Beverly Wilson

Beverly Wilson, the outspoken Sonoma-Marin fair manager who muscled her way into the "boys' club" of fair administration, died at her home in Petaluma Monday. She was 69.


Wilson joined the Sonoma-Marin Fair in 1968 in their business department. She took the reins as CEO in 1972 and held that post for 21 years.

Under her leadership the Sonoma-Marin fair was a financially solvent operation and Wilson was often asked to advise fairs across the nation in their financial matters.

Friends and colleagues praised her nonmanagement skills, noting that she received the Western Fairs Association Hall of Fame Award in 2003.

But as an outspoken advocate for fair fiscal responsibility, Wilson acknowledged that she had both friends and enemies in the industry.

In 1987 she told The Press Democrat "some people keep reading the obituaries to see if I'm dead because they would immediately throw a party."

Wilson was born Jan 3, 1928 at Petaluma General Hospital and grew up at the Penngrove Hatchery, which her parents owned.

Though she often said she hadn't known steers from heifers when she put on her first fair, colleagues said the innocence was just a ploy.

"She liked to say she was a city girl but she knew livestock" said Tom DiGrazia, who worked with Wilson at the Sonoma-Marin fair for several years. "And when Bev asked you a question, she knew the answer."

DiGrazia said Wilson succeeded where few women have; when she became fair CEO in 1972 she was one of six women leading fairs in California.

"She was one of the first to break the barrier into the boys' club because fairs really were a boys' club back then. And she lasted the longest," DiGrazia said.

Charlie Barboni served on the Fair Board for 16 years while Wilson was CEO and said she was responsible not only for envisioning the fair as a family destination, but also for bringing top entertainment acts to Petaluma before anyone imagined it could be done.

Under Wilson's leadership, the Sonoma-Marin fair brought in artists such as Huey Lewis and the News, Willie Nelson and George Straight.

Wilson was a respected colleague and mentor to fair CEOs and agriculture leaders across the state, DiGrazia said. Among them was George Gomes, now undersecretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

Though she was known for her choice vocabulary and sometimes combative style, she earned widespread respect.

"I had some very honest debates with her over the years" said Ethan Hirsch, who succeeded Wilson as CEO. "But she taught me also to be true to your own beliefs. And she didn't mind if you fought her because you believed in something else. Of course, that made her fight even stronger."

Wilson died after a long battle with scleroderma and cancer.

She is survived by her children, Suzanne Wilson of Petaluma, Bill Wilson of Incline Village and Gregory Wilson of Antioch, and by three grandchildren.

Services for Wilson will be private.

-- Laura Norton

Willie Robinson, blues singer

BOSTON -- "Weepin"' Willie Robinson, a blues singer who performed with Steven Tyler and Bonnie Raitt but also spent time homeless, has died at age 81.

Robinson had been a sharecropper, an Army veteran and a friend of performers, including B.B. King.

"He was truly the elder statesman of the (Boston) blues. He was our godfather. He was the most dear man," Holly Harris, host of "Blues on Sunday" on WBOS radio, told The Boston Globe for Monday's editions.

When he sang, "you knew he meant it because he had passion," Harris said.

Robinson died Sunday in a fire started by a cigarette he was smoking in bed, the Boston Fire Department said.

He had worked a benefit concert with Tyler and two Boston Music Awards shows, in 2005 and again earlier this month.

Robinson was born in Atlanta and picked cotton and fruit with his family up and down the East Coast. After spending time in the Army in the 1940s, he became a master of ceremonies and doorman at blues clubs in Trenton, N.J., where he met King and other legends and eventually sang with King's 21-piece orchestra.

His daughter, Lorraine Robinson, told the Globe her father found his place on stage.

"A great smile would come on his face and he would be in his own little world, like he'd tune everything out," she said. "He just, like, felt the music. It was so much in his soul."

Robinson settled in Boston in 1959 and played in clubs, but by 2005 he was living on the street and out of touch with his family.

Blues performers learned of his situation, held a benefit concert and made sure he was fed and clothed.

Robinson later performed everywhere from local clubs to the hallways of the rest home where he lived.

-- Associated Press

Marvin Wachman, college president

Marvin Wachman, a professor of American history who was president of both Lincoln and Temple universities and interim president of two other Pennsylvania colleges, died Dec. 22 at his home in Philadelphia. He was 90.

His death was announced by Temple University, which did not give a cause.

Wachman became president of Lincoln, the nation's oldest college established to educate blacks, in 1961, after teaching for 13 years at Colgate University and spending two years as director of the Salzburg Seminar in Austria.

Lincoln, founded in 1854 in Chester County, southwest of Philadelphia, had a distinguished educational record but was in some financial and accreditation difficulties. Wachman, who was white, was initially reluctant to become president of a black college at the height of the civil rights movement, but was persuaded to do so by Thurgood Marshall, a Lincoln alumnus and trustee who in 1967 became a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Wachman brought in new faculty members, raised money and increased enrollment, greatly contributing to re-establishing the college's academic credentials.

In 1969, after eight and a half years at Lincoln, he was appointed vice president for academic affairs at Temple and was planning an eventual return to teaching. In 1973, however, he agreed to become Temple's president. There were financial problems there, too, but Wachman managed to eliminate the university hospital's $50-million debt and establish new campuses in Tokyo and in the Center City area of Philadelphia.

Wachman officially retired from Temple in 1983 and became honorary chancellor. He was also president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia from 1983 to 1989. In the 1990s, he was interim president at both Albright College, in Reading, Pa., and the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science, now Philadelphia University.

He led both the Pennsylvania Association of Colleges and Universities and the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, which distributes scholarships.

Marvin Wachman was born in Milwaukee, the son of Alex Wachman, an immigrant from Riga, Latvia. His mother was the former Ida Epstein, who was born near Minsk in what is now Belarus. Wachman earned bachelor's and master's degrees in history at Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Illinois.

In World War II, he served in Europe in the infantry as a sergeant, then resumed his academic career.

He was married to the former Adelina Schpok, who survives him, along with two daughters, Katie Marie Wachman and Lynn Allison Wachman.

Wachman, who attended Northwestern on a tennis scholarship, helped coach the tennis team when he taught at Colgate.

His memoir, "The Education of a University President," was published in 2005 by Temple University Press. He described the job as that of "running a small city."

-- New York Times