INDICATES UOAA MEMBER
1940s
Nancy Lewis Moller ’43 is a retired educator, orchardist, and bottled water entrepreneur. Moller remains active as the Hood River coordinator for the World Affairs Council of Oregon, working with the U.S. Department of State’s international visitors program.
Kenneth Lodewick ’47 wrote an article in 1955 titled “‘The Unfortunate Rake’ and His Descendants” for Western Folklore magazine, which was recently published in All This for a Song by Norm Cohen (University of South Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries, 2009). Lodewick and his wife live in Eugene.
William (Bill) Deller ’48, a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon, keeps busy volunteering. He lives in Everett, Washington.
Jeanne Simmonds Keevil ’48, former editor of the Irvine World News in Irvine, California, has been added to the wall of recognition at the Irvine Civic Center. Keevil now lives in Lake Oswego.
Tom Doggett ’60, a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon, celebrated fifty years of marriage to Barbara Doggett ’60 in December. Congrats!
The Blivet Biscuit Works is introducing the world’s first wireless hi-def flat-screen packaging on boxes of its flagship Wheat-O-Yum-Yum snack crackers, reports CEO Alaby Blivet ’63, designer of the “breakthrough advertising delivery system so bold it’ll make NASCAR blush.” The five-by-seven inch screen “combines the jaw-dropping clarity of Avatar with pinpoint demographic targeting capabilities to provide advertisers unprecedented access to consumer mindshare.” “Bye-bye static cardboard, hello twenty-first century,” beams Blivet. A 3-D version of the packaging is “already on the drawing board.”
Gary Goodson ’63, MS ’67, was recently nominated to the United States of America Gymnastics Class of 2010 Hall of Fame.
Edwin C. Davidson, MS ’64, a member of Sigma Nu fraternity, was recently honored by Crow High School with the naming of Ed Davidson Gym in recognition of twenty-nine years as a teacher, coach, and principal at Crow High School.
Earl R. Anderson, MA ’67, PhD ’70, professor emeritus of English at Cleveland State University, was awarded the D. Simon Evans Prize for his book, Understanding Beowulf as an Indo-European Epic: A Study in Comparative Myth (Edwin Mellen Press, 2010).
Hazel M. Dillon Anderson ’68 is a fundraiser for the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio, which provides nationwide science-related enrichment programs for elementary-school children.
Robert F. “Bob” Turner ’68, a member of the UO Foundation Board of Trustees and the Dean’s Board of Advisors at the Lundquist College of Business, was elected chairman of the board at Jeld-Wen’s annual meeting. Turner has been with the company since 1971.
Gregory Foote ’69, JD ’72, a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon, retired after thirty-two years as a Lane County Circuit Court Judge. Also a playwright, Foote has written This Patch of Sky, which premieres in June at Eugene’s Lord Leebrick Theatre Company.
Howard W. Robertson ’70, MA ’78, has published a new book of poems: Two Odes of Quiddity and Nil (Publication Studio, 2009).
Jack Sheehan ’71, a member of Theta Chi fraternity, published his fifteenth book, Quiet Kingmaker of Las Vegas (Stephens Press, 2009), which tells the story of banker and financier Parry Thomas. Sheehan has lived in Las Vegas, Nevada, since 1975.
Cold Duck Lifelong Alaskan Kate Lynch ’94 enjoying the sun and temperatures around thirty below zero at Cripple, Alaska, the halfway point in the 1,149-mile Anchorage-to-Nome Iditarod Sled Dog Race. Lynch presented the Halfway Prize trophy to the first musher to reach Cripple. Behind her are food and supply bags that support the seventy-two teams in the competition.
“Back to Timbuktu,” a statue by Mike E. Walsh ’72, has been featured in “Wordplay,” an invitational exhibit at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, this spring.
Larry Maday, MS ’74, retired after thirty-four years as a mathematics teacher at Tinley Park High School in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. In his tenure at Tinley Park, Maday coached twenty-four seasons of football and twelve seasons of track and field.
Kim Goldberg ’77 released her sixth book, Red Zone (Pig Squash Press, 2009), a photo-poetic diary of homelessness in Nanaimo, British Columbia, where Goldberg lives. The book has been adopted as a literature course text at Vancouver Island University.
Joe Hlebica ’77 earned a master’s degree in traditional Chinese medicine from San Diego’s Pacific College in 2008, following an externship at the Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Sichuan, China. Hlebica plans to specialize in acupuncture for sports injuries and hopes to open a practice in Eugene.
Governor Ted Kulongoski has appointed Libby Tower ’77 of Eugene, a public relations and marketing veteran, to the Oregon Arts Commission.
Former college sweethearts Sherry Wysong ’77 and Lee C. Hebert ’75, MA ’78, were reunited ten years ago and were married in February. The happy couple make their home in Woodinville, Washington.
Libbie (Winn) Pelter ’78, associate professor of chemistry at Purdue University, Calumet is coprincipal investigator of a $6.1 million U.S. Department of Energy research grant in support of the Indiana Electric Vehicle Training and Education Consortium.
After a thirty-year career in the United States Air Force, serving at stations across the country, Becky Beaman ’79 retired as a full colonel and has returned to Oregon to “ponder options” for her life’s next phase. Welcome back!
Bonnie Henderson ’79, MA ’85, is a freelance writer and editor in Eugene. An avid outdoorswoman, Henderson is the author of two hiking guidebooks. Most recently, she joined the board of directors at Eugene’s Northwest Youth Corps, the region’s largest outdoor conservation and youth education program.
Hill & Knowlton’s chief executive officer Jimmy Tay ’81, won the Public Relations Agency Head of the Year honor at the Asia-Pacific Public Relations Awards ceremony held in Hong Kong in November.
Alan L. Contreras ’82, JD ’85, is coauthor of Handbook of Oregon Birds: A Field Companion to Birds of Oregon, a “field-friendly, portable guide to the seasonal status and distribution of Oregon birds.” Contreras, the past president of Oregon Field Ornithologists, lives in Eugene.
Douglas Mitchell, JD ’83, has been elected to the board of directors at Eugene’s Northwest Youth Corps, the region’s largest outdoor conservation and youth education program. Mitchell has practiced law in the Eugene area since 1983.
DUCKS AFIELD
Duckling on Board On a “last childless vacation,” Meg (Upshaw) Anderson ’99 stands overlooking the Kilauea Iki Crater at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the island of Hawaii while wearing a shirt that reads “OREGON It’s not a baby . . . it’s a duck.” In the background is Halemaumau Crater, venting its noxious gases.
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.
Linda J. Sellers ’83 is author of the Detective Jackson mystery series, which is set in Eugene. A former journalist, Sellers has interviewed numerous homicide detectives, a medical examiner, a pathologist, and a SWAT sergeant, in addition to attending a local homicide scene to add authenticity to her writing. The third novel in the series, Thrilled to Death (Echelon Press, 2010), is due out in August.
Loren Berry ’84 was named a fellow in the Construction Specifications Institute at its annual convention in Pennsylvania. Fellows are nominated by their colleagues and selected by a jury of fellows in recognition of their accomplishments in advancing the goals of the institute, namely improving construction technology and specifications and educating people in the construction industry.
Doug Levy ’84 has spent ten years running his own government affairs consulting and lobbying business, Outcomes by Levy. He lives deep in Husky country (Kenmore, Washington) and is “married to a Beaver,” with whom he has two sons.
John Hribernick ’86 is a certified public accountant with Miller, Kaplan, Arase and Company in Seattle, Washington.
Steve Potestio ’87, cofounder of the creative placement agency 52 Limited, has founded Potestio, a human resources and recruitment firm.
Caitlin Hecsh ’88, proprietor of Artistic Design and Print in New Mexico, celebrated ten years of business in 2009. Hecsh designs website graphics, publications, and other printed materials.
Lori Jo Oswald ’88, PhD ’94, owns and manages FormsinWord.com, an online resource for federal and state business forms, and wordsworthwriting.net, a technical editing and document formatting company based in Alaska.
Eric Apalategui ’89 recently launched BestFishing-InOregon.com, a free online resource for recreational anglers. A longtime newspaper reporter, Apalategui also is a freelance writer whose work frequently appears in The Oregonian and Oregon Quarterly. He and his wife are raising two young children near Beaverton.
Scott Carter ’94 has written The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys (Simon and Schuster, 2010).
Robert Henson ’95 has been elected president of the Picture Archive Council of America, the trade organization that represents the interests of companies that license images for commercial and editorial reproduction.
Melissa (Matusch) Beatty ’97 succeeded at bringing KidzArt NW to profitability inside of two years—in the worst economy in many years—and is ready to take on her next adventure. Ready to put that business degree to the test? Make her an offer! Check out www.kidsartNW.com.
Leslie Stewart ’97 married Scot Turner in Portland in October. Turner works at Portland State University and Stewart is an English language acquisition specialist for Salem-Keizer Public Schools. The couple lives in Salem.
Natalie Ballard Strauhal ’99 and husband Matthew welcomed their first child, Desmond Fiel Ballard Strauhal, on November 22, 2009. The Ballard Strauhals live in Corvallis.
Scott Harris, PhD ’01, associate professor at Saint Louis University in Saint Louis, Missouri, has written his second book, What Is Constructionism? Navigating Its Use in Sociology (Lynne Rienner, 2010).
Kellie Horn, MS ’03, has teamed up with fellow Duck Kristine Slentz, MA ’76, PhD ’86, at the Washington State infant toddler early intervention program to provide statewide technical assistance and training.
Brian James McCauley ’03 married Aubrey Mercer McCauley ’02, a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, in February in Portland. Brian works at Umpqua Bank in Tualatin, and Aubrey is the development director for the Oregon and Southwest Washington chapter of the ALS Association, which provides support for those in the region affected by Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Kali Bean ’06 was elected by her peers to serve as director of volunteers on the board of directors for the Portland chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.
Julie Ma ’07 was elected to director at large of the new professionals group on the Portland chapter board of directors for the Public Relations Society of America.
Sara Wurfel, MS ’09, was elected to serve as president-elect on the Portland Metro chapter board of directors for the Public Relations Society of America. Wurfel is currently the director of communications at AARP Oregon.
Howard E. Kessler ’39, a member of Sigma Delta Chi, has died. He was recently preceded in death by his wife of seventy-two years, Edith Davis ’39. As students at the UO, Davis and Kessler founded the “Two-Can-Live-As-Cheaply-As-One Association,” garnering national publicity at the height of the Depression and celebrating what would become their lifelong relish for thrift. The couple raised a daughter, Stephanie, and made their home in Surrey, British Columbia. Kessler was a perpetual optimist who maintained his innate pep and sense of humor throughout his life.
Thomas A. Landles ’40 died recently.
Elvid M. Steele ’40, a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity, has died. He is survived by his second wife, Betty, his son, David ’71, a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity, daughter Kathy, four grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.
Charles Russell “Russ” Chandler ’49, a former state highway department career man, died at the age of eighty-six. Chandler married Marilyn Walker in 1981 after being a bachelor for more than fifty years. The couple enjoyed many years of traveling and spending time at their home on the Oregon coast. Chandler spent his free time playing golf, listening to classical music, and volunteering.
University “lineman of the century,” Bradford Ecklund ’50, a member of the football team and Sigma Nu fraternity, died at age eighty-eight. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he attained the rank of sergeant and was a hand-to-hand combat instructor as well as USMC Golden Gloves boxing champion. Ecklund played for the New York Yankees football club, which later became the NFL’s Baltimore Colts. Retiring in 1953 from professional football, Ecklund began coaching, first at Gresham High School and later, at the pro level, for the Dallas Cowboys, the New Orleans Saints, and the Chicago Bears, among other teams. Ecklund spent his second retirement substitute teaching in New Jersey’s Lenape Regional High School District.
Robert Wilkins ’52, a longtime La Grande city leader, died at the age of seventy-nine. Wilkins, a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, served in the United States Army during the Korean War. He went on to become president and principal in Eastern Oregon Agencies, Inc., an insurance agency in La Grande and Enterprise. He was a member of the board of directors for the Oregon Land Title Association and past president of the Union-Wallowa County Board of Realtors. He was the recipient of the 1979 Man of the Year award from the La Grande-Union County Chamber of Commerce.
Harry Morton Asch ’56 of Laguna Nigel, California, former president of Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity, died in December after a long battle with congestive heart failure. A tax attorney, Asch culminated his career as the district counsel of the western district of the Internal Revenue Service. He also taught and administered the graduate tax program for Golden Gate University in Los Angeles.
Walt Henningsen ’56, a member of Delta Tau Delta fraternity, died at the age of seventy-six. After serving in the U.S. Air Force, Henningsen owned a medical supply business until retirement. He married Sally (Hoy) Henningsen ’58, a member of Gamma Phi Beta sorority. The two were married for fifty-one years and had two daughters and six grandchildren.
John Edwards Nance ’57, a member of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, died at the age of seventy-four. Nance, a writer and photographer, spent forty years chronicling the Tasaday tribe, a group of cave-dwelling people discovered living in the Philippine rainforest in 1971. Nance established Friends of the Tasaday, a foundation to help the tribe and to preserve its rainforest home.
Robert D. Simmons ’60, a U.S Navy man, died at the age of sixty-two. Simmons married Laurie Knoles in 1961 and they moved to Palo Alto, where he worked at the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company for many years. Active in retirement, Simmons and his wife enjoyed many outdoor adventures. He is survived by his wife, their two children, and three grandchildren.
Evelyn Hermann, DEd ’62, died at age eighty-six. After meeting Shinichi Suzuki in Japan in 1963, Hermann spent the next forty years working with him. In 1973, Hermann started the Suzuki Institute of Dallas, now known as the Dallas Conservatory of Music, and worked with the International Suzuki Association until retiring as CEO in 2004. Hermann taught the Suzuki method in China, Japan, Korea, and Australia, and was the string advisor to the Suzuki Association of Taiwan.
Tom Wellnitz ’67, a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity, died at the age of sixty-four. He is survived by a daughter, two sons, a sister, Bette Jo Wellnitz ’71, MEd ’76,
a brother, and four grandchildren.
George B. Stevens ’68 died after a short battle with cancer. Stevens spent the last twenty-five years working as a technical writer in San Francisco. He is survived by his father and his sister, Betsy Stevens Howe ’73.
Diana “Dee” Lund Nelson ’69, a former president of Delta Gamma sorority, died in her Portland home from colon cancer. “Dee” had a long and successful career in medical laboratory technology and is survived by her husband, John Nelson ’70, a member of Delta Tau Delta fraternity, and children Andrew and Sarah ’08.
Astoria resident Karl Stanley Konka ’72 died in September at age sixty-one. After retiring from his seventeen-year career with U.S. National Bank of Oregon, Konka remained active with the Astoria Moose Lodge. An avid hunter and fisherman, Konka was also a voracious reader who loved science fiction.
Kathy (Randall) Cullis ’76 of Bend died at the age of fifty-seven after a valiant three-year fight with cancer. Cullis married in 1977 and was a news anchor at many television stations including KOMO (Seattle) and KMTR and KEZI (Eugene). She moved from Eugene to the big island of Hawaii where she worked as a morning radio news anchor for the Kona Association for the Performing Arts. A member of the Screen Actors Guild who appeared in film and television roles, Cullis was nominated for the islandwide Po’okela Award as “leading female in a musical” for Mame in 2001. She was nominated again the following year for her role in Night of the Iguana. In 2003, Cullis and her husband moved to Bend, where she remained active in local theater.
Michael Dennis Quigley, PhD ’89, died unexpectedly at the age of fifty-nine in Sacramento, California. For more than two decades, Quigley served as a university professor, the last ten years at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona. Quigley’s passion was his family, and although he didn’t have any children of his own, he was a devoted son, brother, and uncle. At the time of his death, Quigley was engaged to be married to Nonie Stevens, with whom he shared a love for traveling.
Col. Glenn T. Beelman, former mathematics department senior instructor emeritus, died at the age of ninety-two. Born in South Dakota, Beelman served for twenty-three years as an officer in the U.S. Army before retiring as a colonel in 1962. For the next sixteen years, Beelman worked in the mathematics department at the UO. He is survived by his daughter, Diane Pattison ’69, two grandsons, and three great-grandchildren.
Charles Dowd, UO professor emeritus of music, died in March from cancer at the age of sixty-one. Dowd, principal timpanist for the Eugene Symphony for thirty-five years, had recently retired from his post as Philip H. Knight Professor of Music at the University of Oregon School of Music and Dance. He was the author of six books on percussion performance and pedagogy.
Anne Leavitt, MS ’84, PhD ’95, former UO vice president for student affairs, died in April from cancer. She joined the Division of Student Affairs in 1984 and went on to hold a number of positions, including associate vice provost and dean of students, before becoming vice president in 2002. Leavitt retired from the UO in 2005 and spent three years as director of scholarships for the Ford Family Foundation.
Andrea Wiggins ’69, assistant dean of advancement for the College of Education, died at her home in March. Wiggins was a phenomenal fundraiser and advocate on behalf of the College of Education. In her fifteen-years of service to the UO, she was instrumental in promoting an esprit de corps with faculty members, engaging volunteers, developing a vibrant alumni base, and fundraising on behalf of COE programs, faculty members, and students.
Decades
Reports from previous Summer issues of Old Oregon and Oregon Quarterly
1920 Opal Whiteley ’20 creates a sensation as her childhood journal is serialized in the Atlantic Monthly as “The Story of Opal.” Her editors gush, “in our quarter century of experience we have never met with its like.”
1930 Famous New York-based sculptor A. Phimister Proctor (whose Pioneer has adorn-ed the campus since 1919) is commissioned to create a central-campus statue commemorating Oregon’s pioneer mothers.
1940 More than 2,300 copies of the UO’s Oregana yearbook are distributed with hopes running high that it will once again win All-American honors in a nationwide yearbook contest—as it has for three of the past four years.
1950 Twenty-five University men are placed on probation for membership in the outlawed Theta Nu Epsilon secret society (“skull and keys”). A related parade and dance on Alder Street turns into a mob disturbance, but nothing like the scene the Chicago Sun Times breathily reports under a page-one banner headline proclaiming “250 STUDENTS IN OREGON RIOT.”
1960 After a red-carpet reception at the Eugene airport, King Mahendra and Queen Ratna of Nepal are welcomed to campus with a twenty-one-gun salute. UO president O. Meredith Wilson obliges the queen’s long-held desire to visit an American supermarket, serving as guide on an impromptu visit to Safeway.
1970 An experimental, student-devised Art 407 course, The Social Mythology of Walt Disney Productions (“a critical analysis of the Disney Corporation as a purveyor of American culture, and the implications of Disney productions for sociology, psychology, art, and religion”), is offered for credit through the SEARCH (Students Exploratory Actions Regarding Curriculum Heterodoxy) program.
1980 “Probably the most photographed and beloved art object in Eugene,” the six-foot tall, 1,200-pound bronze Indian Maiden and Fawn statue, designed by A. Phimister Proctor and cast in Rome in 1926, is damaged by vandals outside the art museum.
1990 For a class exercise, journalism students devise meaningful equivalents to the cost of the controversially expensive $36.6 billion B-2 stealth bomber program. One response: build a $61,000 house for each of America’s 600,000 homeless people.
2000 Data gathered by a campus survey research group for the Oregon Annual Social Indicators Survey reveal that 42 percent of Oregonians feel that a nuclear war during their lifetime is “very likely” or “somewhat likely.”
