Nevins remembered for research, travel, genealogy

Donald James Nevins, known for his work in biochemistry and cell physiology, died in Woodland, Calif., on July 8 at the age of 88. He was a professor emeritus in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences and chair of the former Department of Vegetable Crops from 1984-1989.

A celebration of life will be at 1 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 23, at Davis Lutheran Church, 317 E 8th St., Davis. Light refreshments will follow. Please RSVP by emailing daughter Stephanie Nevins at stephanie@nevins.net.

Nevins was born in July 6, 1937 to Elizabeth Wreden Nevins and Vernon Nevins in in San Luis Obispo, Calif. After graduating from high school, he attended California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, to prepare for managing the Wreden family ranch on Carrizo Plain in southeastern San Luis Obispo County. Instead, he took a different route: His major professor encouraged him to attend graduate school, and he was put in contact with Robert Loomis at UC Davis. There, Nevins earned his master’s and Ph.D. degrees.

He met Sylvia Nelson, an undergraduate from Southern California pursuing her bachelor’s degree in food science, who was spending the summer after her sophomore year working at the Memorial Union information desk. She was sitting on the front steps of the house on A Street in Davis that she and her roommates had rented for the summer when Nevins walked by. One of her roommates knew him from church and introduced them to each other. He was getting some of his meals at the Memorial Union, so after they met, she would greet him as he walked by. He eventually asked her out on a date. They were married in 1962 in Southern California.

After Nevins finished his doctoral degree and Sylvia her bachelor’s, they moved to Boulder, Colo., for his post-doc with Peter Albersheim at the University of Colorado. It was there that both of their daughters were born: Jennifer shortly after their arrival in 1965 and Stephanie in 1967. Not long after Stephanie's birth, the family moved to Ames, Iowa, where Nevins had accepted a faculty position at Iowa State University.

During his tenure at ISU, Nevins took a sabbatical in 1974-75 to work with Prof. Yoshio Masuda in Osaka, Japan. While there, the family lived in a traditional Japanese house in Kyoto, with tatami mat floors, a goeman buro (a traditional cast-iron bathtub) and a koi pond outside. (The activities of the house’s previous tenants are documented in the novel “The Night of Accomplishment,” by British author John Noone, whose stay overlapped with the Nevins family by a few weeks.) In Kyoto, their daughters attended a traditional Japanese school, where all the lessons were in Japanese and the only person in the school who spoke English was the nurse. They enjoyed that opportunity very much.

In the latter part of that sabbatical year, Nevins worked with Prof. Bengt Lindberg in Stockholm, Sweden. The family’s travel from Japan to Sweden included a boat trip from Tokyo to the east coast of the then-Soviet Union, a train trip north to meet the eastern end of the Trans-Siberian Railroad for a ride across Siberia to Moscow, then several days in the capital followed by a flight to Stockholm. There, the family lived in an apartment in the Wennergren Center, a complex for foreign researchers at Stockholm University. The daughters attended an elementary school within walking distance from the Center where they learned some Swedish but were also given help with their English homework.

Also in Stockholm, Sylvia's parents came to visit them. Sylvia's father was of Swedish ancestry, and her mother of Norwegian ancestry, so they took the Nevins family to visit places where their ancestors had lived.

Rebuilding and mentoring at UC Davis

In 1984, Nevins was recruited to UC Davis to chair the Department of Vegetable Crops, a position he held until 1989. His research focused on the biochemistry and functions of plant cell walls.

“They are quite complex structures. Don’s work included identifying and characterizing the types of polysaccharides that make up the walls and how they combine to create the basic structure of plants,” said Kent Bradford, who was a recent hire at the time of Nevins’ arrival and now is a distinguished professor emeritus in the Department of Plant Sciences. “I collaborated with him on a project investigating the unique cell wall polysaccharides that occur as both structural and nutritional components in the endosperm of tomato seeds, as did others who worked on cell growth and other properties, such as fruit firmness.”

Nevins’ tenure as chair followed that of Larry Rappaport, who had begun rebuilding the department after most of the original faculty retired. Nevins continued that effort. “All of us younger faculty at that time appreciated his support and mentorship as our own careers got underway,” Bradford recalled.

After resigning as chair in 1989, Nevins took another sabbatical year, working again with Masuda in Japan and with Bruce Stone at LaTrobe University, Australia.

In 2002, Nevins was elected a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences in recognition of his contributions. He continued as a professor at UC Davis until he retired in 2011. A video interview with him when he retired is available here. His 100-plus publications from 1970 on can be viewed here.

Interest in genealogy

In the early 1990s, Nevins began working on the family genealogy. He discovered an ancestor, William Booth, who had come from England to the U.S. and had bought property in southeastern Iowa. Booth sold the land, then in 1846 traveled to California and made it over the Sierra Nevada before the fatal storm that caught the Donner Party. Nevins also organized a Wreden family reunion in Paso Robles, Calif.

Sylvia Nevins’ parents had acquired property in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana in 1957. The Nevins eventually purchased the property from Sylvia’s father, after her mother’s death, and built a guest house on the site of the farm’s original barn. After retirement, the Nevins split their time between Davis, the place in Montana and Sea Ranch, Calif.

On July 26, Nevins was buried in the cemetery in the town of Hamilton, Mont., near the property and the place where Sylvia’s parents also are interred.

Nevins is survived by his wife, Sylvia Nevins; daughters Jennifer Matthews and Stephanie Nevins; grandchildren Sophia Matthews, Jack Matthews, Lily Fox and Nevin Fox; sister Marilyn Karbowski; and niece Lynne Walker and nephew Ron Karbowski.