Robert Haag, 73, Pianist, College Trustee

Robert Haag, president of the board of trustees of the El Camino Community College District, who was an influential figure in the cultural life of the South Bay communities that the college served, has died. He was 73.

Haag, a gifted pianist, died Tuesday at a South Bay hospital after a brief illness. The cause of death was not announced.

A native of Bakersfield, Haag made his debut as a pianist at the age of 9 with the Bakersfield Symphony, playing Haydn’s D-minor Concerto. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees and doctorate in musicology at UCLA, and served in the Army during the Korean War. He held a degree from Fuller Seminary and was an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church.

Haag began his service at El Camino in 1958. In the late 1960s, he was responsible for developing the college’s community service programs, known today as the Center for the Arts, which brought world-renowned performers such as Arthur Rubenstein and Luciano Pavarotti to the South Bay. At one time, Haag also was head of the college’s fundraising foundation.

On April Fool’s Day in 1989, he offered a daylong piano marathon in a fundraising effort for the college’s music department, performing all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas at one sitting. Sponsors paid by the sonata. The event raised $22,000 to assist in the purchase of a new Steinway grand piano for Marsee Auditorium on the school’s Torrance-area campus.

Haag retired from the college in 1994. A year later, the campus recital hall was named in his honor. After his retirement from the faculty, Haag ran for the board of trustees and was in the third year of a second four-year term at the time of his death.

He is survived by his wife of 51 years, Mary Anderson Haag.

A memorial service is scheduled to be held at 10:30 a.m. Jan. 22 at Calvary Presbyterian Church in Hawthorne.

Those wishing to make donations in his memory may do so to the scholarship fund of El Camino College or to Parkinson’s disease research.