Grant J. Munsey Music Education Endowment

West Valley College philosophy instructor Sandra LaFave has established this endowment in loving memory of her husband Grant Jennings Munsey (1948-2005).

Because the music major has historically required students to receive private lessons, and because students have usually paid for these private lessons out of pocket, the music major has historically been biased in favor of more affluent students. The music department at West Valley College enrolls talented and committed music students of all income levels, however. The Scholarship is intended to benefit West Valley College music majors with a serious commitment to a career in music, and who cannot afford private instruction in instruments or voice.

Grant Munsey was a brilliant computer scientist. He was born in Los Angeles to Clarence and Frances Munsey. Grant attended Orange Coast College and UC Berkeley, and graduated from UC Irvine with a BSEE. Grant was an independent spirit. He had broad scientific knowledge and interests, including biochemistry, mathematics, sign language, and the brain (especially the physiology of visual perception). As a senior at Irvine in 1969, Grant built a robot that roamed freely around the Engineering Building, avoiding obstacles, going around corners, and plugging itself into wall outlets when it needed a charge. Grant played the tuba in the UC Berkeley band. He played the guitar and drums, and sang well. He had wide-ranging and unusual interests, including radio-controlled gliders, tap-dancing, figure-skating, photography, bird-watching, astronomy, and electronic music. He trained as a race-car driver and pilot, and flew aerobatics. He was extremely personable and funny.

Grant began his long career in computers as a tech support specialist for Hewlett-Packard. Grant excelled in that job, and became the highest-level tech support specialist in the company in the 1970's, called in to solve only the most difficult cases. As a young man, Grant traveled around the world, wherever a major HP installation had a problem.

Grant was a founder of numerous start-up companies in the late 1970's and 80's: Onyx Systems, Plexus Computers, CadLinc, Opus Systems, and Ashlar. For ten years, Grant owned a budgerigar (Floyd R. Budgie) who accompanied him to work at various start-up companies; Grant and Floyd were the subject of a featured story in the Palo Alto Weekly. After he became financially secure, he worked only on projects that interested him, whether or not there was money to be made. In the 1990's Grant took a year off to study the C. elegans nematode, and another year studying the human genome and protein folding. In the mid-1990's Grant founded his own company Cognicon, Inc. to sell his software by mail-order. He developed and patented software to transform two-dimensional images into three-dimensional models. Adobe Systems bought his technology in 1997 and added it to Photoshop Version 5.0. Grant worked at Adobe until he became ill in 2001. Shortly before his illness, he was promoted to Principal Scientist; he was the only person without a Ph. D. to hold that title.

Sandra LaFave had a career in the computer industry before she began teaching philosophy at West Valley. Grant and Sandy met and fell in love while they both were working at Opus Systems in 1984. They married in 1991.

In March of 2001 Grant developed what appeared to be an ordinary case of the flu. Unfortunately his case was very unusual. A very rare complication of viral infection is encephalitis. Grant fell into a deep coma lasting eight weeks. Most of the brain stem cells controlling voluntary movement were destroyed, with the result that Grant became a C3 quadriplegic. Though he was fully conscious for extended periods, so he was able to listen to music and books on tape, he was unable to maintain consistent wakefulness. He never recovered much ability to speak or move, and was bed-ridden until his death on Christmas Day 2005.