Ray Colvig, public information officer for the University of California, Berkeley, through four decades, including the Free Speech Movement and Civil Rights and Vietnam protests of the 1960s, died March 4 of sudden heart problems. He was 80.
Colvig |
Colvig retired in 1991 capping four decades as spokesman for the university, starting in 1964.
“He was a firm believer in telling the whole story truthfully and in a timely fashion. ‘Spin’ was not in his vocabulary,” said John Cummins, who worked with Colvin as chief of staff to four UC Berkeley chancellors. “For that, he had the total respect of the media and always put Berkeley’s best foot forward.”
Colvig in a 1984 interview noted how the Free Speech Movement created a “trenches atmosphere” in working with the press at the time.
"Newsmen began to accept the fact that the FSM did have a point, and that the university was behind the times in not allowing students the chance to take part in some politics on campus,” he said. “And the university gradually began to see that it wasn't going to be giving up the whole store to make some modest changes of its rules."
Remembering anti-war protests which turned violent in the early 1970s, Colvig told the Associated Press in 1999 he remembered reporters coming into the public affairs office bleeding from birdshot wounds and filing their stories "in true war-correspondent fashion."
Colvig penned a memoir about the 1960s and the school’s first chancellor, Clark Kerr, “Turning Points and Ironies.”
Colvig was an agricultural news writer in the University of California system after graduating from UC Berkeley and earning a master’s in English from Cornell Univ. He joined UC Berkeley’s PR office in 1959 and was named manager in 1964.
After retiring, he also collaborated with former chancellor Glenn Seaborg in writing “Chancellor at Berkeley” and “Roses from the ashes: breakup and rebirth in Pacific Coast intercollegiate athletics.”
A founder of the Northern California Science Writers Association, Colvig is survived by two sons, a daughter and seven grandchildren.
The school said a memorial service is being planned.