Richard Rowe Treffers – 50th Reunion Essay

Richard Rowe Treffers

10 Vista Lane

Alamo, CA 94507

RichardTreffers@Astound.net

Spouse(s): Donna Trantolo Treffers (1972 still going strong)

Child(ren): Ryan (1979), Steven (1981)

Grandchild(ren): Evelyn (2015), Leon (2016)

Education: UC Berkeley PhD 1973

Career: U. Arizona 1 year, UC Berkeley 25 years, astronomy consultant 15 years

Avocations: travel, private pilot

College: Silliman

After graduation on that sunny June day, I bicycled to our family home in Bethany and packed to journey west to graduate school. Arriving in Berkeley, in an atmosphere tinged with smog and a bit of teargas, I found an apartment and began learning some of the things that would be handy for the rest of my life. Astronomy was interesting, but so was tinkering with new and ornery technology, playing darts and drinking beer with new friends and colleagues, and touring the natural beauty of my newly adopted state. At one departmental picnic on a warm October beach, I had the pleasure of meeting Donna Trantolo, a young special education teacher who, I didn’t know at the time, would become my wife, love of my life, mother of our two children and would many years later encourage me to write this essay.

One would never have known in 1969 that 50 years would pass so quickly. With different presidents, fads, and technologies, our Earth courses in its orbit. One would hope that wisdom and understanding would ensue, but as of late, I am not so sure. Working in astronomy has been enjoyable for it has been an exciting time learning (with amazing accuracy) of the earliest moments of creation, to the bizarre components that inhabit our universe such as black holes and gravitational waves. I drifted into the area of automating telescopes for unattended observations and more recently rehabilitating old historic instruments that would otherwise be abandoned.

That warm sunny day in October led to a marriage and the good fortune of a house in the San Francisco suburbs and two sons. We have been blessed. The past years have been filled with commutes, baseball games, hanging drywall, friends, travel to places where the people don’t speak English, and now two grandchildren.