California Historian Kevin Starr Dies At 76
California’s former State Librarian Kevin Starr died Saturday at the age of 76. The author of “Americans and the California Dream,” Starr was the historian behind a series of social, cultural and political histories of the Golden State.
A professor of history at the University of Southern California (USC), Starr died of a heart attack at a hospital in San Francisco, his wife Sheila Starr reportedly said Sunday.
“Kevin Starr chronicled the history of California as no one else,” the state’s Gov. Jerry Brown said in a statement. “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.”
Born on Sept. 3, 1940, Starr was a fourth-generation San Francisco native who was raised in a Catholic orphanage. He graduated from the University of San Francisco in 1962 and served in the U.S. Army. Starr earned his Ph.D. in American literature at Harvard University and went on to teach at a number of colleges.
The accomplished scholar was appointed state librarian by Gov. Pete Wilson in 1994 and served till 2004 under Gov. Gray Davis and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — who named Starr the State Librarian Emeritus.
Starr received the National Humanities Medal in 2006.
“He was the greatest historian Los Angeles and California ever had and ever will have,” former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan — whose book club boasted of Starr as one of its original members, told Los Angeles Times.
“Kevin wrote ‘til the day he died. He was a productive and indefatigable scholar and the greatest historian of California,” longtime friend and fellow USC professor Dana Gioia told the Associated Press. “He was brilliant, jovial, kind and amusing. He was fantastically good company. People who knew him held him in enormous affection because any situation was always better if he was around.”
Starr is survived by his wife, Sheila Starr, daughters — Jessica Starr and Marian Starr Imperatore — and seven grandchildren.
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