Name: Celebration of Life for Prof. Donald Paul GAVER Jr.
Start: 2018-03-31T18:00:00.000Z
Location: Unitarian Universalist Church of the Monterey Peninsula

February 16, 1926 ~ February 11, 2018 Resident of Carmel and Monterey, CA Professor Donald Paul Gaver, Jr., an internationally noted mathematician specializing in statistics and operations research, died Sunday February 11, 2018 at his home in Monterey. Born in St. Paul, MN to Donald Paul Gaver and Dorothea Haman Gaver. Don graduated from the St. Paul Academy and served in the US Navy, 1944 to 1946. He attended MIT, obtaining BS and MS degrees in Mathematics. Subsequently he earned a PhD in Mathematics at Princeton University. Don met Frances Rouse Gaver while he was at MIT and she was a student at Wellesley College. They graduated in 1950 and married in 1953 before moving to Princeton together. His early professional career spanned the US Navy's Operations Evaluation Group, Westinghouse Research Labs and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1970 he moved to California to become Professor of Operations Research at the Naval Postgraduate School. He and Fran settled in Carmel Valley for almost forty-five years. Professor Gaver was named Distinguished Professor of the Naval Postgraduate School in 1983. Over the next decades his contributions were recognized with numerous professional honors, including the US Navy Distinguished Civilian Service Medal awarded by the Secretary of the Navy. He was perhaps most proud of his election as a Member of the National Academy of Engineering. Don and Fran loved traveling, and made many trips to Europe, Asia and Australia. At home, Don was known as a loyal, gregarious, and often mischievous friend and host. Don is survived by his wife Fran, three children: Elizabeth Gaver (husband Hans-Hinrich Thedens, son Mattias), Donald Paul Gaver III (wife Bernice Kaufman, daughters Manya and Elena), and William Gaver (wife Anne Schlottmann, daughters Elli and Charlie), as well as by his sister Nancy Priedeman, niece Katharine Priedeman White, nephew Bill Priedeman, and six grand-nephews and grand-nieces, and one great-grand-niece. Don's life will be celebrated on Saturday, March 31 at 1pm at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Monterey Peninsula.

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Published by Pioneer Press on Feb. 25, 2018.

Memories and Condolences
for Donald GAVER

Sponsored by St Paul Pioneer Press.

2 Entries

Thomas Schmidt-Melchiors

March 30, 2020

With the deepest regrets I have come to know only today that Donald P. Gaver Jr. has passed away already two years ago.
Our deep sympathy is with his beloved ones.
I happened to meet Don as a young master graduate doing his PhD work at the University of the Federal Armed Forces, Hamburg, Germany, a sister university of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. I was fortunate to become part of an international scientific community not only but also in the US. Papers from Kozin and Bogdanoff, discussions at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, ASME conferences, but also at the NPGS finally led me to my PhD thesis topic. And although Don and I had only a couple of joint discussions on the topic area I still remember that I felt acknowledged and encouraged afterwards. So he obviously had the gift to stimulate these scientific aspirations. Looking from hindsight I sincerely like to thank him belatedly for that.
I had the privilege to stay in his house during my visit in 1987 and my wife and I had the pleasure to stay a few days in his garden house on our honeymoon trip in 1989 whilst Don had a short stay at our home when he came to Hamburg in 1986. Fran and Don were the kindest and most warm welcoming hosts. My wife Philo and I are very glad that we could meet both briefly when we did our honeymoon revival trip to the US after 20 years showing our children this gorgeous country and its friendly people.
So Don left a mark on the human side as well as on the scientific side.
We will certainly not forget Don and remember him as a distant but close to our hearts friend.

Thomas and Philomena Melchiors (M.D.)

Larry Wein

March 3, 2018

To Don's family,

I am so sorry to hear about Don's passing. He was truly a scholar and a gentleman. Although most of us in academia naturally gravitate to people our own age, I always sought out Don (who is 30 years my senior) at the annual INFORMS conferences. When we discussed math problems, he invariably would point out some old work (by him or others) from the 50s or 60s that I was unaware of. But I mostly just enjoyed his company. He had such a dry and unique and wonderful sense of humor, and was a great story teller. He also must have been a great father (and presumably grandfather). At one INFORMS conference in the mid-1990s in New Orleans, I went out to dinner with Don and one of his sons and a few other people, and I was struck by the warmth and playfulness of his relationship with his son. I also was fortunate to be able to celebrate with Don when he was elected into the National Academy of Engineering, which was a very memorable weekend.

I just wanted to let you know that Don was a great guy and he will be sorely missed.

Larry Wein

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