Jonathan Roise, former editor in chief, passes away at 67

Oct. 25, 2012, 1:13 a.m.
Jonathan Roise, former editor in chief, passes away at 67
Courtesy of Michael Couzens

He was 67. Roise, who enrolled at Stanford in 1963, led The Daily during the Vietnam War, a time of anti-war and anti-draft protests, teach-ins, marches, sit-ins and strikes.

An ardent opponent of the war, Roise took a strong editorial stance in support of protests and sit-ins, the rights of individual students, free speech and student liberties. Michael Couzens ’68, Roise’s former roommate and colleague at The Daily, reminisced about their regular “discussions about the anti-war movement, religion and sit-ins.”

At Stanford, Roise was a part of Project South, a radio-documentary group that presented on KZSU. He also worked closely with a group of professors who merged religious studies with matters of social conscience, such as Michael Novak and Davie Napier, dean at the chapel. He volunteered for the United Farm Workers and left Stanford to pursue work in Seattle with Environmental Works, a nonprofit community development organization.

In 1990, Roise moved to Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, to work as the director of the Quaker Center. He co-founded Sí a la Vida, an organization that aimed to provide street children with mentorship and structured lifestyles to transition them to autonomous adulthood. The organization went on to open two centers in Nicaragua.

Couzens remembered how he and Roise lived in a “broken-down boarding house” off campus during their Stanford years.

“We would have a conference on Sunday and declare things that we needed to do, like stop smoking or do the laundry or catch up on doing homework,” Couzens recalled. “There were many new-leaf weeks.”

Roise did not go on to graduate from Stanford.

“I always felt like of all the people I’d known at Stanford who later become eminent one way or another…he was a credit to the university as much as anybody,” Couzens said.

Roise is survived by his son, Joshua, and two siblings. A memorial service is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. on Oct. 27 at Eagle Harbor Church, 105 Winslow Way West, Bainbridge Island, Wash.

– Aaron Sekhri

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