Deceased June 30, 2019

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In Memory

Eitan Fenson ’75, our classmate and friend, passed away June 30, 2019, at age 65 from complications of thyroid cancer near his home in Los Altos, Calif.

At Amherst, Eitan was known for his mathematical talent, bridge-playing and vocal expression of passionately held opinions—not necessarily in that order. One Phi Gam fraternity brother remembers Eitan from Calculus II in freshman year. Prof. Norton Starr used no textbook, expecting students to learn exclusively from his lectures and the acres of equations he scrawled manically on the blackboard. Eitan slouched his 6 foot 4 inch frame over a chair and never took a single note, yet aced the course with ease. Others remember Eitan’s outspoken advocacy that New York was the greatest city in the world and the Yankees the greatest baseball team.

Eitan loved his Amherst experience and spoke afterward of how much he enjoyed the campus setting, academics and his classmates. His support for coeducation was rewarded when daughter Zoe, eldest of his three children, graduated with Amherst’s class of 2009.

Eitan was born in Israel to an American mother and Canadian father. He moved to New York at age 4 and graduated from Manhattan’s Stuyvesant High School.

After Amherst, Eitan received his master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Michigan, where he also met his wife, Barbara Weinstein. After working in New Jersey for Bell Labs, he was recruited to work in Silicon Valley, where he and Barbara raised their children while building careers in the tech sector.

In the early 2000s, Eitan stepped back from corporate life and turned much of his focus to political activism. As head of the Santa Clara County Democratic Volunteer Center, he led thousands of volunteers in some of the country’s most prolific get-out-the-vote efforts. He supported the Bay Area Latino immigrant community and advocated for environmental causes. Volunteers who worked with Eitan praised him in notes on a message board after his passing. “I remember working with a sweet, calm leader who actually listened to us, his worker bees,” one wrote. Another wrote, “I remember him from the Obama campaigns, always there helping to figure out the tech aspect of our systems.”  

Bob McCartney ’75