INDICATES UOAA MEMBER Handwhistler Sally Cohn ’56 was invited to compete in the America’s Got Talent reality show and appeared in three televised broadcasts of the show in Portland, Las Vegas, and Hollywood. Videos of her performances are on YouTube. Her first book, A Handwhistler: Memories of Creativity and Activism, is available on her website: www.handmelodies.com.
Richard “Dick” Shaw ’59, JD ’62, chaired the National Conference of Lawyers and Certified Public Accountants in Colorado in June 2010. He practices as a taxation law specialist in San Diego.
Joe Fischer ’60, MFA ’63, recently misplaced his good conduct medal awarded for his four years of service in the U.S. Air Force as an air traffic controller and graphic artist. He served in Korea from 1952 to 1953.
Alaby Blivet ’63 and wife Sara Lee Cake ’45 attended the final UO basketball game at venerable Mac Court (the women beating the Huskies 68–64). After the game the couple bought the last two pieces of pizza ever to be sold at the eighty-four-year-old venue, took them home, and had them bronzed, “to commemorate the end of a glorious era.” Blivet and Cake have amended their will to donate the slices to University Archives and Special Collections.
Mary Odin Buzzell ’63 is a retired elementary school teacher who, with her husband, Alan, follows the sun. For the past twenty-two years they have spent six months of each year in their New Zealand home. They return to the United States to catch up with family and friends, and recently camped in the Crater Lake and Klamath Falls areas.
Debbie Billings Granger ’64 returned home to California last October after a seven-month, forty-eight state road trip. Driving her one-ton long-bed pickup, she pulled a fifth-wheel trailer 27,132 miles during the adventure, accompanied by her faithful companion, Hunter, a yellow lab. Since Maine was a stop, she continued to Nova Scotia and called her trip “To Halifax and Back.” You can find her journal at MyTripJournal.com/ForeverHome.
Allen Brown ’65 is president of the Center for Dependable Strengths, a nonprofit organization that trains workers in the helping professions to enhance human potential through self-esteem, motivation, and communication. He is a retired educator and lives in Stanwood, Washington.
Don Clark ’66 is the volunteer executive coordinator of a $1 million fundraising drive to create a wall of valor at the Kern County War Memorial Plaza in Bakersfield, California. The wall will honor the 1,007 local citizens killed in combat since World War I. Clark, a retired news anchor, just completed a $2 million campaign that has enabled the Bakersfield Rescue Mission to purchase and refurbish nearly two full blocks of property and buildings.
Michael Harris ’66 has had his noir novel, The Chieu Hoi Saloon, published by PM Press of Oakland, California. After a thirty-year career reporting and editing for West Coast newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, he lives in Long Beach with his wife, Takako. Their son, George, is a senior at the University of California at Davis.
Les Palm ’66 served in the Marine Corps for thirty-two years, achieving the rank of major general before retiring in 1998. He then served as president and CEO of the Marine Corps Association and retired from that second career in July. Palm and his wife, Suzanne, live in northern Virginia and are both enjoying his retirement.
Bill Roecker ’66, MFA ’67, recently published his sixth book. At the Rail is a full-color, comprehensive overview and history of long-range fishing in San Diego. Earlier in his career, he won numerous prizes for fiction and poetry, and taught writing at the University of Arizona and other schools. In 1988, he launched Oceanic Productions, which produces videos, books, and calendars about California offshore fishing and long-range fishing. He is the son of A. W. Roecker, former UO science librarian.
Ron Leaming Weed ’66 served a domestic stint with the Peace Corps after graduating from the UO. He completed a tour as a combat engineer in the U.S. Army near Phu Bai, Vietnam, then served twenty-three years in the Air Force, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel. He later retired from years of teaching high school and college but has “failed at retirement” and is now teaching world history to high school sophomores.
Author Jack Niewold ’67, MA ’68, recently published his memoir, Frail Web of Intention. The book tells of his coming to Oregon from Illinois in the early 1960s, and of his experiences in and around Eugene during the tumultuous decade that followed.
William D. Pederson ’67, MA ’72, PhD ’79, has edited a new book, A Companion to Franklin D. Roosevelt (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). He has also coedited Lincoln’s Enduring Legacy: Perspectives from Great Thinkers, Great Leaders, and the American Experiment (Lexington Books, 2010), and coedited Abraham Lincoln without Borders: Lincoln’s Legacy Outside the U.S. (Pencraft International, 2010). Pederson holds the American Studies Endowed Chair at Louisiana State University in Shreveport.
Hank Pruden, PhD ’68, was presented with the Michael Epstein Lifetime Achievement Award at a Market Technicians Association Educational Foundation event in New York in November. The award recognizes significant contributions to technical analysis in the academic community. Pruden has taught technical market analysis for thirty years at Golden Gate University.
Frances “Jeanne” Scott, MS ’68, has published her book Out of Order, a memoir about her seventeen years as a “misfit” nun. In 2004, she retired from her position as program manager of the Tobacco Education and Control Program in Ventura County, California. She says her master’s program in vocational rehabilitation at the UO “laid the foundation for me to unearth a new identity and create an alternative, educational mission helping others redefine themselves.”
COURTESY CATHERINE BRICKEY
DUCKS AFIELD
Literally “Afield” An English major and literature lover, Catherine (Zigrang) Brickey ’74 was drawn to Hay-on-Wye in Wales, a town boasting more than thirty secondhand and antiquarian book shops. This photo shows her in a nearby field of flowering canola, as she trekked Offa’s Dyke Path, one of the many public trails that crisscross Great Britain.
In Ducks Afield OQ publishes photos of graduates with UO regalia (hats, T-shirts, flags, and such) in the most distant or unlikely or exotic or lovely places imaginable. We can’t use blurry shots and only high-resolution digital files, prints, or slides will reproduce well in our pages. Send your photo along with details and your class year and degree to quarterly@uoregon.edu.
Virginia Elwood-Akers, MLS ’72, recently published a biography, Caroline Severance, which tells the story of the suffragist and social activist who began working for the rights of women in 1850 and lived to vote in the U.S. presidential election in 1912. Elwood-Akers is a retired librarian and lives in Los Angeles.
Mary England ’73 earned her master of science degree from the Stanford University School of Medicine in 1985. She is now professionally retired, but enjoys volunteering with the Community Emergency Response Team at her home in the Rossmoor adult community in Walnut Creek, California. She has lived in the Bay Area for thirty-five years.
Brian Vikander ’73 has accepted an invitation by the Museum of Modern Photography in San Francisco to become a permanent contributor. Vikander’s photography is held by major collections and museums around the world, including the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the governments of India and the People’s Republic of China.
Doug Woods ’75 is retired after more than thirty-three years in the mortgage business as a manager, underwriter, and quality-control auditor. He now enjoys traveling, reading, and spending time with his family. He lives in Gresham.
Dwight Holing ’76 has been elected secretary-treasurer of the American Diabetes Association. His books on wildlife and conservation topics have been published by University of California Press, the Smithsonian, and Time-Life. He is currently working on a book on migration for Animal Planet. He and his wife, Annie Notthoff ’76, live in the San Francisco area.
Bill Edelman, MS ’78, was recently appointed president of the Directors of Athletics Association of New Jersey, which represents 434 member schools and 260,000 student athletes. Edelman is athletic director at Vernon Township High School in Vernon, New Jersey, where he has worked for the past twenty-seven years.
John Henderson ’78 recently published cover stories on Panama’s San Blas Archipelago in The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Miami Herald travel sections. He lives in Denver.
Steven Nelson ’79 is an attorney and shareholder with von Briesen & Roper, S.C. in its Milwaukee, Wisconsin, office. Nelson concentrates his practice in commercial and construction litigation, Occupational Safety and Health Administration compliance, and defense and works closely with several U.S.-based international engineering firms. He is a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates.
Sue Grigsby, MS ’82, received a 2010 Distinguished Alumni Award from Humboldt State University for her outstanding work as a physical education, health, and wellness instructor at Everett Community College in Washington. Grigsby has also initiated two scholarships for HSU students.
Jim Sartain ’82 recently joined security technology company McAfee as the senior vice president for worldwide quality. Prior to working at McAfee, Sartain was responsible for inspiring, driving, and enabling continuous quality improvement across Adobe with new releases of Creative Suite 5, Acrobat X, and other major products.
Mark Biskeborn, MA ’83, published his second novel, A Sufi’s Ghost, in October 2009. The movie script version of his next novel, Mexican Trade, is also complete.
Rich Brown ’86 is assistant professor of theater arts at Western Washington University in Bellingham, where he recently won an Excellence in Teaching Award. In the past year, Brown has travelled with performing groups of WWU students to New York, England, and Japan. He also taught an intensive physical acting course in Romania.
Kate Willis Maynard, MS ’87, teaches humanities and communication courses at the Community College of Vermont. She also oversees the social sciences department, including psychology, sociology, social work, anthropology, and substance abuse. She lives in South Burlington with her husband, Don, and seventeen-year-old son, Kai.
Sandy K. Baruah ’88 is president and CEO of the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, the largest chamber of commerce in the country. In 2008–9, he led the U.S. Small Business Administration, reporting directly to the president of the United States.
Carene Davis-Stitt, MS ’89, PhD ’93, was recently named to the board of directors of Soroptimist International of the Americas. She is a founding partner of DeltaNet Management Consultants in Eugene, which provides innovative business workshops that focus on team-building and management skills.
In August, Mary Hobson ’90 published her first novel The Native Star (Ballantine Spectra, 2010); the sequel will follow in May 2011. She has published dozens of short stories in the past decade—her nom de plume is M. K. Hobson—earning a Pushcart Prize nomination and several “year’s best” mentions. She fondly recalls her years on the UO campus, the stately beauty of Villard and Deady halls, and her work with The Student Insurgent and the EMU Cultural Forum.
Luana Ross, PhD ’92, was recently appointed president of the Tribal College at Salish-Kootenai College in Missoula, Montana. She previously taught indigenous studies at the University of California campuses in Berkeley and Davis, and is the author of the book Inventing the Savage: The Social Construction of Native American Criminality.
Heather Daylene Ayers ’97 earned her master of science degree at Pratt Institute in New York in 2000 and has returned to school to become a physician’s assistant after spending numerous years working for GlaxoSmithKline pharmaceuticals. She recently earned one of the lead roles in Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues, which raises money for antiviolence groups around the world. Ayers’ episode premiered in Ashland in February.
Joleen (Eeson) Ruffin ’97 is the social networking director for the website Tracy Island Online. A three-year breast cancer survivor, she was recently named one of three spokeswomen in a national advertising campaign for the 2010–11 “Power in Pink: She’s A Fighter” campaign for Under Armour performance apparel.
Kyle Andersen ’98 is the newest principal at GBD Architects in Portland. During his sixteen years at GBD, Andersen has been instrumental as the lead designer on several mixed-use projects. GBD is ranked in the top 100 Best Green Companies to Work For in Oregon.
Rebecca Oswald, MMus ’01, saw her song “Regatta” on her October Wind CD nominated for a 2009 Just Plain Folks Music Award in the solo piano category. She also wrote and produced new opening and closing music themes for the weekly TV interview show UO Today, produced by the Oregon Humanities Center and UO Libraries’ Center for Media and Educational Technologies.
Charmaine Gaffrey ’02 teaches contemporary dance at Oregon Ballet Academy in Eugene and performs with Traduza Dance Company in Roseburg. She is a certified Gyrotonic instructor, an exercise method that incorporates stretching and strengthening of muscles and tendons while articulating and mobilizing the joints.
Lindsey Primich ’05 recently spent six months in New Zealand and has traveled extensively throughout South America. She has been working at Dancers’ Workshop in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Chris Thomas ’06 is scoring music for film and TV in Los Angeles. He recently wrote music for a documentary, Woman Rebel, which was short-listed for a 2010 Academy Award.
Grant Bettencourt ’07 recently graduated from Chapman University of Law, and passed the California Bar exam in November. He lives in Orange, California.
Charlie Mouy ’07 is the marketing manager for Northwest Youth Corps, a Eugene-based nonprofit organization that provides education and job-training experiences for youths and young adults.
Josh Deutsch, MMus ’09, lives in New York, where he’s had music-teaching residencies in public schools and has a growing contingent of trumpet and piano students. He recently performed with the quartet Four Across during a brief East Coast tour; they will soon record their second album.
Dancer Valerie Ifill, MFA ’09, continues teaching youths and adults at the Reach Center in Eugene. She was involved in a collaborative project with UO graduate students A. T. Moffett and David Horton, creating and producing a concert in Portland.
Helen Young Gerlinger ’33 died in October at age ninety-nine. At the UO, she majored in music (piano) and met and married Carl Gerlinger ’33. They raised their two daughters in Dallas, Oregon, and moved to Salem in 1967. She and Carl loved to travel abroad, take boating trips with the Rogue River Rovers, and host family gatherings at their farm in Dallas. Carl preceded her in death in 2006. She was a generous supporter of the Salvation Army, Young Life, Salem Hospital, and other organizations, as well as the University of Oregon.
Geraldine “Gerry” Hickson Reedy ’34 died in Bellevue, Washington, on October 28. She was the granddaughter of early eastern Oregon settlers and followed a family tradition of Oregon graduates. Her parents, R. E. Hickson and Mae Barzee Hickson graduated with the class of 1909. Her twin, Eileen Hickson Donnell ’34, graduated with her, and her husband, Rolla Reedy ’33 graduated one year earlier. Her daughter, Margaret Reedy Moore ’61 was in the first graduation class of the Clark Honors College. A niece, two grandsons, and a son-in-law also earned degrees at Oregon. While at the UO, Reedy, an English major, was president of Phi Mu sorority, the women’s Panhellenic organization, and Mortar Board, senior women’s honorary. Throughout her life she assumed leadership roles in many organizations, traveled widely, and tutored both privately and in community college programs.
Homer Mangis Thomas ’43 died in October; he was eighty-nine. At the UO, he served as captain of the Oregon track team and president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, and he was a member of the Sigma Delta Psi and Theta Nu Epsilon societies. He was also a Northwest champion pole-vaulter, but said that his finest hour at the UO was meeting an attractive Gamma Phi coed, Mary Wright ’44, who became his wife. Thomas was owner and president of Star Milling Company in Riverside, California, which produced feed for chickens and turkeys. Later, he founded a brokerage for feed ingredients.
John “Jack” Beckwith Robinson ’44 died in December 2009 in Gloucestershire, England, where he had lived for the past thirty years. He was in the ROTC Class of 1944, which was called to service in June 1943, at the end of his junior year. He met his wife, Dilys, when stationed in South Wales as an Army officer. After the war, he completed his UO degree and was recruited by the U.S. Diplomatic Corps. He met and served under seven U.S. presidents during his distinguished career.
Roger Louis Dick ’47, JD ’49, died in October at the age of eighty-eight. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II as a tank unit commander and during the Korean conflict as a Judge Advocate General Corps (JAG) officer, among other duties. He practiced law in The Dalles with his brothers Edgar and William until their deaths, and more recently with his nephew, William G. Dick II. He was preceded in death by his wife, Sylvia Branden Schilling. At the UO, he was a member of Sigma Nu fraternity. He was a lifelong, avid supporter of the Ducks.
Robert Glenn “Bob” White ’54 died in December at age eighty-one. He earned a master’s degree from Georgetown University. From 1954 to 1961 he worked for the U.S. Department of State, then earned a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley. In the seventies, he served on the Pasadena Board of City Directors and as mayor of Pasadena on a rotational basis from 1977 to 1979.
Richard A. Crang ’56 died November 1 at age eighty-five. At the UO, he enjoyed playing baseball on the University team. He was a Marine corporal and served his country in the Pacific at Saipan, Guadalcanal, Tinian, and other locales. He was involved in the initial occupation of Japan after the war. Back in the States, he taught junior high for the Vancouver, Washington, school district. He was an enthusiastic Ducks fan and never missed a televised game.
Dennis V. Gilbert ’63 died in December at age sixty-nine after battling leukemia for two years. He earned a law degree at Willamette University College of Law, and worked as an attorney and in the insurance field in numerous Oregon locations. Gilbert and his wife, Mary, had four children. He was an avid Ducks fan.
Stephen J. Cannell ’64 died in September at age sixty-nine from complications of melanoma. Cannell was an iconic creator and writer of television shows in the seventies and eighties, producing more than forty series including The A Team, The Rockford Files, Baretta, 21 Jump Street, The Commish, and Silk Stalkings. Incredibly, his success as a writer was duplicated in the mystery novel genre. He was the author of sixteen bestsellers including the Shane Scully series; the newest installment, The Prostitutes’ Ball, was published shortly after his death. Cannell dealt with dyslexia all of his life, and was an avid spokesperson and lifelong educator about the condition. He grew up in Pasadena and married his eighth-grade girlfriend, Marcia, and together they raised four children. She remained his best friend through forty-six years of marriage until his death.
Larry Paul Lea ’66 died in October at the age of sixty-seven. He earned his master of landscape architecture degree from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Lea married his wife, Deanna, in 1971 and built his career as a real estate broker with Grubb and Ellis in Sacramento; he was also a technical writer. He belonged to the Kappa Sigma fraternity, the Brotherhood of the Knights of the Vine of America, and the Harvard Alumni Association.
Rajwant Singh, MBA ’67, died in 1993. He earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Washington. He also attended MIT’s Sloan School of Management, then moved to the Indian Institute of Management in 1970 and introduced various programs for corporate managers. In the United States, he worked for Boeing Company and taught at Lane Community College in Eugene.
Russel Eugene Klein, PhD ’69, died in December at age eighty-four. He taught elementary school while earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Nebraska. After earning his PhD, he continued his career with the Medford School District, eventually becoming district superintendent. He retired in 1984 from his final career position as superintendent of the Clackamas Education Service District. He and his wife, Dorothy, raised three children and were married for sixty-five years until her death in 2009.
Kenneth W. Hirsch, PhD ’69, died June 16 at age seventy-eight. He served in the Army in Europe during the Korean War and earned his master’s degree at Stanford. He married his wife, Beatrice, in 1964, and they moved to Napa, California, in 1988. Hirsch was a professor of communication studies at California State University, Sacramento. His research focused on the effects on children of violence in the media, and the use of effective communication in HIV-prevention programs.
Janet (Dammann) Fairbanks ’73 died of cancer in August at her home in San Diego; she was fifty-nine. She worked as a city planner for the City of San Diego in the 1980s, and later as a senior regional planner for the San Diego Association of Governments. She loved the outdoors, hiking the trails of Julian and the Anza-Borrego Desert, and completed several half-marathons. On her last visit to Eugene, she attended the 2009 Civil War game and enjoyed watching the Ducks play.
David Lloyd Tungate ’78 died of cancer in September. After graduating from the UO, he moved to California where he started his career with National Semiconductor and met his wife, Zagonyi. He loved spending time with his family and friends, reading, joking, traveling, coaching soccer, and playing golf.
Scott C. Armstrong ’80 died suddenly in September at the age of fifty-two. He completed medical school at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, and his residency in psychiatry at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu. He married JoAnn Baertlein in 1984, and they lived in Hawaii, Alaska, and other locations before settling in Hillsboro in 2001. Most recently, he served as the codirector of the geriatric psychiatry unit at Tuality Forest Grove Hospital. He enjoyed biking, playing the guitar, singing worship songs at the top of his lungs, coaching, and supporting his children in their activities.
Bennett T. Huffman, MFA ’89, died in October; he was forty-seven. At the UO, he studied and wrote with author Ken Kesey. He continued his education at the University of Liverpool, where he earned a master’s degree in British literature and a PhD in American literature; his dissertation was based on the works of Kesey. Since 2001 Huffman taught writing and literature at several Oregon institutions including Concordia University, Western Oregon University, and Portland State University. He lived most recently in Camas, Washington.
Jennifer Chalk ’93 died in June at the age of thirty-nine following a courageous battle with sarcoma cancer. After graduating from the UO, she became a successful aesthetician. She is survived by her husband, Scott, and her three-year-old son. She will be remembered as a loving mother, a caring wife, and loyal and faithful friend to all. She was looking forward to bringing her family to the University for a visit and was a loyal Ducks fan.
Professor Emeritus Bill Kleinsasser died in September. He earned his AB and MFA degrees in the 1950s from Princeton University. He taught architecture at the UO for twenty-nine years, beginning in 1965, and was a registered architect in Oregon, Pennsylvania, and New York. His impact on the UO and on his students has been lasting: his theory base is still being taught today as a required class, and his book on Henry Mercer, A Splendid Torch, is in final preparation for publication. He also served as visiting Andrew Mellon Professor at Carnegie-Mellon University, visiting professor at University College, London, and the University of Southern California.
Decades
Reports from previous Spring issues of Old Oregon and Oregon Quarterly
1911 Classes are dismissed to allow faculty members and students to hear President Taft speak at the Eugene train depot. Pulling into the station, Taft is met with a rousing rendition of “Oskey Wow Wow.”
1921 Old Oregon features a proposal from the “united alumni of the University of Oregon” for a campus memorial to honor the more than 2,000 students, faculty members, and alumni who served in the European war, and the forty-three who died.
1931 Among the slang now popular on campus: “huddle buggy,” a car; “hang a gooper,” to kiss; “home-work,” a romantic date; “baloney-merchant,” a braggart; “all hottened-up,” full of pep and enthusiasm.
1941 Men’s basketball coach Howard “Hobby” Hobson leads his players beyond America’s borders on an eighteen-day barnstorming tour of Hawaii “to demonstrate the efficiency . . . of [the UO’s] now-famous fast-break style of basketball.”
1951 Sidney Little, dean of the School of Architecture and Allied Arts, is named campus civilian defense coordinator. A former staff officer in the Office of Strategic Services, Little was active in the China-Burma-India theater during World War II.
1961 Arthur S. Flemming, a former U.S. secretary of health, education, and welfare, is selected as the UO’s tenth president.
1971 A campus group called “Women!” sponsors a “Male Chauvinist Pig of the Year” competition resulting in a three-way tie with a major from Army ROTC, the Erb Memorial Union night manager, and evangelist Billy Graham sharing the dubious prize, a bouquet of lettuce leaves and a “genuine dirty diaper.”
1981 Twenty years ago, “No college in America was interested in collecting conservative literature,” says UO librarian Edward Kemp; they “found it far more exciting to collect liberals and radicals.” Though he “heard snickers” from librarians at other universities, he proceeded undaunted and has amassed an outstanding group of documents related to American conservative thought, housed in the library’s Special Collections unit.
1991 The University is scrambling to deal with the severe budget cuts mandated by Oregon voters with the passage of Ballot Measure 5: elimination of programs and whole departments, reorganization, faculty and staff layoffs, and steep tuition increases.
2001 Members of the UO Department of Geography’s Environmental Change Research Group are contributing to worldwide efforts to understand global climate change.
