Krautkraemer memorial service to be held Jan. 15

A memorial service celebrating the life of Jeff Krautkraemer, a Washington State University economics professor and community activist who fought for stronger clean air standards, is planned for 1 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 15, in Todd Hall Auditorium on the WSU campus in Pullman.

Krautkraemer, 50, died of cancer Dec. 10 at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle.

He had spent years studying the economics of the sustainable use of natural resources and was working on the final chapter of a Cambridge University Press book on the subject when he became ill.

Krautkraemer was chairman of Save Our Summers, a Spokane-based group that advocates for clean air standards in the region. He pressed government agencies and industry groups to adopt alternatives to burning grass seed and wheat stubble in North Idaho and on the Palouse region in mid-eastern Washington.

An applied theorist in microeconomics, he taught undergraduate and graduate courses at WSU. His research concentrated primarily on natural resource and environmental economics. He was a frequent author of published scholarly works and was invited to lecture at universities worldwide.

He was born July 6, 1954, in Rapid City, S.D., to John and Clarice Krautkraemer and lived in California and New Mexico before moving to Spokane in the 1960s. He graduated from Spokane’s Shadle Park High School and WSU with Phi Beta Kappa honors, and received a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship to obtain a master’s and doctoral degrees from Stanford University in economics. He returned to his alma mater to join the WSU faculty in 1981, and was promoted to full professor in 1995. In 1989, he received a Gilbert F. White Fellowship from Resources for the Future, an international research organization in the field of natural resource and environmental economics. He was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Washington during the 1985-86 academic year.

He married Patti Gora in Seattle in 1985. She survives him at the family home in Pullman. Other survivors include a son, Tim; a daughter, Annie; a brother, Jim, of Spokane; and his mother, Clarice, of Spokane. His father and brother, both named John, died previously.

The Jan. 15 memorial service is open to the public.

In lieu of flowers, two memorial funds have been established to honor him. The first, to benefit the Krautkraemer children’s college fund, is through Washington Mutual Bank. The second, a scholarship fund to continue the spirit of his work, will be administered through WSU.

For the latest information, the Krautkraemer family welcomes visits to their Web site at http://www.jeffkrautkraemer.com.