Sybil York, wife of UC San Diego’s Founding Chancellor Herb York, passed away on Thursday, October 27. She was 98.
Sybil was born in San Francisco, and despite the Great Depression, spent an idyllic childhood in Buttonwillow, Calif. before attending UC Berkeley to study Latin and Math. As World War II began, she secured a student job on campus in a “secret location” as a switchboard operator. While at Berkeley, she met a nuclear physicist named Herb York, who was later sent to a “secret location” in Oakridge, Tenn. to work on the Manhattan Project. They reunited years later at UC Berkeley and eventually married.
Sybil and Herb embarked on an extraordinary life together that was filled with the globe’s top scientists and politicians including French President Charles de Gaulle, Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Kennedys.
The two would eventually come to San Diego in 1960, when UC President Clark Kerr persuaded Herb to become the founding chancellor of UC San Diego. York recruited students and faculty and supervised construction on the La Jolla campus.
As the wife of UC San Diego’s first chancellor, Sybil was a gracious hostess and deeply involved in our bi-national region. The entire family learned Spanish with the view to enhancing San Diego’s relationship with Tijuana.
Sybil will be remembered by UC San Diego as our very first “First Lady” of the campus. We are deeply grateful for her efforts to help mold a strong sense of belonging to a truly unique community of brilliant scholars, dedicated to working together to change the future for the betterment of all humankind.
Preceded in death by her husband Herb in 2014, Sybil is survived by her son, David, and daughters Rachel and Cynthia; four grandchildren, Edward, Marian, Sophie and Rhianydd Qing; great-granddaughter Danica; and three generations of nieces and nephews.
