WILLIAM F. ALLEWELT MAY 29, 1926 - OCT 15, 2010

Bill and Jean Allewelt

William F. (Bill) Allewelt died October 15, 2010 in Davis, where he had made his home since 1994.

He was born in Sacramento May 29, 1926, to William Sr. and the former Alta Jane Clapp. He entered the Army Air Corps following graduation from C.K. McClatchy High School. WW II ended before he could complete aviation cadet training, and the GI Bill brought him to UC Davis. At Davis he served in student government for six of his seven semesters on campus, first as editor of the Cal Aggie newspaper and then as student body president.

In 1949, he married his deeply loved life companion, Jean Mitchell of San Francisco. The couple made their first home in Berkeley where he completed his degree in agricultural economics at UC Berkeley. Their following five years were in southern California where he served with federal marketing orders for Oranges and Walnuts. In 1955, he joined Turlock Cooperative Growers, a canning cooperative in Modesto, and became its General Manager just weeks after arriving. In 1963, TCG merged with a companion cooperative to form Tri Valley Growers, headquartered in San Francisco. He served first as its General Manager and later as chief executive officer from 1966 until retiring in 1985. During his tenure TVG grew to become the state's largest canning firm with operations exclusively in California. The San Francisco Business Times named him as one of the 100 most influential business people of the Bay Area's 20th Century.

Shortly after retiring, he was engaged as interim CEO by Sun-Diamond Growers of California to lead that cooperative's recovery from a near disastrous setback caused by faulted accounting. Sun-Diamond managed the businesses of Diamond Walnut Growers, Hazelnut Growers of Oregon, Sun-Maid Growers, Sunsweet Growers and Valley Fig Growers. After reestablishing Sun-Diamond's financial integrity, he presided over a reorganization that returned its cooperatives to operating independence. Thereafter he served as a board member at Diamond Walnut Growers until it became a publicly owned company in 2006. In 1988, he was elected a founding board member of CoBank, headquartered in Denver and formed by merger of former regional banks for cooperatives of the Farm Credit System. He retired in 1996 as its vice chair.

Numerous involvements in community and industry affairs commenced with election in 1960 as the youngest chair ever to serve the Canners League of California, now the League of California Food Processors. The following year he was named Foreman of the Stanislaus County Grand Jury. After relocating to San Francisco he served on the board of that city's Boys and Girls Club until 1985.

Upon moving to Davis, he soon joined the board of Yolo Hospice, retiring as its vice president in 2003. His compelling attachments to UC Davis were expressed during career years advocating the canning industry's financial support of vital research in its Food Sciences Department. Later he served full tenures on the board of the Cal Aggie Alumni Association and as a trustee of the UC Davis Foundation. He also chaired the major gifts committee funding the UC Davis Alumni and Visitors Center.

In 1985, he was appointed a charter member of the advisory board to the UC Agricultural Issues Center where he served as its chair until electing to step down in 2000 to serve as its vice chair until fully retiring in 2007.

In 1991 Allewelt was named by the chief executives of the University of California and California State University systems to chair a commission of academicians and industry representatives charged to recommend means to preserve the quality and effectiveness of their respective agricultural programs despite greatly reduced state funding. The commission's report was published two years later, pointedly urging top officers ofthe two systems to proactively facilitate cooperation and collaboration between the two programs to enhance their effectiveness.

The Allewelts are charter members of the UC Davis Chancellor's Club and are benefactors of the UC Davis Alumni and Visitors Center, the UC Agricultural Issues Center, the Mondavi Performing Arts Center, the UC Berkeley Library and Botanical Garden, and scholarships with the UC Davis Graduate School of Management and UC Davis Medical School. The latter is a memorial to their son, Thomas Kurt Allewelt, who predeceased him at age 43 in 2005.

Bill loved all sports and the outdoors and was passionately attached to fishing. He took great pleasure from having introduced his son, sons-in-law and grandsons to the sport, imbuing them with shared passions for time spent on western trout streams or salmon fishing in Alaskan waters. He is survived by his wife of 61 years, Jean, and their beloved daughters: Susan Allewelt Rosenberg of Sacramento, her husband Chuck, grandsons Eric and Nathan and great- grandsons Austin and Colin; Melanie Allewelt Hoff of Ann Arbor, her husband Curtis and grandchildren Tyler and Emily; and Elizabeth Allewelt Smith of Davis, her husband Clifford and grandsons Brian, Cameron and Andrew.