Eugene Whitworth

Born in Camp, Ark., and raised for a time in Texas, Mr. Whitworth moved to the Bay Area as a boy, went to high school in Richmond and later attended UC Berkeley and Stanford University. A few years before World War II, Mr. Whitworth got a job with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and eventually spent nearly 40 years with the company, working in customer service and public relations before retiring in the mid- 1970s, said his wife, Ruth Whitworth.

Outside of his work, his abiding love was the study of religion and particularly some of its more subtle aspects -- avenues of learning that might seem difficult to the layman. Sometime in the 1930s, Ruth Whitworth said, Mr. Whitworth "had a dream telling him he was to found a metaphysical university, to make this kind of education palatable and understandable." He wanted to "simplify and explain something that is usually quite complicated," Ruth Whitworth said.

To that end, the couple started Great Western University in San Francisco in 1957. At first it was a correspondence school, and then "we began to have some small classes, and it kind of grew like Topsy," Ruth Whitworth said. Eventually, they changed the name of the school to Great Western Brotherhood School of Sacred Studies, concentrating on small classes of students interested in metaphysics and religion, she said. At one point, the school had about 1,000 students. Today, it has about 100, Ruth Whitworth said.

Mr. Whitworth also wrote 10 books, the best known of which are "Song of God," his translation of the Hindu text the Bhagavad Gita, "Nine Faces of Christ" and "The First Christmas Tree," his family said.