Leo Shapiro, 102; led senior learning effort at Cal State Fullerton

Leo Shapiro, 102, founding president of the Continuing Learning Experience at Cal State Fullerton, where he also spearheaded the fundraising drive to build the university’s Ruby Gerontology Center, died Oct. 31 at Emerald Court, a retirement community in Anaheim, after a short illness.

A native of Chicago, Shapiro was born Jan. 4, 1905, one of four children of Russian immigrants.

He earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Chicago in 1925 and began a career in retail merchandising with Sears, Roebuck and Co., where he eventually became national sales manager.

Shapiro left Sears in 1944 and held upper-management positions at Raisin Markets Inc. and Alpha Beta, retiring in 1970.

Working as an independent consultant, he was asked by Cal State Fullerton’s Office of Extended Education to organize a self-supporting educational programming unit on campus to serve the region’s older adults.

The unit began operating in the late 1970s and Shapiro was elected its first president. Classes in the program included foreign languages and world affairs, as well as strategies in the game of bridge. Now known as the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, it has more than 800 members.

In the early 1980s, he co-chaired the fund-raising drive for a university gerontology center that would serve as the headquarters for the Continuing Learning Experience and also serve as a site for gerontology research. The Ruby Gerontology Center opened in 1988 and the Lifespan Wellness Clinic followed in 1995.

A founding member of the Orange County chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, Shapiro was the first of two individuals to receive the President’s Medallion, the university’s highest honor awarded to community members.