Free Speech Movement leader critical
SEBASTOPOL, Calif., Nov. 5 (UPI) _ Mario Savio, one of the most prominent
leaders of the University of California, Berkeley's Free Speech Movement in
the 1960s, was hospitalized in critical condition with heart problems, the
hospital said Tuesday.
Savio, 52, a math professor at Sonoma State University, was admitted to Palm
Drive Hospital in Sebastopol, Calif. Monday night, said Sharon Enos, chief
nursing officer.
He was on a ventilator and not responsive, Enos said. Savio's wife and at
least one of his children were with him at the hospital.
In 1964, Savio led demonstrators demanding that student groups be allowed to
distribute political materials on the Berkeley campus. The Free Speech
Movement was the model for radical student protests that swept the nation in
the late '60s.
Ronald Reagan used the uproar over the often obscene Berkeley demonstrations
as a linchpin of his successful run for governor in 1966. As an ex-officio
member of the University of California Board of Regents, Reagan led the move
to oust Clark Kerr as president of the system for not dealing harshly enough
with the demonstrators.
Savio went into relative obscurity after the FSM, living a quiet academic
life even during the height of the Vietnam War protests.
A spokeswoman for Columbia Palm Drive Hospital in Sebastopol said today that
Mario Savio remains in very critical condition today. Savio, 53, suffered a
heart attack and was admitted to the hospital Saturday night.
Savio was a leader of the Free Speech Movement at the University of
California at Berkeley in the '60s and is now a math professor at Sonoma
State University.
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