The former Sparkle Moore was a native of Zionville, Ind. She graduated from Purdue University in 1924 with a B.S. degree and received her M.S. from the University of Minnesota in 1930. She married Clifford Cook Furnas on April 12, 1925.

Furnas served as ninth chancellor of the University of Buffalo from 1954 until 1962, when UB was incorporated into the State University system. He then served as the first president of the State University of New York at Buffalo until his retirement in 1966.

As UB's first lady, Mrs. Furnas demonstrated enormous dedication to the promotion of the university and to her husband's career. She followed a schedule that allowed her to stay home at most three or four evenings a month, ranking her among the most active president's wives in UB's history.

Mrs. Furnas, who served as honorary president of the UB Women's Club from 1954-1966, was called "a unifying force" for that organization, according to the Women's Club Celebrate 50! commemorative book. "Among the other qualities Mrs. Furnas had was a unique ability to remember not only everyone she met, but something about them and their families. It was said that she read the CV and looked at the picture of each new faculty member."

She was a tireless advocate of the university and the Women's Club, encouraging the wives of UB faculty members to become involved in the organization and its auxiliary groups.

"Of course your family and your home duties do come first, but do try to find time to become active in the Women's Club and in some of its interest groups," Mrs. Furnas said in an address as honorary president to members. "The purpose of the organization shall be to promote the interests of the university in any way possible, to further sociability, and to develop common interests among its members."

The 1965-66 Women's Club yearbook was dedicated to Mrs. Furnas for her efforts, and a tribute to her at UB's 125th anniversary noted the importance of her role as the wife of the university president. In her honor, the Women's Club contributed $500 to the Sparkle Furnas Loan Fund administered by UB.

The Furnases' life together took them all over the world, including a stay in Washington, D.C., in 1956-57, where Clifford Furnas served the Eisenhower administration as the assistant secretary of defense for research and development for 14 months during the Korean War.

Furnas came to the Buffalo area in 1943 and worked as director of research for the Curtiss-Wright Corp. until he was inaugurated as chancellor of the University of Buffalo and later as president of the State University of New York at Buffalo. He was named president emeritus upon his retirement in 1966, a title he held until his death in 1969 in Amsterdam, Holland, where he and Mrs. Furnas were on a trade mission with the Buffalo Area Chamber of Commerce. His ashes reside in Buffalo's Forest Lawn Chapel.

Within weeks of her husband's death, Mrs. Furnas began to collect and organize his papers and mementos, compiling a three-volume biography on her late husband. "I'm really quite proud of the biography," Mrs. Furnas told the Reporter in a 1988 interview. She also gathered and organized a collection of his addresses, articles and messages and compiled a genealogy of the Furnas and Moore families. Much of her work resides in the Furnas Memorial Conference Room, located in 531 Capen Hall on UB's North Campus. Among the memorabilia in that collection are the track shoes used by her late husband at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium, where he competed in track and field events. Other reminders of the past also include Furnas' eyeglasses and his baby ring, a Christmas card from the Eisenhowers, his pipes and a collection of lighters, and the medals he won as an athlete.

There is also a lasting testimony to Furnas' vision of the future.

In her biography of her late husband, Mrs. Furnas wrote, "He was constantly looking at the world through a wide-angled telescopic lens and forecasting the future. He said, 'It is dangerous to speculate too far, but it is foolish not to speculate at all.'"

That three-volume biography was not her only literary work. She also co-authored two books with her husband-"The Next Hundred Years" and "Man, Bread and Destiny" while they were at Yale University from 1932-1943.

In 1992, Mrs. Furnas donated a grand piano in her husband's memory to the UB Emeritus Center.

Mrs. Furnas has lived with family members in Colorado for the past ten years.

Surviving are her daughter, Beatrice F. Thurston of Durango; a sister, Wilma M. Groom of Westford, Texas; five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.