November 22, 2002

Graduate students remembered by close-knit group of colleagues

By Ellen Chrismer

Christine Owlett Courtesy/Ellen Pyatt

Annette Lentz Courtesy/Ken Kaplan

"She didn’t have a TV, that’s for sure," said friend Ellen Pyatt, a fellow doctoral student. "She filled up her life."

But the vibrant life of Owlett and that of her friend, Annette Lentz, were cut short Nov. 8. During a trip to the Lake Tahoe area, Lentz’s rental car was crushed by a falling tree as the pair drove along Highway 50. Owlett and Lentz, who was a doctoral student in biochemistry and molecular biology, were headed toward Lentz’s time-share in the mountains, said Lentz’s adviser, Assistant Professor Ken Kaplan.

Lentz, too, will be sorely missed in Kaplan’s close-knit lab, where she was known for her friendly, yet fiercely determined, demeanor and her love of coffee and The Counting Crows pop-rock group.

"Someone described the gaping hole that comes from something like this," Kaplan said. "I think we are now only understanding what that feels like."

A cancer biology researcher, Lentz studied how normal cells prevent mistakes from occurring during chromosome segregation. On the day she died, she had made a presentation of her latest research to her colleagues.

"She left feeling good about it," Kaplan said.

Both Lentz, 32, and Owlett, 41, were re-entry students realizing long-deferred scientific dreams.

After graduating from a Michigan high school in 1988, Lentz enlisted in the Air Force. Later she worked as a licensed vocational nurse. She transferred from Solano Community College in 1996 and earned a bachelor’s degree in genetics from UC Davis in 1998.

Owlett took a circuitous route to college, working as a nanny, a hotel hostess and a ski instructor for 15 years before attending Solano and UC Davis. She worked with professors Alan Jackman and Karen McDonald in the recovery of proteins from transgenic plants and plant-cell suspension cultures.

Along with her studies, Owlett was known as a dedicated teaching assistant. She was also active in summer outreach programs for high school students.

Owlett’s and Lentz’s departments held a memorial service for them last Friday at the Davis Friends Meeting. A memorial to the pair has also been created outside of 204 Briggs Hall.

Owlett is survived by her husband, a brother and sister, and her parents. Funeral services will be held 11 a.m. Saturday at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, 1300 Fifth Ave., in Belmont. Owlett’s family has asked that memorial contributions be made to the church’s Window Fund.

Services for Lentz were held in Detroit last week. She is survived by her sister, three brothers and their families. Kaplan said UC Davis will also create a fellowship for a third-year graduate student in Lentz’s name. Checks for the Annette Lentz Memorial Fund should be sent to the UC Regents, The Kaplan Lab, UC Davis, One Shields Ave, Section of Molecular and Cellular Biology, 149 Briggs Hall, Davis, CA 95616.