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Heart Failure Claims Local Writer and Professor Duane Spilsbury

Spectrum staff

Duane Spilsbury, a retired journalism professor and frequent contributor to Spectrum and other local publications, died Feb. 25 of congestive heart failure and complications of diabetes. He was 78.

Spilsbury's stories covered a wide range of subjects, from personality profiles to examinations of historical figures to business stories -- including an article on telecommuting published in 1989, long before the practice was widely known.

His stories for Spectrum covered a period of almost 20 years and included profiles of a 100-year-old golfer, a blind jazz musician, a local rescue pilot and a well-traveled bird-watcher.

The Carmichael resident's work also appeared in The Sacramento Bee, Sacramento Magazine, Comstock magazine, Valley Community Newspapers publications and the California Territorial Quarterly.

Spilsbury served in the U.S. Army in World War II, and later attended college at Brigham Young University, Stanford University and the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1950, he began his teaching career in the English Department at McClatchy High School in Sacramento.

He went on to teach journalism at Bakersfield College, and served as a journalism professor at California State University at Sacramento from the 1970s until his retirement in 1985.

"After retirement, he continued to write for Sac State as though he were still there," Olive Spilsbury, his wife of 54 years, said Thursday.

Mrs. Spilsbury said her husband enjoyed hiking, fishing and working out on a regular basis. He also stayed active by volunteering with the SeniorNet computer training organization and by helping his family. He assisted with his son's painting business and took over all dishwashing duties from his wife once he retired.

Mr. Spilsbury is survived by his wife, sons Paul Steven Spilsbury and Duane Christian Spilsbury, two granddaughters and two great-grandsons. A third son, John Kevin Spilsbury, preceded him in death in 1983.

Services were held Saturday at St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Carmichael.

In lieu of flowers, the family requested that donations be made in the memory of John Kevin Spilsbury, University of California, Irvine, for the study of paranoid schizophrenia (attention Dr. Gerald Maguire). Checks should be made out to UCI Foundation in care of the development office, 200 S. Manchester Ave., Suite 835, Orange, CA 92868.