Tribute Paid Founding Chancellor as UCI Flags Fly Sadly at Half-Mast

Flags flown at half-mast Monday hinted at the somber mood enveloping the UC Irvine campus as word spread of the death of its founding chancellor, Daniel G. Aldrich Jr., a man remembered as a hero to many and friend to all.

“He was a very special individual--he built a great university (that will be) even greater in the days to come,” said Frederick Reines, distinguished professor emeritus of physics and one of a legion of promising scientists and scholars Aldrich wooed to the infant university in the early 1960s.

“I remember when I came for an interview, I was impressed with this man, his charm, his intensity, his bright vision of the future of this university,” recalled Reines, who already had won acclaim for his 1956 co-discovery of the elusive subatomic particle, the neutrino.

“After that interview, I said to myself, ‘If they’ll have me, I’d love to come.’ ”

Atmospheric chemist F. Sherwood Rowland, who has won international honors as discoverer of the depletion of the Earth’s ozone shield, recalled his job interview with Aldrich in March, 1964. The prospect of building a major research and teaching university was very appealing to a budding young scientist.

“It was a remarkable opportunity to start a university of the caliber that we expected from Irvine,” Rowland said. “Dan looked like the kind of person who just might be able to pull it off. He always had this enormous confidence that you could work your way through anything. . . . He could lead without insisting on deciding everything, be supportive but not dictatorial.”

Today, largely through the charisma, the imagination and the sheer force of personality of the towering man known to students as “Chancellor Dan,” UCI ranks among the top American universities--no mean feat for a 25-year-old institution still facing growing pains. It is noted for the work of scholars in neurosciences, in English and comparative literature, in chemistry and physics among others.

“Of all the universities established after World War II, UC Irvine is among the very best,” said James L. McGaugh, another founding faculty member and highly respected brain researcher who is a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences.

“Overall, it ranks easily in the top 25% of all universities in the United States--and in some areas, it’s truly outstanding. . . . And whatever Irvine is today is because Dan Aldrich was the chancellor during its formative years. . . . He was an impressive, energetic, charismatic leader.”

Although it was widely known both on the campus and off that Aldrich had been ill, news of his death Monday morning at UCI Medical Center caught many by surprise.

“I think it came as a shock to the campus,” said Associate Dean of Students Robert F. Gentry, a longtime member of the Laguna Beach City Council. “It was a shock because he was fighting cancer in such a stalwart way.”

Through it all, even his painful illness, Aldrich lived with “eternal optimism,” said McGaugh, who served as the campus No. 2 man for eight years until 1982 before becoming chairman of the psychobiology department and director of UCI’s Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory.

“He never, to my knowledge, saw an evil person,” McGaugh said. “He always believed good things were going to happen, and that we could overcome all obstacles.”

Former student body president and then campus radical Michael J. Krisman was saddened to learned of Aldrich’s death.

“I know that people are going to say that Dan built a great university, and he did,” said Krisman, one of the class of 1969 and now chief of staff for the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee in Sacramento.

“But when I knew him . . . it was a time of confrontation and turmoil on campuses everywhere over the Vietnam War, and in those days, the young people distrusted . . . anyone with authority,” Krisman said.

Aldrich won their trust: “You know that old cliche, ‘He meant what he said and said what he meant.’ He really did.”

Reines said that despite the turmoil of the times, UCI, “because of Dan Aldrich, was a reasonable place. . . . His ear was always there. He valued the opinions of all the members of the campus society. He managed to by force of his personality and his high ideals and his love of the Judeo-Christian ethic, to have friends everywhere. . . . Everyone held him in high regard.”

Faculty, administrators and graduates alike said Aldrich was renowned for his rapport with students.

“He was so down to earth, we used to call him the Dirt Doctor, because he was the dean of agriculture for the University of California,” Krisman said.

When students pursuing alternative life styles took up dwelling in trees, old buses and in culverts on the mostly barren campus, Aldrich was under pressure to toss them out of UCI. Instead, he listened to their reasoning: a desire to “live off the land.”

“He said that was fine but that they weren’t going to go back to disease and typhoid epidemics,” Krisman recalled.

Aldrich promptly ordered running water and toilets installed and shrugged off the complaints.

Ray L. Watson, Irvine Co. vice chairman, met Aldrich 30 years ago, when he was the development giant’s first planner and UCI was still just a gleam in Aldrich’s eye. They shared offices in the old Irvine family homestead, Aldrich using the old master bedroom suite, Watson ensconced in the family living room.

“Through those years, I watched that incredible man build more than just a pretty campus, but one of the finest educational institutions in the world. It’s pretty all right, but it’s what goes on behind the walls that is really important,” Watson said. “And I think Dan Aldrich can take credit for all of it.”

“He had this mission to build a great university, and incredible integrity,” Watson said. “He also had a quality that many people should have--he could listen to what people said. He didn’t always agree, but people ultimately had to respect him.

“Frankly, I can’t think of any person who could have done what he did--create a major university--at that period of time.”