Thurston Womack

April 2, 1920 - October 27, 2017

Thurston Womack died in Marin County after a short illness. The son of Nellie Shelton and Devro Womack, he was born at home near Bowling Green, Kentucky, and came west with his family at an early age to settle in the San Joaquin Valley near Fresno, where he and his brothers and sisters—Eileen, Francis, Travis, Thixton, and Printise—grew up in Sultana and Dinuba.

Thurston attended UC Berkeley and Humboldt State College before WWII and during the war he served in the US Army as a Staff Sergeant in the Pacific Theater. He was assigned duty as a coxswain on a landing barge and was involved in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines. He was also stationed in New Guinea and Australia. After the war he finished his BA at Humboldt State and subsequently obtained a teaching position there. Using the GI Bill, he completed a Masters Degree at Stanford University and a PhD in Linguistics at Columbia University, and came to the English Department at San Francisco State University in 1954. He helped design the TESOL graduate program there and served as Chair of the English Department from 1980 to 1985 and then, until he retired in 1990, was head of the American Language Institute, which he had also helped establish in 1961. He taught in Tokyo, Japan from 1960 to 1962 as a Fulbright Exchange Scholar, and also taught in Taiwan and India. Two of his publications, co-authored with his late Japanese colleague, Shin-Ichi Miura, were “A Linguistic Approach to English” and “Writer’s Guide to English Composition Usage.”

After WWII Thurston married Helen Abigail Hartsook, whom he had met at Humboldt State in Arcata, California. They moved to Mill Valley, California in the mid-1950’s and raised three children there— Lynn Clauser , Kristin Womack , and Chris Womack. Thurston was preceded in death by Helen and Lynn, and is survived by his wife of 16 years, Charlotte Marks Cranmer of Walnut Creek, and her extended family. He is also survived by his daughter-inlaw, Angela Cerda-Gaitan, and son Chris Womack of Mill Valley; his daughter Kristin Womack and her husband, Ted Bakkila, of San Anselmo; his grandson Eric Clauser; his granddaughter Kristin Cerda-Womack; his nieces Bess Bair, Kathy Bellanca and Deanna Koobation; and nephews Steve Bair, Jeff Bair, Mark Bair, Kurt Hartsook, Donald Womack, Robert Womack, and Richard Womack.

Thurston was an enthusiastic backpacker and hiker. He climbed Mt. Whitney as a teenager, and later Mt. Fuji and Mt. Shasta. He spent many summers backpacking in the Marble Mountain Wilderness in Siskiyou County with friends and family, and often hiked on Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County. He fished for mountain trout in the Marbles and went poke-pole fishing for Monkeyfaced eels in the tide pools off Slide Ranch in Marin. He attended concerts frequently, loved to cook dishes from many cultures, enjoyed sharing a meal and a glass of wine with friends, read constantly, traveled extensively throughout the world, and is remembered by many for his friendship, warmth, intelligence and generosity.

All are invited to a memorial gathering for Thurston at 2 p.m. on Saturday, January 6, 2018, at St. Stephen’s Church, 3 Bay View Avenue, Belvedere, Ca.