Kenneth E. North

Kenneth E. North A Moraga resident and longtime Oakland police officer who later worked as a special investigator for the California Department of Corrections, died of pneumonia Sunday at Bruns House hospice in Alamo. He was 88. A native of Eureka, North served in the Army Infantry in France and Germany during WWII, a member of the Texas Division, known as the Fighting 36th. Ken joined the Oakland Police Department in 1943. He drove the police ambulance, then walked a beat. Eventually he rose to the rank of inspector and worked armed robbery until he retired in 1972. Then he became a special investigator in the S.F. office of the California State Department of Corporations retiring as a supervising special investigator in 1991. North married his high school sweetheart, Phyllis Chadbourne Hughes, in Eureka in 1940; they divorced in the late 1960s. In 1971, he married Jeanne Calegaris Lee, who died in 2000. Ken loved thoroughbred horseracing. He prided himself on his handicapping skills, especially when the racetrack was muddy and unpredictable. Ken loved animals, and was seen most mornings after Jeanne died with their little white dog Raggs in the front seat driving to breakfast. He is surived by two daughters, Sandra North of Moraga and Susan North of Sacramento; two stepsons, Terrance Alan Lee of Carmichael and M. Steven Lee of New Jersey; two granddaughters and one great-grandson. Interment will be at Sacramento Valley National Cemetery in Dixon. The family requests that donations in his memory go to the Hospice of the East Bay.