Eldon J. Dvorak | WEAI Executive Vice President, 1967-1998

The following was prepared by Wade Martin and Joe Magaddino, Eldon's former colleagues at California State University, Long Beach:

We regret to announce that Eldon J. Dvorak has passed away. Eldon has a long list of accomplishments both professionally and personally. Many of you knew him as your colleague in the department of economics at CSULB and others through his tireless work at the Western Economic Association International. Eldon helped to expand the CSULB economics department during his time as chair. He was able to double the number of tenure-track faculty as the department grew rapidly. He also was instrumental in the creation of the M.A. program.

Certainly Eldon would regard his main professional contribution as taking a rag-tag third-rate professional association whose records were contained in two shoe boxes into a major scholarly organization with two high quality journals. Economic Inquiry has had a series of outstanding editors. (Bob Clower was the first editor Eldon selected and he later went on to edit the AER). Eldon recognized that even though Economic Inquiry published high quality articles, many of the articles were written to those specialists in the field and not to a more general professional audience and those charged with making policy. So he created what eventually became Contemporary Economic Policy. He was the founding editor and was followed as editor by Darwin Hall of CSULB and later by me [Wade Martin]. Darwin and I worked hard to realize Eldon's goal of providing the profession with a high-quality journal which made contemporary economic analysis available to a broader audience.

As Eldon's childhood friend says, "Eldon always enjoyed life." This picture shows Eldon and his long-time partner Catherine Wernke at a recent dance doing what they loved to do -- enjoying life. Eldon has donated his body to UCI and a memorial service is being arranged however no date is set yet.