Pickup Driver Arrested for Vehicular Manslaughter : Crash Kills Cal State Fullerton Professor

Priscilla Oaks, a Cal State Fullerton English professor and expert on education in China, died in a car crash on Laguna Canyon Road, police reported Wednesday.

Oaks, 61, of Laguna Beach was killed Tuesday night when she apparently tried to avoid a pickup truck and her car swerved off the road and overturned, police said. Her body was found in the car at the bottom of a gully along Laguna Canyon Road, a mile south of El Toro Road, at about 10:30 p.m., Sgt. Greg Bartz said.

Suspicion of Drunk Driving

The driver of the pickup truck, Leonard Eisler, 31, of Anaheim was taken to Mission Community Hospital in Mission Viejo, where he was reported in serious condition with a broken leg, a possible concussion, and cuts and bruises. Bartz said that Eisler was arrested on suspicion of felony drunk driving and vehicular manslaughter.

Eisler’s driver’s license had expired earlier this month and he was convicted in 1982 in North Orange County Municipal Court of misdemeanor drunk driving, according to state Department of Motor Vehicle records.

Swerved to Avoid Truck

Bartz said that Eisler was driving his 1985 Toyota pickup truck north on Laguna Canyon Road. Oaks was alone in her 1982 Honda Civic traveling south. Evidence at the scene indicated that Oaks swerved to avoid Eisler’s truck and crashed into a seven-foot embankment, Bartz said.

When accident investigators got to the scene, they found Eisler’s truck tipped over in the middle of the road, Bartz said. The two vehicles did not collide.

Several motorists called police from a roadside emergency telephone when they came upon the wreckage. Laguna Canyon Road was closed to traffic for nine hours.

Police Watch Cmdr. Lance Ishmael said that there were eight traffic fatalities last year along Laguna Canyon Road. There have been three so far this year, he said.

Oaks joined the Cal State Fullerton faculty in 1969. Before that, she taught at UCLA, Harvard, the University of New Mexico and UC Irvine. She taught in China on a Fulbright Scholarship from 1980 to 1982.

The native of Brookline, Mass., received her doctorate from UCLA. She became interested in Chinese culture while studying the language at Radcliffe, according to her former husband, Henry Shames, a Century City lawyer.

Her interest in China culminated in the Fulbright Scholarship, which enabled her to teach English literature at Fudan University in Shanghai; Shandong Oceanographic College in Quingdao, and Beijing University. She taught in China at the request of the Chinese Ministry of Education.

Oaks taught American literature at Cal State and was the faculty coordinator for immigrant and refugee students.

“She was a very energetic, very creative person--full of vitality,” said Thomas P. Klammer, chairman of the Cal State English department. “She was the kind of teacher that students never forget. She had won several awards for innovative teaching.”

She is survived by three daughters, Suzanne Shames Sattelmeyer, 35, who is a legal-economic assistant to the Missouri Legislature, Columbia, Mo.; Sarah Shames Eswein, 31, of Hudson, N.Y., an executive with a computer software firm, and Diana Shames, 24, a student at the Harvard Business School; a son, Stephen Shames, 38, New York City, a free-lance photographer, and two grandchildren, Joshua, 10, and Sarah Ellen, 2.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete on Wednesday, but Cal State officials said that a memorial service will be held on campus.