Jean Day Lassila (1934-2008)

LASSILA, BARNES, DUNNEWALD, MILLER

Posted By: Ames Tribune
Date: 9/25/2008 at 18:08:27

THE AMES TRIBUNE, Ames, Story County, Iowa, Thursday, September 25, 2008.

Oct. 23, 1934-Sept. 12, 2008

Jean Day Lassila died Friday, Sept. 12, 2008, in the house on Ross Road in Ames where she had lived for 42 years. The cause of death was heart disease. She was 73 years old. Memorial services and burial will be in Rock Springs, Wyo.

Lassila was born Oct. 23, 1934, in Rock Springs, Wyo., the first child of Helen and Richard C. Day. She graduated as valedictorian of her class at Rock Springs High School, and in 1956, she earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of Wyoming, graduating second in her class.

She was an accomplished chemist, having earned a doctorate degree in organic chemistry at Yale University in 1961 and later doing research at Iowa State University. She coauthored eight papers in physical organic chemistry and three textbooks of general chemistry. Her work, "Programmed Reviews of Chemical Principles," went through several printings.

While in graduate school at Yale, she married and had her first child. (She impressed fellow students by finishing an important exam despite starting labor.) In the 1970s, she stayed at home for several years to raise her three children. She and her husband later divorced.

In 1983, she returned to work at ISU as an academic adviser to undergraduates planning to enter the healthcare professions. In 1990, she became an administrative specialist and assistant to the dean in the dean's office of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
She was known for her service to the university community. She served on numerous college and university committees until she retired. She helped to administer the Representative Assembly of the College, the College Honors Program and the McFarland Clinic Partnership Memorial Scholarship, and she contributed to the design of the Interdisciplinary Studies major and the Biological and Premedical Illustration major. She also drafted ISU's groundbreaking campus no-smoking policy. For almost two decades, she evaluated candidates for the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society, continuing to work with Phi Beta Kappa even after she retired in 1999.

She took an active interest in genealogy, researching family history in Wyoming, Iowa, Finland, England and elsewhere. She traced one branch of the family back to the 9th century.

She is survived by three children, Kathrin Day Lassila, of Hamden, Conn., Erik Day Lassila, of Beijing, and Jonathan Kyle Lassila, of Palo Alto, Calif. She also is survived by four grandchildren, Benjamin and Michael Barnes and Anya and Connor Lassila; and by two sisters, Mary Dunnewald, of Arvada, Colo., and Ruth Miller, of Boulder, Colo.

In lieu of flowers, memorial gifts may be sent to the ISU Foundation, for the Phi Beta Kappa Scholarship Fund, P.O. Box 2230, Ames, IA, 50011.

Grandon Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.

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