Farewells
The Trail Blazer
Nancy Hicks’s early reporting assignments included racial and political turmoil in New York schools, Chinese medicine and the Apollo space program. Just her presence in the newsroom—as a black woman in the late 1960s—made her a pioneer.
Nancy Alene Hall Hicks Maynard, JD ’87, with her late husband, Robert, owned the Oakland Tribune for nearly a decade. She died September 21 in Los Angeles at 61. The Tribune is the only major metropolitan daily to have been black-owned.
Born in New York, Maynard bristled during her teen years at the media’s negative depiction of her Harlem neighborhood after her former school burned down. She thought newsrooms that better reflected their communities could help prevent that sort of misinterpretation. She graduated from Long Island University in 1966, and began work as a copygirl at the New York Post before joining the New York Times two years later.
After her first husband’s death, Maynard met Washington Post writer Robert Maynard at a conference for black journalists. They married in 1975. The couple bought the Oakland Tribune in 1983 and made it a showpiece of a diversified newsroom. They sold the newspaper in 1992, shortly before Robert died of cancer.
They promoted minorities in the media by co-founding, with others, the Institute for Journalism Excellence, later renamed the Maynard Institute to honor Robert. Nancy Maynard won numerous industry awards and her influence has been felt at newsrooms throughout the country. “She was a fearless, astute champion of diversity in news media,” wrote Steve Montiel, one of the Institute’s co-founders.
Survivors: her partner, Jay T. Harris; two sons, David and Alex Maynard; a step-daughter, Dori Maynard; a sister;
and a brother.
Champion of the Arts
“Man does not live by engineering alone. A truly great university must recognize all parts of the human spirit.” So said one of Stanford’s biggest supporters of the arts.
Ruth Levison Halperin, ’47, who worked for 60-plus years as a volunteer and contributor to Stanford. Halperin died of cancer November 20 in Atherton. She was 81.
She majored in political science and worked in retail before marrying Robert Halperin, who would become president of Raychem, in 1956. While raising their three children, she led efforts to improve the arts at Stanford and served as mentor to hundreds of Stanford volunteers.
During Halperin’s decade as a member of the University Board of Trustees, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused major damage to the Stanford Museum, forcing it to close for nearly 10 years. Halperin’s efforts helped the renamed Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts become a vibrant enterprise that engages artists with faculty and students. She also was instrumental in the arts initiative at Stanford, an effort based on the premise that education in the arts and humanities is the foundation of a liberal arts education.
Thomas Seligman, director of the Cantor Arts Center, called her an “exquisite citizen” who truly appreciated learning about art. She often traveled internationally to help the museum identify and collect art. Seligman said he and Stanford appreciated “her advice, her wisdom, her unbelievable spirit [and] curiosity.”
She served in a wealth of volunteer positions, including on the Cantor Arts Center opening steering committee and as founding leader of the contemporary collectors circle (which she chaired for more than 22 years). With her husband, she endowed two chairs in the department of art and art history, as well as a curatorship in modern and contemporary art at Cantor. The couple commissioned artist Andy Goldsworthy to create Stone River for the campus: the serpentine wall was crafted from sandstone salvaged from Stanford buildings in the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes. Halperin was awarded the 2007 Gold Spike Award, the Stanford Associates’ highest award for exceptional volunteer leadership service in development.
Survivors: her husband of 52 years; three children, Peggy Halperin Dow, Philip, ’85, and Mark; a sister, Barbara Levison Napolitano, ’50; and eight grandchildren, including Robert, ’11.
The Lifesaver
Joan Hodgman’s daughter, Ann Schwartz, ’75, PhD ’99, said that in medical school at UCSF, her mother had a professor who tried to make all his female students cry. Hodgman was determined not to shed a tear, and didn’t.
Joan Elizabeth Hodgman, ’43, was a leader and a pioneering woman in neonatology. She died August 10 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease) at a family cabin in Oregon. She was 84.
During 60 years at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, Hodgman served for three decades as director of its newborn division. She helped to develop its intensive care unit for sick and premature babies and played a central role in dramatically reducing the hospital’s infant mortality rate—50 percent in just 10 years.
A prolific researcher (among her interests was Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), Hodgman also was a successful administrator, clinician and teacher. Although she downplayed the challenges of being female when the medical field was primarily male, she made a point to encourage women in the field.
As medical advancements enabled doctors to save more severely debilitated newborns, ethical questions arose concerning the extent to which physicians should go to save newborns’ lives. Breaking from many, Hodgman argued that there comes a point when further medical treatment does more harm to the infant than good. She received numerous professional awards, including the 1999 Apgar Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Hodgman’s husband, Amos Schwartz, predeceased her. In addition to Ann, Hodgman is survived by another daughter, Susan di Pietro; a brother; and four grandchildren.
Super Dave
David Hahn wore a Stanford jacket and baseball cap, rarely missed a football game, and even named his cat Stanford. A fixture in the stadium, he’d stick around after games to give out high-fives for a win or console Cardinal fans after a loss. And he wasn’t even an alum.
Hahn, known to many as Super Dave, died September 16 near his home at an assisted living facility in Palo Alto. He was 35. A graduate of Palo Alto High School, he worked at the Florence Moore dining hall. Hahn had Williams Syndrome, a condition that officials believe contributed to his death. Among the symptoms of Williams Syndrome is excessive friendliness. A relative wrote, “He loved everyone, he judged no one, he was not on the lookout for ulterior motives.”
Hahn’s death hit many in the Stanford community hard, particularly members of the Band. Hahn had attended nearly every Band rehearsal since 1996: he was thanked on the past three Band albums, and the group played on his 30th birthday. A drummer and emcee, Hahn sometimes filled in at games and even recorded a rap album with the band a few years ago. The Fans of Super Dave Facebook group described their loss: “Dave was the most genuinely friendly person to ever touch Palo Alto and the Stanford community, and he will be sorely missed. . . . We are richer for having known him.”
Survivors: his parents, Michael and Susan Hahn; and a sister, Laurie Hahn Tapper.
