Dr. John A. Dearien

DR. JOHN A. DEARIEN Passed away October 21, 2005 at St. Vincent Hospital in Little Rock, surrounded by his family, after a ten-month battle with stomach cancer. He was born in San Diego on June 23, 1941. The family returned to Mt. View, AR in the fall of 1945 when he was four. After graduation from Mt. View High School in 1959, he earned a Bachelors and a Masters in Civil Engineering from the Univ. of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and a Ph.D. from the Univ. of Missouri in Columbia in 1968. He married there and after graduation relocated his family to Idaho Falls, ID, where he worked for the Department of Energy for thirty years, having spearheaded such projects as RELAP, the U.S. Space Reactor effort, the DOE Electric Vehicle Program, the Three Mile Island clean-up, among many others. His invention and lifelong dream, CyberTran, a super-efficient computer-controlled light rail public transportation system, which has garnered publicity in international scientific journals and accolades from transportation experts, is carried on by the team he built at their Alameda, CA laboratory. He married Laurence Coint-Bavarot on January 6, 1990 in Paris, France. After retirement from the DOE, he and Laurence returned to Mt. View in 1999, where he continued work on CyberTran and on engineering projects throughout Stone County through his company, Dearien Engineering. John is preceded in death by his father, John Astor Dearien, Sr., and is survived by his mother, Muriel; his wife, Laurence; his sisters, Virginia Lea Dearien Schmidt (Ron), Carolyn Dearien Lovett (Tom), Marilyn Dearien Barton (David); sons, Jay (Megumi) Fujioka, Jason (Christy); daughter, Jenny Dearien Novak (Jay); four grandsons, Cameron James, Eric Orcutt and Hugo Fujioka Dearien and Ben Jacob Novak, 3 nephews, Jonathan Schmidt, Wesley Schmidt and Nathan Barton. John is remembered lovingly by his wife as her soul mate, by his children as adventurous, fun-loving and humorous, by his mother as her bright shining star, by his sisters as the big brother who was brighter than bright, by his brothers-in-law as a real brother, by his classmates, friends and co-workers as brilliant and a down-to-earth regular guy, by Phedra, Violaine and Sean as a loving and supportive stepfather, and by Nicolai, Pascal, Iggy and Macy as "Papy John." Memorial services were held at 2 p.m., October 25th at First United Methodist Church in Mt. View. Burial followed at Mt. View Historical Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the John Dearien Memorial Fund at the Stone County Medical Center Development Campaign, P.O. Box 510, Mt. View, AR. 72560. John and Laurence experienced many days of loving care there.