Donald Oscar Rickter

Donald Oscar Rickter was an inventor, a scientist, a questioner, a meditator, a memoirist, a husband, and a father. Don died after a short bout of pneumonia at Mt. Auburn Hospital on July 11, 2024. He was 93. 

Don was born in Rio Dell in the redwoods of Humboldt County, on May 5, 1931. He was a true son of California with roots going back to the 1830s. Don's mother Wealthy grew up in Esparto, a little town northwest of Davis. After the death of her father, Ray Murphey, in a gun accident in his hardware store, Wealthy's mother counted on extended family to care for her and the three kids. Wealthy was sharp and funny, the class valedictorian. She and Don’s Dad Oscar met in Corvallis, where Wealthy was taking classes to be a pharmacist, after riding up from Davis with her brother on a three-wheeled motorcycle. Oscar was studying agriculture and animal husbandry. 

 Oscar and Wealthy married and settled in Rio Dell near Oscar’s family, and he built a house and a barn, but Wealthy’s health suffered in the constant dampness, and in 1937, when Don was six, they moved to a ranch in Yolo County to be closer to Wealthy’s family. At the beginning the family lived in their car on bare land, in Don’s sister Bonny’s recollection. Oscar built a lean-to and then expanded it into a house. Don and his three siblings (older brother Dan and younger sisters Bonny and Suzanne) grew up hunting rabbits and participating in 4-H activities, including raising dairy cows (Don thanked his lucky stars continually that he didn’t have to milk the cows every morning anymore). They had farm chores to do and each other to play with.

Don had scant access to books and few outlets for his intelligence in the house. He attended the one-room Fairfield School, a long walk or bike ride away, with multiple grades taught by the same teacher, Mrs. Snavelly, where Don was literally in a “class by himself,” because the only other classmate in his grade, Bobby Bem, died in a hunting accident (yet another run-in with gun violence). His memoirs tell the story of being told by Mrs. Snavely to take a pencil and a piece of paper and start writing down numbers and go as high as he could. He filled page after page and needed more paper. Don recalled his phenomenal reading skills being shown off to a visiting county education inspector, then feeling like a trained monkey. He skipped a grade and moved to the head of the class, though he sometimes felt isolated and awkward socially.

 Don mailed a penny postcard to answer a math puzzle in the back of Pathfinder magazine and befriended a high school teacher, Mr. Mergandahl, at Newton High School in Massachusetts, who encouraged him to seek higher education. He attended the public junior high school in Davis and pursued his bachelor’s degree at the College of Agriculture. He spent a year at Cal Berkeley before returning to Davis to finish his math degree and then his master's. He lived at home for a time, then he took teaching jobs at junior colleges.

 Wealthy’s heart was weak from a childhood battle with rheumatic fever, and she died at 51, leaving Don’s siblings and their dad to run the ranch. To his great surprise and alarm, Don was drafted into the Navy in 1957 and spent more than a year stationed in San Francisco and working in a lab. His subversive, authority-allergic side was revealed when, frustrated by having to wait in long lines at the Mess hall when he had a short lunch break, he created an official-looking but fake "Early Chow Pass" with a fictional officer's signature ("Lt. Commander Alfred E. Newman"). And to his surprise, the fake pass was accepted without question.

 Stationed in San Francisco Bay with a lab job and weekend leave, Don explored the city and joined the Tip Toppers Club for tall people. Men six feet four or taller and women six feet tall could get in for free. He attended First Unitarian Church on Franklin St, once the home pulpit of Rev. Thomas Starr King. After the service, Don had coffee in the parish hall, and this is where Phyllis and her friend Virginia spotted the tall, dark, and handsome man standing by himself and decided to go over and talk with him.

Their courtship is best told in his words:

I was attracted to her and started a conversation. I say I picked her up. She agreed to meet me at a social event for young people the next Tuesday in Berkeley.

Our first date went well. What about a second date? Every trip to see her was a 444-mile drive from Santa Ana to the SF Bay Area. After a few dates she told me she had no interest in marriage. Both of her favorite aunts were happy as unmarried teachers. Who needs a man to be successful? Phyllis gradually realized that she was happy to see me -- but she still planned to remain single. I admired her independent spirit. She had trim ankles, beautiful legs -- and on up. She was fun to be with and we always had a lot to say to each other. Both of us were from rural backgrounds with hard-working taciturn fathers of Swedish ancestry. Our mothers were of mixed British ancestry. She had come west from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she was active in the liberal Baptist church there.

I made fourteen round trips of 888 miles each -- five by car, one by Greyhound bus, and eight by airline. We liked to meet downtown at The Golden Bubble, on Powell Street. Then we would have dinner in The City. We believed it was impossible to find a bad dinner in San Francisco. There were famous places, many ethnicities, delightful scenes at twilight.

We had a happy Easter Week in 1959, starting with a drive to Napa Valley to visit some wineries. I took a picture of Phyllis at the Louis Martini Winery in St. Helena on Good Friday, 27 March. This is when my persistence paid off. She said, “Don, maybe I could marry you after all.” We continued our trip, over the Coast Range to Winters, in the Sacramento Valley. We were in Yolo County. My Dad was at the ranch near Davis. He was delighted to meet Phyllis. “Donald has found a real ‘Svenska Flicka’” (a young Swedish woman).

Don and Phyllis married in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Phyllis’s home town, on August 21st, 1959. Phyllis worked full time teaching or short-term administrative work, while Don pursued his doctorate in Chemistry, first at Purdue in Lafayette Indiana then at Michigan State University. David was born in 1962 while they were living in married student housing at Michigan State. Don earned his PhD in 1964 and moved to the Boston area with his young family, renting the first floor of a two family home in Belmont. Paul was born at Mt Auburn Hospital in 1965. They bought a house in Arlington where they raised David and Paul through public schools and off to college.

Don spent his professional career at Polaroid Corporation in Cambridge Mass. He used his training in organic chemistry to invent dyes for instant photography and was awarded four patents for his creations. In the 1970s, he became interested in exploring for information about chemical compounds and other technical data that were available on early computer networks. He then became a resource for others at Polaroid looking to search online and got a new title: Information Scientist. He retired from Polaroid in 1996.

In retirement, Don became an avid participant in the Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement (HILR), where he took courses with other highly educated retirees. He loved taking courses in current events but he especially loved the memoir-writing class, which he took almost every semester. Over the course of his retired years, Don wrote dozens of stories of moments of his life, humorous and poignant. Those stories survive and his family will work to put these collected "memoirs" into a finished form, with the title of Growing Up Yolo.

Don was a committed Unitarian Universalist, serving many roles at Arlington Street Church in Boston over the 60 years he was a member, including service on the congregation board and multiple ministerial search committees. In recent decades he and Phyllis served as mentors to over a dozen ministerial students, blessing them with their wisdom and advice. Don also served as the leader of the local chapter of the American Chemical Society, an organization he was a member of for over 70 years. Don loved to proofread their publications and was gleeful about pointing out especially groan worthy typos like pubic school. 

Throughout his life, Don was a brilliant and uncompromising man. He was happy, indeed overjoyed, to fight for a cause, invent something new, or simply zig when everyone else zagged. In the early 1970s, he recognized the need for a gender-neutral pronoun and created "Xe" (pronounced "zee") and advocated for its use. Around the same time, he became interested in Transcendental Meditation, learning how to meditate at the TM center in Cambridge and continuing to meditate twice a day for 20 minutes without fail for the next 50 years. His meditation practice and the peace it brought him no doubt added years to his life and life to his years.

His fascination with the study of flags (vexillology) and his interest in justice led him to advocate for a new design for the Massachusetts state flag. He was always happy to explain to people the problematic history of the current state flag and its roots in the oppression of the original inhabitants of this area. In recent years, he created his own design for a new Massachusetts flag and wrote frequently to his political representatives pushing for its adoption.

Throughout his life, Don invariably wore one or more buttons on his shirt or jacket. He might wear a button to advertise his political beliefs, to commemorate the anniversary of a historic event, or to simply spread a little joy to people he would meet each day. His birthday on May 5 (Cinco de Mayo) became an opportunity to wear a special birthday hat: a sombrero.

His survivors rejoice a life lived in pursuit of puns and clever wordplay, stamp and coin collecting, a weekly game of Scrabble in the living room, Sunday dinners and funny papers on the couch– all flavored by his deeply rationalist nature –yet also deeply connected to the fellowship of Arlington Street Church, even if he sometimes questioned his beliefs. Family will remember the love he showered on his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchild.

His beloved wife Phyllis predeceased him in 2019, shortly after they celebrated their 60th anniversary. He leaves his two sons, David Rickter Rain (Anna) and Paul Carlson Rickter (Ellen), four grandchildren (Avery, Lydia, Callen, and Jasper) and one great-grandchild (Sylvie). His surviving family members cherish his memory and are proud to carry on his best qualities.

Family and friends will gather to honor and remember Donald at his memorial service on Saturday, September 7, 2024, at 2:30 p.m. at the Arlington Street Church, 351 Boylston Street, Boston, MA. 

Arrangements under the care of Concord Funeral Home, 74 Belknap St., Concord, MA 01742  978-369-3388  www.concordfuneral.com