For myriad members of the UC Berkeley community, a campuswide memorial service Wednesday served as a somber and dignified remembrance of more than 60 campus faculty, staff, emeriti and undergraduate students who died in 2014.

Dozens of students, staff, faculty and others honoring the deceased gathered on the lawn in front of California Hall for the annual memorial service, a tradition since 2002. Students walking through campus stopped and stood silently as the mournful notes of a lone bagpipe echoed across campus, initiating the ceremony.

Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, standing at a lectern flanked by two floral wreaths of blue and gold, welcomed those gathered with a speech expressing deep sympathy for the friends and families of those who died in the past year. Among those remembered were 10 undergraduate students.

“Their brief time here at Berkeley has left an indelible mark on all those who knew and were inspired by them,” Dirks said. “Some of their families are here with us today, proud that their children were students at the University of California, Berkeley, and we share in their terrible loss.”

Members of multiple campus groups — including the department of music, the Graduate Assembly, the Academic Senate, the Staff Ombuds Office, the ASUC and UCPD — participated in the ceremony.

UC Berkeley sophomore Micheal Omeka, originally from Nigeria, met Selam Sekuar — a student honored at the ceremony — after they both received a MasterCard Foundation scholarship, a program for students from Sub-Saharan Africa.

Omeka said of Sekuar, who hailed from Ethiopia, that “she always had something positive to say to make your day better.”

Aman Upadhyay, a campus junior, was at the service to honor Apoorve Agarwal, a friend whom he had gone to school with since the second grade.

“I thought the memorial was very well done and respectful,” Upadhyay said. “I only wish it was advertised better. I think if more of his friends had known about it, they also would have came. He was one of the greatest guys at this university.”



Eva Uribe, graduate student in the campus’s department of chemistry, came to commemorate her former adviser Stanley Prussin. She felt that the performances and reading of the names by different campus community members lent an even greater sense of “community” to the ceremony.

“(Prussin) was a wonderful mentor,” Uribe said. “He mentored his students right up to the week he died. He was very courageous in his fight against cancer.”

Tyrone Bennett, who works in the campus’s information services and technology department, appreciated that he was able to attend a memorial for four of his colleagues, as he wasn’t able to attend any private or family services.

“No part of our community remains untouched by these losses,” Dirks said. “The list of names bespeaks the stars that radiate around this amazing university.”

As community members left the ceremony, they took from a vase single purple lilies and laid them at the foot of the memorial stand, remembering and honoring the lives that were lost.

Below is a complete list of those remembered at the ceremony.

Academic and faculty

Stanley Prussin, nuclear engineering

Earl Walls, education

Barbara Weiss, social welfare

David Wessel, music

Barbara White, education

Emeriti

James Anderson, anthropology

Robert Cooper, public health

Alan Curtis, husic

William Garrison, civil and environmental engineering

Martin Graham, electrical engineering and computer sciences

Norton Grubb, education

Tulio Halperin-Donghi, history

Ernest Kuh, electrical engineering and computer sciences

David Littlejohn, Graduate School of Journalism

William Muir, political science

Donald Olsen, architecture

Evert Schlinger, environmental science, policy and management

James Spaulding, journalism

David Stoddart, geography

Herbert Strauss, chemistry

Ian Sussex, plant and microbial biology

Stephen Tollefson, College of Letters and Science

Charles Townes, physics

Lloyd Ulman, economics

Ray Wolfinger, political science

Victor Zackay, materials science and engineering

Staff

Shirley Anderson

Adora Castaneda, University Library

LaVonne Clarine, Undergraduate Division

Evaughn Collier, information services and technology

Judy Decarbonel, law

Harold Frey, intercollegiate athletics

Walt Hagmaier, information services and technology

Theartis Herbert, information services and technology

Ronald Kos, human resources

Donald Koué, public affairs

Michael Brian Lake, optometry

Andrew Lee, International Office

Kurt Lauridsen, Student Learning Center

Barbara Morgan, information services and technology

Laura Mulley, College of Letters and Science

Roberta Myers, public health

Jeffrey Nealy, public affairs, University Relations

Gilbert Nicholas, Residential and Student Service Programs

Frank Orme, physiology

Avelardo Perez, University Health Services

Leo Pivonka, Haas School of Business

Lili Quick, student affairs/Lawrence Hall of Science

Elizabeth Ruchenski, integrative biology

Gordon Smith, UCPD

Danai Suthivarakom, Career Center

Chilion Sylvan, Graduate Division

Joyce Tucker, International House

John Ziehe, UCPD

Undergraduate Students

Apoorve Agarwal, Letters & Sciences

Zachary Bradley, Natural Resources

Paul Hanson, Letters & Sciences

Michael McWaid, Letters & Sciences

Barry Moores, Haas School of Business

Selam Sekuar, Letters & Sciences

George Tak-Shing Shum, Letters & Sciences

Eloi Ivan Vasquez-Margolin, Letters & Sciences

Bryson Young, Letters & Sciences

Frank Yang Zheng, Letters & Sciences

Contact Elaina Provencio at [email protected].