FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                

Sept. 6, 2005                   

Contact: Shirley Melikian Armbruster

559.278-5292 or 559.593.1815

or

Tammy Lau

Central Valley Political Archive

278.8573  

Former mayor Dan Whitehurst donates papers to Fresno State archive

The Central Valley Political Archive (CVPA) of the Henry Madden Library at California State University, Fresno, has announced the acquisition of the papers of former Fresno mayor Dan Whitehurst.

 In 1977, at age 28, Whitehurst was elected the youngest mayor in the nation for a city with a population of more than 100,000. He served as Fresno’s mayor from 1977 to 1985 after serving on the City Council for two years. During his two terms as mayor, Whitehurst tried to advance Fresno’s growth as a major city while being responsive to the needs of its diverse citizenry. 

Whitehurst’s mayoral papers comprise 14 linear feet and cover the years 1979 to 1984.  They include speeches, reports, correspondence, goals and objectives, and subject files.

His papers join those of former U.S. Representatives Cal Dooley, John Krebs, Rick Lehman (also a former state legislator), Chip Pashayan, and Bernie Sisk, in addition to the papers of state legislators Ken Maddy, Walter Karabian, Jim Costa and George Zenovich.              

Whitehurst was born in 1948 in Dos Palos and attended San Joaquin Memorial High School. He graduated from St. Mary’s College in Moraga in 1968 and went on to get a law degree from UC Berkeley’s Hastings Law School, as well as a master’s degree in Urban Studies from Occidental College. Whitehurst and his wife, Kathleen, lived in the Bay area for a time while he worked for the law firm of former San Francisco mayor Joseph Alioto, but they soon returned to Fresno where the Whitehurst family had well-known, established funeral homes. 

In 1985 Whitehurst accepted a fellowship to teach a course on California politics at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. After his return, he became the executive director of the Fresno County Economic Development Corporation. He largely remained a private citizen until his bid for re-election (15 years after his last term) as Fresno’s mayor in 2000. He was defeated by Alan Autry but moved on to become the second Kenneth L. Maddy Professor at the Maddy Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Fresno in 2001.

Now the president of the Farewell Funeral Service in Fresno, Whitehurst currently lives in Northern California with his wife.   

            For more information about the CVPA, you may also contact Lau through e-mail at tammyl@csufresno.edu. Visit the CVPA on the Web at www.cvparchive.org.