Posted by Cathy Gowdy on Wednesday, March 03, 2010 at 04:27:01 :
Marin Independent Journal
Tuesday, November 26, 1985
Section A, page 4
DENNIS B. WILLIS
A funeral for Dennis “Dennie” Burke Willis, a former superintendent of the Dixie School District, will be held today at 2:30 p.m. at the Eggen & Lance Mortuary in Santa Rosa. Mr. Willis, 76, died Saturday at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital.
Mr. Willis, who lived in the Los Ranchitos area of San Rafael for almost 20 years, had resided in Santa Rosa since 1974.
He was born in Booneville, Mendocino county, where his parents homesteaded to raise sheep, cattle and hogs.
In Marin, Mr. Willis saw the Dixie School District grow from a one-room school with 23 pupils when he came in 1951 to 10 schools with 5,000 students when he retired in 1969. In recent years, it has shrunk to three schools with about 1,000 students.
He was principal of Santa Venetia and James B. Davidson schools before becoming district superintendent.
While striving to build classrooms and provide regular school programs for a skyrocketing school population created by Terra Linda subdivisions, Mr. Willis also managed to institute several innovative programs.
He started special programs for the gifted and the handicapped, long before state monies were granted to aid those programs, established a volunteer teacher aide program and got Sonoma State College to conduct a summer demonstration school which recruited outstanding teachers from throughout the state.
In 1962 he organized the Dixie Institute for Educational Research, a nonprofit corporation to improve education through research.
The California Elementary School Administrators Association honored him in 1968 with the Golden Apple award as the most outstanding Bay Area educator.
After he left Marin in 1969, he taught at Chico State University for four years.
During his 40-year teaching and administrative career, Mr. Willis was active in state and national educational organizations.
He began his career in 1932 in a one-room school in a remote area north of Covelo in Mendocino County’s Round Valley. He held several teaching and administrative posts in Mendocino schools before coming to Marin County in 1951.
Mr. Willis was educated in one-room schools and received credentials from Humboldt State College and the University of Southern California. He also received a master’s degree in education from San Francisco State College.
He is survived by his wife, Marjorie Willis of Santa Rosa; a son, Daniel Willis of Sacramento; a brother, Porter Willis of Oregon; two sisters, Beth Tuttle of Booneville and Allo Coulter of Modesto; and one grandson.
The family prefers memorial contributions to the American Cancer Society, 826 St. Helena Ave., Santa Rosa, 95404.
Inurnment will be at Santa Rosa Memorial Park.
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A Death Notice in the same paper adds that his grandson is Jason Willis of Sacramento.
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