Special to the Town Crier
Every Friday morning for more than 40 years, Edward S. Rexworthy called the Town Crier and recited the previous week's Los Altos weather statistics.
"Rex," as his friends called him, died Jan. 14, in Los Gatos after a short illness. He was 93. He entered the hospital in December to regulate his blood pressure because it was too low. He died of heart failure after returning to his home at The Terraces of Los Gatos, a retirement community.
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m., Friday, at The Terraces, 800 Blossom Hill Road, Los Gatos.
Up until his death, he continued to read his temperature and rain gauges and posted them in the library at The Terraces.
"The weather is important to people. They want to know how cold or hot it was, or how much it rained," he told the Town Crier in 1993.
Mr. Rexworthy's weather data has been used in a variety of projects. The United States Navy used his records to select Moffett Field as its lighter-than-air station for the Akron and Macon dirigibles in the 1930s. His weather statistics determined the direction of the runways that are used today.
Highly regarded for his expertise, "Rex would appear as an expert in court concerning weather," said Troy Wilder, a former business partner with Risk Technical Services in Los Altos.
During the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, he took a series of special wind measurements for the Bridge Authority. He recalled going up the 746-foot-high south tower of the bridge in an open cage elevator, buffeted by strong ocean winds, to gauge the wind velocity.
Mr. Rexworthy moved to Los Altos in 1918 from his home in Kent, England. He attended Stanford University and received a bachelor's degree in civil engineering, with a minor in meteorology, in 1934.
He supplied weather data to several Bay Area newspapers, the U.S. Weather Bureau and local radio stations and served as a professional witness.
Mr. Rexworthy served on the board of the San Antonio Hills Homeowners Association. The association serves homeowners in the Los Altos Golf & Country Club area of unincorporated Los Altos. He moved to Los Gatos in 1994.
Marian Balster, a Los Altos neighbor, said he had a love for big railroad locomotives that originated from a class in railroad engineering at Stanford. For a school project, he was assigned to find a route to lay track through the mountains to Santa Cruz. His interviewing of people started a rumor that a railroad was coming through the mountains and residents organized a resistance group.
He is survived by a son, Dwight Rexworthy, of Belmont, and stepchildren, Catherine O'Rourk of Riverside, and Brian O'Rourk of Cobb.
For more information on the memorial service, call (408) 356-1006.