Marilyn Richards Obituary

Marilyn Richards
10/29/1934 - 10/09/2025
Marilyn Jean Richards nee Derry passed away early in the morning on Thursday October 9th, 2025 in Windsor, CA. Marilyn was born on October 29th, 1934 to Helen and Harry Derry. She passed just weeks prior to her 91st birthday.
Marilyn graduated from Acalanes High School in 1952 and from the University of California, Berkeley in 1957. She graduated with a Bachelors in Mathematics and was affiliated with the Kappa Delta Sorority. Marilyn utilized that degree at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as an early pioneer in computer sciences before the field grew to be what it is today. She had a distinguished career at Lawrence Livermore as a programmer in a time when programmers were uncommon-and woman programmers unheard of.
Marilyn utilized her wicked knack with numbers and patterns to not only create her own source code, but often debug code for her fellow scientists in the lab. As a talented problem solver during her years at Livermore in the 1960s and 70s she rose up through the ranks into management and became one of the Laboratory's first female division heads. Marilyn headed up the Computations Division of the Computer Department, managing upwards of 100 personnel at Livermore. She was sometimes referred to as a "programmer's programmer" decades before Microsoft or Apple were household names.
Marilyn was married and divorced twice. Marilyn met her first husband, Norman "Bud" Karvelis, at UC Berkeley. She had three children with Bud: Victoria, Mark and Brian. Marilyn also shared a step-son, Dag Richards, from her second marriage with Gerry Richards. Marilyn is survived by her younger sister June Hodge, two children, four grandchildren and six great grandchildren.
During the two decades following Marilyn's retirement from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory she volunteered extensively with the Assistance League in Santa Rosa helping provide funding for the local women's shelter. In her off time Marilyn could be found enjoying her favorite British murder mysteries, diligently gardening in her yard and starting her mornings by enjoying a coffee and cigarette. When family was around she would happily take no mercy and school all her children and grandchildren in Scrabble. Regardless of where she was or the time of day you could always find Marilyn working on her first passion-math-sudoku, kakuro, any number game she could get her hands on, she'd be happily puzzling away.