Trevor Reed Nelson passed away in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, August 26, 2026 from a long illness. Trevor was born on August 15,1934 in Schenectady, NY. Due to his father, Walter Nelson’s work in Electronics Engineering, he moved to Connecticut, Indiana, Michigan, California, Tennessee, back to Michigan to the old family home, and then to California where he graduated from El Cerrito high school in 1952. He traveled throughout Europe 3 times, the first being when his father was studying at the Sorbonne in France. Being in Europe gave him the opportunity to visit his family relatives in Denmark.
He attended MIT on a joint program at Reed, where he studied philosophy and physics as a Sophomore and Junior and finished out at MIT, graduating with a Bachelor of Architecture in 1959.
After college Trevor came back to Berkeley, first working for several years at a job shop that gave him a wide variety of experience. Trevor worked at Memorex as the Corporate Architect, architects Cobb and Morton in Los Gatos, Takamoto and Krinard in Los Altos, and EHR and CAS in Palo Alto. He then went into business for himself, designing production facilities for HP and other Silicon Valley companies. He designed a house on Mount Hamilton for Rex Lindsay in 1960 and a house for Phil Conley at Sea Ranch in 1970. He did a number of residential remodeling projects with his contractor friend Patrick Heaviside.
Trevor started folk dancing in grade school at Oak Ridge in 1944. Starting in 1950 he went folkdancing almost every day for more than 50 years. He joined up with Rikudom Performing Dance Troup in San Francisco from 1960-1965. He continued dancing the rest of his life.
He married Helen Casaletto, whom he met in folk dancing, in 1965 and became a father to her two children, Laurel and Steve. They divorced in 1980.
In 1998 he had his daughter Rosemary with long time folkdance friend, Laurie Reynolds. He was extremely proud of Rosemary’s achievement in working on a PhD in Psychology and Forensics.
Trevor enjoyed folk dancing, architecture, humor, politics and bluegrass, ragtime and folk music.
Trevor is survived by his daughter Rosemary Reynolds, partner Laurie Reynolds, Nephew Walter Nelson and stepchildren Steve Casaletto and Laurel Casaletto Chessin.
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