Donald Taves

July 22, 1926 - March 23, 2025

Donald “Don” Taves, 98, a long time resident of Emerald Heights in Redmond, died peacefully at Evergreen Hospice Center on March 23, 2025. Husband, father, grandfather, public health officer, scientist, psychiatrist, and “elder,” he lived his life as a quest for scientific understanding, personal growth, and more loving relationships between humans and the natural world. The eldest of four children, he grew up in a Mennonite farming family in Aberdeen, Idaho, surrounded by relatives. He enlisted in the Navy after graduating from high school and served as a radio/electronics technician in Hawaii and on a destroyer in China in the immediate wake of the war. He completed two years at Wheaton College before transferring to the University of Washington where he received his B.S. in 1949 and his M.D. in 1953. He met Ellen Myers, his wife of almost 70 years, during his first year of medical school and they were married in 1951. After a three year residency in Public Health in Vancouver (WA), Salinas (CA) and Berkeley (where he completed an MA in Public Health), he was hired as the health officer for Shasta County in northern California. As county health officer, he was expected to weigh in on whether or not to fluoridate the county’s drinking water. After reading the literature, he decided that not enough was known about fluoride to recommend doing so and, as a result, one of the few health officers who did not endorse fluoridation. His curiosity aroused, he applied to the University of Rochester to pursue a Ph.D. that would allow him to research the effects of fluoride on various bodily systems. After completing his degree, he joined the faculty of the medical school. To pursue his research on fluoridation, he developed an improved method for analyzing fluoride levels in the blood. This led to a number of randomised clinical trials with patients. Skewed results in some of these studies led him to develop a better method for assigning patients to clinical trials, which he called Minimization. The new method of analyzing blood fluoride not only allowed him to measure the effects of fluoridated water, but also to be the first to discover the presence of organic fluoride, forever chemicals,) from manufactured products, in blood. He continued these studies, and published articles in an effort to get his method of Minimization accepted by statisticians and the medical community for the rest of his life. Influenced by the human potential movement during the 1970s, he decided to take early retirement from the University of Rochester Medical School and complete a residency in psychiatry in order to do something new in his “retirement.” After completing his residency, he and Ellen moved back to the Pacific Northwest, established counseling practices, and designed and built a house in LaConner, WA. With this move, they returned to their roots, moved closer to their adult children, and their extended family. In 1994, they moved to Emerald Heights to be closer to grandchildren and the university. During this period, they took trips throughout Puget Sound on their towable cabin cruiser (“Smidgen”), competed in croquet tournaments, and made multiple trips to Australia to visit Karen and her family. Don was an active member of the Redmond Toastmasters group for the last seven years. Through the Wilderness Awareness School in nearby Duval, Don reconnected with his boyhood interests in the Nez Perce, developing survival skills, and exploring the natural world, as well as taking on a new role as an elder. He was predeceased by his wife Ellen and two of his siblings and is survived by his brother Jack, four children – Ann, Ben, Karen, and John – and four grandchildren (Jay, Annika, Margot, and Chris). Friends and family will gather for a celebration of his life at Emerald Heights on June 28th. We plan to make a zoom option available for those who cannot attend in person. In lieu of flowers, friends are invited to make contributions in his memory to the Wilderness Awareness School at https://wildernessawareness.org/donate/.