Class of June 1955 

from LARRY DASHIELL   June 2013

    After graduation I moved to Berkeley, The weather was better than Haight & Fillmore. I enrolled  at U.C. played a little basketball, changed majors now and then, and received a B.A. in English (my hardest subject) in 1961. During the summers, excepting my bootcamp summer at Fort Lewis, Washington (at the foot of Mt. Ranier), I worked for the U.S Forest Service in the Tahoe, Sequoia and Stanislaus Forests, fighting fires and working on timber projects. That was a world apart from the Streets of San Francisco. I discovered John Muir and his legacy. I had attended  John Muir grammar school (at Page and Webster Streets) There was a connection.

The cold war led to the crisis in Berlin which led me, a young Army officer , to an Armor Division in Germany, not far from the Czech border. We were told there were a lot of Russian tanks on the other side. I soon learned why it was called the “cold war”: the temperature outside was minus 20 degrees F. After 3 years rolling around Bavaria in armored vehicles, and fulfilling my obligation, I decided to say goodbye to Nurnberg and Munchen, and return home. I married and went to Hastings where I received my law degree in 1969. I moved to Sacramento to join college friends who had started a law firm. I have practiced law in Sacramento for the past 43 years. I have 2 sons and 5 grandchildren. My son Dan is an attorney in San Francisco and my son Dave is a CHP officer, now in Sacramento. I enjoy gardening and making wine when I am not reading and listening to music. ( I also drink the wine.)

When my sons were young, we discovered the Lair of the Bear, a family camp near Pinecrest Lake, operated by The U.C. Berkeley Alumni Association. I continue to be most fortunate to be able to spend a week in the summer  with my family, (and hang out with my grandchildren ages 6 to 16), in the Sierra Nevada forests which I discovered the day after graduation from Lowell.

I thank Carol Hicks for finding me and for setting up this amazing website. I also thank John Jung for writing the books which I intend to read this summer at the Lair.

    And now it’s fifty eight years later and ......  well, I plan to be there, and say hello in 2015.