Donald Lee Epley

Donald Lee Epley

Solon

Donald Lee Epley was born December 22, 1934, in Princeville, Illinois, to Fred and Jenny (Johnson) Epley. They farmed four miles east of Princeville and one mile north of Dunlap. Don died Saturday, November 15, at Legacy Senior Living in Iowa City. He had been battling cancer for several months.

Don and his wife Yvonne lived for over five decades in a large farmhouse on fifteen acres at the west edge of Solon. Several years ago they sold the property to the school district, and it is now the site of the Solon Middle School.

Raised on the Illinois farm with his older brother and sister, Fred Jr. and Doris, Don attended first grade through eighth in a rural one-room schoolhouse. He graduated from Princeville High School in 1952 and went to the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, where he earned a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. He became a professor at Stanford University in 1960. He married Yvonne Loomis, a California native, in Redwood City, California, on August 25, 1963. Don, not yet 30, then accepted a position at the University of Iowa to become chair of its electrical engineering department. The newlyweds moved to Iowa City and soon thereafter bought the land and house in Solon. Family members used to joke that Don epitomized the saying you can take the boy off the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the boy.

June Acres began to breed and train horses. Yvonne took the lead in running this venture. She and Don developed a wide network of friends in the Iowa Morgan Horse Association. Yvonne learned carriage driving and participated in Morgan horse shows. They enjoyed lasting ties with Carolyn Howe, who was 18 and studying horse husbandry when she came to work with their horses, and Bob Riley, a veteran horse trainer who later worked at the farm for weeks at a time well into his seventies, often staying in their upstairs apartment.

Don’s research coming out of graduate study was oriented to mathematics. Early in his career he worked on queueing theory, designing the ways a single computer can have multiple users “simultaneously” even though the computer works on only one fragment of the inputs at a time. With the expansion of computer technologies and capacities, Don increasingly focused on software and eventually left the College of Engineering for the computer science department. From 1973 to 1978 he chaired the department and initiated the creation of the undergraduate program. Over the years, he taught hundreds upon hundreds of undergraduates and directed numerous doctoral students.

In the mid-1990s he nearly died of a massive heart attack. He had come home from work early and felt increasingly ill. Alarmed, Yvonne insisted on driving him to the hospital in Iowa City. There he had a coronary and was taken immediately to the operating room for emergency quadruple bypass surgery. As he recovered, Yvonne took charge of his diet and his activities. He retired from the university a year or so later. And lived a healthy life for three more decades.

Don and Yvonne celebrated their sixtieth anniversary in 2023. She died less than a month later, having suffered from Alzheimer’s for the previous few years. Early in her decline, Don decided he did not want to have her go to a memory care unit and opted for an assisted living facility where they could continue to live together.

Don and Yvonne attended the Unitarian Universalist Society in their

early years in Iowa City. Later they were congregants at the Unity Center in Cedar Rapids and active in its affairs. In the last few years, Don had conversations with lay ministers and began going to Presbyterian services in Iowa City and continued to explore religious and spiritual questions in his reading. A voracious reader, he enjoyed novels, biographies, and works on current affairs.

Over the years, he also acquired extensive knowledge as a fan of movies, jazz (from his days in the San Francisco Bay area), and baseball.

After Yvonne’s death, Don found solace and friendship with Eve Mountford, also a resident at Legacy Senior Living who had recently lost her spouse.

Don experienced loss and family tragedy throughout his life. His mother died when he was eleven. In the early 1960s his young cousin Earl Johnson was killed in a car accident. In 1968 Don’s older brother Freddie, 44, died unexpectedly of a heart attack. In 1981, his nephew David, 22, his sister’s youngest child, died in a motorcycle accident.

When Don’s mother died her unmarried sister, Jarda Johnson, came to live with the family, cared for him, and took charge of the household. After Don left for college, she and his father married. Don himself was an invaluable presence for family members at difficult or decisive moments in their lives, especially his nieces and nephews. When his brother died, he reached out to help his sister-in-law and his thirteen-year-old niece Susan through the trauma. He was a longstanding presence for his sister Doris’s three children—John, Debra, and David Brenkman. In the wake of some adolescent misdeed, David was sent to Don and Yvonne’s one summer; at first he felt working with Don mending fences and tending to the horses was a punishment but quickly established a lasting bond with his uncle. Debra spent the better part of a year in high school living with Don and Yvonne during his sabbatical back in California. Years later when Doris, 65, died suddenly the three of them bonded even more, traveling together on trips, including to Seattle and the Pacific Northwest and even to Paris. Eventually Debra moved to Solon from Peoria, Illinois, to be closer to them. Don was just beginning high school when John, Doris’s oldest, was born; he was his nephew’s lifelong role model, mentor, and friend.

Later generations also got to know and enjoy Uncle Don. For John’s sons Samuel and Benjamin, Don could be counted on for lively conversation and reminiscences. So, too, for Sam’s daughter and son and Ben’s three daughters. Ava and Abraham and Isabella, Anya, and Eliana all had valuable moments with their great-great-uncle.

The immediate family will hold a private celebration of Don’s life in the coming months. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations can be made in his honor to the Eastern Iowa Alzheimer’s Foundation. Friends and acquaintances are encouraged to post their memories and thoughts on the Gay and Ciha Funeral and Cremation Service website: www.gayandciha.com.