Obituaries - May 30, 1999

Ralph J. Geffen; U.S. Magistrate Made Key Gay Rights Ruling

Ralph J. Geffen, 74, retired Los Angeles federal magistrate who ordered the release of thousands of FBI records on the agency’s decades-long effort to monitor the activities of gay groups. After reviewing the case for 18 months, Geffen said undercover investigations by FBI agents using paid informers were “based upon the anti-homosexual bias of the [late] FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and his belief that homosexuals, especially when organized or joining in groups, posed a threat” to national security. But Geffen found no “plausible law enforcement basis” for the agency’s surveillance and infiltration activities, conducted for more than 30 years. The 1988 ruling was made in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Ralph Siminoski, a Los Angeles family counselor who had begun seeking the FBI files in 1982 under the Freedom of Information Act. The ACLU had filed suit in U.S. District Court for the files in 1983. The FBI then turned over 5,800 pages of documents, but many files were withheld and passages were blacked out on those that were released. Geffen served as a federal magistrate for 23 years and was a presiding U.S. magistrate judge at his retirement in 1991. In recent years he worked as a special master for the U.S. District Court as well as in private dispute resolution. He was a co-founder and past president of the Paralysis Project of America, which raised funds for research on spinal cord injuries, and served on the board of the University of Judaism and the ACLU. On Wednesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after a two-month battle with cancer.

Robert Mozley; Professor, Arms Control Expert

Robert Mozley, 82, professor emeritus at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and an authority on arms control. Mozley helped develop a particle tracking device called a streamer chamber, which was considered a major advance over the bubble chamber that physicists had used to identify the tracks of subatomic particles. He was a vocal critic of Defense Department moves to restrict publication of unclassified research and at Stanford sided with a large group of faculty and staff who were concerned about research that could be applied to the development of weapons of mass destruction. In 1987, he retired and moved to Washington to work on arms control issues as staff physicist for the Federation of American Scientists. He also worked with the Committee of Soviet Scientists for Peace on a joint project that resulted in the book “Reversing the Arms Race.” He also wrote “The Politics and Technology of Nuclear Proliferation,” published in 1998. Mozley, who was born in Boston and lived in Menlo Park, Calif., was educated at Harvard University and UC Berkeley, where he earned his doctorate in physics and participated in the construction of the world’s first proton linear accelerator. On Monday at Stanford Hospital of complications after surgery.

Ed Peterson; Inventor of Beeper for Trucks in Reverse Gear

Ed Peterson, 78, inventor of the alarm system that beeps to warn people when trucks and heavy machinery are moving in reverse gear. Peterson invented Bac-A-Larm in the mid-1960s in response to industrial and government needs for a vehicle safety device. He initially marketed the item to Morrison-Knudsen, the international construction and engineering giant that, like Peterson’s company, was based in Boise, Idaho. Peterson’s firm is now the world’s largest supplier of reverse warning systems, selling about 1 million a year. In addition, Peterson invented a retractable telephone cord, collapsible luggage carriers and home security alarms. He was born on Staten Island, N.Y., and grew up in Brockton, Mass. He served as a bomber pilot in the Army Air Corps during World War II. In 1979 he took all 60 employees of his business to Disneyland, covering air fare, hotels, meals and rides in the park. In Boise on Wednesday of cancer.

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