Jack Baskin
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Jack Baskin | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 20, 1919[1] |
| Died | January 12, 2020 (aged 100) |
| Spouse | Peggy Downes Baskin |
Jack Baskin (September 20, 1919 – January 12, 2020) was an American philanthropist, engineer, and businessman in California, especially near Silicon Valley. He was the founder of the Jack Baskin School of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz,[2] one of the founding members of the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz, and director of the Peggy & Jack Baskin Foundation with his wife, Peggy Downes Baskin.[1]
Baskin was born in September 1919 in upstate New York and was the son of a watchmaker who immigrated from Russia with his wife to the United States in 1908. For his early education, Baskin attended school in a one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade with 30 other students. When it came time for Baskin to seek a college education, it was in the midst of the Great Depression, and so his family worked to save money to pay for his tuition. He would eventually study mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado, the first in his family to have a college education. Afterward, Baskin pursued his Bachelor of Science degree at New York University, earning the degree in 1940.[3]
Following college, Baskin entered his first job in engineering, being paid $28 per week, today being valued at around almost $500, or $70 per day.[4] During this same period, Baskin served as an aeronautical engineer in World War II.[5] Three years after the war in 1948, he moved west and earned his California Professional Engineers License, eventually becoming a general contractor in Southern California, especially in the newly-popular suburbs of Los Angeles. Baskin would go on from there to work in engineering, real estate, and philanthropy, eventually settling in Santa Cruz, California, where he lived until his death.[3]
