In Remembrance: Gale Bach ’55 Died on March 11 2021

Gale Bach passed away on March 11, 2021, in San Diego, California. After Yale, he received a master's degree at the University of Michigan, and went on to join the Navy as a psychologist, serving in Japan and subsequently California, where he met his wife Kirsten Nielsen. He left the Navy to get his doctorate at the University of California at Berkeley, and went on to teach in the California state college system at both Chico and Hayward. He returned to clinical psychology practice, and the Navy, via Bethesda, Maryland, and then on to San Diego, where he ultimately transitioned to private practice in neuropsychology, living and working in an old victorian home which they had lovingly restored.   

Gale loved to teach, and did so throughout his career, including after-hours classes at the California School of Professional Psychology, and on faculty at the UC–San Diego School of Medicine’s psychiatry department. He remained an active board exam writer and examiner. He rounded out his career as director of the post-graduate psychology intern program at Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego. 

He loved cars and road trips, classical music, and was a pretty good cook. He was always grateful for the tremendous gift he felt that a Yale education had given him, and considered his time there to be truly transformative; he would even describe it as “life saving,” lifting him from his meager origins growing up in Kansas City, Missouri. His loving wife Kirsten passed in 2010; he is survived by his daughter Nina and son Kevin, and four wonderful grandchildren.

—Submitted by the family.