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
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