Farewells
Hole Hearted
Long before Tiger Woods, ’98, and Tom Watson, ’71, began their celebrated careers, BOB ROSBURG was winning championships and wowing audiences. First as a player and later as a broadcaster, “Rossie” spent more than 50 years in professional golf, winning six PGA tour events and pioneering the use of on-course television reporting.
Winner of the PGA Championship in 1959 and twice runner-up at the U.S. Open, Rosburg, ’48, died on May 14. Although he had been battling cancer, the cause of death was a head injury sustained in a fall near his home in La Quinta, Calif. He was 82.
Born in San Francisco in 1926, Rosburg was a golf prodigy. At 4 he was featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not and took part in a six-week golfing exhibition that also featured Antarctic explorer Richard Byrd. When he was 12 he defeated retired baseball legend Ty Cobb in a championship match at the Olympic Club.
At Stanford, Rosburg earned letters in baseball and golf. He was a key member of the 1946 NCAA championship golf team and was invited to spring training by the Brooklyn Dodgers.
After graduating, he sold cars and insurance before turning to golf full time as an instructor. He began playing on the PGA Tour as the game’s popularity rose in the 1950s. The highlight of his career was the PGA victory at Minneapolis Golf Club, where he erased a six-shot deficit with a final-round 66 to win by one stroke.
In 1975, Rosburg commenced a 31-year broadcasting career with ABC Sports.
He was the first to report from the golf course during play—now a staple of coverage at every major event. He was beloved for his storytelling and pet saying: “He’s got no chance.”
Rosburg is survived by his fourth wife, Becky; three children from his first marriage, Bob, Deborah and Bruce; and several grandchildren.
Decades before the word feminist came into popular usage, FRANCES BLAISDELL was blazing trails. At a time when women were seldom hired as professional musicians, she worked steadily in New York City’s most prominent concert halls, forging a 50-year career as a performer.
A lecturer and beloved flute teacher in Stanford’s music department for 35 years, Blaisdell died on March 11. She was 97.
Blaisdell’s father, a self-taught amateur flutist, introduced her to the instrument when she was 5. Disappointed she wasn’t a boy, he called Frances “Jim.” But he insisted on auditions for her with teachers who dismissed the idea of a girl flutist. One such audition secured a scholarship to what is now the Julliard School of Music.
In 1930 Blaisdell became first flute of the National Orchestral Association. She played as first flute or as a soloist for the New York Philharmonic, the New York City Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera and the Julliard Orchestra.
Blaisdell performed in a gold lamé dress as a soloist at Radio City Music Hall in the early 1930s, sandwiched by Rockettes, and in a short but lucrative stint in vaudeville. She played on Broadway in South Pacific and Carousel, and on the Hour of Charm on CBS and NBC radio with Phil Spitalny and His All-Girl Orchestra. She and her husband, clarinetist Alexander Williams, and three other Philharmonic players formed the Blaisdell Woodwind Quintet, which also had a radio series.
In 1973, Blaisdell moved to California and started teaching at Stanford. In 2006 she received the Lloyd Dinkelspiel Award, which recognized her “extraordinary teaching, mentorship and support” of both majors and non majors. She kept in close contact with many of her students (one even called her from the delivery room) and at 97 still had 300 people on her Christmas card list.
She is survived by her daughter, Alexandra Hawley, ’65, MA ’69; her son, John Williams; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. Her husband died in 2003.
CLAUDE BRINEGAR was a former Democrat who had never met Richard Nixon when the Republican president asked him to become the secretary of transportation in 1972. Brinegar accepted and became a key cabinet member, restructuring the railroads and working to blunt the effects of the 1970s energy crisis.
A longtime oil executive and a political appointee at the national and state levels, Brinegar, ’50, MS ’51, PhD ’54, died March 13 in Palo Alto. He was 82.
Brinegar was born as Claude Rawles Stout on December 16, 1926, in Rockport, Calif. After his father abandoned the family, his mother married Butler Brinegar, and Claude took his name.
He married the former Elva Jackson, ’50, in 1951. The couple had three children and later divorced.
Brinegar joined Union Oil in 1953 and was a vice president when Nixon tapped him to come to Washington. Within days of arriving, he was confronted with a crisis in the railroad industry that threatened to shut down the flow of goods. His effort to save Penn Central and several other troubled railroads resulted in the restructured company known as Conrail.
Spurred by the Middle East oil embargo in 1973, Brinegar spearheaded legislation—later repealed—that established a national 55 mph speed limit. It was an ironic twist in a career that also included a close association with the Daytona Speedway; for years Brinegar drove a Porsche formerly used as a pace car.
The first of President Nixon’s cabinet members to speak out against Watergate, he said in May 1974 that he was “shocked, offended and discouraged” by the “mess.” He returned to Union Oil in February 1975 after resigning as transportation secretary, and retired in 1992.
Brinegar is survived by his wife, Karen Bartholomew, ’71, whom he married in 1995; his three children, Claudia Berglund, Meredith Cross and Thomas Brinegar; and four grandchildren. His second wife, Mary Katherine Potter, died in 1993.
