Mario Edgar Deas

1936 - 2024

On Monday, July 1, 2024, Edgar Deas died at home, surrounded by his family. He was 88 years old when, after a decades long struggle with Parkinson's Disease, complications finally took him. Born in Cuba in February of 1936 to Mario Deas and Dora (Caballero), he was christened Mario Edgar Yran Deas but always went by Edgar.

The family moved from Cuba to Nevada for a brief time when Edgar was 7, and his father was asked to help build a refining plant at a manganese mine to support the war effort. In the mid 1940s, shortly after the plant was operational, they moved to the San Francisco Bay Area.
In the early 1950s, the family relocated to Willits, California, where Edgar met Judith (Judy) Owen while attending Willits High School. From that point on, they were an inseparable team.
In 1955, shortly after moving to Healdsburg, Edgar and his father, Mario, founded E&M Electric, an electric motor repair company. They primarily serviced the lumber industry, which dominated the local economy at the time. E&M grew to include designing and installing electrical and control systems in many of the lumber mills that dotted the North Coast.

As the business grew, so did the family. Edgar and Judy married in August of 1956 and over the next decade had four sons, who all grew up here, attended Healdsburg schools and "dragged" their very willing parents to all their school, club, and sporting events.

Supporting a family was just a part of the picture. Edgar was also involved in the Healdsburg community at many levels. He was a proud Kiwanian, served on the City Council, supported sports and educational activities, and was available to a wide range of friends and family to give advice and counsel. Along the way, Edgar and a group of local business leaders started a regional bank and Edgar was a board member and served a term as chairman of the board. Today that bank is part of the Bank of Marin. For almost seventy years, Healdsburg was his home. He loved it and it loved him.

The business Edgar co-founded with his father has evolved but continues to deliver products and services with the same professionalism, pride, and integrity: attributes they instilled in the organization and the family. Today, there are third and fourth generation family members steering the company into the future and keeping that legacy alive.

Edgar is survived by Judy, his wife of nearly 68 years, all his sons, Steve (Jane), Bruce (Suzel), Paul (Pamela) and Mike (Jeaneen), twelve grandchildren and three great-grandchildren as well as his sisters, Marta (Pete) Peterson, Ileana (Jack) Gaskins, and Linda (Dennis) McGinness, and their children.

Edgar's counsel will be missed, as will his sense of humor and his dedication to everything he loved: his community and his family, above all.

A memorial service to celebrate Edgar's life is planned for August 18, 2024 at 456 Hidden Acres Road at 3:00pm. Due to limited parking, please carpool, if you can. There was a private inurnment at Oak Mound Cemetery.
In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to one of these charities:
The Parkinson's Support Group of Sonoma County
PSCSG, % Peter Karp, President, 2341 Alvarado Ave Santa Rosa, CA 95401 or
Healdsburg Kiwanis, https://www.healdsburgkiwanis.org/donate.html or
Healdsburg Museum and Historical Society, https://www.healdsburgmuseum.org/donate.