Frank C. Child, an early leader of the UC Davis economics department and a visionary civic activist who led efforts to establish the city of Davis' signature bikeway system – the nation's first – died Friday. He was 86.
The cause was congestive heart failure, said his son, Bill Child. Frank Child died in Santa Cruz, where he retired as dean of social sciences at University of California, Santa Cruz.
Mr. Child joined UC Davis in 1962 and became the second chairman of the economics department the following year. He led the program until 1980 from a small academic unit "to a pretty medium-size department in which all the disciplines and schools of thought were represented," said retired economics Professor Andrzej Brzeski. "He was very well respected."
Mr. Child arrived in Davis after living for four months in the Netherlands, where bicycles were the dominant transportation mode. Eyeing the city's flat terrain, he and his wife, Eve, launched a grass-roots effort in 1964 to establish a system of bicycle lanes on Davis streets.
The couple organized a core group of citizens who lobbied, collected petition signatures and backed successful City Council candidates who supported bike lanes. In 1966, the Davis council voted to create the city's first bike lane, spawning a national transportation movement.
"All the bike lanes in the United States today are descendants of what started in Davis," said Ted Buehler, a graduate student at the UC Davis Institute for Transportation Studies.
The action delighted Mr. Child, who sold his second car and bought six bicycles for his family to get around Davis. He also helped persuade UC Davis Chancellor Emil Mrak to close large portions of the campus to automobile traffic to promote cycling.
"My father had a three-speed Raleigh with a wire basket for his briefcase on the handlebars that he rode for years," Bill Child said.
Frank Clayton Child was born in 1921 and grew up in Salt Lake City. He was one of four children raised by a homemaker and a brick mason who built many Mormon churches in Salt Lake City, Australia and New Zealand. An excellent student, he earned a bachelor's degree in accounting at age 19 from the University of Utah on the eve of World War II.
He entered the Army as a lieutenant in 1942 and served with the 9th Armored Division in Europe, earning a Bronze Star for bravery. He was discharged as a captain in 1945 and met a USO performer, Eve Clough, in Marseille, France.
They dated briefly before going separate ways but agreed to meet a year later under the clock at the famed Astor Bar in New York if they wanted to pursue a relationship. Although she was 20 minutes late, the couple reunited at the appointed place, married in 1948 and remained together until her death last year.
After the war, Mr. Child earned a master's degree from the University of Utah and a doctorate in economics from Stanford University. He taught at Williams College, Pomona College and Michigan State University before he was offered a position as economic adviser to the South Vietnamese government in 1958.
He and his wife moved with their four children to Saigon until 1960, when a coup attempt forced them to flee. The family lived in the Netherlands, traveled across Europe in a VW Beetle and returned to California, where he taught at Stanford before joining UC Davis. He served as dean of the school of social services at UC Santa Cruz from 1983 to 1987.
Mr. Child was an early critic of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam and spoke out in national journals and public forums. In private, he was a modest, unassuming man who enjoyed art, opera, world travel and spending time with his family.
"He was the one who got up in the morning, got us kids out of bed and made breakfast for us so his wife could sleep in," Bill Child said. "A man who did that in the 1960s was pretty rare."
Call The Bee's Robert D. Dávila, (916) 321-1077.
