Obituaries : Orville Dahl; Founded Cal Lutheran University

Dr. Orville Dahl, the first and founding president of Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, died Sunday in Carmichael, Calif. He was 84.

He came to Southern California from Minnesota in 1957 as a representative of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. The church wanted to build a liberal arts college in California, and sent Dahl to find a good location.

For several months Dahl searched for the right spot, traveling from Modesto to Riverside and up the coast to San Luis Obispo, said Stephen Wheatly, associate director of the Cal Lutheran Educational Foundation.

Unable to find a location, Dahl returned home, telling his wife, Jean, “If God wants it, he is going to have to find the site himself.” She reminded him he still had one trip to make--to Thousand Oaks.

After he returned and was looking at a piece of land in Thousand Oaks, a farmer named Richard Pederson pulled up in his truck, removed a newspaper article about Dahl’s search from his breast pocket, and said: “I’ve been expecting you.”

“It was the single greatest moment of my life,” Dahl told Wheatly last year.

The next day Pederson turned the deed over to Dahl.

“Because of Orville Dahl’s vision and passion, there is a university in Thousand Oaks,” said Luther Luedtke, Cal Lutheran’s current president. “Where others saw dirt farmland, he had the vision and belief to see a distinguished college.”

He is survived by his wife; two sons, Orin and Richard; two daughters, Elizabeth and Leonore; nine grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Dr. Orville Dahl Memorial Fund at Cal Lutheran, 60 W. Olsen Road, Thousand Oaks 91360, c/o Della Greenlee.