|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Pleasanton’s Concerts in the Park will be missing one of its signature voices this summer. Steve Marvel, the longtime lead singer of Public Eye, the local cover band known for playing the series’ closing show for the past decade, died of a heart attack April 5 at the age of 64.
A Delaware native who moved to the Bay Area for college and stayed here in Northern California until recent years, Marvel found music at a young age and never let it go.
He helped form Public Eye in 1993 as lead singer and multi-instrumentalist and they would go on to play lively gigs in the area for more than 30 years, including the final Concert in the Park last August – in what would be his last show behind the mic, although he couldn’t complete the concert for health reasons, according to his ex-wife Kerri Marvel.
“What Steve cherished most was using music to unite people, inspiring them to dance and feel the rhythm, often inviting them to join him on stage with a tambourine,” Kerri Marvel told me over the weekend. “Depending on the crowd at any particular venue, Steve was known for changing the lyrics of whatever song he was singing to fit what was going on in the world (or just in the venue).”
Marvel worked a variety of jobs until finding a career as a director of fixed operations for more than 20 years. He was also a devoted sports fan, a huge boat enthusiast and loved reciting movie lines, Kerri said.
She shared that Marvel struggled with alcohol dependence in his later years, which ultimately contributed to his death at his apartment in Myrtle Beach, S.C., where he had recently moved following their divorce to be closer to his mother and sister.
Family, friends and Public Eye fans are gathering at Main Street Brewery (where the band played often over the years) for a memorial on the afternoon of June 29. Good chance his favorite song ever, The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony”, will ring out that day.
Music also played an important role in the life of the late Bob Londagin – I know because my son now has a set of drumsticks inscribed “Blues for Bob” that his grandmother brought over after attending Londagin’s funeral in Livermore on May 31.
Londagin worked as a firefighter in the Tri-Valley for nearly three decades, most of the time for the Pleasanton Fire Department before retiring as a fire captain with the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department after the merger. He then founded the Quail Garden assisted living community for seniors in Livermore with his late second wife and later ran the business for years alongside his daughter, according to his obituary.
“Around the fire station, Bob was known for his high expectations in housekeeping, earning him the nickname ‘Baseboard Bob’,” LPFD Fire Chief Joe Testa told me about his former colleague. “In the community, Bob was a competent and caring responder.”
“He was an early adopter of the fire department’s emergency medical services role, where he provided compassionate care to his patients. He responded to thousands of emergency calls over the years from the former Station 1, which is now the Firehouse Arts Center,” Testa added.
“On a personal note, I served as Bob’s firefighter-paramedic in the first years of my Pleasanton/LPFD career. Bob put his trust in me and assigned me a mission-critical project that would be an understatement to say was a ‘stretch assignment’. This was managing the field communications program for the fire department,” the fire chief recalled. “I have no doubt that this foundational assignment and Bob’s belief in me to carry it out were a big part of where I am and who I am today.”
Londagin died peacefully on his 81st birthday, April 22, according to family. Twice a widower in life, Londagin is survived by third wife Kate, daughters Erika and Alicia, stepchild Blaze and four grandchildren.
The Tri-Valley cheerleading community has been mourning Donna Potter, the founder of NorCal Elite San Ramon who died April 30 at age 60.
I wasn’t able to find a formal obituary online, but the club posted a remembrance on social media and her daughter created a moving memorial video with clips and stills from Potter’s life.
Describing her as “the heart and soul” of the cheer training gym, NorCal Elite San Ramon said, “Her love built this program. Her strength carried it. And her belief in every athlete shaped generations of lives. She gave everything to this gym — not just her time, but all of her heart. And that love will always live on in each of us.”
Performance, community service and family are common themes looking through the online obituaries submitted in recent weeks on our website and in our paper.
Larry Bartleson, who died March 28 at age 91, was a founding member of Lynnewood Methodist Church, part of the famed Balloon Platoon and a former ValleyCare Hospital board director.Â
Also in March the community lost Gloria Fredette, a former Pleasanton Unified School District trustee, on her 76th birthday.
Retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Bob Gardner, 81, “loved travel, photography, puns, gadgets, guitar, warm weather, and his grandchildren”, his family wrote. Gardner’s funeral is at Graham Hitch Mortuary this Saturday.
Ginanne Thrailkill’s service is also Saturday, at St. Clare Episcopal Church where she taught preschool for several years. She passed around this time last year at 57.
Livermore resident Peggy Despotakis’ “warmth, strength, and unwavering love for her family will be cherished and remembered always” – they wrote in her obituary after her death April 21 at 89.
Marty Maslana, also 89, lived a life of experiences, according to her obituary, but in particular enjoyed telling the tale of working at KFMB Channel 8 at the same time as an ambitious up-and-comer, Regis Philbin.
Read more about these Tri-Valley community members, and others, on our Lasting Memories webpage.
Editor’s note: Jeremy Walsh is the editorial director for the Embarcadero Media Foundation’s East Bay Division. His “What a Week” column is a recurring feature in the Pleasanton Weekly, Livermore Vine and DanvilleSanRamon.com.
