In Memoriam
Alexander M. Hehmeyer
September 18, 2026
On this date we were notified by his son Alex that Alex Hehmeyer ’64 had passed away on August 15, 2026. Below are the following remembrances:
Obituary
San Francisco Chronicle
October 2, 2026
Alex Hehmeyer
1964 Yale graduation
Alexander Millar Hehmeyer, born August 10, 1942 in New York City, died on August 15, 2026. His wife of 57 years, Carol Marliave Hehmeyer, born June 30, 1941 in Salt Lake City, died just 24 days later on September 8. They spent most of their lives together in the Bay Area living in San Francisco, Marin, Walnut Creek, Lafayette, Pleasant Hill, and Concord.
They are survived by their sons, Alexander Hehmeyer and his wife, Jaime Teevan, and Paxton Hehmeyer and his wife, Preeti Hehmeyer, and five grandchildren: Griffin, Cale, Dillon, Brier and Kiran. Lawyers at heart, they called their sons Lex and Pax; "law" and "peace."
Alex Hehmeyer
in recent years
Alex graduated from Yale in 1964 and then earned his law degree from the UC Berkeley School of Law in 1967. He began as an attorney at Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro, but soon moved into investment banking, finance, and business leadership. He was General Counsel at Richard C. Blum & Associates and was later CEO of the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. At the end of his career he was Chairman at Rootstock Software, which was acquired in 2022.
Carol graduated from UC Berkeley in 1963 and was also class of 1967 at the UC Berkeley School of Law (where she and Alex met). Carol was a third generation UC Berkeley graduate and descended from a long line of Californians. She spent approximately 15 years with the San Francisco District Attorney's Office and later had her own practice in the city. She became a formidable trial lawyer, trying more than 45 civil and criminal cases over the course of her career.
Although he grew up in Manhattan, Alex loved being outdoors, nurtured by summers he spent as boy at Lake George. He and Carol regularly backpacked together early in their marriage, and he skied and scuba dived with his sons. He also loved wine, food, and travel. His family remembers Caesar salads at the California Culinary Academy, meals with Paul Prudhomme in New Orleans, escargot in Paris, Napa and Central Coast wine auctions, and his stories about summers spent lobster diving off Cape Cod while he was in college. He went on a final safari to Zambia and Botswana with Lex and Pax shortly before his death.
Carol was fiercely loyal and protective of her family and friends. She was also impossible to overlook: tall, loud, exuberant, and a prolific storyteller who could tell the same story many times. She loved entertaining, ordering too much food and making certain everyone had more than enough. Her generosity was one of the ways she expressed her love.
Alex and Carol
as depicted on the program for their
Oct. 3, 2026 memorial service
In their later years, Carol lived in memory care at Oakmont of Montecito. Alex moved there so he could be close to her and visited her every day. After Alex became ill in July 2026, he returned home and entered hospice to end life on his own terms. When Carol learned what he had decided, she walked in and asked, “What is this bulls**t?” Although her memory had faded, she understood that something important was happening and she expressed herself in her usual blunt fashion.
Carol was with Alex when he died. Her sons were with her when she died 24 days later.
Carol and Alex lived big lives. They worked hard, traveled, entertained, argued, told stories, drank wine, raised children, spoiled grandchildren, and filled their homes and the lives of the people around them. They also left an unmistakable family legacy: two sons, five grandchildren, and a lifetime of memories likely to be told and retold — just as Carol told her stories.
They were together for a long time. And, in the end, they were together too.
A private celebration will be held on October 3, 2026, in Palo Alto. In lieu of flowers, those wishing to celebrate Alex and Carol might consider a donation in their memory to UC Berkeley School of Law.
Essay, 60th Reunion Book
by Alex Hehmeyer
May 2024
We have reached the 80-years-old milestone and are no strangers to life’s lessons. We have experiences with life, death, health, family, work, social activities, travel, and friendships. I’ll summarize a few of my experiences since our 50th.
My wife Carol and I have been married for 54 years. She retired some years ago as an Assistant District Attorney in San Francisco, but continued to provide pro bono legal services. She has had various medical issues, but her hardest struggle is with Alzheimer’s. Fortunately she is cheerful and still relatively high-functioning. After my being the sole caregiver (highly stressful) for a couple of years, we transitioned and she is living in an excellent memory-care facility. I visit several times a week. I am glad that we did not defer having experiences along the way, including family activities and travel, so there are many happy memories that I and the others in the family have, even though she no longer shares most of them.
We have two sons in their forties and five grandchildren: four teenage boys and a four-year-old girl. We see them as often as we can, especially the son and his family living fairly close to us. We are in Concord, California.
This year I convinced each son to accompany me on a separate European river cruise; one down the Danube and the other down the Rhine. I kept up on shore excursions with them and the other passengers (who were probably around 60), so my twice a week personal training exercise program paid off. I still have a ways to go, though.
I made the life-style choice very recently to move to an apartment in a senior living/assisted living facility close to where Carol is. I made the right choice. It is much better than living alone.
I have been generally healthy. I do have, like many of us, metal and plastic knees and one hip, and new eye lenses. I had a bout with skin cancer and surgeries (too much sun exposure growing up), and my irregular heartbeat is permanent.
I only fully retired last year, on August 1, 2022. That was the closing date for the very timely sale of the software company The Danville Group, dba Rootstock Software, to the private-equity company, Gryphon Investors. I was the nonexecutive Chairman of the Board from 2008, the year it was started by the founder and CEO, Pat Garrehy. Rootstock Software is comprehensive, cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning software built on the Salesforce Platform, and is used by manufacturing, distribution, and other companies.
I have also, as a volunteer, mentored several startups and startup teams in business planning and early stage company fundraising competitions, such as those sponsored by Rice, the University of Michigan, and UC Davis.
I look forward to our 60th and, among other activities, discussing current political and social issues. I assume that we all still remember when intellectual diversity and principled, fact-based debate and true First Amendment rights were respected.
Essay, 50th Reunion Book
by Alex Hehmeyer
May 2014
We who were born during WWII are the scouts for the Baby Boomers. There is arguably a greater generation gap between the Classes of 1964 and 1969 than there is between the Classes of 1935 and 1964. In the five years after June 1964 we had the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that authorized the horrific escalation of the Vietnam war, the implementation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, student unrest in many other places, the Summer of Love in San Francisco, Woodstock, women admitted as Yale undergraduates, the rise of the Hippies and the drug culture, and changes in fashion and personal appearance.
I was born and raised in New York City. My father was a partner at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. My mother was an artist (a graduate of Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris) and was active in studying comparative religions and spiritual healing. I have one sibling, a younger sister. We lived in a high-rise apartment in Washington Square, in Greenwich Village. I went to day school (from K-9) at Friends Seminary, a co-ed school with small classes (about 25). Among my classmates were Neil Mitchell and Roger Weil (both Yale ’64) and John Avlon (Yale ’65). My parents were very permissive about letting me roam around New York. It was a bit of a shock to then go to a somewhat monastic and restrictive prep school (Choate) for three years. Many of the Choate class of 1960 matriculated at Yale.
I decided I wanted to go to law school at a state university, and was admitted to the University of Virginia and UC Berkeley. I was leaning towards UVA but, urged on by Neil Mitchell, I decided to go to Berkeley. We shared a Berkeley apartment with Roberto Bonetti ’64 (who studied civil engineering). I literally stepped over Mario Savio at Sather Gate as the Free Speech movement started.
If I had gone to UVA I never would have met my wonderful wife, Carol, and had our great sons.
All of us have had to make similar future life-deciding decisions. I don’t play “what if” or “if only.” I do often say “thank goodness.” I look forward, almost never backward, except to learn lessons from prior mistakes and relive memories of prior successes.
I became an associate at the largest San Francisco law firm in 1967, but later decided that I preferred to be in business and went to Sutro & Company (which was not a client), where I ran several divisions. I met Richard Blum there and I joined him as he started his private equity firm in 1981. I worked with him until 1994, so I also got to know his wife, Dianne Feinstein, and learned a lot about politics. I have been an entrepreneur and C-Level executive (education and training and other service companies, and enterprise software). The details are on LinkedIn.
I enjoy mentoring and being in the software business, and don’t plan to formally retire.