San Anselmo-Fairfax Death Notices

James Buchanan Cowperthwaite was born in Helensburgh, Scotland in1923. He was seven when parents emigrated to Fairfax. Cowperthwaite met his future wife Mary Anne (Crisp) while both were attending Tamalpais High. He served as an aviation machinist mate 1st class in the U.S. Navy during World War II and completed an accounting degree from Golden Gate University when he returned to the Bay Area. Cowperthwaite was involved in the development of accounting systems for the IBM 700 series “supercomputer,” a technical marvel of its time in the 1950s. Cowperthwaite died on Oct. 2. He was 90.

Sheila Stuart Miller was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1936.  She graduated from Columbia University’s Teachers College in 1954 and moved to Greenbrae in the early 1970s after living in New York and Michigan. She was an avid tennis player who enjoyed travel, art, reading, and hosting parties, dinners and cocktails. She met her future husband Richard H. Miller in New York and they married and divorced twice and had three children.  Miller died on Oct. 14.

Russell Earl Brubaker was born in Michigan in 1929. He attended University of Michigan after serving in the Navy and launched a 30-year career with IBM that took him all over the West Coast. He moved his family to Ross in 1974. Brubaker was active in retirement, representing the city of Larkspur on the Commission on Aging and was named Larkspur’s Senior citizen of the year in 2009. Brubaker died on Oct. 21. He was 84.