Kevin Starr | |
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| Born | Kevin Owen Starr (1940-09-03)September 3, 1940 San Francisco, California, US |
| Died | January 14, 2017(2017-01-14) (aged 76) San Francisco, California, US |
| Education | University of San Francisco (B.A. 1962); Harvard (M.S. 1965; PhD 1969); U.C. Berkeley (M.S. 1974) |
| Occupations | Historian, author, professor, librarian |
| Known for | Writings on California history |
| Spouse | Sheila Gordon (1963–his death) |
| Children | 2 |
| Awards | California Hall of Fame; National Humanities Medal; Los Angeles Times Book Prize |
Kevin Owen Starr (September 3, 1940 – January 14, 2017) was an Americanhistorian andCalifornia's state librarian, best known for his multi-volume series on thehistory of California, collectively called "Americans and the California Dream."
After an impoverished childhood, he received degrees from various universities where he studied history and literature. Beginning in 1973, Starr wrote nine books on the history of California during his career, along with being professor or visiting lecturer at numerous California universities. From 1989 until his death in 2017, he was a professor at theUniversity of Southern California.
From 1994 to 2004 Starr was California's state librarian. He continued writing California history throughout his career, receiving aGuggenheim Fellowship, membership in theSociety of American Historians, and the Gold Medal of theCommonwealth Club of California. In 2006 he was presented aNational Humanities Medal from PresidentGeorge W. Bush for his work as a scholar and historian, and in 2010 was inducted into the California Hall of Fame.
Kevin Starr was born on September 3, 1940, inSan Francisco, to Owen Starr, a machinist, and Marian Starr (née Collins), a bank teller. He was a seventh generation Californian.[1]
Starr's parents divorced when he was a child. When he was six his mother had a nervous breakdown, after which Starr and his younger brother, James, were placed in a Roman Catholic orphanage inUkiah. Five years later, he and his brother were reunited with their mother, where they lived in apublic housing project inSan Francisco, while they subsisted on welfare. He attendedSt. Boniface School in theTenderloin neighborhood.[2]
He later enrolled in theUniversity of San Francisco, a Jesuit institution, where he graduated with aBachelor of Arts degree in English in 1962. At the school, he was editor ofThe Foghorn, the school newspaper.[3] After graduation he was commissioned as an armor officer in theUnited States Army. He served for two years as a lieutenant with the 4th Battalion,68th Armor Regiment, first as a platoon leader and then as the Assistant S-1. The 4/68 Armor Bn was assigned to the 3rd Brigade,8th Infantry Division and was located atColeman Barracks near Mannheim in West Germany. Upon release from the service, Starr enteredHarvard University, earning anM.A. in English in 1965 and aPh.D. in the discipline (specializing inAmerican literature) in 1969. He subsequently launched his teaching career at Harvard as an assistant (and later associate) professor of English from 1969 to 1973 before returning to California.[4]
In 1973, he became an aide and speechwriter to San Francisco mayorJoseph Alioto.[3] He was also appointed city librarian, during which time he earned a master's degree inlibrary science from theUniversity of California, Berkeley, in 1974.[3] He also did post-doctoral work at theGraduate Theological Union in Berkeley.[4]
From 1976 to 1983, Starr wrote a column for theSan Francisco Examiner. In one column, he described himself as “a conservative neo-Thomist Roman Catholic with Platonist leanings and occasional temptations towards anarchy.” He opposed what he called San Francisco's "rigid inquisitorial orthodoxy," which he identified with the city's Democratic leadership, and defended Proposition 13, which capped increases in property tax rates. After Patricia Hearst was abducted by the Symbionese Liberation Army, denounced her parents, and participated in the SLA's bank robberies, Starr described Hearst, whose father was president of theSan Francisco Examiner, as "a political prisoner of the politics of class resentment." In one speech, San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk referred to Starr as a bigot and grouped him with anti-gay activists. After leaving theExaminer and running unsuccessfully for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Starr tempered his political views and refashioned his public persona.[5]
Beginning in 1973, Starr wrote nine books on the history of California, eight of which comprise hisAmericans and the California Dream series.[6] It was at Harvard that he first became inspired to write about California's history, after browsing through their collection of books about California and the Pacific Coast.[3] He explained the impact those books had on him:
All of a sudden I saw all these California books: diaries, memoirs, journals, histories, bibliographies. And a kind of enchantment overtook me, a kind of beguilement, a kind of reverie, definitely a physical reaction in the days that followed. As I look back on it psychologically, I see that I’d made an absolutely powerful connection between California and my interior landscape.[3]
From 1974 to 1989 he was professor or visiting lecturer at numerous California universities, includingUC Berkeley,University of Southern California,[1]UC Davis,UC Riverside,Santa Clara University, the University of San Francisco, andStanford University. He was also a columnist for theSan Francisco Examiner[2] and served as the Vatican correspondent forHearst Newspapers, covering the elections of PopesJohn Paul I andJohn Paul II in 1978.[7]
Kevin Starr chronicled the history of California as no one else. He captured the spirit of our state and brought to life the characters and personalities that made the California story. His vision, like California itself, was bigger than life.
In 1989 Starr became Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at theUniversity of Southern California, he then became Professor of History, and he was designated University Professor in 1998.[8]Starr sometimes taught at the USC State Capital Center inSacramento, California.[9]
Starr was appointed byGovernor Pete Wilson to serve as California's state librarian, a post he managed from 1994 to 2004, at which timeGovernorArnold Schwarzenegger named him State LibrarianEmeritus.[4] Starr oversaw the allocation of $350 million in local library construction money after voters approved a statewide library borrowing measure in 2000.[1] As a child, Starr had to read the newspaper to his visually impaired father, an experience which led him to create a statewide service that allowedvisually impaired people to call a phone number to connect with someone who would read the news to them.[1]
California state librarian Greg Lucas calls Starr "truly, one of a kind. No other historian has been able to captureCalifornia's exceptionalism, its vitality and its promise in such detail and yet invest it with the immediacy and excitement of a page-turner novel."[1] Starr's library assistant, Mattie Taormina, notes that "Starr made you excited to be a Californian because you were going to create the future California."[1]
Starr is the author of the multi-volume history of California collectively entitled "Americans and the California Dream". The first volume in the series,Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915 was published in 1973. The final volume, entitledGolden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, covers the period from 1950 to 1963 and won the 2009Los Angeles TimesBook Prize for history.[10]
His writing won him aGuggenheim Fellowship, membership in the Society of American Historians, and the Gold Medal of theCommonwealth Club of California.[3]
In 2006, Starr was made a member of the College of Fellows of theDominican School of Philosophy and Theology inBerkeley, California. In 2006 he was presented aNational Humanities Medal from PresidentGeorge W. Bush for his work as a scholar and historian.[3][11] And in 2010, GovernorArnold Schwarzenegger andMaria Shriver inducted Starr into theCalifornia Hall of Fame.[1]
ComposerJohn Adams was inspired by the "Dream" series of books to write the pieceCity Noir in 2009.[12] Starr received The Robert Kirsch Award by theLos Angeles Times as part of the 2012Los Angeles Times Book Prizes.[13]
Starr died of aheart attack in San Francisco on January 14, 2017.[2]
