Saratoga News

Al Abshire

Commissioner Al Abshire loses his battle with cancer

By Sarah Lombardo

Watching Al Abshire laugh and joke with fellow members of the Saratoga Planning Commission, and listening to him talk out both sides of an issue, no matter how controversial, one found it hard to remember that for a little more than two of his three years on the commission, Abshire was battling cancer.

Now that his battle is over, his wife, Florence, is sure that it will be Abshire's warmth and interest in the community that people won't forget.

"Anything that he tackled, he would put his whole mind behind it and think it through thoroughly," Florence, Abshire's wife of 15 years, said.

Abshire died Aug. 10. He was 74.

Mayor Gillian Moran, who was a councilwoman when Abshire was appointed to the Planning Commission, called Abshire a "joy to work with and a fearless defender of his views.

"He worked for what he thought to be the best long-term interests of the community," she said.

Born Alfred Donald Abshire on April 17, 1923, Abshire was proud of the fact that he was a fourth-generation Californian, Florence said.

But most of all, she said, he was proud of his garden.

"Really, his greatest love was his garden," she said. "He really was an expert gardener."

Abshire kept a small orchard at his and his wife's Saratoga home. The garden boasted 50 varieties of chrysanthemums, and cactus orchids circled the yard.

And he was an active member of the community. In addition to sitting on the Planning Commission, to which he was appointed in 1994, Abshire was active in the Foothill Men's Garden Club; was a past local chapter president of SIRS, a statewide organization for retired men; was a member of the Whitman College Overseers; was a deacon at the Saratoga Federated Church; and was once a member of the Hakone Foundation, for which he was a member of a committee formed to choose student scholarship recipients of trips to Japan.

Abshire also established the Abshire Research Award at Whitman College in honor of his first wife. The award is for all undergraduate majors and has been highly praised by the university and the students, Florence said.

In his working career, Florence said, Abshire had two jobs. Having earned a degree in chemistry from UC-Berkeley, he was a district manager in the petrochemical division for Shell Chemical Company, from which he retired in 1978, and he was a consultant for Stanford Research International in Menlo Park until 1990.

It was during his years with Shell that Abshire and Florence met.

"We were neighbors in Houston," she said. Her husband and Abshire carpooled together to work, and their youngest sons had been best friends since grade school.

Years after the death of their spouses, Florence and Abshire married in 1982.

"We had 15 remarkable years," Florence said. She said it was special having the memories of so many years of friendship between them.

And they had one remarkable family, Florence and Abshire each having five children from their previous marriages, although all of their children were grown by that time.

"The only thing I brought with me was a decrepit 12-year-old dog that Al had convinced my husband to buy for our son Jimmy," she said. "And 12 years later, here it was coming to California with us in the back seat of the car.

"He used to say that's what he gets for not keeping his mouth shut."

Abshire is survived by his wife and 10 children and 17 grandchildren.

Services have been held.

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