Pascal (Toni) Oltenacu

March 17, 1938 – December 10, 2022

Pascal (Toni) Anton Oltenacu died at home on the morning of December 10th, 2022, after a long fight with pancreatic cancer. Toni was born on March 17, 1938, in Bucharest, Romania.  He earned a DVM degree in 1964 from the College of Veterinary Medicine, Bucharest, Romania, and subsequently served as a practicing veterinarian in a large animal practice in Romania. In 1967 he joined the Zootechnical Research Institute in Bucharest, Romania as a scientist.

 

Graduate School

           In 1969, Toni came to the United States to study as a graduate student in Animal Breeding and Genetics at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, and received his master’s degree in 1970. Toni made the difficult decision to defect to the U.S. as the Socialist Republic of Romania at that time was under a communist party rule.  He transferred to the University of Minnesota where he completed his Ph.D. in Animal Breeding in 1973.  He became a citizen of the U.S., and after tremendous difficulty that ultimately required diplomatic intervention, he was able to bring his parents from under the communist regime to the U.S. where they later became citizens.

​

Cornell Years

           Toni joined the faculty in the Animal Science department at Cornell University immediately after finishing his Ph.D. program at Minnesota. He accepted a position that had a research emphasis on Dairy Cattle Systems, which at that time was an emerging field of study. Toni had an outstanding and innovative research program at Cornell, focusing on modeling reproductive disorders and other diseases as they related to dairy production. He was honored for his scientific contributions as the 1993 recipient of the Merial Dairy Management Research Award presented by the American Dairy Science Association.  He was also instrumental in developing an award-winning distance education program for undergraduates in animal genetics funded by USDA Higher Education grants and was a pioneer in the use of computer assisted training. 

           Toni enjoyed invigorating collaborations with a wide range of colleagues in research locally, nationally, and internationally.  Toni trained numerous graduate students from around the globe. All students enjoyed and benefited from studying with him because he was always ready to support them in studies, work, and life as well.

​

International impact

           A long-term collaboration with scientists from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science in the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences started in 1985 with a sabbatical in Sweden. From 1993 to 2003 he held a joint appointment in the Department of Animal Environment and Health, spent three months per year in Sweden, and was intimately involved in the research and teaching program of that department. These collaborations led to many important publications, distance education teaching programs, and several grant proposals that funded research projects. 

           Close collaborations with Romania started in 1995, soon after the Romanian Revolution put an end to 42 years of communist rule. He served as a scientific advisor to restructuring the research program for the Romanian Zootechnical Research Institute in order to modernize its research agenda and address relevant issues associated with joining the European Community. He was also intimately involved in updating the teaching program for the Department of Animal Science. As a result, he worked with Dr. Horia Grosu as editor and contributor of the book, Genetic Improvement Programs for Livestock that is now the basic textbook for all courses in animal breeding and genetics. In addition to several awards from the Romanian Ministry of Agriculture, in December 2002 he was elected as Honorary Member of the Romanian Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences.

           Collaborations with Italian scientists started in 1993 with a  Research Fellowship in Agricultural Sciences (RAISA), funded by the Italian National Council of Research, which resulted in a nine-month stay in the Department of Veterinary Sciences, Technologies, and Food Safety at the University of Milan. In 2000, in collaboration with scientists from the Zootechnical Research Institute for Sicily and University of Palermo, a research project was funded by a European Union grant. Consequently, from 2003 to 2006, he worked with Dr. Francesco Pinelli and the Zootechnical research Institute for Sicily as scientific advisor for the development and implementation of a breeding program to improve milk yield and resistance to scrapie in the Comisana sheep breed.

 

Retirement

           After retiring from Cornell University in 2007, Toni supported his wife Raluca as she created her own professional career at the Oklahoma State University and the University of Florida.  Both institutions, upon adding Raluca to their faculties, also tapped Toni’s highly regarded expertise to offer imaginative courses and seminars to their programs.  Toni held a part time position at Oklahoma State University and subsequently joined the Animal Sciences Department in Florida where he was able to combine his passion for teaching with his love for history in developing a very popular course “The Role of Animals in Human History.” Between 2008 and 2014 he served as a member of a working group set up by The Division on Animal Health and Animal Welfare (AHAW) of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to issue a Scientific Report on the Effects of farming systems on dairy cow welfare and disease.

           Toni was more than an accomplished animal scientist.  He and his wife, Raluca, were valued friends to all who knew them.  They have always been warm and welcoming hosts renowned for their marvelous dinner parties, whether in Ithaca or later in Stillwater or Gainesville.  Toni took great pleasure in hosting gatherings in which he turned out elaborate cooking feasts accompanied by detailed historical facts about the history of each dish.  He loved all things Italian and had a passion for good espresso, which he perfected making at home. Toni and Raluca have deeply enjoyed their culinary interests, traveling, music, and various sports, especially skiing and tennis.

           Wherever Toni lived, the tennis communities were always enriched when he arrived.  The tennis crowd soon learned to cherish his dogged competitiveness, his good humor and sportsmanship, and his ability to play, always better than his opponents expected of this five-foot six-inch dynamo.  His tennis friends always enjoyed the game a little more when Toni was in it.  He also taught Raluca to play tennis and within a short time, they were a formidable mixed doubles pair. Enrichment may be a key to understanding and appreciating Toni’s life.  He enriched the community, the lives of his friends and associates, and the intellectual character of the universities he graced wherever he lived and worked. He loved life and lived it to its fullest even during the last months of his life. He will be dearly missed and will never ever be forgotten.

 

           Toni is preceded in death by his father, Ion Oltenacu; his mother, Maria Oltenacu; and his adopted brother, Cornel Oltenacu. He is survived by his wife, Raluca Mateescu, and his nephew, Nils Oltenau.

​

         An obituary written in Romanian prepared and distributed by Dr. Horia Grosu can be viewed HERE.