A California architect who helped with the Pearl Harbor memorial and who has been heavily involved in charitable support for children is this years recipient of the Ames High School Alumni Associations Distinguished Alumni Award.

Dick Campbell, who graduated from AHS in 1955, was honored at a dinner on Thursday at the high school.

Alumni Association president Jack Smalling said Campbell was selected because of his career-long work with the U.S. Navy, as an architect and with his public service and charitable efforts on behalf of children at the Stanford University hospital.

Campbell, who lives in Palo Alto, Calif., with his wife Marcia, also an AHS graduate, has worked as an architect for nearly 50 years and is still on the job. Since 1984 he has been a partner with an architectural firm that has been responsible for designing and building several major buildings on the campus of Stanford University. His latest achievement was to replace the Stanford football stadium, on a 90-year-old site, with a new 51,000-seat facility in less than 10 months.

During his naval career, Campbell was project manager for the Memorial for the USS Arizona, which was sunk at Pearl Harbor in 1941 with loss of 1,177 sailors and officers.

During the last 30 years, Campbell has volunteered his time with community and church planning projects in San Francisco, Oakland and Los Altos. He also has spent 17 years working on a charity that generated as much as $300,000 annually to help pay medical costs for children whose parents could not afford treatment at the Stanford Childrens Hospital. His main assignment was to design and construct backdrops for major events. Campbell said he got his initial training in this area while a student at Iowa State University from 1955 to 1960 building Veishea floats for Phi Delta Theta fraternity.

Campbells philanthropic efforts also extend to cancer research. He and Marcia have been major supporters of the Relay for Life Cancer Walk in Palo Alto. They lost their oldest daughter in March 2007 to the disease and annually sponsor a team in her honor in the walk.

At Ames High, Campbell was class president, homeroom president and on student council for two years. He was also in football for three years, track for two and In Hi-Y for three years, where he served as president as a senior.

Smalling said Campbells nomination was supported by 14 persons, including professional architects, clients, charity organizers and five Ames High graduates.

Campbell is the 23rd AHS graduate to receive the Distinguished Alumni Award since it was established in 1990.

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AHS honors California architect