Postscript : He’s Retired, but That Doesn’t Keep UCI Chancellor Emeritus From Labors of Love

The lion in winter still has fierce eyes and a throaty growl.

That lion, UC Irvine’s founding chancellor, Daniel G. Aldrich Jr., always has had a commanding presence at an athletic 6-foot-4. Now retired, and only nine months after an operation for cancer, Aldrich might be expected to look less healthy as he approaches his 70th birthday.

Instead, he looks every bit the same strong, ruddy-faced man who headed UC Irvine from 1962, when it was still in the planning stage, to 1984.

“Some people seem surprised when they see me,” Aldrich said recently. “I guess they expect to see someone ailing and cadaverous.”

Aldrich had just returned to UCI and his office as chancellor emeritus last week from a visit to the Los Alamos (N.M.) National Laboratory, where he is a consultant. A day earlier, he had been in Washington, working as a consultant to the federal Agency for International Development. In December, he was in Australia competing in the World Assn. of Veteran Athletes biennial international games.

“I finished second in discus, sixth in hammer (throwing), and seventh in shot (put),” Aldrich said. An old rival from Finland had beat him, Aldrich said. But overall, the retired chancellor said he was pleased with his Australian performance.

Aldrich performed in the games under an extraordinary handicap: In May, he underwent emergency surgery to remove his cancerous colon. Doctors also found that the malignancy had spread to his liver. Instead of radiation, Aldrich opted for a treatment in which anti-cancer chemicals are dripped constantly into his bloodstream from a pump in a holster, “just like a G-man,” he said.

Aldrich, who wore his pump while competing in the games against men from around the world, said he didn’t find it especially bothersome. At home, he also plays tennis and golf. “My life hasn’t changed all that much,” he said. “One goes on.”

Retirement, such as it is for the very active Aldrich, was slow in coming. He was to officially leave UCI in the summer of 1984. At the time, he said he and his wife, Jean, looked forward to puttering around their new home in Laguna Niguel.

But three months before his retirement, the chancellor at UC Riverside died. UC President David Gardner asked Aldrich to delay retirement and to serve about a year as interim chancellor at Riverside. Aldrich agreed, and he held that job until July, 1985.

A year later, Gardner again summoned Aldrich back to duty--this time as acting chancellor of UC Santa Barbara, where former Chancellor Robert Huttenback had resigned amid controversy. Aldrich headed the Santa Barbara campus for a year, leaving last June, a month after his cancer operation. He is now officially in retirement.

Asked if he misses being chancellor, Aldrich roared in his leonine voice: “Not at all. . . . When I leave something, I don’t look back. I look forward to what’s ahead.”

A native of New Hampshire, Aldrich still has a crisp Yankee accent. He eschews the trappings of honors and accolades. His small office is lined mostly with books. No scrolls or awards hang on the walls. Even trophies and medals from his beloved Senior Olympics and masters’ track-and-field competition are absent. He gave virtually all those trophies to a seniors’ athletic organization so they could be recycled and used for new awards.

But Aldrich cannot escape the fact that he already is a historical figure. No other University of California chancellor has served so long or for three UC campuses. Few have had such a direct role in starting a major university from scratch.

Aldrich said he is happy and feels good.

“I don’t teach class, and I don’t hold forth as a chancellor any longer,” he said. “On the other hand, I daily participate with those who are at those duties. . . . I’m genuinely interested in figuring out how best to make use of any talent and energy I may have to help whomever. I feel blessed with the opportunity to continue to function and feel as well as I do.

“There is some purpose in still being at hand, and so I want to make available whatever I have to share.”