Obituary for Roscoe E. “Rocky” Peithman

Roscoe E. “Rocky” Peithman died unexpectedly, but peacefully, on February 18, 2015, one week before his 102^nd birthday.

A resident of McKinleyville, California, he was born on the family farm in Hoyleton Township, Illinois, on February 26. 1913, son of Edward H. and Sarah Jane Peithman.

He attended the one-room country school nearby and completed high school in Centralia, Illinois. He attended Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, receiving a B.S. with a major in physics in 1935. While teaching in local high schools, he continued graduate studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana, receiving his M.S. in 1939.

In 1942, he was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Navy, serving as a Naval Air Navigator, and as an air navigation instructor for the Pacific Theater of Operations.

He joined the faculty of then Humboldt State College in 1946, retiring in 1977 as a Professor of Physics. He took a leave of absence from 1953 to 1955 to study at Oregon State University, where he received his doctorate. His studies in atmospheric physics and electronic instrumentation at Oregon State led to further study at the University of Illinois in 1964, and at Colorado State University in 1976.

Beginning in 1957, he served as Chairman of the Division of Natural Sciences, then as Chairman of the Division of Physical Sciences until 1969, when he was named Dean of the School of Sciences at HSU.

During the work on the Master Plan for Higher Education in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Dr. Peithman served as a faculty representative from Humboldt State. He also was one of the two academic senators from Humboldt when the Academic Senate of the California State Colleges was formed in 1961, serving in this capacity from 1961 to 1966.

He remained active in the Naval Reserve, and was a member of several reserve units in California and Oregon. This included serving as commanding officer of the Naval Reserve Officers School in Eureka. Summer duty involved navigator duty in flights to Japan and the Pacific Islands. He retired as a Lieutenant Commander, USNR, in 1973.

A lifelong amateur radio operator, he held the extra class FCC Amateur license, W6BME, and was involved in emergency communications during floods in Northern California in the 1950s and 60s.

In recent years he became active in studying weather data obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather satellites. This required assembling a receiving station and working with specialized software for receiving the data. The study of this weather data became a significant part of his later retirement years, including a weather website that he maintained well past his 101^st birthday.

He is survived by his son, Stephen Peithman, of Davis; two granddaughters, Darcy Fusch of Bellingham, Washington, and Lisa Krause, of Seattle, Washington; great-granddaughter Emma Krause; and sister Virginia Lydon, of St. Louis, Missouri. His wife, Laura Jane Davenport Peithman, and daughter Ann Peithman Fusch predeceased him.