A Santa Barbara giant has departed. Richard Auhll died of sepsis and pneumonia, after five months of paralysis due to a fall and COVID.
Many in the S.B. community will first remember Richard for his annual Fiesta and New Year’s parties. For 30 years, he hosted hundreds of revelers in his home overlooking the Marina, as the La Boheme dancers performed and The Rave played on into the night. Over the years, the parties became a source of donations for charities, such as the Police Activities League.
But there was a far more serious side to the consummate party host. Richard was in every sense a self-made man, who credited higher education for his multi-faceted achievements and felt rewards should “help those who helped themselves.”
Born in North St. Paul, Minnesota, Richard’s childhood was shaped by adversity, and a love of academics was not always the case for this latchkey kid.
He often admitted to being a rowdy prankster at Holy Family grammar school in Council Bluffs, Iowa, until one seminal moment reset his future path. In his 3rd-grade textbook, he saw the sentence “Pilots must know arithmetic.” Then and there, he thought to himself, “I can do that.”
Once mathematics had been conquered, an increasing curiosity led to him ace his classes in science, history, and debate. In 1957, during Richard’s teenage years, the Russians launched Sputnik into orbit and the space race was on. From Central High School in Omaha, Nebraska, he went to the University of Michigan and then to Stanford, earning degrees in aerospace and aeronautical engineering to become a true “rocket engineer” at United Technologies Rocket Division in Silicon Valley.
Discontent working for a large corporation, his laser-focus redirected to an MBA at Harvard Business School with the intention of creating a high-tech company in California. Fulfilling that goal, he took Circon, here in Santa Barbara, from a miniature tool company to manufacturing the world’s smallest video-camera instruments. These were used for teaching and for performing micro-surgery for knee, urology, gynecology, and brain operations.
A relentless philanthropist, Richard said his success was “grounded in the knowledge, analytical thinking, and self-confidence I developed during my university education.” He has endowed multiple Engineering Chairs at UCSB and the University of Michigan and served on many academic advisory boards and foundations. He supported the Hoover Institute at Stanford and also taught classes in entrepreneurship at Harvard’s Business and Law schools and at the University of Delaware.
As a young boy, the love of flying had been planted in Richard when he had his first plane ride with his Uncle Jack, who trained fighter pilots during WWII. Since flight training in the early 1980s, Richard logged more than 6,000 hours in the air, piloting his beloved Citation Jet, 888 Romeo Alpha, all over the United States to business events and especially to University of Michigan football games. The freedom to fly allowed him to maintain friendships and live in both Santa Barbara and Aspen, Colorado.
Over time, his voracious curiosity let him to build a library on paleontology, petrography, Egyptian tombs, and Roman aqueducts. More recently, time was spent documenting the history of climate change with the earth’s orbital mechanics. Giving PowerPoint presentations to Santa Barbara Rotary gave him great joy.
During his paralysis, Richard frequently speculated on the origins of the Big Bang, inspired by endless TV hours watching the James Webb Telescope’s stunning penetrations of outer space.
He entertained colonizing the moon and Mars, ultimately deciding it was too impractical for humans due to the damage of cosmic blasts of radiation, micro-gravity, and the lack of circadian rhythms on our muscle, bones, and brains. Let alone what squeezing tubes of pizza and chocolate cake would do to our appetites. (True to his methodical nature, Richard always ate the same meals at his favored restaurants: Red Snapper Piccata with marinara pasta at Chase, Cioppino at the Boathouse, Herbies Ribs at Los Arroyos on Coast Village Road, Cashew Nut Chicken at Meun Fan Thai Café on the Mesa, and Tandoori Chicken at Apna on State Street.)
Closer to home, and in his wheelchair, he always checked to make sure the hummingbird feeders were filled so his cherished and admired little aviators would be ready for their next journey.
Richard is survived by his daughter, sister, brother and sister-in-law, cousins, and his longtime partner, Martha Smilgis.
A funeral Mass takes place October 21, 10 a.m., at Holy Cross Church (1740 Cliff Dr.). Donations in the memory of Richard Auhll may be made to St. Vincent’s School, S.B. Police Activities League, or See International.
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