Jacqueline Rorabeck Kasun Ph.D.

Jacqueline Rorabeck Kasun, Ph.D.

Jacqueline Rorabeck Kasun died on January 1, 2009 in Eureka, California, after a long illness. She is survived by her husband of 59 years, Lt. Col. (U. S. Army Ret.) Joseph Frank Kasun, three married children, daughter The Hon. Christine Kasun Moruza, daughter Audrey Kasun Moruza, and son Lt. Cdr. (U. S. Navy Ret.) Walter Kasun, as well as ten grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Jacqueline LaVerne Rorabeck was born in Los Angeles in 1924. Her mother died when Jacqueline was four months old. Her father’s parents raised her in Watts, moving to Alhambra when she was fourteen. At sixteen, she graduated from Alhambra High School, accepting a scholarship to the University of California at Los Angeles. She received her B.A., Phi Beta Kappa with Honors in Economics in February, 1945 from the University of California at Berkeley, having worked at Woolworth’s, Bullock’s, a photographer’s studio in Westwood, Hood Distributing Company in Covina, the Kaiser Permanente Shipyard #2 in Richmond, and for the University of California as a reader in economics.

Immediately upon graduation, she enlisted in the United States Army, and served until the fall of 1946 in a medical detachment in Camp Atterbury, Indiana. Upon leaving the WAC, she entered Columbia University, where she studied for two years, working as a graduate teaching assistant, earning a master’s degree, and passing the qualifying examinations for the Ph. D.

After leaving Columbia in 1947, she worked as a research economist for Standard Oil of New Jersey at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. In 1949 she returned to California to teach economics at Pomona College and start her Ph. D. dissertation. In 1950 she married Capt. Joseph F. Kasun, and started a research position for the Haynes Foundation in Los Angeles, which led to the book that became her Ph. D. dissertation. She finished the dissertation after five years, in minutes a day snatched between three children and a move across country. Her husband brought her the notice of her Ph. D. from Columbia University while she was in the hospital in Ft. Belvoir, Virginia in 1956 with their third baby, Walter.

Her writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Public Interest, and numerous other publications. Her book The War Against Population was published by Ignatius Press in 1988 and appeared in a second edition in 1999, and was later published in two foreign languages. It received an award for excellence from the American Library Association. She appeared on CBS “60 Minutes” in a 15 minute interview conducted by Mike Wallace.

Following her husband’s military career around the world, she held teaching positions at Pomona College, the University of Maryland in Heidelberg and Berlin, Germany, Park University in Park, Missouri, The University of Arizona, California State College at Fullerton, and Humboldt State University, where she was Emeritus Professor of Economics.

She wrote, “These dates and places cannot, of course, mean to anyone else what they mean to me-playing with my friends in the summer evenings in Watts, the San Gabriel mountains as they looked from our house in Alhambra, the pretty little creek that I crossed on my way to the U.C.L.A. campus, the stately oaks on the Berkeley campus, the clang of the shipyards, the horribly scarred young soldier who returned to Camp Atterbury from the war, the fun of dancing to “One O’Clock Jump” and “Tuxedo Junction” and “Hamp’s Boogie”, the great trees and the zoo in Central Park and the jewelry makers in Greenwich Village, my beautiful wedding on a sweltering August day in Claremont, California and the party under the oaks, the exaltation of bringing three babies into the world. Nor can these memories convey to anyone else my knowledge that the Lord and His angels have watched over me throughout my life.”

Friends are invited to attend a memorial service at Arcata First Baptist Church, 1700 Union Street, Arcata, CA, at 4:00 PM on Tuesday, January 6, 2009. Reception to follow. Interment will be in Arlington National Cemetery, Fort Myer, Virginia.

Donations, in lieu of flowers, may be made to the Pregnancy Care Center of the North Coast or Humboldt Pro-Life.

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