The Memorial Wall

Sister Joan Jensen Peterson, wife of Elder Wayne S. Peterson, died Monday, Feb. 12, 2024, in Salt Lake City after enduring the effects of Parkinson’s disease. She was 82.

She served as a leader of the California Oakland Mission from 1985 to 1988, alongside her husband during his call as a General Authority Seventy from 2001 to 2007 and then as matron of the Nauvoo Illinois Temple from 2007 to 2010. The Petersons also served together over the Family and Church History Headquarters Mission for two years.

“Joan lived a life of service and sacrifice and exemplified the pure love of Christ. Throughout her life, she met challenges with trust in the Lord and faith in Him,” her obituary stated.

Joan Alice Jensen was born on May 11, 1941, the second of six children of Ronald Victor Jensen and Delores Schiess Jensen. Growing up on a dairy farm in Hyrum, Utah, she enjoyed taking care of the animals, riding horses and helping to care for her younger siblings. 

After graduating from South Cache High School, she attended Utah State University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in early childhood development and elementary education. While attending a dance, she met Wayne Peterson. She remarked to a friend, “Now, he would be nice to marry.”

They wrote to one another while Elder Peterson served a full-time mission to Australia and then continued their courtship upon his return. They were married in the Logan Utah Temple on July 20, 1962. The Petersons welcomed six children to their home: four daughters and two sons.

Blessed with a soprano voice, Sister Peterson loved to sing, read, play tennis, ski and cook. With her knowledge of childhood development, she enjoyed volunteering in many classrooms and served on the PTA board. She also served on the board of “Love Lights the Way” for the Cottonwood Healthcare Foundation and on the board for the Utah Governor’s Mansion Foundation.

Through the years, she served as a stake Relief Society counselor, and as a ward Relief Society president, Young Women counselor, Primary president and teacher. Wherever she served, she led in a gentle and loving way, her obituary noted.

She is survived by her husband of close to 62 years, Wayne Skeen Peterson; her children: Linda (David), Jill (Richard), Judith (Jim), David (Marcia), Kathryn (Mike), and Paul (Emily); her siblings Jon, Rosemary and Maureen; 25 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her parents and two brothers, Ronald and Jeffrey, and one granddaughter, Ashley Peterson.

Marianne Dunn Wofford died on Saturday, Jan. 20, 2024, after a brave battle with Parkinson's disease.

A loving Granny to Beck and Keane, a steadfast friend and a businesswoman of integrity, she loved to cook and entertain. Her homes reflected her unique taste and love of colorful, lively artwork. Likewise, her gardens were full of texture and color, providing visitors relaxing warm surroundings in which to commune.

Marianne was born in Searcy, Ark., on Dec. 19, 1949, the sixth of seven children. She attended college at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. After marrying, she relocated to San Antonio, where she lived for 14 years and served as a bank officer at Alamo National Bank. In 1984, she moved to Kerrville, Texas, and received her bachelor's degree in business at Schreiner College. While studying there, she also worked as an alumni liaison for the Hill Country College Fund.

She spent the next 22 years as an investment advisor with A.G. Edwards and Morgan Stanley before opening her own Ameriprise Financial office (Collum, Wofford and Associates) with Dawn Collum in 2012. She took great pleasure and care in helping her clients plan their financial futures.

Marianne believed in serving her community and did so on numerous boards and committees, most significant of which was fundraising for the Dietert Center and co-chairing the Hill Country College Fund. She was also the first woman president of the Rotary Club of Kerrville, and served as an elder at First Presbyterian Church.

After being diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2014, Marianne, as was typical, found a way to turn a negative into a positive by helping others. With help from a few close friends and support from Peterson Regional Medical Center, she set about creating a Parkinson's support group. Its monthly attendance quickly grew and continues to provide information and support to patients and caregivers. While servicing on the support group board, she helped bring to Kerrville the beneficial Parkinson's therapy programs Big and Loud and Rock Steady Boxing. She received an award for this work from the San Antonio Parkinson's Association.

Marianne was preceded in death by her parents, O.L. Dunn and Blyss Gentry Dunn; as well as brothers, Gentry Owen Dunn, Danny Lane Dunn and Michael Duane Dunn; and sisters, Carolyn Blyss Dunn Householder, Pamela Jean Dunn Griffin and Rita Dunn Sultan. As adults, she and her sisters took "Sisters' Trips" and had so much fun that their brothers decided they would travel along as well.

She is survived by her son, Bryan David Wofford, his wife, Erin Mosty Wofford, and her beloved grandsons, Beck Scott Wofford and Keane Emmet Wofford, all of Center Point, Texas. She is also survived by many nieces and nephews, all who brought great joy to her life. She was affectionately known as "Granny" to many great-nieces and -nephews.

Marianne unfailingly touched lives with her kind spirit and is leaving many loved ones and friends to honor her life.

Margaret “Peggy” Rich, of Duluth, passed away peacefully on Wednesday, January 17, 2024 surrounded by her family.

Peggy was born in Duluth on June 25, 1926 to Jasper and Margaret Barncard. She was the first woman to graduate with a dual degree in Physics and Chemistry from the University of Minnesota. She received an offer to attend Columbia University on a Fellowship. She was not able to attend, however, and later graduated with a Masters Degree in Education from the University of Minnesota, Duluth. She spent her educational career in a variety of teaching and administrative roles within the Duluth Public Schools. She particularly enjoyed working with students who had special needs. Her last position was working with the Teen-Parent Program where she developed strategies, particularly around math, that would prepare and empower young moms with the life skills they needed to go forward.

She married Joseph Rich on July 9, 1947 and raised 3 children. Together, they shared many memories at the family cabin on Rose Lake and through their extensive travels throughout the world. Her love and support for Joe was steadfast during his 28-year battle with Parkinson’s prior to his death in 2012.

Peggy was preceded in death by her husband, Joe, sister Joanne, her parents and two grandchildren.

She is survived by her daughter, Sue (Steve) Slotness; twin sons, Jim F. (Joan) and John A. (Brenda); six grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.

Gerald Levin, the visionary executive in the early days of HBO whose career will be forever marred after he orchestrated the merger of Time Warner and AOL, a debacle that destroyed the value of employees’ retirement accounts and culminated in a historic $100 billion write-down, has died. He was 84.

Levin died Wednesday in a hospital, his grandchild Jake Maia Arlow told The New York Times. He had battled Parkinson’s disease since being diagnosed in 2006 and lived most recently in Long Beach, California.

Levin was an attorney who worked for a year in Iran before joining HBO at its inception in 1972 as a programming executive. He was promoted to CEO a year later, and a year after that he convinced parent company Time Inc. to take HBO to cable companies nationwide via satellite technology, earning him the nickname of “resident genius.”

The Philadelphia native and University of Pennsylvania Law School graduate was elected a Time board member in 1988 and quickly helped arrange the company’s $14 billion acquisition of Warner Communications, bringing Warner Bros. and Warner Music into the fold.

Levin was named co-CEO of Time Warner along with Steven J. Ross in early 1992, then had the title for himself when Ross died 10 months later from prostate cancer.

Time Warner meandered under Levin’s early tenure, but he impressed Wall Street in 1996 by acquiring Turner Broadcasting System, thus adding CNN, TNT, TCM and Cartoon Network to the conglomerate’s growing list of assets. The merger also returned to Warner Bros. rights to its pre-1950 movies, which Turner had purchased years earlier, and it made media mogul Ted Turner a board member and primary Time Warner shareholder.

In 1997, Levin’s son Jonathan, a 31-year-old high school English teacher in the Bronx, was murdered by a former student who tortured him with a knife until he surrendered the password to his bank ATM card. Friends called the tragedy a “defining moment” for Levin, who already had a reputation for quoting Greek philosophers and the Bible, and he began brainstorming ways to leave an inspiring, world-changing legacy through his leadership of Time Warner.

“Levin presented himself as a scholarly, upright man who just happened to be the CEO of the world’s largest media company. He didn’t just want to be remembered as a CEO who’d improved the bottom line; he aspired to be known for so much more,” Nina Munk wrote in her 2004 book, Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner.

In the late 1990s, Levin figured, correctly, that the Internet would forever alter the way media was delivered and sought a dramatic way in for Time Warner, which had stumbled with its own lackluster digital initiatives like Entertaindom and Full Service Network.

After months of negotiations between Levin and AOL CEO Steve Case, they agreed to merge the two companies, with 55 percent going to AOL’s shareholders and 45 percent going to Time Warner’s. The latter company was far bigger in every metric (annual revenue, for example, was $27 billion vs. $5 billion) except for one: market capitalization, which is the value Wall Street put on each of the company’s shares.

By the time the merger was announced in early 2000, AOL’s 17 million subscribers already were growing impatient with slow, dial-up internet providers, and soon they’d be fleeing in droves for high-speed cable providers like Time Warner Cable, owned then, of course, by Time Warner.

After the merger, Levin pledged that synergies and the internet’s rapid growth would quickly lead to $40 billion in revenue and $11 billion in cash flow for the newly minted AOL Time Warner. However, a bursting stock bubble, falling ad rates and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, devastated the company.

Levin stepped down as CEO of AOL Time Warner in May 2002, replaced by Richard Parsons, and that year the company reported a $100 billion loss, the largest in the history of corporate America. A year later, Parsons removed AOL from the company name.

At its nadir, which didn’t come until several years after Levin’s departure, shares of the company known again as Time Warner had lost 92 percent of their value, and Levin went on CNBC in 2010 to apologize to shareholders, in particular employees who lost their jobs or saw the value of their retirement accounts plummet.

“I presided over the worst deal of the century, apparently … I have obviously been reflecting on that,” he told CNBC anchor Joe Kernen. “I’m really very sorry about the pain and suffering and loss that was caused.

More recently, Levin had been encouraging media moguls — and CEOs in general — to push for social change and not worry about offending Wall Street, and a couple of issues he was passionate about before his death were holistic health care and gun control. He referred to himself as “a dedicated, religious vegan” in a June 2016 interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

“How can you justify an assault rifle as being a valid Second Amendment instrument? Let’s hear from some of the people that lead our companies what they believe,” Levin said during that interview, which occurred two weeks after Omar Mateen killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando. “Every time there is a murder or a mass killing, it brings back my own family’s experience, and each time I hope that we are going to do something.”

In 2004, Levin married his third wife, Dr. Laurie Ann Levin, a former producer, agent and wife of producer Jack Rapke, and he had been helping her run Moonview Sanctuary, a posh, holistic healing institute she founded in 1998 in Santa Monica. He also backed StartUp Health, which invests in next-generation health initiatives, and he brought Case in as an investor as well.

Levin also was a senior adviser to Oasis TV, which has been trying to establish itself as a provider of TV content for the spa crowd.

Levin went public about suffering from Parkinson’s disease shortly after Robin Williams committed suicide in 2014, in part because Williams was depressed and thought he was in the early stages of the same disease. (An autopsy later revealed that the comedian actually had suffered from Lewy body dementia, not Parkinson’s).

“I was trained not to show my emotions. You couldn’t tell by looking at me what I was thinking because I was an ace negotiator. I mean, life was a poker game. What a terrible thing. So I don’t let Parkinson’s dominate my life,” he told THR.

“I’d love to open a treatment center that treats everybody in the world. Not just for addiction or depression or mental health issues or Alzheimer’s. Everybody needs help.”

Levin was previously married to Carol Needelman and Barbara Riley. Survivors include his children, Anna, Laura, Leon and Michael, and seven grandchildren.

Author David Brin announced that Vernor Vinge, sci-fi author, former professor, and father of the technological singularity concept, died from Parkinson's disease at age 79 on March 20, 2024, in La Jolla, California. The announcement came in a Facebook tribute where Brin wrote about Vinge's deep love for science and writing.

"A titan in the literary genre that explores a limitless range of potential destinies, Vernor enthralled millions with tales of plausible tomorrows, made all the more vivid by his polymath masteries of language, drama, characters, and the implications of science," wrote Brin in his post.

As a sci-fi author, Vinge won Hugo Awards for his novels A Fire Upon the Deep (1993), A Deepness in the Sky (2000), and Rainbows End (2007). He also won Hugos for novellas Fast Times at Fairmont High (2002) and The Cookie Monster (2004). As Mike Glyer's File 770 blog notes, Vinge's novella True Names (1981) is frequency cited as the first presentation of an in-depth look at the concept of "cyberspace."

Vinge first coined the term "singularity" as related to technology in 1983, borrowed from the concept of a singularity in spacetime in physics. When discussing the creation of intelligences far greater than our own in an 1983 op-ed in OMNI magazine, Vinge wrote, "When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity, an intellectual transition as impenetrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding."

In 1993, he expanded on the idea in an essay titled The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era.

The singularity concept postulates that AI will soon become superintelligent, far surpassing humans in capability and bringing the human-dominated era to a close. While the concept of a tech singularity sometimes inspires negativity and fear, Vinge remained optimistic about humanity's technological future, as Brin notes in his tribute: "Accused by some of a grievous sin—that of 'optimism'—Vernor gave us peerless legends that often depicted human success at overcoming problems... those right in front of us... while posing new ones! New dilemmas that may lie just ahead of our myopic gaze. He would often ask: 'What if we succeed? Do you think that will be the end of it?'"

Vinge's concept heavily influenced futurist Ray Kurzweil, who has written about the singularity several times at length in books such as The Singularity Is Near in 2005. In a 2005 interview with the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology website, Kurzweil said, "Vernor Vinge has had some really key insights into the singularity very early on. There were others, such as John Von Neuman, who talked about a singular event occurring, because he had the idea of technological acceleration and singularity half a century ago. But it was simply a casual comment, and Vinge worked out some of the key ideas."

Kurzweil's works, in turn, have been influential to employees of AI companies such as OpenAI, who are actively working to bring superintelligent AI into reality. There is currently a great deal of debate over whether the approach of scaling large language models with more compute will lead to superintelligence over time, but the sci-fi influence looms large over this generation's AI researchers.

British magazine New Worlds published Vinge's first short story, Apartness, in 1965. He studied computer science and received a PhD in 1971. Vinge was also a retired professor of computer science at San Diego State University, where he taught between 1972 and 2000.

Brin reports that, near the end of his life, Vinge had been under care for years for progressive Parkinson's disease "at a very nice place overlooking the Pacific in La Jolla." According to Vinge's fellow San Diego State professor John Carroll, "his decline had steepened since November, but [he] was relatively comfortable."