Army in 1966 and spent his entire military career at Fort Dix, New Jersey. He was discharged in 1968 with the rank of specialist 5. He then joined IBM and worked there for ten years in the New York-New Jersey area. While working for IBM, Norm attended St. John's University, from which he received an MBA degree in 1975.

Norm left IBM in 1978, but remained in the computer business until his retirement in 2002, buying, selling, and leasing computer hardware for various companies and finally for himself for the last eight years.

In 1980, Norm moved from New York to Irvine where he married his wife Mary Jo. They moved to Prather in the Sierra foothills in 1989 and then to Walnut Creek in 1991. Norm has a stepdaughter, Christine Whalen, who is an attorney and who lives in Oakland.

Norm was a member of the Contra Costa Performing Arts Society and was a volunteer at the Commonwealth Club in Lafayette and San Francisco. He and Mary Jo traveled extensively and Norm was a member of one of the branch's poker groups.

Norm was trying to figure out how to not go gently into the night. Golf and alcohol were helping, so he had made a start.

Sir Robert (Jack) Calloway October 3, 1930 - January 7, 2025.

Jack and his wife Kay moved to Walnut Creek in 1972. They have three children, Mary Kay, Terri, and Tom, four grandchildren, and two great grandchildren.

Jack served as president of the Administrative Management Society from 1990 to 1991, president of the Walnut Creek Men’s Golf Club in 2000, and was elected as Big Sir in 1999. He is an honorary life member of Branch 146.

Jack was a lifetime golfer until health issues required him to give up the game in 2012. He also enjoyed genealogy as well as gardening with a special interest in butterfly gardening.

2024

Sir Tom Boltz June 27, 1937 - December 4, 2024.

Sir Robert (Bob) Burley May 19, 1927 - July 16, 2024.

Bob Burley was born on May 19, 1927 in a farm house east of Lancaster, California with the aid of a midwife. A country doctor came by a day or two later to collect his $5 and fill out a birth certificate. Bob stayed in the Antelope Valley for the next eighteen years, attending a four room grade school with four very good teachers through eighth grade and then taking long bus rides to attend a high school that was eleven miles away and covered a 50 square mile radius.

The depression was in full swing and so there were no luxuries. But his family was far better off than those in other parts of the country and he and his siblings grew up as a happy lot. There are many games that can be played with little or no equipment.

Bob’s high school advisor predicted that he would fail but, instead, he graduated with honors and was accepted at Occidental College. However, his college career was immediately cut short by the draft. He was sent to Camp Roberts for infantry training and was about to set sail for fighting in Japan when the atomic bomb led to the Japanese surrender. Instead, he was sent to Korea as part of the occupation army.

After about a year in Korea, Bob was discharged and returned to Occidental College. He earned his bachelor’s degree there and then went on to dental school at the University of Southern California.

In 1954, Bob took his dental board exams and married Sally Reynolds. They moved to Walnut Creek where Bob opened a dental practice and he never left. When Bob and Sally arrived, they knew no one and so they joined everything to become part of the community. Somehow he ended up being a member of various boards and going through the chairs. This turned out to be rewarding in many ways.

Bob and Sally had three children, Brian, Steve, and Cheryl. They all live in the Bay Area and each has two children---four granddaughters and two grandsons.

Sir William (Bill) Hartman April 29, 1937 - June 25, 2024.

Bill Hartman was born in Sacramento in 1937 and was raised in Berkeley. He watched the town transition from a conservative community to the most liberal in the country.

Bill graduated from Berkeley High in 1955 and then entered Stanford, where he earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1959. He then joined the Army, serving in both the infantry and in intelligence. During that tour, he supplemented the Secret Service at the Kennedy inaugural in 1960. After his discharge from the Army in 1962, he enrolled at Boalt Hall (now the University of California Law School) and earned a J.D. degree in 1964.

Bill began his legal career as a deputy district attorney in Contra Costa County in 1965. In 1968, he joined a law firm in San Francisco where he rose to partner. In 1985, he started his own law firm in Walnut Creek with several other attorneys and retired from the firm in 2002.

Bill lived in Walnut Creek. His wife Pat died in 2013 after 49 years of marriage. Bill has three children and seven grandchildren, all of whom live in the Bay Area.

Bill enjoyed world affairs, travel, sports, tennis, classical music, spending time with his grandchildren, cooking, and literature.

Sir Robert (Bob) White August 25, 1933 - May 28, 2024.

Bob White was born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1933. His father worked for Western Electric doing power plant installations in the upper Midwest, which necessitated family moves every four to eight weeks or so. The family finally settled in St. Louis County, Missouri, where he and his younger sister were raised from kindergarten through high school.

After high school graduation in 1951, he joined the US Navy and did six months’ training in anti-submarine warfare. From there, he was assigned to Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron Two at Ream Field on the Mexican border near San Ysidro, California. He left the service in 1956 as a sonarman first class.

Bob used the GI Bill to go to Park College in Parkville, Missouri, where he earned a bachelor of arts degree in US history. He then received a Woodrow Wilson scholarship to attend Stanford University. After a year at Stanford, he received a fellowship to attend San Francisco Theological Seminary. In the summer after his first year at the seminary, he served at a church in the tiny town of Bickleton, Washington. That is where he and his young family became fully immersed in a much different kind of life---cattle ranching and wheat farming.

By far one of the most interesting experiences of his life occurred during his last year in the seminary in March 1965. He and other seminary students accepted a request from Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to come to Selma, Alabama to participate in the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery. They took a two day bus trip to Brown Memorial Chapel in Selma where they bedded down on and under the church pews. Among other assigned chores, they helped put up an enormous circus tent for the marchers to sleep in. They then got to march to Montgomery and hear the speeches. Sadly, a great day was ruined when he heard that one of the marchers had been shot to death along the highway between Selma and Montgomery.

After that bittersweet experience, its aftermath, and for other reasons, Bob began a 32 year career in September 1965 teaching, coaching, and counseling at Campolindo High School in Moraga. He also moved to Concord and has lived there ever since.

Sadly, Bob lost his wife Frances in 2016, leaving three children, seven grandchildren, and four great grandchildren.

Sir Dominic 'Dee' Di Matteo September 2, 1921 - March 22, 2024.

Dominic “Dee” J. Di Matteo, passed away peacefully on March 22, 2024, with his family at his side at the age of 102. Dee was born on Sept. 2, 1921, in Wickliffe, Ohio, to Italian Immigrants Berardino and Lucia Di Matteo. Dee graduated from Wickliffe High School as Valedictorian and later was one of their first Hall of Fame inductees. After graduating, he briefly worked for the Ohio Rubber Co. before enlisting in the US Navy in 1940 at the age of 18. He spent 3years as an aviation mechanic and tail-gunner at NAS Miami before being selected for the Navy’s V-5 Pilot Training Program. He earned his “Wings of Gold” in 1945. He loved flying and was recognized early on as an exceptional pilot.

Dee was transferred to study at Stanford University and continued to fly out of NAS Moffitt Field. Called back to flying fulltime for the Korean War, he completed several carrier deployments and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and multiple Air Medals. He served during 3 wars (WWII, Korea, and Vietnam) and flew over 50 Navy fixed & rotary wing aircraft, mostly fighters then on to the early carrier jets. He was beyond proud as his two sons followed him as Naval Aviators. He retired as Commanding Officer of the 12th Naval Recruiting District in San Francisco in 1971 completing 30 plus years of a distinguished Naval career.

While attending Stanford, at the Newman Club, Dee met the love of his life, Florie. They were married until Florie’s passing in 2018, after 66 amazing years together.

He worked at BART for 14 years. A very full life continued with Church, 3 Bridge Groups and cards, many classes, woodworking, gardening, house renovations, sports (bocci, Walnut Creekers Baseball, gym), SIRS, and lots of travel with family and decades long friends.

Sir Ron Sparacino May 21, 1943 - March 7, 2024.

Sir Denny O'Loughlin November 25, 1925 - February 8, 2024.