Family Honors Celestial Summer Dove Cassman '04 While Helping Others
Thirteen years after starting a UC Davis Law scholarship, Ken and Susie Cassman remain excited about its mission – and cherish the memory of the person who inspired it.
Celestial Summer Dove Cassman ’04, known as “Dove” to her family, “was always interested in the vulnerable and the underserved” and in trying to right inequities, her father said during a recent visit to King Hall with his wife.
“She had a very big heart for people,” added Susie Cassman, who, as Dove’s stepmother, watched her weave her way to a career in law.
While an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz, Dove volunteered with Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) for abused or neglected children. Before starting law school three years later, she worked for a nonprofit affordable-housing and community-building organization. While in law school, she co-chaired the King Hall Legal Foundation, which raises money for public interest fellowships.
Post-King Hall and after returning to her beloved Santa Cruz, Dove worked as a deputy city attorney and served on CASA’s board.
“She was an artist as well,” said Ken, who bragged that his daughter could have made her living from painting and drawing. “A lot of her stuff had themes about the Dalai Lama. Her other heroes were Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, of course.”
Celestial Summer Dove Cassman was 35 in 2011, when she was killed by a former boyfriend during a visit to Hawaii. In 2013, Ken and Susie Cassman established the Celestial Summer Dove Cassman Scholarship for Ending Violence Against Women.
Many of Dove’s King Hall classmates have contributed, along with her family members, friends, and colleagues from Santa Cruz and Sacramento, where Dove worked for a firm just after law school.
“The breadth of the giving highlights how many people were touched by Dove,” Ken said.
Through continued annual support, the fund has grown over the years. Two students receive the scholarship each year, with a preference for those interested in work that could assist domestic abuse survivors and prevent further abuse. For the past two years, the Cassmans also have funded a student summer position at UC Davis Law’s Domestic and Sexual Violence Law Clinic.
“The idea is, the problem is so large that anything you can do to stop it in some way” is helpful, Ken Cassman said. At the same time, the Cassmans want to ensure that how Dove died never eclipses how she lived. Davis was an integral part of that life.
“We are a Davis family, in a way,” Ken said. “This is the (only) place where we would do anything like this.”
A professor emeritus of agronomy and horticulture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Ken now lives with Susie in Southern California. But he completed his post-doc at UC Davis and later spent five years on the faculty.
Although Dove grew up primarily in Lake County, with her mother, Deborah Bevington, she visited Ken and Susie often in Davis. Two of Dove’s five sisters attended UC Davis as undergrads.
Her sister Jess was on campus as an undergrad at the same time Dove was in law school. “They would hang out together and have so much fun,” Susie recalled. “They would go on outings. They would send pictures of them going down the river on inflatables.”
Although her parents paid for her undergraduate education, Dove put herself through law school. As an academic, Ken says, he had seen too many students give up before finishing their postgraduate or professional studies.
“If you are fighting for it, it makes it so much more important,” he said.
And Dove “was a fighter,” Susie Cassman said. Already a few years out of UCSC when she decided to apply to law school, Dove had to reacquaint herself with studying—this time increased about 100-fold. Yet she still found time during law school for her sister, KHLF and other extracurriculars. Dove even co-authored, with Professor Lisa R. Pruitt, an enlightening 2005 UC Davis Law Review article on diversity at King Hall based on data gathered from Dove’s schoolmates.
The Celestial Summer Dove Cassman Scholarship shows a preference for lower-income students responsible for funding their own education. Students like recipient Jordan Porterfield ’25, who received the scholarship as a 2L and is now an associate at Baron Family Law in Sacramento.
While at King Hall, Porterfield participated in the Domestic and Sexual Violence Law Clinic, co-founded the Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Association student group, and served as student commencement speaker.
“Domestic violence is an issue that is sort of my purpose in being a lawyer, because I similarly lost a family member to domestic violence,” Porterfield said. “I felt very struck by (the Cassman family’s story), especially because Celestial was from Lake County, and I am from Ukiah, which is very close to Lake County. I think that the fact she is from the same area made me feel even more connected to her story.”
The Cassman scholarship paid for her bar prep and registration, which was “a huge expense for me,” Porterfield said.
During their visit to King Hall, the Cassmans met with Domestic and Sexual Violence Law Clinic summer research assistant Mars Bandagi ‘26, another beneficiary of their generosity. For her summer project, Bandagi created a database of law school clinics and externships engaged in legal work related to gender-based violence.
“This young woman, Mars, is a show stopper in the way she can explain what she is doing and why she is doing it–exactly the purpose of it,” Ken said.
The Cassmans are glad to see the scholarship, and more recently, summer clinic funding, go toward work Dove would have believed in.
“Dove was a rising star,” Ken said. Her family’s aim now, he said, is “to help create other rising stars and people who are going to make a difference in the world.”