June Laurette Stark was born in San Francisco on August 1, 1922 to Charles Edwin Stark and Ethel Diana Rohrback (Stark). In 1929, she and her family moved to Mill Valley, California. June graduated from Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley in 1940. She attended the College of Marin in Kentfeld, California, before enrolling at the University of California at Berkeley where she majored in Romance languages. After finishing her A.B. Degree at Cal, June worked first for the Standard Oil Company, then for the Golden Gate Bridge Administrative District. Eventually she moved to the East Coast, where she met Howard Kambach and married him in 1953. The couple left New York in the early 1960s to live on the West Coast.
June began playing viola in the late 1960s. She played in several orchestras, and frequently gathered other string-players for quartets and other chamber music. In 1987, June and Howard moved to the Valle Verde Retirement Community in Santa Barbara. June was a volunteer with the Archives department of Valle Verde, and invited many other musicians to perform at the community. She served on many Valle Verde committees with her friends and neighbors.
June is survived by three generations of her sister Rosemary’s children; cousin-in-law Ruth Stark of Santa Barbara and numerous cousins once-removed, and their families. She will be remembered by countless friends at Valle Verde and around the world for her many talents and perennially radiant “joie de vivre.”
In lieu of flowers, June’s family encourages donations to NRDC https://www.nrdc.org/about (Natural Resources Defense Council) or to the environmental conservation organization of your choice. We thank you for your generosity.
An online celebration of June’s life will take place on Saturday, October 17. For more information, please email JuneKambachMemorial@gmail.com.
