Richard C. Blum was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley within the Nineteen Fifties when he determined to hitchhike by means of Europe and Northern Africa as an change pupil the summer season earlier than his senior yr.

Till that time, he’d hardly left america, not to mention ventured past San Francisco’s 47 sq. miles. However as he walked the streets of Vienna and roamed the shoreline of Casablanca, he was confronted by a starkly completely different actuality than the one he’d left behind.

“I didn’t know a lot in regards to the world,” he wrote in his e-book “An Accident of Geography: Compassion, Innovation and the Battle Towards Poverty.” He went on to share: “I by no means realized how tough life was for thus many.”

This realization would inform the rest of his life. He was a wildly profitable businessman, political adviser, intrepid traveler and philanthropist. He was an in depth pal of the Dalai Lama, and notably, the husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein. He died on Feb. 27 at his residence in San Francisco after an extended battle with most cancers. He was 86 years outdated.

All through his life, Blum retained a steadfast dedication to UC Berkeley, from which he graduated with two enterprise levels. From 2002 till his passing, he served on the Board of Regents, together with a stint as chairman emeritus, and he established the Blum Heart for Creating Economies in 2006.

“The College of California gave him such a beautiful alternative in schooling and launching pad,” stated Janet Reilly, who labored with Blum on the Board of Regents. “He wished that for each pupil.”

Blum was often called a fiercely devoted Regent who labored tirelessly to trim the forms and make the UC system operate higher.

“After I got here on to the Board of Regents and have become chairman, I made a decision that this place wanted to be shaken up and restructured, and I set out to try this,” Blum advised Berkeley’s Victor Geraci. “A better factor would have been to only present up on the conferences and pound your gavel every so often.”

However gavel-pounding was not Blum’s fashion. He was a person of motion. “Dick was not going to take a seat on his fingers,” stated Mark Yudof, former president of the College of California, who Blum wooed from the College of Texas in 2008.

“What I’ll miss about Richard is basically his fearlessness,” stated Shankar Sastry, director of the Blum Heart for Creating Economies, which has since expanded to 10 UC campuses. “No downside was too onerous. Nothing was insuperable. He had a way of risk about every part.”

Throughout his tenure as a Regent, Blum shepherded the College by means of the 2007 monetary collapse and fought repeatedly for college kids and school, defending the significance of analysis, pushing to revise the College’s pension plan and advocating for the seismic retrofit of California Memorial Stadium and different growing old campus buildings.

“I’ve by no means met anybody fairly like him,” stated Yudof. When he wished one thing accomplished, “no bureaucrat was going to face in his method.”

This was additionally true of his need to resolve world poverty by means of an entrepreneurial lens. The Blum Heart for Creating Economies rapidly grew to become residence to one of the vital fashionable minors on campus, attracting college students and school from “each nook and nook,” famous Sastry.

“The very first thing that struck you about Dick is that he actually was a Renaissance man. He was a person of huge concepts,” stated Reilly, who can be the co-owner of Clint Reilly Communications, which owns The San Francisco Examiner. “He had a deep compassion for human beings and actually understood that we’re all a part of the human household.”

Blum was an ever-present determine at graduations, handing out certificates and shaking fingers. Sadly, this would be the first yr he won’t attend, famous Sastry.

“You’ll be able to’t perceive Dick with out his feeling of loyalty to folks and to the establishments that he encountered alongside the way in which,” stated Yudof. “His curiosity was in all the time doing the most effective he may do for the College of California.”

When Blum did go away campus, he spent his free time touring the world. But it surely was a visit to Nepal in 1968 the place his curiosity in world poverty grew into one thing larger.

“I’d all the time wished to go there,” he stated. “Acquired to know the Tibetans and the Sherpas. As human beings, it’s very straightforward to love them. They’re all good Buddhists, and most of them imagine that the way in which you carry happiness is to attempt to assist others.”

That philosophy grew to become deeply ingrained inside his personal life. Within the early aughts, he established the American Himalayan Basis, which centered on schooling, well being care and in addition labored to cease the trafficking of younger women in Nepal. Blum served as an honorary consul of Nepal and Mongolia.

“Every thing with Richard was a little bit of an journey,” stated Sastry. “At coronary heart, I believe his spirituality was form of an attention-grabbing mixture of Jewish and Buddhist. Particularly the Buddhist message of spreading compassion and being accepting of what individuals are wish to allow them to develop that basically, to my thoughts, was actually what drove him.”

Over time, Blum amassed a star-studded checklist of shut associates and contacts within the political world and past. He traveled with Jimmy Carter, hiked Mt. Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary, suggested Presidents Obama, Clinton and Carter on financial coverage, and hosted the Dalai Lama at Berkeley.

“He was comfy in these settings and speaking to dignitaries and to political leaders,” stated Reilly. “However he was equally as comfy with people who he helped — individuals who had completely nothing materially. He acknowledged that cash didn’t make you rich.”

That was on full show Friday morning beneath the hovering domed ceilings of Congregation Emanu-El, the place tons of of individuals from most of the people joined with San Francisco’s political elite, together with Gov. Gavin Newsom, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, former Gov. Jerry Brown and former San Francisco Mayors Artwork Agnos and Willie Brown to have a good time his exceptional life.

Regardless of the large loss and the void Blum leaves behind, Reilly stated, “This can be a life effectively lived. That is the lifetime of a rare man who actually made a distinction on the planet. That was by selection.”

jwolfrom@sfexaminer.com

Richard Blum, proper, with the Dalai Lama. (Courtesy photograph)

A memorial service for Richard Blum at Congregation Emanu-El on Friday. (Kevin N. Hume/The Examiner)

Pallbearers put together to maneuver the casket on the memorial service for Richard Blum. (Kevin N. Hume/The Examiner)

Sen. Dianne Feinstein waves to associates on the memorial service for her husband, Richard Blum. (Kevin N. Hume/The Examiner)