Farewells
Prolific Architect
From initials carved in dorm rooms to trophies shelved in the Athletic Department, Stanford students take every opportunity to make their mark on the Farm. Few manage as dramatically as architect John Carl Warnecke, '41. The designer of internationally known work—as well as campus landmarks including Maples Pavilion, the Cummings Art Building and the Stanford Bookstore—died in Healdsburg, Calif., on April 17 after complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 91.
Oakland-born Warnecke won two letters as an offensive lineman for Stanford football. He capped off an undefeated senior year on the famous "Wow Boys" team with the 1941 Rose Bowl victory over Nebraska. Upon graduation from Stanford with a degree in graphic arts, Warnecke finished Harvard University's three-year architecture master's degree program in one year before coming back west.
After working for the Richmond Housing Authority and his father's architectural firm, he founded his own company in 1945. About three decades later, John Carl Warnecke and Associates was the largest architectural firm in the country, with six offices spanning the United States from Honolulu to New York City. Warnecke's most famous projects were in Washington, D.C., including the Hart Senate Office Building, the Soviet Embassy and the gravesite of John F. Kennedy, an old friend, at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Kennedy gave Warnecke his start in Washington with a 1962 project to build federal offices while preserving historic buildings in Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House.
Warnecke retained a special commitment to Stanford's architecture throughout his professional life. "He always cared very much about that campus and carrying on the tradition there," said his daughter, Margo Warnecke Merck, '73.
Warnecke was predeceased by his son John Jr., and his first wife, Grace Cushing. He is survived by his daughter; sons Rodger, '72, and Fred; four grandchildren, including Alice, '06; and his former wife, Grace Kennan. —Scott Bland, ’10
Making Up Baby
It was all Mom's fault. That was the prevailing scientific wisdom on children's behavior when Anneliese Korner began her research at Stanford in the 1960s. Her work found that a mixture of genetics and environmental influences make kids who they are. She published three books and more than 200 articles on such topics and then, in the last decade of her life, wrote an utterly different book. Across the Street From Adolf Hitler was a memoir about growing up near Hitler's residence in Munich.
Korner, a professor emerita at the Stanford School of Medicine, died on March 4 at her home in Palo Alto. She was 91.
Frightened by an episode in which their daughter was interrogated by the Gestapo, Korner's parents sent her to Switzerland when she was 16. In Geneva, Korner was influenced by psychologists Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson and Anna Freud.
In the early 1960s, Korner approached the chair of psychiatry at Stanford about her interest in studying infants. "What I wanted to do," she said in a 2002 interview, "was to find out how it all starts." She branched out into studying interventions that would help the tiniest preterm babies and developed a neurobehavioral assessment tool used on preemies around the world.
One line of Korner's inquiry found that premature babies placed on gently vibrating waterbeds had fewer breathing and heart-rate problems. An early version of this research involved swaddling and rocking newborn rats as stand-ins for babies. "I still get the giggles visualizing Anneliese and her partner, Dr. Evelyn Thoman, swaddling those little rats and putting them in mechanical rocking chairs," said Helena Kraemer, professor emerita and a longtime friend.
Korner, who was also known by the name Korner-Kalman, is survived by her daughter, Sue Kalman, and grandsons Joseph and David Persico. Her husband, Sumner "Kal" Kalman, MD '51, a professor emeritus of pharmacology, died in 1992.
Witty Botanist
Jane Goodall once called Reid Venable Moran "a sort of living myth in botanical exploration." Moran, '39, died on January 21, of pneumonia. He was 93.
Moran explored natural history with his father, Robert Breck Moran, Class of 1907. Reid studied biology at Stanford and obtained advanced degrees at Cornell and UC-Berkeley.
From 1942 to 1946, Moran served as a flight navigator in the Air Force. He and his crewmates were forced to bail out over hostile German territory in 1944. Moran parachuted into a tree and, true to his botanical training, took a moment to identify the spruce. The crew evaded Germans for weeks, hiking through mountainous terrain and running for cover during strafing. Colleague Myron Kimnach notes, "As he was walking across the country he collected a few bits of plants to dry them for the herbarium."
Moran worked for 25 years at the San Diego Museum of Natural History, serving as curator of botany from 1957 to 1982. He spent more than four decades documenting the threatened ecosystem on Isla Guadalupe, off Baja California. "They put goats on the islands so the sailing ships could stop and get meat," says Kimnach, "but the goats ate practically everything there except the trees." Spurred by Moran's observations, removal of the feral goat population began in 2004 and was declared complete in 2007. The island's plant life began to make a dramatic comeback.
Moran delighted in a well-executed joke, from putting "endangered species" stickers on the dinosaur exhibits to inserting a pun or two in his Latin botanical descriptions. During travels, he often tried to see what he could send, unwrapped, through various postal systems: a pumpkin, perhaps, or a dried manta ray, address label attached to the tail.
Survivors include his daughter, Jenna; his stepson, Matthew Boersma; and a sister, Katharine "Kaki" Cashman, '37. He was predeceased by brothers Robert Breck Moran Jr., '36, and William Rodes Moran, '42. —Jenny Pegg
