Richard Orrin Cross, beloved father, teacher, and advocate for public education, died peacefully on May 19. His life was devoted to family, students, and community, grounded in the belief that education can transform lives and strengthen society. He is survived by his children, Kevin and Kimberly, and his cherished grandchildren Julia, Jonisha, Sequari, and Eve. He was predeceased by his daughter, Kirsten, and his second wife, Mary Louise Naverrete.
Born to Lionel and Janet Cross in Fortuna, California, on January 20, 1937—the day FDR began his second term—Orrin grew up with the family joke that Inauguration Day had been changed in his honor. Lionel, his family’s first college graduate, taught agriculture and led the Future Farmers of America in San Jose. Janet, also a graduate, maintained steam locomotives during WWII and later taught home economics. Their example instilled in Orrin a lifelong respect for learning and work done in service to others.
As a teen, Orrin spent summers picking prunes and painting houses—lessons in discipline he later passed on to students. At seventeen, he met Carol Kipp in the Willow Glen Methodist Church, where they sang in the choir and were active in the youth fellowship. His love of singing and the outdoors lasted all his life. Married while still in college, the two pedaled everywhere on four-speed Raleighs, mastering the art of balancing groceries on the handlebars. Orrin continued commuting by bicycle for decades, riding up San Carlos’s famously steep 17% Melendy Drive—rain or shine (though he did eventually upgrade his bike).
In 1960, he joined the faculty at San Carlos High School to teach biology. A National Science Foundation grant sent the young family—with two toddlers and a baby packed into a camper—to Purdue University each summer for four years, where Orrin earned his Master’s degree in biology. It’s hard to say which parent had the tougher job during those trips.
He was a gifted teacher who cared deeply about his students, though it wasn’t always appreciated—more than once, he drove to a class member’s home to enlist parents in a plan for success. “Orrinology” quickly gained a reputation for being tough but fair. Students always knew where they stood and how to make up lost ground. Labs brought theory to life, and field trips – to Pillar Point on the coast, the Sierras, or the San Diego Zoo – made science unforgettable. He didn’t just teach biology; he taught students how to learn. Many remembered his class as a high point of their school years, and thanked him for preparing them for college.
Outside the classroom, Orrin worked to strengthen the systems supporting public education. At 30, he was elected president of the Sequoia Union High School District Teachers Association, helping secure wages and benefits to retain top educators. He and Carol campaigned for school desegregation in the late 1960s, and in 1975 he served on the local elementary school board, championing bilingual education and broader access.
A natural innovator, Orrin worked in multimedia before the term existed. In 1967, he created an “audio-tutorial” classroom lined with slide-sound stations and cassette lessons set to popular music. Triple-screen slide shows, featuring hundreds of classroom photos set to music with cutting-edge “fade” technology, were a highlight at Open House. Students performed dissections and experiments, handed out home-baked cookies, and offered live interaction with “Herman” – a real human skull, animated by a hidden student with a lever and microphone.
In 1976, he installed one of the first computerized phone systems to notify families of student absences. His voice became a familiar presence throughout the district, with students rushing to erase messages—which many alumni can still quote—before parents came home. His approach dramatically cut class-cutting, and was one of the earliest implementations of automated calls in the country.
An avid outdoorsman, Orrin loved to ski, hike, kayak, and camp in the Sierras. He and Carol always made room for friends on family trips.
When San Carlos High closed in 1982, Orrin transferred to Carlmont, where he taught until retirement in 1997. After divorcing in 1990 and a brief stint of bachelorhood (marked by some inventive stir-fry experiments), he married Mary Louise, whose family welcomed him warmly. Retirement brought travel, time for loved ones, and a return to community life. In 2002, he rejoined the Unitarian Fellowship of Redwood City, singing in the choir and joining the “Connections” committee. Ever a teacher, he led a political discussion group at the San Carlos Senior Center and volunteered as a wildflower docent at Edgewood Park, where he hiked regularly.
In 2021, as dementia advanced, he moved to Colorado to live with his son Kevin. Though memories faded, the essentials endured: songs learned in youth, his self-image as a teacher, and his deep affection for family, friends, and the many lives he touched. His legacy lives on in the thousands of former students who still approach the world with curiosity, persistence, and the belief that knowledge carries both privilege and responsibility.
A memorial will be held Friday, January 2, 4:30 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Redwood City. The following day, we’ll gather at Pillar Point to honor Orrin’s love of the natural world.
A fantastic description of a Life of Learning, Teaching & Inspiring!
It was an honor to know a man whose life so beautifully embodied purpose, passion, and care for others. Orrin’s belief in the power of education and innovation left an imprint far beyond the classroom—it touched hearts, opened minds, and strengthened the fabric of community.
His creativity, warmth, and dedication will continue to inspire all who had the privilege of crossing his path. May his legacy live on through every life he shaped and every lesson he so generously shared.
Thank you for the opportunity to be a small part of his life and care .
With deep respect and warm remembrance.
What a beautiful Obituary, and a very detailed chronology of what a wonderful person and an exceptional life that Orrin lead. My husband, John, and I with our children, Jordan, Mikaela and James will miss him dearly. He was such a good and caring man with a gentle soul.
Orrin was clearly a remarkable man, as both a teacher and a creative force in his world. I have the pleasure of knowing his son, Kevin, brilliant also, and a leader helping to make positive change in the world focusing on sustainability in the environment. May Orrin Rest in Peace knowing his son is carrying on his father’s legacy.
I want to let Mr. Cross’ family know that I was in his first class in 1960 at San Carlos High School. It was a General Science class, and he had us doing experiments all year long. Our whole class dove enthusiastically into the interesting and fun experiments he set out for us. We made our own microscopes by melting glass pipettes over Bunsen burners, then stretching the blob of molten glass until it was thinner than sewing thread. One student would hold the pipette, hot and fluid in the middle, and another student would run the length of the classroom with the other end of the pipette. Then we’d break up that thin filament into sections, and melt one section until it made a single drop of glass. We would embed that cooled droplet into a wooden tongue depressor after poking a hole in it. We could then use the homemade microscope to discover and observe the microscopic creatures in pond water–we could see Paramecium and Amoeba and rotifers of various kinds, which were all plentiful and so amazing to watch. We also each made our own scale with the rocking arm anchored by a razor blade in the middle of a boom that had little homemade baskets hanging from each side. To calculate the weight of any object, we used sets of staples — single staples, sets of 5, sets of 10, and so on. We weighed common objects, classifying their weights by units of staples. The other students in my class and I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED Mr. Cross’ class. His classroom became a hive of student activity after school every day. Students were in there stretching glass or tending to their plant experiments almost every day, running across the classroom or tending their seedlings, laughing, and working together.
Personally, I had had 8 years of Catholic school before I came to San Carlos High, and the vitality of the students and excellence of the teachers was remarkable to me. Mr. Cross’ class was wonderful. He respected us, gave us chances to learn by doing in every single segment of General Science that year. To me, it felt like I was living in Technicolor after living in a very bland world of black and white–in my grade school, we students had no fun in our classes, we did absolutely nothing active, there was very little talk about the world around us, and there was almost zero science taught. I had to read voluminously from the Encyclopedia and the public library’s collection of science books to feed my hunger for concrete information about animals, plants, people, astronomy, physics, and the world at large.
I have always wanted to thank Mr. Cross for being a shining star in my educational firmament, but didn’t know how to find him. I’s heard he might show up at one of the San Carlos High class reunions I attended, but he did not.
He was an exceptional teacher. He treated us like intelligent people, he challenged us, he trusted us with our intense pursuit of the experiments he’d created for us. We were passionate about creating the very best tiny microscopes we could, after weeks of practice stretching glass to 25-foot-long filaments, for example. We bonded as a student group in his classroom, and enjoyed those relationships for the following three years.
I know that I was one very fortunate teenager to have had him as a teacher, and will remain deeply grateful for his caring about science and his caring about our minds and hearts as well.
I’m so sorry to hear of his passing. He was a special man, and, to me, he epitomized the art of teaching and developing the minds of teenagers.
Thank you for listening. Mr. Cross, may your family understand fully how important you were to probably thousands of students. May your spirit last forever!
Wow – thanks for this amazing and heartfelt note. I took my Dad to MY class reunions (1980), but I guess he never got the invitations to the Class of ’60 reunions. Sorry you weren’t able to connect with him after graduating from high school. I hope to meet you at his memorial service.
Kevin Cross