‘93 Marked the Passing of Notables With County Ties

Orange County residents in 1993 marked the passing of a number of notables with ties to the area:

* Patricia Nixon, the former First Lady, died of lung cancer in June at age 81. She was buried in Yorba Linda, in the shadow of her husband’s boyhood home, at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace.

* Joseph T. Molloy, 54, Anaheim’s police chief since 1988, died in July of a heart attack in his office as he prepared for his morning jog.

* Lorrin (Whitey) Harrison, an Orange County native who traveled the world in search of the perfect wave, died in Hawaii in September of a heart attack at age 80. Harrison, who stowed away on ocean liners as a youth to surf in Hawaii and was featured in commercials, Life magazine and on “The Tonight Show,” surfed regularly until his final days.

* Jonathan David Grenz, 44, a real estate broker who lived in Costa Mesa and suffered from throat cancer, committed suicide in February by inhaling carbon monoxide in Michigan with the help of Dr. Jack Kevorkian.

* Pvt. Donald Doyle Robertson, 28, and Pvt. David J. Conner, 19, were both killed in traffic accidents while on duty in Somalia in March during Operation Restore Hope. Robertson, a Tustin resident who worked as a plumbing installer before joining the military, was a mechanic in the U.S. Army. Conner, an Orange County native and father of a 5-month-old son at the time of his death, was an Army truck driver during the African mission.

* Athalie Clarke, the 90-year-old widow of James Irvine III and a philanthropic, cultural and political activist who helped shape much of Orange County, died in her sleep at home in May. Clarke helped expand UC Irvine, was a Republican delegate to many national political conventions, had played host to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan for living-room chats and founded a national water research group.

* Amy Elizabeth Biehl, a white Fulbright scholar studying the role of women during the political changes in South Africa, was killed in August by an angry mob of blacks as she drove friends home in a black township. Biehl, 26, grew up in Newport Beach and had graduated from Stanford University. Her attackers are currently on trial in South Africa.

* Donald Heiney, a longtime UC Irvine professor of English and one of the founders of the university’s nationally known writing program, died of a heart attack in his Newport Beach home in July at age 71.