John 'Jack' Williamson passed away on October 16, 2017 at his mountain home near Idyllwild. He was 65 and had been healthy until August when he became ill from bile duct cancer. Jack was born December 5, 1952 and his parents moved around and finally settled in South Pasadena where he attended high school from 1967 to 1969.

Jack was very well read, interested in philosophy, religion and science, a brilliant writer and storyteller. He had a profound gift for language, a wry, ironic sense of humor, a taste for the bizarre, a wild imagination, and a vivid, pithy, hilarious view of the world. After graduating from SPHS, Jack earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics at UC Santa Cruz, then went on to study economics at Caltech. He taught for a while at McGill University in Canada, then returned to Caltech where he graduated with a PhD in economics. A good economist, Jack couldn't help noticing that businessmen can earn a lot more money than teachers, so he joined an economics consulting firm with some of his Caltech colleagues. He applied statistical and economic analysis to contentious questions, advising parties in lawsuits, sometimes in very controversial questions, including the location of high tension power lines in wilderness areas, damages caused by oil companies exploring in South America jungles, and assessing damages from the B.P. oil platform blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

Jack looked like a Bohemian, long hair, a scraggly beard, wearing mechanic's overalls. He loved old cars and machines, kept a 1953 MG sports car which he bought in high school and carefully restored to mint condition. He used to drive an old Morris to work. Once, driving on the Pasadena freeway, its steering wheel fell off in his hands. He just shoved it back in and kept on driving. To repair his old cars he studied metalworking and kept a garage and a house full of machine tools which he acquired when the aerospace industry was closing down, lathes, milling machines, welders, and so on. When he died he was working on a project restoring an old 1950s PowerWagon, a huge kind of four-wheel drive pick-up truck. Jack studied Zen Buddhism and practiced meditation with the Rinzai-Ji Zen Center for many years, where he sat on the board of directors. He loved dogs and kept a pit bull, Spot, who he rescued from the pound. There were four dogs in his house when he died including Beauty, who never left his side. Most of all Jack loved women, and they loved him too. He had three wives, Gail, Julie, and Lydee Scudder, the love of his life. He met Lydee in high school when they hung out at the Museum folk dance club on Fair Oaks below Colorado in Pasadena. Each married someone else but they stayed in touch, and got together when the new century turned. They married at the Zen Center and bought a beautiful house adjoining the national forest in an incredibly remote location up in the mountains. Lydee kept three horses, dogs, and did therapy work. Jack had his dogs, cars, and machines, and his consulting work. For years they lived a pretty romantic, Zen sort of life. Suddenly last year Jack passed away; four months later Lydee followed, of apparently unrelated illnesses.

Jack is survived by his sister Inez. We are delicate beings, and life can be fickle.

George Jennings '69