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Jackson may have died during allergy reaction
Services for former University of Arizona football player Akil Jackson have been set for tomorrow in his hometown of Auburn, Calif.
Jackson choked to death in the emergency room of Sutter Roseville Hospital on Saturday, apparently after having an allergic reaction. The Placer County Coroner’s Office said yesterday the official cause of death will not be known for about two weeks.
Services are set for 11 a.m. tomorrow at Parkside Nazarene Church in Auburn, with burial immediately following at New Auburn District Cemetery.
Auburn’s Chapel of the Hills Funeral Home is handling arrangements.
”He was very humble, very loving and caring, very dynamic and well-respected,” said his father, T.J. Jackson. ”He was a very giving person.”
T.J. Jackson told the Auburn Journal newspaper that his son normally took medication to combat food allergy problems, but couldn’t locate it in time to prevent a seizure.
The former Wildcat linebacker, a piece of Arizona’s ”Desert Swarm” defenses in 1993-94, was remembered by his former teammates in much the same manner as described by his father.
”It’s like I’ve lost a brother,” Jackson’s UA teammate Warner Smith said. ”I still can’t believe it.”
Another teammate, Chris Lopez, was a high school teammate at Placer High School, just outside Sacramento.
”He was a big-time player there,” Lopez said. ”We grew up playing Little League together, growing up together.”
As a high school senior in 1990, the 6-foot-1, 220-pound Jackson rushed for more than a 1,000 yards and averaged more than 20 tackles per game. In addition, he was an all-league wrestler and was drafted as a pitcher by the San Diego Padres.
”As a human being, you couldn’t find a nicer guy,” Placer High coach Bill Flake said. ”He was a gentle giant with a smile for everybody. As far as impact players, he was probably the greatest this school has ever seen.”
Jackson was also a junior college All-American at Sacramento City College before enrolling at UA in 1992.
A Roseville resident, Akil Fudail Jackson was born Feb. 29, 1972, in Sacramento. He moved with his family to Auburn in 1984.
After college he returned to Placer County and worked for Roseville’s High Performance Painting at the time of his death.
He also is survived by his mother, Emma; a brother, T.J. Jr.; and a sister, Natasha, all of Auburn.
(Dated Oct 07, 1999)
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Cancer Center founder Salmon dead at 63
He was a five-star general in the war on cancer – winning many battles – but in the end, Dr. Sydney Elias Salmon, lost his own 21month fight with the disease.
Dr. Salmon, founding director of the Arizona Cancer Center and a leading cancer researcher, died yesterday morning of pancreatic cancer. He was 63.
In addition to the 40,000 to 50,000 patients the Arizona Cancer Center has seen since he helped start it 23 years ago, his research over four decades benefited cancer patients throughout the world.
”The Arizona Cancer Center has lost a wonderful friend, colleague, physician and scientist,” said Dr. Daniel Von Hoff, who took over as director of the Tucson center in August. ”The world also has lost a remarkable cancer visionary and great leader.”
A public memorial service will begin at 10:30 a.m. Oct. 17 under the covered drive of the Sydney E. Salmon Building at the Arizona Cancer Center, 1515 N. Campbell Ave.
Parking will be available in the UA parking lot on the northwestern corner of East Mabel Street and North Campbell Avenue. A shuttle will run from the lot to the Cancer Center.
Dr. David Alberts, associate dean for research in the University of Arizona College of Medicine, said, ”Every decade he came up with a new discovery.”
Dr. Salmon learned in December 1997 that he had cancer of the pancreas, a small organ behind the stomach. It produces enzymes that help digest food and hormones that help use and store food.
Pancreatic cancer has a oneyear survivorship rate of 20 percent.
Dr. Salmon underwent standard treatment and experimental therapies. He also took gemcitabine, a new drug for pancreatic cancer that Von Hoff helped develop.
The treatments probably helped extend his life and contributed to the quality of it during his illness, said Laurie Young, a Cancer Center spokeswoman.
”He was so brave in his approach to the disease, and he continued to be an active participant in the Cancer Center,” she said.
For a long time, he kept seeing patients, and until a few weeks ago he was at work on his research, she said.
”He lived his life to the end as a scholar,” said Alberts, who was Dr. Salmon’s physician and who considered him a mentor and friend.
Alberts worked alongside Dr. Salmon for 30 years.
Young said, ”There were several times throughout his illness that we thought he had a excellent chance of beating this” – but it would recur, as cancer often does.
Dr. Salmon was internationally acclaimed for his work in characterizing the stages of multiple myeloma, a bone marrow cancer, and for his expertise in treating the disease.
He also was recognized for his development of the human tumor cloning assay, which scientists use to grow human tumor cells in the laboratory. That allows them to test the effectiveness of various drugs in a petri dish. The assay is now used worldwide for determining the best treatment for individual patients and to identify new anticancer therapies.
His most-recent work was as coinventor of a technique for drug discovery that allows for the generation and testing of tens of thousands of compounds in a day – rather than testing one or two in a day.
The technique could shorten by years the searches for effective drugs to treat cancer and other diseases.
Dr. Salmon’s other accomplishments include pioneering, along with a handful of other doctors, adjuvant chemotherapy in the 1970s, Alberts said.
Standard practice today, adjuvant chemotherapy is used following the surgical removal of a cancerous tumor.
It changed the way doctors thought about and approached the disease, Alberts said.
”I think he’s definitely one of top five cited cancer specialists in the world . . . . His contributions to the literature are such that they were cited constantly by authors,” Alberts said.
Dr. Salmon was born in Staten Island, N.Y., on May 8, 1936.
He moved to Tucson in May 1948 at the age of 12 with his parents, Herbert M. Salmon and Edna W. Salmon, both of whom are deceased.
Dr. Salmon attended Tucson Unified School District schools, including Mansfeld Junior High School, and graduated from Tucson High School.
He received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy with a minor in psychology from UA in May 1958.
He married Joan Estelle Tobias on June 1, 1958, and remained happily married until the time of his death. They had five children together.
Dr. Salmon received his medical degree in June 1962 from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo.
After a medical internship and residency at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.Y., he enlisted in the U.S. Public Health Service at the rank of lieutenant commander and was assigned to the cancer research service at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in Boston.
From 1966 to 1968, Dr. Salmon was a National Institutes of Health special fellow in hematology and immunology in the department of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco.
Upon completion of his fellowship, he joined the faculty of the University of California-San Francisco, as an assistant professor of medicine.
In June 1972, he was recruited to the UA College of Medicine to head the hematology/oncology section of the department of medicine.
Dr. Salmon would play a key role in planning for the creation of the Arizona Cancer Center. In 1976, the state Board of Regents formally established the Cancer Center, and Dr. Salmon was named director.
Under his leadership, the center grew rapidly and became a major resource for the treatment of cancer in the Southwest.
The center’s first building, the Leon F. Levy Building, was dedicated in 1986, providing clinical, administrative and research facilities.
In 1990, the National Cancer Institute named the Arizona Cancer Center as one of a small, prestigious network of ”comprehensive cancer centers,” which the national group determined have outstanding basic and clinical cancer research and patient care.
The center’s second building, the Sydney E. Salmon M.D. Building, was named by the regents to honor Dr. Salmon and was formally dedicated in January 1998.
The addition more than doubled the total space for the center’s 500plus faculty and staff, making the combined size of the facility greater than 100,000 net square feet.
In 1998, Dr. Salmon announced his decision to step down as director of the Cancer Center. After a national search, Von Hoff was named director in August 1999.
Dr. Salmon served as director emeritus until the time of his death.
During his career, he served as an adviser to government and the pharmaceutical industry and won many awards for his cancer research.
He wrote nearly 400 scholarly papers, and he edited 12 books in fields related to cancer research or cancer treatment.
And Dr. Salmon held eight patents for technologies that have had a major impact on biology and medicine.
Salmon is survived by his wife, Joan; five children: Howard M. Salmon, Stewart J. Salmon and Russell A. Salmon, all of Tucson; Dr. Julia V. Salmon of Boston and Laura M. Levine of Atlanta; one brother, Norman W. Salmon of Tucson; and three grandchildren, Jordana Miriam and Joshua Toby Levine of Atlanta and Susann Rachell Salmon of Tucson.
The family requests that contributions be made to the Arizona Cancer Center/UAF for the Sydney E. Salmon M.D. Director’s Endowment.
”The University of Arizona has lost one of its greatest leaders, Dr. Sydney Salmon. He fell victim to the very disease that he spent his career fighting – cancer. Through his efforts and vision the Arizona Cancer Center was founded and emerged as an outstanding center of excellence at the University of Arizona and as a nationally and internationally recognized comprehensive cancer center. Our nation has lost one of its preeminent leaders in the battle against cancer. His colleagues at the Arizona Cancer Center and his colleagues around the world will continue that battle and they will prevail. Our thoughts are with Dr. Salmon’s family.”
- Dr. James Dalen, dean of the University of Arizona College of Medicine.
(Dated Oct 07, 1999)
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Matriarch Guadalupe Guerrero, 101, once honored for kids’ success
• During the Depression, she and her husband had a reputation for giving food to anyone who came to their door.
With nine children, 25 grandchildren, 36 great-grandchildren, a great-great-grandson and about 50 godchildren, Guadalupe Mendez Guerrero was the stuff legends are made of.
”She truly was a matriarch in every sense of the word,” son Javier Guerrero said.
Mrs. Guerrero died yesterday of pneumonia at age 101 in her Tucson home west of downtown.
Said her oldest daughter, Mercedes Guerrero: ”My mom always, always was ready to feed people who were hungry. She always had food to share.”
She recalled the time her mother gave away all the bread she had baked at home to a poor man and his widowed daughter.
”That was typical of my parents,” Mercedes said. ”We were always provided for – and together they helped whoever was in need. People must have heard (of their generosity) because they would always stop by.”
Mrs. Guerrero was born May 25, 1898, to Javier Mendez and Margarita Carde Mendez in Bacoachi, Son. She married Ramon Guerrero in September 1923 and moved to Bisbee, where her husband worked as a copper miner.
In 1962, the family moved to Tucson to be closer to relatives.
Son Javier Guerrero said his mother instilled the importance of two points in her children: An education is valuable, and everyone has a responsibility to contribute to society.
And the message hit home.
He received the Legion of Merit and was the command master chief of the Atlantic fleet for the U.S. Navy.
And seven of Mrs. Guerrero’s children attended college, despite her own lack of a formal education, and she was awarded a copper letter from the mayor’s office in 1988 for her community contributions through her children.
Mercedes Guerrero is a retired schoolteacher and executive director of the Institute of Mexican Folklore.
Another son, Adalberto, a retired University of Arizona professor, was a pioneer in bilingual education.
Daughter Margarita Rubi is a retired school teacher who last taught at Roskruge Bilingual Magnet School . And son Roberto worked to develop postal systems in South America.
Maria Guadalupe ”Lupita” Romero, the youngest child, received her doctorate from UA.
During the Depression, the Guerrero home became something of a haven for people moving to California, because they knew they’d be offered a meal and a place to stay, Adalberto said.
One of Mrs. Guerrero’s grandchildren became the pilot for Marine One, the presidential helicopter. She even got to see the family pilot in action.
”She was born before cars were around, in a small town in Mexico, but she got to fly in the president’s helicopter,” Romero noted.
The last survivor of 11 children, Mrs. Guerrero was preceded in death by her husband and three sons, Gilberto, Ramon Jr. and Manuel Gustavo.
She is survived by three daughters, Mercedes, Margarita Rubi, and Guadalupe Romero, all of Tucson; three sons, Adalberto and Roberto, both of Tucson, and Javier of San Diego ; and the numerous grandchildren, great-grandchildren and the great-great-grandson.
Visitation will be at the north chapel of Carrillo’s Tucson Mortuary, 204 S. Stone Ave., today from 4 to 10 p.m., with a rosary recited there at 7.
Mass will be celebrated at St. Augustine Cathedral, 192 N. Stone Ave., tomorrow at 10:30 a.m.
The family suggests donations to the cathedral’s maintenance fund.
(Dated Oct 08, 1999)
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