By Donna Furey | LB Indy
Representatives for longtime Laguna Beach resident Dr. Ted Martonen delivered a $3 million gift last week to the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, one of the largest donations the center has ever received.
Martonen died in January 2014 at the age of 71; he had been battling some health problems, said the executor of his trust, who declined to be identified.
“Needless to say everyone is very excited about this gift,” said Board member Mary Ferguson, who referred questions to the center’s director, Keith Matassa, who was unavailable.
It isn’t clear what the center plans to do with its latest windfall. Celebrity and animal rights activist Bob Barker donated $250,000 to the center in 2011, helping the organization recover from a damaging flood. And last April, Ted Bauer, a part-time Laguna Beach resident, cut the ribbon on an expansion of center facilities underwritten by grant of an undisclosed amount from the Houston-based Charles T. Bauer Foundation.
The center, dedicated to the rescue and rehabilitation of sea mammals, reported revenue of $1.8 million and expenses of $1.1 million in 2012, the latest figures available on Guidestar.org, which tracks non-profit organizations.
Martonen had a notable career after graduating from Michigan State University where he earned two bachelor of science degrees in engineering math and engineering mechanics. He completed a Ph.D. at the University of Rochester and after graduating relocated in 1977 to Laguna Beach.
“He was an outstanding researcher and his work will be referenced for years,” a fellow research associate from Martonen’s post doctoral days at UC Irvine, Judson Kenoyer, posted on the website Tributes.com when he learned of Martonen’s death.
Another colleague from the era, Bob Phalen, wrote, “ You will be missed for your pioneering and elegant scientific advances related to inhaled particles. You will live a long time in the literature… thank you for your brilliant mathematical contributions.”
By the mid 1990s, Martonen had taken a position as a research physicist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory in North Carolina.
In 1997, he won the Computerworld Smithsonian Award for Medicine for his supercomputer simulations of the human lung accomplished by combining his expertise in medical research and computer technology.
After retirement from the E.P.A., Martonen returned to Laguna and collected the work of local artists. He swam in the ocean every day and traveled to Peru and China indulging his love of archeology, said his trustee.
He also took frequent trips to France where he continued his research in aerosol therapy at AirLiquide, based in Paris and involved in research and development of hydrogen products. Ira Katz, who worked with him at AirLiquide, described his friend on Tribute.com “I had known Ted since 1989 when I started working with him on the analysis of aerosol deposition using the model he had developed. As those of you who knew him well, he was a wonderful friend and interesting person, but also could be infuriatingly difficult to deal with. In the totality, this special person will be missed.”
Martonen never married and was not close to his sisters, who live in his native Michigan. He also made a gift of $1.5 million to the University of Rochester, the trustee reported.
