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In Memoriam

James E. Bruno, UCLA professor of education and one of the founding faculty of UCLA’s Education Studies Minor program, died July 11 of cancer. He was 65.

Bruno’s scholarship centered on issues dealing with students and teachers in large urban school districts, with special emphasis on the development of effective school administrative, leadership and planning policies and practices. Specifically, his research focused on quantitative methods, operations research, and the mathematical modeling of educational policy and planning issues, technology-based assessment procedures to support instructional programs, and psychosocial and economic perspectives dealing with the subject of time.

“Professor Bruno’s death is a great loss to us all. He was dedicated to, and achieved, bringing out the best in every student, and he was an enormously creative and energetic scholar,” said Aimée Dorr, dean of UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.

Bruno joined UCLA as an assistant professor of education in 1968. He authored 10 books and monographs, wrote more than 100 articles and made more than 280 professional presentations during his illustrious 38-year academic career.

His book “It’s About Time: Leading School Reform in an Era of Time Scarcity” (1997) investigated the role of time in student and teacher behaviors in educational organizations.

“Jim was a true modern Renaissance intellect, a highly individualistic life force who had the vision and the courage to pursue research and innovation no matter how untraveled the pathway or how poorly lit,” said UCLA education professor Marilyn Kourilsky. “He epitomized passion and love for family, ideas and knowledge — a passion that he generously shared with others and a passion that could literally sweep one along by its sheer intensity.”

Bruno was a major force behind the creation and continued success of the Education Studies Minor program at the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. His passion for systemically improving education outcomes for all K–12 students shone through his research, teaching and mentoring.

A beloved professor, Bruno received the education department’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2003.

“Though his family and his work were his two main priorities, in that order, he cultivated many personal interests outside the university as well,” said close friend and former student Carl Lager, an assistant professor in the department of education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “In addition to whipping up great Italian food from scratch, he was a Stradivarius-inspired violin maker and violinist, a diver, an East Coast swing dancer, a furniture maker, a model train hobbyist, a softball player, a pianist, a palm reader and a huge fan of Frank Sinatra, Mickey Mantle and the Yankees.

“With each interest, he always found ways to encourage his family and friends to participate with him. In short, he modeled a healthy life-work balance that is glaringly missing today.”

Bruno is survived by his wife, Ann, and their two daughters, Jenny and Julia. A memorial celebration was held on Aug. 12 at the UCLA Faculty Center.

Guillermo E. Hernández, professor of Spanish, director emeritus of the university’s Chicano Studies Research Center and a leading expert on “corridos,” died July 16 in Mexico City. He was 66.

Hernández, a leading scholar on “corridos,” or Mexican ballads, and Chicano literature, was best known for his leadership efforts on the Arhoolie Foundation’s Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings at UCLA. With more than 30,000 digitized recordings, the Frontera Collection is the largest and most diverse collection of Mexican and Mexican-American music. The archive, housed in the UCLA Music Library, includes the earliest recordings of corridos and many other popular genres.

“Professor Guillermo Hernández was an impassioned and committed teacher and scholar at UCLA, with the keenest interest in educating and improving the lives of his students,” said Jonathan Post, former interim humanities dean in UCLA’s College of Letters and Science and a professor of English. “He was a valued member of the Humanities faculty; his sudden passing is a shock to the campus and his friends, and the many contributions that he made over his years at UCLA will be sorely missed.”

Hernández was leading a four-week summer session program in Puebla, Mexico, for students studying Spanish and also those majoring in Spanish. He was in Mexico City on a field trip with 26 students when he died of a heart attack in his hotel room, his family said.

Hernández earned a bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley. He had taught at UCLA since 1982. From 1993 to 2002, Hernández was director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, which is at the forefront of interdisciplinary and collaborative research that analyzes issues critical to Latino communities. He is credited with reviving “Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies,” the premier journal in the field, founded in 1969.

Hernández’s area of specialization was medieval Spanish literature, but he also contributed greatly to the field of Chicano studies. He wrote “Chicano Satire: A Study in Literary Culture” (1991), for which he won an Outstanding Academic Book award from Choice magazine, a publication of the American Library Association.

“His book on satire was an important literary contribution in that it traced Chicano satire back hundreds of years,” said Chon Noriega, current director of the Chicano Studies Research Center.

Corridos were Hernández’s true passion. Hernández spoke eloquently about the Mexican ballad, saying, “Corridos are part of a most significant historic and artistic heritage . . . [and] represent a rich poetic and musical tradition that preserves the voice of common people.”

Under Hernández’s direction in 2000, the award-winning Mexican “norteño” band Los Tigres del Norte donated $500,000 to establish the Los Tigres del Norte Fund at UCLA. The fund supports research, teaching and preservation efforts related to Spanish-language music in the United States and provided major support to digitize and provide public access to the Frontera Collection.

In 1998, the Chicano Studies Research Center, the Arhoolie Foundation and the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History also developed the world’s first comprehensive museum exhibition on the corrido. The Smithsonian Institution sponsored a national tour of the exhibition.

“Guillermo was pivotal in bringing the Arhoolie and Los Tigres del Norte foundations together through the Chicano Studies Research Center in order to preserve and make accessible Spanish-language music in the United States,” Noriega said.

Since the singers and musicians featured in the Frontera Collection helped define and propagate a wide range of Mexican regional styles, it has been credited with providing an overview of the foundations for today’s Latino popular music. Mexican regional music continues to draw a wide following today among Latinos in the United States and abroad, and it still features many corridos.

In addition, the collection includes many spoken performances, such as patriotic speeches and vernacular comedy skits. Many of the recordings are one-of-a-kind because the companies that recorded them no longer exist, or, if they do exist, have lost or melted their master recordings.

Hernández also traveled throughout Mexico to conduct research on early corridos and recently had traced the origin of one song to a small town in Mexico, Noriega said. One of the songs Hernández had conducted research on — “Gregorio Cortez” — was included in the Library of Congress’ 2005 National Recording Registry, which each year recognizes recordings that best reflect the American experience.

“Guillermo’s death is a tremendous loss to the field of Chicano studies, not only for all he accomplished, but for all the work he still had ahead of him,” Noriega said.

Since 1992, Hernández also was the coordinator of the International Corrido Conference. He organized conferences at UCLA and at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as at Mexican universities in Monterrey, Mexico City and Culiacan. He traveled throughout the United States, Mexico and Spain to speak about corridos.

Hernández is survived by his wife, Yolanda Zepeda; his first wife, Lucha Corpi; and his children Arturo, Luciano, Guillermo M. and Gabriel, as well as his grandchildren Kiara, Nikolas and Kamille. He is also survived by two sisters, Frieda and Nora, and two brothers, Arturo and Hector.

In lieu of flowers, the Hernández family has requested that donations be made to the Guillermo E. Hernández Memorial Scholarship Fund at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. Checks should be made out to the UCLA Foundation/The Guillermo E. Hernández Memorial Scholarship and mailed to UCLA, 1309 Murphy Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095.

Mazisi Raymond Fakazi Mngoni Kunene, celebrated poet, prominent anti-apartheid activist, and emeritus professor of African linguistics and literature at UCLA, died on Aug. 11 at Entabeni Hospital in Durban, South Africa, after a long illness. He was 76.

Those attending the memorial service on Aug. 19 included such dignitaries as South Africa’s First Lady, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Premier of KwaZulu-Natal, and the Mayor of Durban, as well as former UCLA Professor Keorapetse “Willie” Kgositsile. In a message read at the event, South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki declared Kunene “an extraordinary South African … who combined in his being, as one integrated whole, our past, our present and our future.” He was, Mbeki said, “one of those African thinkers and artists who sought to restore the dignity of the colonized and once-enslaved peoples of Africa and those of the African diaspora.”

Widely regarded as one of the continent’s preeminent poets and winner of multiple literary awards, including being appointed South Africa’s first poet laureate in 2005 and Africa’s poet laureate in 1993, Kunene drew on the oral tradition of Zulu literature to create poetry about Zulu history and thought as well as to celebrate pan-African values. He once said that “a writer … should avoid the temporary attractions of cheap popularity and make a contribution to the community that gave birth to his genius.” He translated some of his work into English, including his most famous work, a translation of the great oral epic “Emperor Shaka the Great” (1979). He wrote this still widely taught text, about the powerful early 19th-century Zulu leader, while living in West Hollywood in the mid-1970s. The critic Charles R. Larson has described the 1,700-line, 17-book text as “an African epic equal to ‘The Iliad’ and ‘The Odyssey’ … a monumental undertaking and achievement.”

The prolific poet also published “Anthem of the Decades: A Zulu Epic,” about how death came into the world, as well as two poetry anthologies, “The Ancestors and the Sacred Mountain” and “Zulu Poems.” In the 1990s, he published several books in Zulu, including “Isibusiso sikamhawu” (1994), “Indida yamancasakazi” (1995), “Umzwilili wama-Afrika” (1996) and “Igudu likaSomcabeko” (1997). Although most of his work has been neither published nor translated, his most famous work has been translated into many languages, including English, French, German, Japanese and Dutch.

Kunene started writing in Zulu when he very young and had published a number of poems in newspapers and magazines before he was 12. He won the Bantu Literary Competition when he was 26.

Kunene obtained a teaching certificate at Maphumulo Teachers’ Training College and his master’s degree in 1959 from the University of Natal for a survey of Zulu poetry. He left South Africa to pursue a doctoral dissertation on Zulu literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University, but instead played a leading role in bringing attention to the horrors of apartheid. He was a founding member of the anti-apartheid movement in Britain, setting up the London office of the African National Congress (ANC) with current President Mbeki. In 1962 he became the chief representative of the ANC in Europe and the United States, where he traveled and lectured widely. In 1966, his work was banned by South African government order. In 1972, he organized the historic South African Exhibition Appeal, to which Picasso, Marc Chagall, Giacometti, Henry Moore, Ben Enwonwu, Robert Rauschenberg and others donated works. President Mbeki praised this exhibition as “one of the most memorable highlights of the world struggle against apartheid, the indelible signal that the struggle for the destruction of the apartheid system was, in reality, a struggle for the elevation of the human soul.”

During his more than 30 years of exile, Kunene became the head of the Department of African Studies at the National University of Lesotho and then taught African literature and the Zulu language at UCLA for 19 years, where he became a full professor. He was a spiritual and practical adviser to many students, earning him a devoted and enthusiastic following. He had an especially close association with the African Student Union. One of Kunene’s former doctoral students in linguistics, Kykosa Kajangu, remembers that his “door was always open, not only to students at UCLA, but to students from every walk of life. His mind was a wisdom depot.” A former doctoral student of his in literature remembers him as “brilliant, regal, even arrogant, but devoted to the intellectual welfare of the students who came to him.” Others remember that he was sometimes “outrageous” but “always had a twinkle in his eye” and was “generous, deeply humane and inspiring.”

Kunene only returned to South Africa in 1993, when apartheid had ended. He then lectured at several South African universities, including the University of KwaZulu Natal in Durban.

Kunene was born in Durban on May 12, 1930, and grew up in Amahlongwa on the KwaZulu Natal south coast. His ancestral home, where he was laid to rest, overlooked the Indian Ocean. His father, Mdabuli Albert Kunene, was from the royal Swazi clan, and his mother, Eva Kunene, was a teacher from the large Zulu Ngcobo family. In 1973, he married Mabowe Mathabo, with whom he had four children.

Kunene is survived by his wife, Mathabo; daughter, Lamakhosi; sons Zosukuma, Ra and Rre; and his siblings, Blessing Musawenkosi and Sthandiwe Joyce Kunene.

Donations to preserve Kunene’s work can be made to the Kunene Foundation, founded by Mathabo Kunene to promote her husband’s work and to campaign for the inclusion of African literature in school curriculums. To contact the Kunene Foundation, e-mail Janine Zagel at jzagel@worldonline.co.za or visit www.cas.org.za/projects/Library.htm.

Charles H. “Tom” Sawyer, a distinguished emeritus professor of neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, died June 20 at the age of 91.

Sawyer was an influential pioneer in the field of neuroendocrinology — the study of the relationship between the nervous system and the endocrine system. His research was among the first to pinpoint how the brain controls the secretion of hormones from the pituitary gland and link it to reproductive function. His findings laid the groundwork for the development of the birth control pill and the treatment of infertility.

One of the original five members of the UCLA Brain Research Institute, he created the institute’s Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology, which remains at the forefront of research and training new experts in the field.

“Tom was a giant in the field of neuroendocrinology,” said Arthur Arnold, UCLA chair of physiological sciences and director of the UCLA Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology. “His research demonstrated how the brain controls the reproductive endocrine organs and is influenced by them in turn. He was part of a small and elite international group of scientists who established the brain-gonad connection, for which he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He made UCLA an international center in neuroendocrine training and research.”

Sawyer was a founding faculty member of the anatomy department at the UCLA School of Medicine, where he delivered the first lecture to its first class. He taught gross anatomy to UCLA medical students for nearly 60 years.

Sawyer was equally admired by his colleagues in the field. Fellow endocrinologist Dr. Andrew V. Schally, the 1977 Nobel Laureate in medicine, signed his textbook with the inscription, “To Tom Sawyer, the No. 1 pioneer in neuroendocrinology and the man who started the avalanche of progress on the hypothalamus. With deep admiration and friendship, Andrew V. Schally.”

In the mid-1960s, Sawyer received a Ford Foundation training grant that funded postdoctoral training in the neuroendocrinology of reproduction. This enabled him to train young UCLA scientists in the field that he helped to create and to expand the reach of neuroendocrine research — and its implications for reproductive medicine — around the world.

Due in part to his extensive collaborative work, Sawyer was a prolific scientist. During his 63-year research career, he published 336 papers in distinguished medical journals.

“Tom was an outstanding neurobiologist who played a major role in the development of neuroendocrinology at UCLA and worldwide,” said Roger Gorski, a former colleague of Sawyer’s and a UCLA distinguished professor emeritus of neurobiology. “His efforts led to the creation of the UCLA Brain Research Institute’s Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology, which continues to train new scholars and lead collaborative research on the complex interactions between hormones, genes and neurons.”

Sawyer was born in 1915 in Ludlow, Vt. He received an A.B. degree from Middlebury College (1937), and was a Dutton traveling fellow at Cambridge University from 1937 to 1938. He received his doctoral degree with distinction in zoology from Yale University in 1941 — the same year he married fellow Middlebury biologist Ruth Schaeffer of Waterbury, Conn.

After two years as an anatomy instructor at Stanford University (1941–43), Sawyer joined the anatomy department at Duke University (1943–51), where he was promoted to professor.

In 1951, Sawyer was invited to join the anatomy department at the newly created UCLA School of Medicine. He served as department chairman from 1955 to 1963 and again in 1968. He was a charter member of the UCLA Deans Council in 1973.

Sawyer served the Public Health Service as a member of its fellowship review board in pharmacology and endocrinology and as a member of the neurology study section A from 1963 to 1967. He was chairman of the anatomy panel of the National Board of Medical Examiners in 1964, on the council of the Endocrine Society from 1968 to 1970 and a member of the board of directors of the Society for the Study of Reproduction from 1969 to 1971. He was a council member of the International Society of Neuroendocrinology and a 50-year member of the American Physiological Society.

Sawyer received the prestigious Koch Award of the Endocrine Society in 1973, presented the first Geoffrey Harris Memorial Lecture at UCLA in 1974, won the UCLA Brain Research Institute Award in 1966, earned the UCLA Certificate of Teaching Excellence Award in 1976 and won the Hartman Award of the Society for the Study of Reproduction in 1978.

He was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences in the Physiology and Pharmacology section in 1980. Sawyer received the Award of Extraordinary Merit from the UCLA Medical Alumni Association in 1990.

In addition to Ruth, his wife of 64 years, Sawyer is survived by his daughter, Joan Sawyer Steffan, who was inspired by her father’s career to become a University of California, Irvine, assistant professor researching neurodegenerative diseases; son-in-law Dr. William Steffan, a family physician; and grandsons Joseph and Thomas Steffan.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be sent to The Charles H. Sawyer Fund at the UCLA Department of Neurobiology, Box 951763, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1763.

George Wetherill, former UCLA professor and chair of geophysics and geology, died of heart failure July 19 at his home in Washington, D.C. He was 80.

Wetherill’s theoretical models helped transform our understanding of how our planets and solar system formed. Born in Philadelphia on Aug. 12, 1925, Wetherill began his long career in education while in the U.S. Navy during World War II, where he taught radar at the Naval Research Laboratory. In 1953, Wetherill graduated from the University of Chicago after earning a number of degrees: Ph.B., S.B., S.M., and Ph.D.

Before joining the faculty at UCLA, Wetherill was a scientific staff member in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at Carnegie Institution of Washington. In 1960, he arrived at UCLA and served as a professor and department chairman of geophysics and geology. After 15 years, he left UCLA and returned to Carnegie to lead the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism as director. Even after he stepped down in 1991, he continued his research as director emeritus.

As part of a small group of scientists in the 1950s, Wetherill helped to develop geochemical methods involving natural radioactive decay to determine the ages of ordinary igneous and metamorphic rocks. At UCLA, he used these geochemical techniques to show that all the major classes of the most common type of meteorite had the same age as the Earth — 4,500 million years.

Wetherill continued to study the orbital evolution of asteroids and meteorites, using these theoretical studies to examine the formation and dynamic evolution of the solar system and other possible planets from other stars. From this, he found that Jupiter’s gravitational field could be very important to life on Earth in that it provides a shield against orbiting asteroids and comets that might otherwise hit our planet. He also found other likely “habitable zones” in other planetary systems.

Wetherill won several prominent awards, including the National Medal of Science, the highest scientific award in the nation, in 1997. More recently, he was awarded the 2003 Henry Norris Russell Lectureship, the highest honor bestowed by the American Astronomical Society.

Cathleen Wells, senior editor for the Office of Media Relations, died July 28 of complications from colon cancer at the UCLA Medical Center. She was 61.

A member of the UCLA staff since 2000, Wells edited thousands of press releases and news advisories, making sure each one was error-free before being sent to news outlets around the world. Nothing left the office without first being scrutinized by Wells’ discerning eye.

Her love for a well-written piece was just one of the many passions in her life. Born Cathleen Haburton on May 23, 1945, in Dayton, Ohio, Wells was 6 when she moved with her family to Orlando, Fla. She was an aspiring actress from the start and, while majoring in theater at Rollins College in Orlando, appeared in several musical comedies, including a production of “Guys and Dolls.”

“She actually auditioned for one of the supporting roles, the girlfriend of Frank Sinatra’s character,” said Wells’ youngest daughter, Meghan Sahli-Wells. “But they gave her the leading role, the Jean Simmons role. And she was really disappointed because she wanted the more interesting character!”

The actress was only 21 when she dropped out of Rollins College to marry Greeley Wells in 1966, the same year the couple moved to Los Angeles. While her husband attended Art Center College of Design, Wells supported her growing family (daughter Bethany was born in 1970; Meghan, three years later) by working a number of unusual jobs.

She sold Fuller brushes briefly and worked the cash register at Pickwick Bookstore in Hollywood, and also performed as a mime at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Agoura, Calif. Desiring to finish her education, Wells enrolled at UCLA and received her bachelor’s degree in English in 1978 and her master’s degree in medieval English literature in 1981. In 1979, she divorced her husband and took custody of their two daughters.

Known for the popular “Happy Hour” gatherings that she would throw every Friday night for her neighbors in Culver City, Wells took a job in 1983 as an editor for Social Studies School Service, a company that sells educational supplies. She worked there for 17 years, finally joining the staff of UCLA’s Office of Media Relations in 2000.

“My mother was an amazing hostess, and one of her big talents in life was getting people together,” Sahli-Wells said. “Our whole neighborhood is really linked together from the happy hours that she had all those years. And now that she’s gone, it’s like these people are still together. That’s a big thing she left behind — the friendships and the people that she allowed to come together and be good to each other. She insisted on a certain kind of quality for daily existence, and that meant that you enjoy yourself and recognize the importance of that in order to be a happy human being.”

Wells is survived by her daughter, Bethany Wells, and son-in-law Michael Choate, of California; daughter Meghan Sahli-Wells, son-in-law Karim Sahli, and grandsons Emilien and Lucien, all of Paris; mother Eleanor Haburton of Culver City; and ex-husband Greeley Wells of Jacksonville, Ore. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the UCLA Jonsson Cancer Center, 8-950 Factor Building, Box 951780, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1780.