Eulah Croson Laucks

Eulah Laucks, (deceased) "a long-time Santa Barbara, California resident, died peacefully June 3rd on Salt Spring Island, BC with her daughter and son-in-law at her side. She will be remembered as a generous, charming, and graceful lady to the core by all those who had the opportunity to know her. Eulah was born in Gold Hill, NV and grew up in Bakersfield, CA. She graduated from Bakersfield high school, and later worked at the Kern County Tuberculosis Sanitarium in Keene, California to save enough money to attend the University of Washington in Seattle, where she majored in journalism. She spent her senior year in Rome and witnessed the progression of Mussolini’s Italy towards an alliance with Hitler and the beginning of WWII. When she returned to the US she took a job as a public relations writer at Laucks Laboratories in Seattle, WA where she met and married Irving Laucks. After living on Orcas Island WA for ten years they moved to Healdsberg, CA and had a daughter, Mary Laucks and raised a foster son, the late Lorenzo Gon. They traveled abroad for several years and then moved to Santa Barbara in 1964 to begin an association with the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, where Eulah served on the board of directors for many years. Eulah and Irving founded the Laucks Foundation (LF) in 1969 and focused its activities on raising awareness of the danger of the MAD relationship between the Soviet Union and the US. When Irving Laucks died in 1981, Eulah began to focus LF on ecological issues and social justice. At the age of 69 Eulah received a PhD from UCSB with a thesis titled, The Meaning of Children in Contemporary America. For many years Eulah contributed her time and energy to the UCSB Scholarship committee, The Channel City Women’s Forum, The Community Environmental Council, Santa Barbara City College, Fairview Gardens, The Walter Capps Center, The Land Institute, and to publishing the Laucks Foundation newsletter (Reprint Mailings 1979-1999). In 1996 she published a memoir, Saucer Eyes, about growing up in Nevada’s hard rock mining country. Since 2000 she lived with her daughter and son-in-law, Brian Swanson."