A newsletter for alumni, students, parents and friends.

Remembering June Walton Tichinin

By Bruce Tichinin

June Walton Tichinin, born August 18, 1918, slipped away peacefully on August 13, 2006 in the arms of three children and a grandchild. Over the last two months, after her leukemia diagnosis, she was cared for at all times by family members.

In the 1850s June’s ancestors, the Waltons, Husons and Brearcliffes, pioneered the settlement of Tehama County, California. She was born and raised in Red Bluff, and developed life-long habits of hard work and frugality during and after the Great Depression. As a child, she accompanied her family annually on the six week, 150 mile sheep drive from Red Bluff, up the Sierra Nevada Mountains, to the family range of 7,000 acres about 30 miles north of Susanville. She passed this property to her children, who maintain it as a wildlife preserve, sustained-use timber forest, and cattle and hunting range.

June graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, where she was House Manager of Stebbins Hall. There she met her husband, Leon Tichinin, who was house manager of another co-op, Sheridan Hall. Their friends included fellow co-opers Ted (president of Barrington Hall) and Maggie Johnston.

In 1955, June and Leon took their six children to “Noisy Acres,” a fourteen acre homestead outside Morgan Hill, which was then a farming hamlet. Leon was a farm advisor, and later Santa Clara County Director of the U.C. Agricultural Extension Service. They realized their goal of putting all their children through college and travel abroad. They also hosted foreign exchange students from Denmark, Argentina, China and Australia. June later became a teacher at Burnett Elementary School. Many of her pupils still live in Morgan Hill and remember her affectionately as a strict and caring teacher who helped them accomplish more than they thought they could.

Leon died in 1987, and June moved back to Berkeley. She and old co-op friend, Ted Johnston, who had recently lost his wife, Maggie, became life companions until his passing last year. The Johnstons had spent Mother’s Day with the Tichinins for many years, and their now adult children became brothers and sisters to the adult Tichinin children over the years their parents spent together.

June continued her love of education and books, serving as a founder of the USCA Alumni Association, a volunteer for the Berkeley Public Library Bookstore, and a grandmother intensely involved in the raising of her 12 grandchildren.

Wise counselor and mentor, generous supporter of humanitarian causes, fierce advocate for the mistreated, tireless and uncomplaining worker, quiet and unpretentious leader, she lived a life lovingly focused on the well-being of others, and, without expecting it, but quite inevitably, received back the full measure of love from them. June’s was a life well-lived.

The Tichinin family requests that anyone who wishes to contribute in June’s memory direct donations to the June Walton Tichinin Memorial Grant, which awards low-income co-op women who display a potential for leadership.