Daniel G. Aldrich, 71, Founder of UCI, Dies : Educator: As the university’s first chancellor, he built the school into a primary research facility.

Daniel G. Aldrich Jr., founding chancellor of UC Irvine and the only person in the University of California’s history to head three of the system’s campuses, died Monday at UCI Medical Center after a prolonged illness with cancer. He was 71.

An athletic man with a strong, resonant voice, Aldrich started UCI literally from the ground up, having picked the site for the campus in December, 1961. He is credited with developing the university, with a current enrollment of about 16,000, into one of the nation’s premier research institutions by the time he retired 22 years later.

In addition to heading the Irvine campus from its planning phases in 1962 to his retirement in 1984, Aldrich served as interim chancellor of UC Riverside in 1984-85 and interim chancellor of UC Santa Barbara in 1986-87 when that campus was struggling to recover from a financial scandal.

Aldrich’s 22-year tenure as head of UC Irvine is the longest of any chancellor in the nine-campus UC system.

Clark Kerr, who was UC president from 1958 to 1967, said Monday that Aldrich had outstripped all other educators in launching a university campus. “Dan Aldrich was one of the great and most successful builders of a new university campus, from open fields to a world-renown institution, in all of American history,” Kerr said.

UC President David P. Gardner, borrowing a baseball term, often called Aldrich his “utility chancellor,” referring to his versatility and ability.

In a statement Monday, Gardner said that Aldrich “will be remembered above all by those of us who knew him well for his personal integrity, moral values, unimpeachable character, and the dignity and courage with which he bore his illness the last several years.”

Jack W. Peltason, who worked with Aldrich during the early UCI days and who succeeded him as chancellor in 1984, also praised Aldrich’s courage in the face of a terminal illness. “His whole life was an example, his last few years an inspiration,” Peltason declared.

Aldrich was “a man of courage, vision, commitment and kindness,” Peltason said. “His concern was always what was best for others. His memorial is all around us: it is UCI.”

In December, 1961, shortly before being named UCI chancellor, Aldrich and an internationally famous architect, the late William Pereira of Los Angeles, walked over the sere, treeless hills of what was then part of the sprawling Irvine Ranch.

Pereira, in a 1984 memoir, recalled that Aldrich--then the UC system’s dean of agriculture--spotted a bowl-shaped area set off by a rock outcropping and said, “This should be the center.” The architect agreed, and he designed a university campus planned in concentric circles, with the rocky outcropping and bowl-shaped area as a park and the geometric center of the campus.

When Aldrich retired in 1984, the UC Board of Regents named that central greensward “Aldrich Park.” In dedication ceremonies that year, Aldrich’s normally gruff voice briefly cracked with emotion as he talked.

“I must say that if there is anything about this place to be identified with the Aldrich name, I’m so appreciative of the fact that you’ve chosen to identify this park,” he said. “Because this is at the heart of this place; it is the place where those of us, in one capacity or another, have had occasion to come and to dream and to build. . . . I am an aggie at heart, as you all know. The opportunity to plant and to nurture and to grow is part of me. And this is the place where I’ve had opportunity to do so. With your help, we’ll continue to nurture the building of this place.”

Laguna Beach City Councilman Robert F. Gentry, who is UCI’s associate dean of students, said Monday that Aldrich had an “unending respect for the dignity of each and every human being” he seemed to encounter.

“It’s very difficult to lose a hero, and for me, Dan Aldrich was a hero,” Gentry said. “His legacy is going to be very strong educational leadership. But beyond that, he was a very different kind of leader. . . . His commitment to and celebration of diversity was absolutely remarkable.”

Horace Mitchell, vice chancellor for student affairs, said: “He was a real giant. He was someone who was totally dedicated to the university.”

UCI officials said that private funeral services for Aldrich will be conducted at an undisclosed date, with burial at sea, as he had requested. Survivors include his wife, Jean, and three grown children, Daniel G. Aldrich III of Santa Cruz, Stuart Aldrich of San Diego and Elizabeth Toomey, and seven grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, the family has suggested that expressions of sympathy be in the form of donations to the UCI Foundation.

Aldrich’s death came after a three-year fight against intestinal cancer. He had been hospitalized at UCI Medical Center since March 9, but before that he had remained vigorous and active. When the terminal cancer was diagnosed in May, 1987, Aldrich, a fierce, lifelong sports competitor who stood 6 feet, 4 inches tall, said he did not intend to slow his active lifestyle. “One goes on,” he said.

Aldrich originally planned to retire in 1984, after stepping down as UC Irvine’s chief executive. But after the death that year of UC Riverside Chancellor Tomas Rivera, Gardner persuaded Aldrich to become interim chancellor at that campus until a full-time administrator could be appointed.

Aldrich left UC Riverside in July, 1985, but in July, 1986, Gardner again called him out of retirement, this time to be interim chancellor at UC Santa Barbara. Aldrich took over that campus after the resignation of Chancellor Robert A. Huttenback, who was accused of misusing UC funds. Huttenback was convicted of embezzlement and tax fraud in July, 1988.

Gardner praised Aldrich’s handling of the Santa Barbara campus in the tense months after Huttenback’s departure. The campus had been torn apart emotionally by the scandal, university officials said, and Aldrich’s personality and administrative skills were credited with hastening the healing process.

After leaving UC Santa Barbara in June, 1987, Aldrich assumed the postion of chancellor emeritus at UCI, maintaining an office on campus there while living with his wife in Laguna Niguel. As chancellor emeritus, Aldrich chaired a committee on developing nations, served as a consultant in biological sciences for the Los Alamos National Laboratory and worked with UC Mexus, a university consortium involving the United States and Mexico.

Aldrich also remained active in Senior Olympics sports competitions after retirement. In December, 1987, Aldrich competed in the World Assn. of Veteran Athletes international games in Australia, despite having undergone emergency surgery to remove his cancerous colon just seven months before. Aldrich won second place in the discus competition.

Aldrich was born in Northwood, N.H., on July 12, 1918. Although he spent most of his adult years in California, he forever retained the accent of a New England Yankee. And while his most prestigious years came as he developed UC Irvine in a booming suburban area, Aldrich proudly said his roots remained in agriculture, where he began his academic career.

Aldrich received his bachelor of science degree from the College of Agriculture at the University of Rhode Island in 1939. He earned his master’s degree from the University of Arizona in 1941 and his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin in 1943.

Aldrich took his first academic job in the UC system in 1943, becoming a junior chemist at the UC Citrus Experiment Station at Riverside. Except for three years in the Army during World War II, Aldrich stayed at Riverside until 1958, when he was appointed the UC system’s dean of agriculture, presiding over the agriculture-teaching programs at UC Davis, UC Berkeley, UC Riverside and UCLA. He remained agriculture dean until early 1962, when he was named chancellor of UC Irvine, which was then only in the planning stages. The campus did not open for classes until September, 1965.

Campus historians have said that Aldrich’s task in building a new campus was complicated by the turbulent 1960s--a time of national unrest on college campuses because of the Vietnam War. At one point in the late 1960s, some students occupied a building on campus. “My position was that as long as they were not being destructive or disrupting classes, so be it,” Aldrich recalled later. He said he was low-key about the incident and sought to avoid a campus police-student confrontation. After three days, Aldrich sent the protesters occupying the building a note, saying they would soon be in the official position of being disruptive and should disband. With no fanfare, the protesters dispersed.

Conservative Orange County--and historians have noted that the county was considerably more strait-laced in the 1960s than today--sometimes looked aghast at liberal activities on the new UCI campus. Aldrich said he was able to keep peace between community and campus because he had no trouble in identifying with Orange County.

”. . . I identified with these people,” he said. “It didn’t even strike me that I was coming into a conservative county. I fit in. I was very much involved with my church; I was a reserve officer; I had been very much involved with the Boy Scouts over the years and the YMCA, and I also knew this county well. I knew its agriculture well. I had worked (as UC agriculture dean) with the Irvine Ranch, and I had met many of the major growers in Orange County. I had helped Walter Knott with some of his berry operations years ago. So I knew this place.”

Pereira, in his 1984 memoir, said the rocks that Aldrich picked as the center of the campus are the founding chancellor’s eternal monument.

“He saw into the future, as he always has and visualized thousands of youths sitting among them (the rocks), gazing around the campus and thinking and planning their future.

”. . . May these rocks be so regarded: That the right man came here at the right time, and from this bare ground built a place as lasting.”

Times staff writer Kristina Lindgren contributed to this report.

Somber CAMPUS: Flags were flying at half-mast at UCI. A25