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Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
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Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
Contents Frank Bruce Robinson......................Page 4 Louis A. Boas...............................................5 Dr. William W. Watkins.............................6 Jay Glover Eldridge.......................................6 “Scrappy” Richardson..................................7 H.V. Carpenter............................................7 Permeal Jean French.................................8 Chief Kamiakin............................................9 Orville Clough............................................10 Ivan Cornel..................................................l0 Levi Vassar.................................................10 Norm Stanford...........................................10 Lord Hugh Bovill........................................11 Mary E. Ridenbaugh.................................12 Justin S. Morrill.........................................12 Donald R. Theophilus................................12 Ernest Hartung..........................................12 Malcolm Renfrew.......................................12 Mary Hall Nicolls.......................................12 Lionel Hampton..........................................12 Bruce M. Pitman........................................12 Archie Phinnie............................................12 Carol Ryrie Brink.................................12,13 James Allen Perkins..................................14 Sister Johanna............................................15 Dr. Robert Foster........................................16 Abe M. Goff.................................................17 Frank Brocke..............................................18 Shirley Ringo...............................................19 Karen Kiessling..........................................20 Edmund O. Schweitzer..............................21 Gerard Connelly.........................................22 Hec Edmundson.........................................23
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
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y r a d n s e i e t i g e L L sonaof the Palouse Per Vol. 1
Welcome D
octors, a banker, by only a few. and a Yakama chief. Every one has a story to Teachers, professors, enjoy and a historic photo or deans and regents. A junk two. man, assorted politicians, a The list isn’t complete. Not mail-order preacher and an by a long shot. That’s why we English lord. Farmers, logcall this Volume One. Expect gers and a ghostly nun. Volume Two next winter. Who They and others had knows how many volumes Lee a hand in creating the there will be? Rozen Palouse and its institutions, As managing editor of both in reality and — in one the Daily News, I’d like to Editor’s case — in fiction. know who you think should Note Some of the 32 names on be on the list of Legendary the left will be familiar to Personalities. most readers. Some will be recognized Email lrozen@dnews.com
Neill's Flowers established in 1910.
Come visit one of Pullman's oldest businesses! Neill's Flowers and Gifts when it had a fountain and grill as well as flowers
234 E Main Street, Pullman (509) 334-3545
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Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
Nation’s 7th largest religion was run from Moscow T
here were few growth industries during the Great Depression. Yet during those difficult years Frank Bruce Robinson parlayed a non-Christian doctrine with a belief in the power of positive thinking and a shrewd business sense into the world’s largest mail-order religion. It was perhaps the best example of Moscow making an impact upon the world. Usually the world rushed in to affect Moscow. Only occasionally did the influence flow in the other direction. And Robinson made his mark on the community as much as anyone before or since. Born in England in the 1880s, Robinson arrived in Moscow in April 1928 with his wife and young son, Alfred, and was employed as a pharmacist by Charles E. Bolles at the Corner Drug Store. His job gave him his evenings free and he could devote that time to his religious vision of the future based on 1 Corinthians 3:16: “Know ye not that your bodies are the temple of God — and that the Spirit of God lives in you?” His first public lecture was given one evening in the Moscow Hotel and about 60 people attended. But when he began to be accepted on a national scale, he consciously ceased all local proselytizing and refused to provide
any of his literature to anyone in the Moscow area. Most people in Moscow didn’t really know what Psychiana stood for. Psychiana grew essentially out of the Great Depression when times were hard and work was scarce. People were discouraged and Psychiana provided a hope. Robinson convinced a group of local businessmen to back him financially in a plan to organize a “psychological religion.” In 1929, he placed his first national advertisement in a psychology magazine, declaring “I talked with God — yes I did — actually and literally.” He received nearly 3,000 letters in response. From these beginnings, Robinson’s Psychiana grew to include thousands of students in over 67 countries. Robinson’s new religious philosophy set him at odds with nearly all of the town’s mainline ministers and churches. He had accepted modern scientific principles as opposed to fundamentalism. It seems evident he had been influenced both by Christian Science and the new “positive thinking” religious thought. He did not believe in the virgin birth, the resurrection, the atonement, the Trinity nor original sin. God, to
HODGINS DRUG
Serving the Moscow area since 1890!
Moscow resident Frank Bruce Robinson, seen here, organized a “psychological religion” that became one of Latah County’s largest employers, but put him at odds with members of the community.
Special Collections and Archives, UI Library
him, was not a personality, but a force or power. He rejected the belief the Bible was divinely inspired as well as the concepts of sin, heaven and hell. Psychiana became one of Latah County’s largest employers, hiring dozens of people who would have otherwise found it difficult to make a living during the Depression. They were kept busy assembling Robinson’s lessons, for Psychiana never had a church structure. Rather, it operated like a correspondence course. Psychiana kept the post office busy too. At times as many as 60,000 pieces of mail went out per day, and Moscow’s post office attained first-class status. At one time, Psychiana was reportedly the nation’s seventh-largest religious organization with nearly 100 employees, mostly women. Robinson also wrote over 20 books outlining his religious beliefs, had a regular radio program and traveled widely giving lectures. Psychiana became a national
trend-setter in the religious use of the mass media, and business people from throughout the nation traveled to Moscow to learn how it operated. To Robinson, Jesus was not the son of God, only a great person possessed of the God Power to no greater extent than was possible for anyone who followed the Psychiana teachings. Robinson was not a pie-in-thesky believer. Happiness and rewards — including financial security — were available on Earth. People needed only to think positive thoughts and follow the Psychiana lessons, sent to them with a money-back guarantee. At the entrance to Moscow in the 1930s stood a large sign: MOSCOW, IDAHO KNOWN THE WORLD OVER AS THE HOME OF PSYCHIANA THE NEW PSYCHOLOGICAL RELIGION Not all the town’s residents appreciated the sign, or the religion it
Courtesy of Latah County Historical Society and Keith Gunther
A landmark near the corner of Third and Main, Hodgins is still family owned and operated. Roland Hodgins started his Pharmacy in Genesee prior to 1890 before moving to Moscow in 1890. The move to Moscow was prompted by growth surrounding the University of Idaho. Today Hodgins is still a full service pharmacy with excellent customer service. The store also offers the area's largest selection of educational toys, hobby items and games. Hodgins employees, your neighbors and friends, can be reached at 208-882-5536.
HODGINS DRUG
307 S. Main, Moscow | (208) 882-5536 hodgins@turbonet.com | www.hodginsdrug.com Latah County Historical Society
This undated photo, taken at one of the Moscow Psychiana offices, shows women assembling materials to be mailed.
Legendary Personalities of the Palouse advertised. And throughout the community the feeling persisted Robinson was only into religion as a business to make money and that Psychiana was basically a scam. But most people in Moscow didn’t know much about it, think much about it and chose to ignore it. Some resented his open display of his wealth such as his cars — first a Dussenberg, then Cadillacs — and his ostentatious house with his own pipe organ. But he saw these as evidence and examples of the good life that Psychiana could bring. He organized Moscow’s first youth center. He owned two drug stores and a hospital. He donated property to the county for Robinson Lake Park. And he was one of the town’s leading charitable donors. “When they plant me beneath the sod,” Robinson once wrote, “none will ever be able to accuse me of not faithfully following the Light I have.” Still, he developed severe critics within the community and J.E. Nessly founded a newspaper at Deary in 1936 with the primary purpose of discrediting Robinson. One of his chief antagonists in Moscow was George N. Lamphere, publisher of Moscow’s daily StarMirror. Robinson had been giving all of his Psychiana printing business to the Star-Mirror but came to the determination he was being overcharged. At least, that’s his story. Louis Boas, then the editor of Star-Mirror, said in an oral history interview that Robinson was actually behind in paying his
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
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Idahonian name stuck until 1991, when it became the Moscow-Pullman Daily News, which still, technically, is owned by the News-Review Publishing Co., which in turn is owned by TPC Holdings Inc. of Lewiston. During the 1930s years, Robinson developed a kind of paranoia that he was being harassed and persecuted by some people in the community. He even carried a handgun for protection. Even though he had suffered a serious heart attack in 1940, he continued his work with Psychiana throughout the years of World War II. The flier “Thank GOD for the ATOMIC BOMB!” that promised to show you how to find your God Power in 20 lessons came out near Robinson’s death of a lung hemorrhage Oct. 19, 1948. The Robinson family had never been deeply involved in Psychiana as a busiLatah County Historical Society ness. His wife, Pearl; son, Alfred; and Some of Psychiana’s employees line up outside the Moscow headquarters in this daughter, Florence, had been active members of the First Presbyterian undated photo. Church of Moscow. Alfred quietly closed down the operation not long after his printing bills, although he paid up the newspaper, including getting him father died. eventually. deported in 1936. Despite the scandal, Family members tended to avoid and Nonetheless, in 1933 he bought the Robinson’s good friend, Idaho’s U.S. discourage all discussion of Psychiana print shop of William T. Marineau Sen. William E. Borah, helped him and its founder. — then operating a weekly newspaget back into the country quickly and In September 1961, the Idahonian per in Elk River — and moved it to become a naturalized citizen in 1942. published its 50th anniversary edition. Moscow to publish a competing newsThe News-Review was published It was considered one of the most compaper, which, through purchases of until 1939, when Robinson’s archplete and extensive histories of Moscow several other small papers, became rival Lamphere died from an acciever published. The Moscow News-Review, owned by dental gunshot wound. At that point, In it, not one mention was made of the News-Review Publishing Co. Robinson’s News-Review and the Lamphere, of course, was not Star-Mirror merged and were renamed either Psychiana or Frank B. Robinson. happy about all of this. Although the Idahonian, The Robinson family — From Latah County Historical there is no hard evidence to support it, retained controlling interest in the Society, Latah Legacy and Moscow Robinson blamed Lamphere for all of Idahonian until they sold in 1967 to Centennial edition of the Idahonian his troubles that followed his starting the Alford family in Lewiston. The
For 40 years, this editor decided what went on the front page
L
ouis A. Boas, who for nearly 40 years served as the chief gatekeeper of the news in Moscow, would not have agreed with the current editorial policies of the Daily News. For one thing, he didn’t believe newspapers should take editorial stands on local issues. “You’re too close to local issues,” he argued. “You can’t be objective in a small town when it is a small town issue. They’re friends of yours or they’re not friends of yours.” For another, he had strong feelings about the editorial writer who signs his name to editorials. He was against it. “The newspaper takes the responsibility for what appears in print,” he said. “It should be the opinion of the paper. The opinion of the institution as a representative of the people. That’s what the opinion should be rather than the opinion of Jay Shelledy or Bill Hall. Who cares what Bill Hall thinks?” “Louie” Boas became a partner and editor of the Moscow
Star-Mirror in 1926. When that paper merged with the NewsReview in 1939, he became a stockholder and editor of the Idahonian and remained in that job until he sold his interest and retired in 1966. He was a warm man with an often crusty exterior, and he served as Moscow’s newspaper editor longer than any other person. He continued to live in Moscow after his retirement and died Jan. 5, 1978. His reminiscences come through the transcripts of his oral history at the Latah County Historical Society. “Newspapering in those days was much different than it is now,” he reflected. “When I ran the Idahonian, if you look at the issues 10 years before I quit, I had a rule of 25 stories on page 1. Now they run four stories on page 1.” He preferred many short stories to a few long ones. “I don’t think one person in 50 reads the whole thing except those about whom it is written or their friends.”
The Boas family moved to Boise in 1910 from Ohio where his father was a candy maker. At 18, Boas came to the University of Idaho and four years later graduated with an engineering degree. His heart, however, was not in engineering, but journalism. He worked on the UI Argonaut as a student and did part-time work for the Star-Mirror as well as serving as campus correspondent for several other Northwest daily newspapers. In those days The Associated Press transmitted all of its copy in Morse code over the telegraph. “I was writing for half a dozen newspapers my junior and senior years,” he related. “I had a string of papers, and we had to file ’em by telegraph.” And he prospered. In his senior year he was making as much as $300 a month with his newspaper jobs. But when on graduation he took a job with Westinghouse and moved to Pittsburgh, Pa., he was paid only $100 a month.
Kyle Laughlin Photographs, UI Library
Louis A. Boas served as editor of the Moscow Star-Mirror and Idahonian before retiring in 1966. He briefly left newspapering and became a “ghost writer.” “I wrote articles for technical and semi-technical publications which carried the name of the scientist or engineer who did the work. I wrote it. He did the work. I couldn’t do the work. You get the point?”
He found Pittsburgh an utter hell hole and briefly moved back to Boise and became city editor of the Idaho Statesman. Then the opportunity arose for him to buy an interest in the Star-Mirror in Moscow and he became George Lamphere’s partner. “I had gone to school here so I was familiar with the town and I had worked on the paper part-time, so I knew what it was and so forth. So I committed to make this my life’s work,” he said. “Your local newspaper should be, and must be, the conveyor of local information and serve as the watchdog of local government. That’s number one. “That’s the major responsibility of a newspaper — to be a watchdog over public institutions as a representative of the people.” — From the Moscow Centennial edition of the Idahonian
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Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
Butcher kills doc, deputy I
t was warm and quiet at 9 a.m. Sunday, Aug., 4, 1901, in Moscow. Dr. William W. Watkins, 55, a prominent physician known as “a man of force and character and a leader in public enterprise,” was slowly driving his horse and buggy west on Second Street to go to his office nearby. He was returning from a house call. As he approached Jefferson Street, a man on horseback rode up to him and called out, “Hello, doctor!” As Watkins stopped, three shots rang out and Watkins slumped over in his carriage with one shot through his heart, one through his temple and another in his back. Watkins had let out one piercing scream before he died almost instantly and his horse, frightened by the gunshots, bolted, pulling the carriage to the doctor’s office. The killer was William Steffen, 40, a husky butcher and meat cutter. He and Watkins had known each other for some time. As Steffen rode down Second Street, George V. Creighton, owner of Creighton’s Store, called out to him, “Where are you going so fast, Will?” Steffen shot at Creighton and wounded him in the arm. Then he rode to Third Street on his way to the city limits. But before he got there he was accosted by Deputy Sheriff
George Cool. When Cool ordered him to stop, Steffen fired two shots that mortally wounded Cool. Steffen took off for his mother’s farm south of town where he lived. At the courthouse square, Sheriff Joseph Collins met him and the two exchanged gunshots. Neither were hit, but the last shot of the sheriff’s hit Steffen’s horse in the hind leg and Steffen had to run home. Collins immediately formed a posse and went in pursuit. They surrounded the Steffen house, besieging it about two hours with shots being exchanged both ways. There is some question whether Steffen’s mother was in the house during the siege or not. But at one point, she came out and told the posse: “My son is dead. Don’t shoot anymore.” Steffen’s body was found upstairs near a broken window. He had been shot in the left breast. The official coroner’s report listed the cause of death as a self-inflicted gunshot wound. “He had run out of bullets so he shot himself. He knew they was gonna get him, I guess,” Kenneth Steffen, a nephew, said some years later. On one of the envelopes found in Steffen’s pocket were written these names: Dr. Watkins, George Langdon,
August Held and E.E. Jolly. Held was a former employer with whom he had quarreled. Watkins, it was said, had learned that Steffen had severely mistreated his mother, and he reported it to the sheriff, who had sworn out a warrant. Steffen was brought into court for a public reprimand. Jolly, editor of the Moscow Mirror, published a full account of the trial. No one could explain why Langdon’s name was on the list. Another message on an envelope read: “I didn’t get the right ones after all.” Steffen was known as a hardworking man, but with a hot and sometimes violent temper. After the killing, one newspaper called him “violently insane.” Watkins, on the other hand, was a pillar of the community. Born in New Hampshire, he came to Moscow in the late 1880s to improve his health after practicing in St. Louis, Mo. He became surgeon of the Latah County Hospital. In 1890, he became one of the organizers of the Idaho State Medical Society, and was elected its first president. He was vice president of the Idaho state board of medical examiners. After the location of the state university at Moscow, he was appointed a member of the board of
Murder news didn’t deter Eldridges E
ager to know more of the area and the town in which he had tentatively accepted a position to teach, Jay Glover Eldridge and his bride, Polly, on the advice of her parents, sent to the Moscow Mirror requesting a copy of the newspaper. From it they intended to learn whatever they could of their prospective home. It was August 1901 and the black banner headline screamed, “Dr. W.W. Watkins... murdered … on Main Street.” The details of the triple tragedy did nothing to assuage their horror nor did it deter them from making the long, tedious trip west to Moscow. Later that month, the 25-year-old Princeton graduate and his wife arrived in Moscow, covered with dust and invested with enthusiasm for what was to be an entirely
new and different life. So began a service of 45 years to the University of Idaho and the community. His position was in the department of modern language, and two years later in 1903 he became dean of the faculty, an office he retained until becoming emeritus. It was the first of many positions he accumulated at the university, in fraternity, Masonic, business, veterans and youth organizations and in his church. There being no registrar, Eldridge took it on. The publication of the catalog of courses became his annual responsibility, and he often acted in the president’s stead in his absence. He served as dean of the College of Letters and Science, acted as dean for the Graduate School, and applied at least half of his time in teaching.
UI Portrait Collection, UI Library
Jay Glover Eldridge spent much of his life devoted to a multitude of education and community organizations. Eldridge also assisted in starting an athletic committee, stimulating competitive play between Idaho and Washington universities. Tennis was first introduced under his guidance. The faculty baseball team used his skills.
Latah County Pioneer Association, UI Library
Dr. William W. Watkins in 1901 fell victim to a murderer described as regents and was its secretary. He was president of the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and chaired the first Idaho Republican state convention. He and his wife had three daughters: Henrietta, wife of A. Ryrie, of Moscow: and Elsie and Winnie, at home. Years later, Moscow author Carol Ryrie Brink featured her grandfather’s story in her novel “Buffalo Coat.”
Fraternity work absorbed much of his time for various periods and he was instrumental in securing Beta Theta Phi charters for both Washington State College and Idaho. In 1951, Eldridge received the national award of the Legion of Honor for his 31 years of advisory council work with the Order of DeMolay for high school boys. He was active in Boy Scout leadership. He organized a faculty group, obtaining a charter for them in the American Association of University Professors. For many years he served as faculty adviser of the student YMCA. The interstate committee of the YMCA of Idaho and Oregon elected him a member for his work with older boys’ groups. He and Polly joined Moscow First Presbyterian Church in 1906. He indulged his musical interests by supervising the choral department from the beginning. He became an elder in the church and, as such, was elected by the Presbytery of North Idaho as its com-
— From the Moscow Centennial edition of the Idahonian missioner to the church’s General Assembly in 1921, 1934 and 1937. He filled the post of superintendent of the Presbyterian Bible School from 1911 to 1949 and for a long time was president of the regional Sunday school association. In 1936, he wrote the centennial hymn for the board of foreign missions of the Presbyterian church. His hymn, “God of Years,” to music by Beethoven, was chosen winner in a worldwide competition. His other activities included membership in the Chamber of Commerce, vice presidency of the Idaho society of the Sons of the American Revolution, first governorship of the Mayflower Descendants of Idaho, first Idaho divisional commander of the Sons of the Veterans of the Civil War, service of several years on the Community Chest board and presiding officer of all local and state Masonic bodies as well as officerships at the national and international level. — From the Idahonian 50th anniversary edition
Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
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‘Scrappy’ Richardson: The junkman who loved kids M any a tale has been told over the years of Charles Anthony “Scrappy” Richardson, who came to Pullman in the mid1930s to become the city’s most unforgettable character. He came from the Midwest and converted an old cattle yard along Pullman’s North Grand Avenue into a junkyard. The Junk Company was located on land that is today occupied by Cougar Country Drive-in, among other businesses. Scrappy bought and sold junk until ill-health forced him to close the business in 1966. One wonders if he acquired his nickname because of his interest in junk, or because of his persistent challenges to take on anyone in a fight. Richardson, a Pullman curiosity from the 1930s until his death in November 1969, might be seen as two men. Tales have been told of his feisty, almost crazed disposition, along with his extraordinary generosity toward children. Longtime Pullmanites recall Scrappy’s uncontrolled behavior after he had taken too many drinks of whiskey. Under the influence, he might attempt to knock himself out
Geoff Crimmins
A sign on a coin-operated laundry in Pullman is dedicated to Charles “Scrappy” Richardson. by alternately punching himself in the chin with first his right fist, then his left. During one of the times local police brought him in for being drunk and disorderly, he destroyed a 20-foot-long booking desk. Soon after the Easter Massacre of 1949, local lawmen worried about the prospects of Scrappy turning into a psychotic killer. Yet no one had found a way to get him to the Whitman County Sheriff’s office in Colfax for an evaluation. Finally, someone offered him a job as a deputy, telling him he needed to travel to Colfax to be sworn in. To lure
him to Colfax, the sheriff actually sent him an official badge, so one version of the story runs. Scrappy then used his official designation as lawman to direct traffic on a busy street, and that prompted authorities to claim that he had gone too far over the brink. Local doctors committed Scrappy to the state hospital in Medical Lake. He did not stay long. The hospital’s director, after consulting with a Pullman physician, decided that Scrappy was indeed sane and released him with papers that said he was not psychotic. Nonetheless, the hospital
sent him a bill. His doctor told him to ignore it, to let the state sue. The state did not pursue the matter. From then on, Scrappy would say that he was the only person in Pullman who had papers proving he was sane. Episodes like this went on for years. Stories tell of Scrappy threatening Gordon Klemgard, owner of Tractor Co., with an ax because he had supposedly stolen the Austrian crown jewels. Or of his notorious but successful lawsuits against the Northern Pacific Railroad — and others — over land disputes.
The other side of Scrappy Richardson is a contradiction. While he and his wife, Helen, lived in a brown shack in the junkyard, he was one of Pullman’s most generous benefactors. Some residents remember that as children, when they went to the Junk Company to find the necessary axles or angle iron for their soapbox cars or “bugs,” that Scrappy would give them a piece of hot candy. And if they finished their projects, he rewarded them with a silver dollar. If Scrappy happened upon a barefoot child on the sidewalks of downtown Pullman, he might buy him new shoes or an entire outfit of clothes from the Empire Department Store. In the end, when Scrappy sold over 60 railroad carloads of junk and closed his business, all his profits went to help Pullman’s underprivileged children. Today, a plaque attached to the building housing One Hour Cleaners reads, “Dedicated to Charles ‘Scrappy’ Richardson.” Maybe he was the sanest man in town. — From Pullman Centennial
The man who put WSU radio on the air
E
WSU Libraries Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections
Professor H.V. Carpenter opened the first radio station at Washington State University before broadcast was popular or even respectable in academia.
xperiments in wireless communications began at Washington State College in 1908 when Professor H.V. Carpenter of the Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering and a group of students placed a primitive spark-gap Morse code station on the air. The station was operated intermittently for the next 14 years, although it was constantly dismantled and rebuilt as Carpenter learned of new developments in wireless telegraphy. In 1922, Carpenter — he was dean of Engineering by then — decided it was time to go into full-fledged voice and musical transmission. With the help of Frank Nalder, the college’s new director of Extension, he persuaded Dr. E.O. Holland, the college’s president, to apply for a license to build a radio broadcasting station. Holland was reluctant at first but finally gave the go-ahead. It was 1922, the first year of the great radio boom, and virtually every institution of higher education in the nation big enough to have an electrical engineering department was working on a transmitter. Literally hundreds of college radio stations went on the air that year, to last
for a few months or a few years. By the mid-1930s only two dozen of these college stations were still operating. One of these survivors was in Pullman. Its call letters were KFAE, and it went on the air Dec. 10, 1922. Under its present call letters, KWSU 1250-AM, it is still operating as an NPR station. The original station was home-built to a fair-thee-well. The college had little money for frills like radio stations. Washington was just emerging from the depression of 1921, and state appropriations were at a low ebb. Carpenter and Nalder managed to squeeze $400 from the Engineering and Extension budgets; talked the Associated Students of WSC into providing an additional $200; and persuaded the Pullman Chamber of Commerce to put up $200. Fortunately, there was a lot of raw material lying around the Electrical Engineering Department’s laboratories. Even more fortunate, there was a young electronics genius, Homer Dana, on the department’s instructional staff. Carpenter designated Dana to design and build the station. Dana was a whiz at improvisation. He raided a museum exhibit — Spokane’s first electronic generator,
which had been given to the college for permanent display — for heavy iron core, which formed the modulation transformer. He approached two young engineering students, Gordon and Neal Klemgard, and slipped them $10 to “liberate” a couple of windmill towers needed to support the antenna. The first microphone was similarly liberated from a little used telephone. The resulting plant served the station for more than 30 years, with a few modifications. By 1926, the station was well enough established that the college Speech Department opened the nation’s first course in broadcast performance. The course, conducted by Maynard Lee Daggy, had to be disguised in the college catalog as “Community Drama.” Broadcasting still wasn’t quite respectable in the academic world, but the course description made it clear students would prepare material for delivery on the college radio station. The course was still called Community Drama when it gave Edward R. Murrow his first broadcasting experience in 1930. — From Pullman Centennial
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Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
UI’s dowager of discipline also a patron of parties I
t is doubtful any person for men and those reserved other than Permeal Jean for women. She knew what French has had a greater she was doing. She had been impact upon student life at young once.” the University of Idaho. She was in her 60s — “by She arrived in Moscow in no means elderly” — when 1908 to become the first dean she guarded and patrolled of women at the UI, serving this popular extracurricular for 28 years. journey. She was born in Idaho “She advocated friendly City in the 1860s. In 1899, companionship and a genshe became the first woman erous measure of sociable to serve as Idaho’s superincontact, but she frowned tendent of public instruction, on hanky-panky,” d’Easum serving two terms, until wrote. “At 9 o’clock or there1902. abouts Dean French made it As Boise author Dick clear that men were out of d’Easum has pointed out the women’s cars.” No one in his biography of French, balked at the edict, because “Dowager of Discipline,” the according to d’Easum’s university’s first dean of research, “General respect by women was a firm disciplithe student body — on camnarian. She arrived on campus or out of geographical pus at a time when parents jurisdiction — was such that sought assurances the school a frown or nod from Dean was a “safe” place to send French was a royal rebuke or their daughters. Through benediction.” dress codes and rigid rules of Many of her edicts lasted conduct, French maintained until the 1960s, over 30 a highly structured social years after she retired — a system. tribute to her influence. She banned women from But French was more smoking in most public than just a disciplinarian. places. She loved to party. The “I think it best that girls campus had never seen such do not become too flagrant extravaganzas as those she with their cigarettes,” organized. French noted in 1930. “It Almost any occasion could reflects upon us. When inspire French to host an appropriations official, lively and building dinner party funds come at Ridenbaugh before the Hall, the Legislature, women’s dorm, it is curious where she but painfully had an aparttrue that such ment for many things as girls years. She smoking have also sponsored a direct bearregular teas ing. A school and dances. is judged by She began its students.” the school’s She limited annual the numbers Halloween of dates costume party. women could Dick d’Easum When everyhave, and set one rushed Author of “Dowager of the hour when from campus they had to be Discipline” over the holiin their rooms. days without a chance to celOn the special trains ebrate together, she started that took students south and home for the Christmas the university’s Christmas holidays, “to see that joy did caroling tradition on the not explode unconfined,” Administration Building d’Easum wrote, the dean lawn. “planted herself in a sleepWhen it occurred to ing compartment between her the school had no way the Pullman cars designated of marking the arrival
“
She advocated friendly companionship and a generous measure of sociable contact, but she frowned upon hanky-panky. ”
of spring, she organized the May Fete tradition. Moscow’s modern Renaissance Fair can trace its roots to French’s first May Fete in 1910. In the 1920s, French believed there was a need for a proper place for students to gather to visit, enjoy formal teas, dine and dance. Therefore, she built the Blue Bucket Inn at her own expense, and the place quickly became the most popular spot on campus. French ardently followed and supported Idaho athletics, and organized the Harvard Yell Contest, for many years an annual competition between Washington State College and the University of Idaho to determine which school had the most spirit. She was a strong supporter of the fraternity and sorority systems, and helped bring national Greek letter societies to Moscow. She organized the Mortar Board, an honor society for senior women, as well as founded Daleth Teth Gimel in 1927, an honorary group for women who lived off campus, which soon had chapters on other campuses. She was a prime mover in organizing the Associated Women Students, the Inter-Sorority Council and the Women’s Athletic Association. While she insisted upon strict discipline for women students, she was also a feminist. She frequently chastised the administration, regents and legislators for not treating women as well as they treated men. Appropriations for women’s courses must “be made equal” to men, she wrote in 1916. Women needed more living space, better and more instructors, and a proper “women’s building.” She fought hard, and usually successfully, for all of these, and was one of the school’s most effective lobbyists. Many people viewed her as the most powerful person at the school, and in matters relating to women, most
UI Portrait Collection, Special Collections and Archives, UI Library
University of Idaho dean of women Permeal Jean French was a stickler when it came to proper student behavior, but also an advocate for opportunities available to women at the university. A campus dormitory was named after her. university administrations learned quickly that it was best not to oppose her. President Mervin G. Neale served the university during most of the 1930s, and was as opinionated as his dean of women. The two at times clashed, and at Neale’s insistence the Board of Regents passed a regulation requiring all campus personnel to retire at age 70. Consequently, in 1936, French submitted her resignation. The school purchased her Blue Bucket Inn and turned it into the first Student Union Building. On Oct. 9, 1954, President Donald Theophilus, hearing French
was ill, wired her in Seattle that the newest women’s dormitory on campus would be named the Permeal French House. The following day she died. The University of Idaho also recognized its first dean of women with an honorary Master of Arts degree in 1920, and later an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. The awards were deserving of one who served the school with such dedication for so many years. — From the Idahonian Moscow’s Centennial edition, the UI Centennial Edition and Latah County Historical Society
Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
| Monday, June 20, 2016 | 9
Kamiak Butte takes name from Yakama tribal leader L
ooming above the rolling hills and wooded valleys of the Palouse, Kamiak Butte floats like an emerald forest island in an ocean of grain. It was named for a leader from the Yakama tribe who symbolized the contest between the Native American and the white settler for control of what is now Whitman County and other areas of eastern Washington. Kamiak Butte has stood since Pre-Cambrian days as an island of sedimentary rock more than 3,000 feet high. Lava flows from the Columbia Plateau washed around it repeatedly until only the granite prominence remained visible above the hardened basalt. Later, airborne loess blew in from western Washington and Oregon to form the rich blanket of topsoil which makes the Palouse farmlands so startingly fertile. The buttes of the Palouse, such as Kamiak and Steptoe, were left marooned like rocks in a childhood sandbox. In fact, geologists around the world now use the term “steptoe” to describe any island of older rock surrounded by lava. The north side of Kamiak Butte, now a county park, must have been shaded from the drying effects of the sun, for it shelters a splendid mini-forest with over 150 species of birds. But what of the name? Kamiak Butte is named for Kamiakin, a noted warrior of the Yakama Indian Nation. His parents were a Palouse Indian man, renowned as an adventurer and ne’er-dowell, and the daughter of a Yakama chief. Actually, words such as “chief” and “tribe” do not effectively describe the lifestyles of the Native Americans of eastern Washington as their social structure was more loose-knit. They lived in small, seminomadic communities led by influential elders or headmen. The appellations of “tribe” or “chief” were adopted first by the whites, who found it convenient to view their Native American competitors in such terms. The Yakamas spoke a dialect of the Sahaptian language family, as did the Palouse and Nez Perces, while the Spokanes used
Courtesy WSU Libraries Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections
A 1923 photograph of a bronze medallion depicting Chief Kamiakin with the inscription “Kamiakin, Chief of the Yakimas.” The medallion was cast in bronze for $87.00. The modeling of the medallion was based on a Yakama Indian skull and images of the chief’s son and daughter. an interior Salish dialect. Kamiakin was familiar with both. He rose to a position of leadership less through inheritance than through natural talent. In the oral tradition of his people, it was prophesied the whites would come and drive his people from their land, and that Kamiakin himself would battle bravely against them. Characterized by love of his people and the land, he was an adventurer like his father and had traveled beyond the Rocky Mountains to the Great Plains on buffalo hunts. He was a gifted speaker and, as early as 1840, many of the Yakamas from Naches to Prosser recognized him as their leader. He introduced cattle from Fort Vancouver to the Yakima Valley and in 1847 he traveled to Walla Walla to request a Catholic priest for the benefit of his people. When a mission was founded by the Oblates at Ahtanum, he learned from the priest how to construct an irrigation
ditch a quarter-mile long from the creek to water a garden spot. He is thus credited with the first irrigation project in the Yakima Valley. At this time, the population balance of the eastern portion of the Washington Territory (an area comprising what is now eastern Washington, northern Idaho and northwestern Montana) was weighted heavily toward the Indian people. There were perhaps several thousand Indians living in widely Steptoe scattered bands with a few hundred white settlers congregating in centers such as The Dalles, Ore., and Fort Colville, an old Hudson’s Bay trading post. As long as there were only a few whites in the land, con-
flict between them and their Native American neighbors was minimal. But as more and more settlers traveled west on the Oregon Trail, it became clear the objectives of each group were diametrically opposed. Indian bands were devastated by diseases such as measles and their precious land appeared in increasing jeopardy. Kamiakin and other tribal leaders were also aware of the unhappy history of the Indian peoples of California and the Willamette Valley. In 1855, territorial Gov. Isaac Stevens was deputized to make treaties with the Indians of the Washington Territory. At the Walla Walla Council between Gov. Stevens and eastern Washington Indian bands, Kamiakin signed a treaty but made clear his unyielding opposition to the cession of Indian lands and later decided, together with other Indian leaders, to fight white encroachment upon the land where their ancestors were buried. Battles and skirmishes ensued all around the territory in the next three years between various Indian tribes and the U.S. Army. Interestingly, Army officers who would later achieve greater fame in the Civil War served earlier in the Washington Territory during the Indian Wars. Such men as Philip Sheridan and George B. McClellan gained valuable experience during these years. Kamiakin and many other Yakama Indians fought the cavalry gallantly, but ultimately military reserves and dissension among tribal members left him to withdraw to the land of his father in the Palouse, where the composition of his band was primarily of Palouse Indians. In the spring of 1858, reports of Indian cattle raids and the murder of two white men bound for the Colville gold fields reached Col. Edward Steptoe at Fort Walla Walla. He led his men on an illfated expedition north into
the heart of the Palouse, where they were soundly defeated by a much larger and better-equipped Indian force at the battle of Rosalia. Kamiakin may well have been present at this battle, but probably was not the unilateral commander depicted in newspaper accounts of the time, which roundly condemned him as the villain. Later that year, Col. George Wright defeated the combined Indian nations decisively in the Battles of Four Lakes and the Spokane Plains. Kamiakin’s dream of an Indian confederacy united and victorious against the whites was lost forever. Kamiakin and his followers fled to the northeast, successively into Idaho, Canada and Montana, before finally slipping back into the Spokane area about 1860. Kamiakin spent the last years of his life near Rock Lake in northwestern Whitman County and died about 1877. His descendants moved to reservations around the Pacific Northwest in the years that followed, where many remain to this day. The Ahtanum mission where Kamiakin irrigated his garden was burned by the white soldiers during the Indian Wars, but was rebuilt soon after, and is now a historic site. The original name for Steptoe Butte was Pyramid Peak, an obvious choice due to its triangular shape, but the name was changed by early settlers to commemorate the unfortunate Col. Steptoe. As noted, many of these settlers attributed the leadership of the Indian fighting force at Rosalia to Kamiakin. Thus, James A. Perkins, the founding settler of Colfax, proposed that Kamiak Butte be named after Kamiakin, as Steptoe Butte had been named for his opponent. Kamiakin has been compared to Tecumseh for his dream of an Indian confederacy. Caught in a historical tide which he could not control, he reacted in the best traditions of his people. Kamiakin is gone, but the butte which bears his name remains, gazing across the Palouse country. — From Pullman Centennial
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Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
Idaho Ivy League: Not exactly what you think By Amy Thompson Special Collections and Archives, University of Idaho Library
E
ast of Potlatch in northern Latah County along state Highway 6 are the towns of Princeton and Harvard. Modern maps seldom show that in the same vicinity were once the towns of Cornell, Purdue, Stanford, Vassar, Wellesley and Yale. While many of these towns never existed as anything more than a railstop for the Washington, Idaho & Montana Railway to pick up logs for the Potlatch mill, their names have brought a certain amount of fame to the neighborhood among trivia buffs. Thirty and 40 years after the line was completed, the railroad maintained their Ivy League fame in both a Ripley’s Believe It or Not cartoon and The New Yorker magazine, respectively. The WIM line carried passengers and postal services to many of these stations until 1955 when it changed to freight only. But the names are not quite what they seem. Once, you could have asked Orville Clough of Princeton, Minn., Ivan Cornell, Levi Vassar and Norm Stanford about it. Of all the university-themed towns, Princeton was the original and named by Orville Clough — a homesteader who arrived in the area in the early 1880s — after his hometown of Princeton, Minn. A post office was established by 1894, and the town was officially founded in 1896. This was a convenient location for travelers to the nearby Hoodoo mining regions. Princeton was a bustling town from the start and quickly able to support a hotel, store, livery stable, saloon and stage-coach stop. Today Princeton is an unincorporated community with a population of 46 in 2014. Harvard, the next stop on the line, was named by local homesteader Homer Canfield. The Washington, Idaho & Montana Railway officials gave the honor of naming the station for his cooperation with their putting a line through his land. They pre-
Princeton, looking east from Hampton on the old road, 1912.
Harvard Main Street in 1906, looking west. sumed he would go with his namesake and call it Canfield. However he felt that with a Princeton nearby, it was only natural to go with Harvard. Today Harvard is an unincorporated community with a population of 224 in 2014. Despite the rumors of college students working on the railroad who suggested naming the remaining stations after their places of study, it is much more of a compelling coincidence that stations were either named for local homesteaders or by WIM railroad officials to continue the trend. Ivan R. Cornell was granted a homestead patent in 1904, just over one mile due south of where the Cornell Station was to be located.
Photos courtesy Special Collections & Archives, UI Library
Almost 20 years before the railway came through, Norman A. Stanford held patents for two plots of land, both located just a few miles from where the Stanford Station was built. Members of the Vassar family, including George, James, Levi and Thomas, all held patents in the vicinity of what became the Vassar Station. Yale, Wellesley and Purdue were not named for homesteaders. More likely WIM officials named them to maintain the notoriety of having such an exclusive line of stations. Today the latter three towns no longer exist, but there are reminders of what used to be — Yale can still be found on the occasional map along with Wellesley Road and Purdue Creek.
Yale, three men and hand cart on railroad track.
Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
| Monday, June 20, 2016 | 17
Abe M. Goff: Prosecutor to congressman by way of Egypt
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hen Abe McGregor Goff died in November 1984, the Idahonian editorialized: “He cast a long shadow over life in the community in nearly 60 years of public service. He certainly had one of the most colorful and distinguished careers of anyone who has ever called Moscow home.” Not since William J. McConnell served as one of the state’s first United States senators and two terms as governor has anyone from Moscow served both his state and nation with greater dedication and distinction. Goff had been born and raised in Colfax. After serving as a private during World War I, he entered law school. He was also the center on the Vandal football team and a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. Goff’s first public office was as prosecuting attorney for Latah County. He ran for the office in 1926, shortly after he had finished law school at the University of Idaho. During the campaign he was approached by some members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, who asked him to sign a pledge that he would “enforce the prohibition law above all other laws.” He patiently explained to them that he couldn’t sign their pledge because he had taken an oath to observe the Constitution of the United States and sworn to faithfully enforce all the laws of the state of Idaho. “And they very politely left me and thereafter came out for another candidate and worked against me all through the campaign and fortunately I made it,” he said. However, a big part of his job in his four terms as prosecuting attorney was to enforce the state prohibition laws. “In Latah County I’m quite sure we had the best record for the enforcement of the prohibition laws of any county in the state,” he said. In prosecuting his cases, he often cited the special responsibility the county had to the mothers and fathers of the students attending the UI, then the state’s only university. He relates his experiences firsthand in his oral history gathered by the Latah County Historical Society. In 1940, he was made president of the Idaho Bar Association and elected to the state Senate. “At that time of course the big interest was the appropriation for the university, and that’s always been true with somebody from Latah County.” He considered his most worthwhile accomplishment to be a provision for the state courts to set their own procedures. It was through a bill sponsored by the state bar association and was considered a major step in reforming the judicial system. “The legislature would fix all the criminal laws and the basic civil laws,” he said, “but the procedure that was to
Photos courtesy Special Collections and Archives, UI Library
Abe M. Goff played center for the University of Idaho football team, and was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. be followed in the courts was recognized by statutes.” He also helped on a bill to “provide retirement for state judges at all levels.” After returning from the Legislature, Goff was called to active duty with the Army at Fort Lewis, Wash. Later he was called to duty with the Army in Washington, D.C., and sent to North Africa to work out of Cairo. After the African campaign ended, he served with the Judge Advocate’s office and worked with matters in the punishment of war crimes in Europe. When the European war ended he joined Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s staff in the occupaGoff tion of Japan. “And I came back as deputy director of the War Crimes office,” he added. While still serving in Washington, he was nominated on the Republican ticket for congressman for Idaho’s First District. “I’d been nominated while I was still in the Army in the primary. Came home the first of September, 1946, got into the campaign, defeating Compton I. White, who had had 13 terms as a Democrat. “It was a close race and a great surprise when I was elected. Because
first I had little chance to campaign and next this was considered a settled Democratic district.” As a freshman Congressman, Goff was elected president of an organization of all first-time Republican members of Congress. “And Richard Nixon, by the way, from California, was elected secretary. And we knew each other well, we were good friends.” In Congress, Goff was named to the Committee on Agriculture. He introduced and pushed through a bill called the National Forest Pest Control Act. He was most proud, however, of introducing the Air Supremacy Act. It did not pass as such, but much of its substance was included in another bill that did pass. His bill was designed to build the strongest Air Force in the world. “And as a combination of the Armed Services Committee and the Appropriations Committee, they did exactly what I had recommended in the separate bill I’d introduced. “I felt so strongly that we should build up our Air Force as the surest defense against foreign attack. And that’s what they did, and we did devel-
op this tremendous bomber fleet as a result of the action of Congress in 1946.” He considered this tour of duty in the House of Representatives as successful. He was active on various important committees. He ran in 1948 for re-election but was defeated. “But the election came around that fall and it turned into an unexpected Democratic general landslide,” he said. “For Truman, he’d been in, and I went out by about the same vote as I came in.” Goff ran for the Senate nomination in the Republican primary of 1950, but failed to make it. Later, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed him general counsel to the Post Office Department. In 1958, Eisenhower named Goff as a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission. He ended his federal career there. “I served as a member and chairman for nine years and then retired and came back to Moscow where I always wanted to make my home and where I have my friends. Like the people. Like the county.” In his later years, Goff often was called upon to give speeches at Memorial Day and Veterans Day observances. Goff married Florence Letitia Richardson of Moscow in 1927. They were married for 57 years and are buried at Moscow Cemetery. They had two children: Timothy Richardson Goff and Annie McGregor Goff. — From Moscow Centennial edition of the Idahonian
Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
| Monday, June 20, 2016 | 11
Bovill history tied to English lord and Nebraska lady U
ntouched beauty drew Lord Hugh Bovill — youngest son of an English lawyer, politician and judge — to Idaho in 1899. Bovill was like many Europeans of his day — in search of greater opportunities and adventures in the American West. After working on the family tea plantation in Ceylon, Bovill developed a 7,500-acre horse ranch with a fellow countryman in Colorado. Looking for yet more adventures, Bovill traveled to Nebraska where he started a ranch next to the Sioux Indian reservation. He met his wife, Charlotte Robinson, in Nebraska, and the couple married in 1894. Apparently Nebraska in the late 1800s was becoming too crowded for Bovill, who took a train trip to Idaho in search of uncharted lands. He traveled to Moscow, and continued on horseback to an area near Bovill. He quickly fell in love with the area and purchased 580 acres from homesteader Francis Warren. He traveled as quickly as the train would take him back to Nebraska and packed up his wife and two daughters for their new adventure west. Bringing horses and cattle with them, they established a ranch but quickly discovered a more lucrative endeavor. Sportsmen had also discovered the wooded lands surrounding Bovill’s ranch and were in need of lodging. A growing number of homesteaders and those in the timber industry also sought out temporary lodging. The Bovills seized the opportunity and added onto their home in 1903, creating a hotel
Hotel Bovill in 1907, pictured above. famous for its elegant dining and convivial hosts. Times changed quickly for the Bovills, and the town soon became named in their honor, the older name of Warren Meadows drifting into history. However, logging companies and the railroad moved in about 1907, and the once virgin timber paid the price. Still, the Bovills tried to cooperate with the likes of Potlatch Lumber Co. and Weyerhaeuser, recognizing change was inevitable. Saloons and similar night-life establishments came in to serve the needs of the loggers and rail workers. Hugh Bovill became the
Bovill’s Main Street is shown in this 1911 photo.
Photos courtesy UI Archives
official postmaster in 1907, but the couple soon decided too much had changed for their liking. Local historians say the Bovills felt somewhat betrayed and moved from the area about 1910. They lived for a time in Coeur d’Alene, Montana, Oregon and finally ended up calling California home. The Hotel Bovill, 602 Park St., was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. — from a Daily News column from 2000 by Craig Clohessy, based on information gathered by Mary Reed for the Idahonian in 1988
Lord Hugh Bovill and his family took advantage of Bovill’s popularity among sportsmen and built a hotel onto their home.
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Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
Lots of legends have names on UI buildings By Darcie Riedner and Erin Stoddart Special Collections and Archives, University of Idaho Library
A
revered tradition at the University of Idaho is honoring an individual by naming a campus building in his or her honor. As at many universities, campus buildings reflect state or regional significance, illuminate university history, honor past presidents, and recognize distinguished alumni, faculty, staff and donors. Below are a few of the best examples on the UI Moscow campus.
Ridenbaugh Hall After the original Administration Building burned down in 1906, Ridenbaugh Hall became the oldest building on campus. Built in 1901, the hall was dedicated to “the young women of Idaho” and named for Mary E. Ridenbaugh, vice president of the UI Board of Regents, and a regent from 1901 to 1907. Known before her marriage as one of the five “beautiful Black sisters,” the Idaho Statesman described her as “a woman molded by rugged pioneer life and tempered in the school teacher’s chair who … laid the foundation for modern Idaho culture” and as “a woman of tact and rare social charm and her services were much sought particularly in the early days by governors and mayors.” The building was originally used as a girl’s dormitory and for domestic science classes, and was later a men’s dormitory. It has the distinction of being the first UI building named for an individual and is included on the National Register of Historic Places.
Morrill Hall Morrill Hall was built in 1906 using insurance proceeds from the Administration Building fire to finance
the university’s first agricultural building. Morrill Hall was named for U.S. Sen. Justin S. Morrill of Vermont who introduced the bill that became known as the Morrill Act in 1862. This act provided free land for the founding of landgrant universities in each state and laid the foundation for the creation of the UI.
Theophilus Tower Theophilus Tower residence hall was constructed in the 1960s and opened in 1970. It was the first dormitory to house both men and women. At the time of its opening, the 11-story building was one of the tallest in the Northwest. The building is named for Donald R. Theophilus, UI president from 19541965 and an aficionado of collegiate boxing. Tower Trick or Treat is a longstanding tradition where students provide a safe Halloween environment for area children.
Hartung Theater The Performing Arts Center opened in 1974 and was renamed Hartung Theater in honor of Ernest Hartung, who served as university president from 1965 to 1977. A biologist, Hartung was known as a progressive “shared governance” president, helping create organizations that evolved into UI’s Women’s Center, UI Foundation, New Student Services, Staff Affairs, Faculty Council and Arboretum Associates. In 1969, in the midst of the U.S. campus war protests and student unrest, 4,500 UI students showed up at Hartung’s house to support his policies. Thirteen buildings went up during his tenure.
Renfrew Hall The Physical Sciences Building was constructed in 1962 and housed chemistry and physics department offices, labs and classrooms. In 1985, the building was renamed for Malcolm Renfrew, a
Morrill Hall, 1920
Photos courtesy Special Collections and Archives, UI Library
Potlatch native and UI alumnus. He was a well-known chemistry professor and department head who received an honorary doctorate in 1976. While working at DuPont, he was involved in the development of Teflon. He was a gifted watercolorist and a member of watercolor societies on the Palouse and in Idaho, New York and California. He was a trombonist with the UI Vandal nonmarching pep band, gardener, philanthropist and dog lover. Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter declared Oct. 12, 2010, as “Malcolm Renfrew Day” in honor of his 100th birthday.
Niccolls Hall The Home Economics Building was constructed in 1951 on the site of the old Engineering Building. The building now contains a food laboratory and state-of-the-art child development laboratory in addition to being the home of the School of Family and Consumer Sciences. The building was named after Mary Hall Niccolls, an alumna and major scholarship sponsor in home economics. A Moscow native, she got her bachelor’s degree in home economics in 1908, taught home ec and then served on the UI Board of Regents from 1916 to 1921. She died in 1963.
Lionel Hampton School of Music
The Music Building, later named Lionel Hampton School of Music, 1960.
The Music Building was dedicated in 1952 and renamed for legendary vibraphonist and band leader Lionel Hampton in 1987 to honor the legendary jazz musician’s contributions to the university’s annual jazz festival. It is the first school of music named for a jazz musician in the United States. Hampton’s personal archival collection is part of the International Jazz Collections at the UI Library Special Collections and Archives.
Brink and Phinney Halls Originally built as a men’s dormitory in 1936, Willis Sweet Hall (named for university founder and regent Willis Sweet) was renamed in 1982 to honor Moscow native and alumna Carol Ryrie Brink, who won the 1936 Newbery Medal for the novel “Caddie Woodlawn.” Brink Hall is home to the departments of English and mathematics. The building adjacent to Brink Hall, now known as Phinney Hall, was first named Chrisman Hall for longtime UI military education instructor Gen. Edward Chrisman. It became Phinney Hall in the 1980s to honor Archie Phinney, a noted anthropologist and a descendant of both the Nez Perce and William Craig, a fur trapper who was the first permanent white resident of the area in the 1840s. Phinney Hall was originally built as a men’s dormitory in 1938.
Pitman Center The most recently renamed building is the former Student Union Building, built in the 1960s on the site of the old Blue Bucket Inn. The Bruce M. Pitman Center recognizes the former dean of students and vice president for student affairs who retired from the UI in 2015 after more than 40 years of service. The Daily News noted he worked under 11 different presidents, including eight regular, three interim and one acting, and said, “He’s been the university’s one constant throughout the past four decades.” During various UI disasters, he was often sent to meet the press. Pitman, an active leader in his church, recently organized Family Promise of the Palouse. — From University of Idaho Library Special Collections and Archives; see more at http://www.lib.uidaho.edu/ digital/campus/.
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Moscow-Pullman Daily News
Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
‘Front Porch’ banker made friends for Troy
I
t would be hard to overstate the effect the independent First Bank of Troy had on the development of Troy. The personal service and liberal lending begun by Ole Bohman, a local lumber and business man, who served as a bank president from 1914 to 1946, brought confidence and loyalty from the local residents. Bohman’s policies were carried on and expanded by Frank Brocke who served as a cashier under him and succeeded him as president of “The Home Owned Bank for Home People.” Affectionately known by Troy people as “Uncle Frank,” Brocke was always willing to talk business with customers at the bank, on the telephone or at his house in the enclosed front porch, known locally as “Frank’s Branch Bank.” During and after World War II, his liberal lending policies helped many veterans who were attending the University of Idaho or Washington State College when there were problems with their GI Bill benefits. A liberal loan policy obtained the support — and business — of the local population and UI students in Moscow. Although the bank normally carried loans longer than most competitors, losses remained remarkably low over the years. Brocke, according to the American Banker, was the “pioneer in student loans,” developing his program before the federal government got into the act in 1968. In addition, bank by mail was instituted and became a trademark of the Troy bank. Those veterans and their wives remained grateful and kept their accounts with First Bank Latah County Historical Society wherever they went. By 1971, the Frank Brocke, known in Troy as Uncle Frank, helped college students and military members with his liberal lending polices bank had 6,000 accounts in 41 states and 45 countries. Those clients often while running the First Bank of Troy. He was labeled a “pioneer in student loans” by the American Banker. included a note with their deposits, he found a job, came to the bank and Employees and early customers men had grown up in Troy and their and Frank would respond with a asked for a loan to buy a car. Frank began to arrive and were sent into a father had a business next door to newsy note back to them. considered his request and granted ventless vault. Over 20 people were the bank. This prosperity did not go unnohim the loan. crowded in there with the threat the Stories among the old timers in ticed and the little bank at Troy The second robbery, in 1963, gunmen would shut the door to the Troy are still plentiful and personal experienced two bank robberies, each began on Brocke’s famous front vault if there was a disturbance. The of help from Frank Brocke and the with its own twist. In the 1950s, the porch when three people, two men youngest hostage was about 10 years independent First Bank of Troy. At first robbery occurred when a lone one point, it had branches in Moscow and another man in drag, came to old. man in dark glasses approached the and Plummer. In 1976, the people the house late at night and forced When the safe opened, the two counter, put a lunch box on it and crooks in the bank made their escape of Troy felt a great loss when First told the teller to “fill it up.” She faint- their way in at gunpoint. Tying Mrs. Bank of Troy was sold to Idaho Bank Brocke and their son, Bob, in their with $55,000 under the cover of a ed and Willis Bohman, the cashier and Trust. rooms, the robbers waited through fire at the Odd Fellows Hall down and son of Ole Bohman, obeyed. The Brocke died in October 1977. the night with Frank. Very early in the street. It had been set by their crook escaped with about $5,500. He the morning they took him to the “woman” accomplice. When captured was arrested a few days later and — From Latah County Centennial bank to wait for the safe to open. later in California, two of the young sentenced to prison. On his release,
Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
| Monday, June 20, 2016 | 13
Brink left mark in hometown, literary world A
uthor Carol Ryrie Brink has a strong claim to represent
Idaho. In Moscow her name graces a building on the University of Idaho campus, the children’s room at the Moscow library and a regional park. After writing a successful children’s book, “Caddie Woodlawn,” Brink wrote one of her best adult novels, “Buffalo Coat,” the first of her so-called Idaho novels. Published in 1944, “Buffalo Coat” was based on the lives of her grandparents. It spent weeks on the New York Times’ best-seller list and set telephones ringing as Moscow people speculated about the real names of the fictional characters. The novel explores why people came to the place she renamed Opportunity and about life in a small western town. The book’s success puzzled Brink, who had thought Moscow had quite forgotten her. Brink was born in Moscow in 1895, the daughter of Alex and Henrietta Ryrie. Hers was an upper-crust family. Her grandfather, William W. Watkins, was among Moscow’s most prominent physicians and town boosters, one of those responsible for landing the university for the community. Her father was an early Moscow mayor, and her mother was a talented musician. Carol Ryrie seemed born to good fortune. Yet her life suddenly shattered. Alex Ryrie died of consumption in 1900. One year later, a deranged young man killed her grandfather in what remains Moscow’s most notorious murder. Her mother hastily remarried but committed suicide in 1904 — in despair over her unhappy union. Brink, who was not yet 9 years old, went to live with her grandmother and aunt. Frustrated and unhappy in Moscow schools, she transferred to the Portland Academy in her teens, then returned to Moscow to attend the university, serving as society page editor of the Argonaut. Feeling Moscow was too small, Brink transferred to the University of California
Latah County Historical Society
Brink and son David are shown in this undated photo.
UI Archives and Special Collections
Carol Ryrie Brink is shown in her later years. at Berkeley after her junior year and graduated in 1918. That same year she married Raymond Brink, whom she had met while he was a mathematics professor at the University of Idaho. The Brinks spent most of their adult lives in St. Paul, where Raymond became chairman of the mathematics department at the University of Minnesota. She never returned to live in Moscow, but fondly remembered the town. In 1936, Carol Brink submitted a manuscript to the Macmillan Company based on the Wisconsin stories her grandmother told her as a child. The novel, “Caddie Woodlawn,” somewhat fictionalizes the childhood adventures of Brink’s grandmother, Caroline Woodhouse “Gram” Watkins, whom Reed characterized as the “headstrong and plucky heroine” of the novel. The novel brought her instant acclaim and was awarded the nation’s most prestigious prize for children’s literature, the Newbery Medal. The second Idaho novel, “Strangers in the Forest,” published in 1959, was based on the experiences of her Aunt Elsie in taking up a timber homestead in the white
pine forest near Clarkia, Idaho. Elsie, like many Moscow women, took up these claims as an opportunity to become financially independent. After proving up, they could sell their land to a lumber company. “Strangers” gained popular national acclaim and was condensed by Readers Digest. Brink and three friends spent a summer at her aunt’s cabin, and these experiences provided much of the material for the novel. In 1977, the Latah County Historical Society published her reminiscences in “Four Girls on a Homestead.” “Snow in the River” was the final Idaho novel, published in 1964. It was Brink’s most difficult and revealing work. As Brink explained, it was the most autobiographical of any of her books, as it included the tragedy of her mother’s suicide. Through the novel, Brink reveals her own emotional growth and the confession that her mother had never really cared for her. Yet the tone is restrained, describing how she withdrew into silence, this being the only way she could pull what shred of resolution she had left about her naked wretchedness. As Brink did in real
life, the fictional character demonstrates a strong resolve to become self-reliant. “Any tale is a shadow of real life, and what we write an echo of a sound made far away,” wrote the Brink in one of the books she authored. Many of these really did echo her experiences and those of friends and family members either coming of age or living out their lives. While “Snow in the River” Latah County Historical Society may be Brink’s strongest Brink, 1920s. novel, literary reviewers dismissed it, although the Near the end of her life, National League of American Brink expressed confidence Pen Women did give it an she had accomplished all award for fiction in 1966. As she had desired as a writer, a writer whose sense of proalthough feeling her last priety and balance paralleled manuscript, vignettes from her personal beliefs, Brink her Moscow days, would not understood the public’s literbe published. ary appetites had changed, Brink died in San Diego making her work appear oldin 1981. She received many fashioned. awards during her lifetime, Even though Brink’s but perhaps the one she was life was a testimony to a most proud of was her honorwoman’s right to a meaningary doctorate of literature ful career, her writing was from the University of Idaho. accomplished among the After her death the school duties of raising children, named its faculty building keeping house and being a after her, at about the same wife. She often wrote at the time the Moscow Public end of the ironing board, at Library named its children’s the kitchen sink and when library for her. her two children, David and In 1983, the Washington Nora, were asleep. State University Press pubBetween 1936 and 1977 Brink wrote 27 books for chil- lished that last work, “Chain of Hands,” and the three dren and adults, mostly fiction. Seven of them — three novels she called her Idaho children’s and four adult’s Trilogy. — deal with accounts of life in and around Moscow. “All — Adapted from stories by Over Town,” “Louly,” and Joann Jones, curator emeritus “Two Are Better Than One” for the Latah County Historical are happy children’s books of Society, and Mary Reed, the her days in the town. director emeritus of the society.
14 | Monday, June 20, 2016 |
Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
Business chance sent Perkins to Colfax I
n 1870, Waitsburg, Wash., businessman Anderson Cox sensed an opportunity to make some money if he could locate a sawmill in the right place a little farther north and east. He persuaded a 29-year-old farmer named James Allen Perkins and his buddy, Thomas J. Smith, to go stake land claims at the confluence of the north and south branches of the Palouse River. The sawmill would serve settlers starting to move into the Union Flats area. Perkins and Smith did the job: The sawmill happened — the first such enterprise to take root north of the Snake River, east of the Columbia and west of the Rocky Mountains. But more important to our nearby history was the concurrent birth of Colfax. Perkins’ ancestors first arrived in America in the 1600s. James was born to their descendants, Joel Perkins and his wife, Margaret, in 1841. In 1852, James, his parents and his grandparents, Jesse and Jane Perkins, left Illinois to come west across the plains, by oxcart. The Perkins families first bypassed today’s Whitman County, settling instead in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. When James was 20, the families turned back and headed east to the Washington territories, looking for farmland with better soil and a drier climate. They drove more than 100 head of cattle to Waitsburg, Walla Walla County, which met their requirements. James farmed near his father until Cox came calling with a deal too exciting for the young man to refuse. Even after Smith, who later became a state legislator, and a second partner abandoned their claim, Perkins persisted. He built a cabin and named his one-man settlement Bellesville, some say in honor of a girlfriend, but perhaps more likely a reference to Belle Plains, his Illinois birthplace. Perkins’ cabin still stands as the oldest surviving building in Colfax. Within a year, a third partner, Hezekiah Stout Hollingsworth of Waitsburg, reclaimed Smith’s land and, with Perkins and Cox, not only built a mill and a lumber business,
Left: The Perkins family is shown in 1917. Seated are James, left; Sara, right; daughters, from left, Stella, Minnie and Myrtle; and son, Sumner. Below: The Perkins House, built in 1886, is shown present day.
Photos courtesy of Whitman County Historical Society
but also directed the final platting of the town in 1872, naming it Colfax after Schuyler Colfax, vice president to President Ulysses S. Grant (18691873). In the same year the first schoolhouse was built and Perkins became clerk of the first school district in the county. Perkins lived in Colfax until his death in 1920. He was active in local and state political and civic affairs and invested much in “upbuilding” the town. The territorial legislature organized Whitman County in the winter of 1871-72. Perkins was one of three commissioners to choose Colfax as county seat. In 1872, his humble cabin was the site of the first county Republican convention. In 1873, Perkins, then 32, married 18-year-old Sara Jane Ewart, and they honeymooned in Perkins’ cabin. They had three daughters and a son: Minnie, Myrtle, Stella and Sumner. About 1886, he built the not-sohumble Perkins House, which also still stands in Colfax, and is the site of many a community meeting and impromptu tour by Valoree Gregory, executive director for four Colfax organizations, who has her office there. The mill became a major Palouse business, eventually purchased by the Potlatch Lumber Company. It closed in 1907. Perkins’ influence remained strong throughout his life.
He was elected mayor four times (once without a single opposing vote), represented Whitman County in the territorial legislature and was a delegate to national conventions. He was one of the incorporators of the Washington and Idaho Railroad, and was longtime partner in the Bank of Colfax. He was also a trustee of the Colfax Academy,
later Colfax College, and president of the Whitman County Pioneer Association. One Washington history calls Perkins a “man of sterling integrity, upright in business and unquestioned in his dealings with all.” — From Whitman County Historical Society
Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
| Monday, June 20, 2016 | 19
Self-starter Ringo balanced teaching, politics By Shanon Quinn Daily News staff writer
T
here is no struggle to find a topic of conversation when sitting down for coffee with Shirley Ringo. The issue is deciding which topic to tackle. Behind a demure cardigan, sensible haircut and impeccable manners lies a core of intellect, empathy and steel will. That is to be expected after a cumulative 14 years in Idaho’s political scene. The retired teacher, legislator and mother of three is well versed in a multitude of subjects. Anything from family to politics to every aspect of education is up for grabs, but it’s clear at the onset of any chosen subject what Ringo’s concerns are. The ability of all people — regardless of race, socioeconomic status or any other standard by which people are judged — to lead productive, satisfying lives. It’s been two years since leaving her political career behind in favor of spending retirement with her husband, John, and enjoying their grown son and daughters, but Ringo, 75, hasn’t missed a beat in the goings on in either of her professional passions. “I’m not as engaged as I have been,” Ringo said. That’s a relative statement. In her busiest years of public life, Ringo balanced providing mathematics education for Moscow’s youth with serving in the Idaho Legislature. Her path to that position was an unlikely one. Ringo arrived on the Palouse in the late 1950s to earn her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics at Washington State University, which she put to use in teaching at public schools as well as community colleges in and near Seattle. When her husband landed a job at WSU in the early 1970s, the couple was happy to return to an area that was so familiar. “It was like coming home in a way,” she said. While Ringo also taught at WSU, she felt less than certain about her position. Because of enrollment fluctuations, “I had to wait to see if I had the job for sure,” she said. “To me that didn’t seem secure enough.” It was in searching for that security Ringo found a job she would hold for 25 years as well as her first taste of leadership in serving her new Moscow community. She taught high school math and held the presidency of the Moscow teachers association from 1976 to 2000. “It was great,” Ringo said with a smile at the memory. “There couldn’t have been a much nicer place to teach. I really enjoyed both the staff and the students.” Throughout the years her inter-
est in community service and politics grew with the number of organizations she worked with — such as the Idaho Education Association, National Education Association and National Council of Teachers. “I did dabble in politics and started chairing the Latah County Democrats in 1992,” she said. “Part of my job was to try to recruit people to run.” Ringo said attempting to recruit candidates was a difficult job in Idaho. “Running as a Democrat, success is totally not possible in some parts of the state and marginally possible here. It was kind of hard to recruit somebody so in 1998 I gave up and recruited me. I wasn’t ready and surprised myself by winning,” she said. Although the new position — especially in combination with her full-time teaching position — was a challenge, Ringo rose to the occasion and worked to focus on creating common ground and compromise between the parties she said are so partisan. Ringo experienced both wins and losses during her political career and was not someone to accept defeat — even after being defeated. “I did go ahead and focus on the political thing then in that next election I lost,” she said. “I sub-taught for 2 years, dabbled in the political scene and really followed what the person who defeated me was doing to see if I was happy with it or not. I wasn’t, so I ran again and I beat him.” Ringo made her last political stand in 2014, with her bid for Congress, stepping down from public life after her loss to incumbent Rep. Raul Labrador. “That was really an uphill battle,” Ringo said. “That district goes from Canada to Nevada and there was a lot of territory to cover. Unfortunately, the progressive parts of Boise were in the other congressional district.” Her chosen causes to champion include health care and education which, she said, have changed a good deal since her days as a new college graduate. “When I graduated from WSU, I could pretty much decide where I wanted to live and go get a job,” Ringo said. “I can’t believe how easy it was, even though we didn’t make much. For someone to go to the trouble to get a college education and then have jobs be an uncertainty I think is really sad.” Although Ringo said she is still urged to return to the political arena, that is not something likely to happen. “I’m too old,” she said. Being the ever engaged woman she is, though, Ringo said she plans to increase her community involvement through joining organizations that work to improve life for those around her … and maybe teach a class or two. Shanon Quinn can be reached at (208) 883-4636, or by email to squinn@dnews.com.
Contributed photo
The now retired Ringo took on the challenge of running for the Legislature as a Democrat in Idaho, in addition to her other roles as a teacher and mother.
Fighting the good fight since back in the day.
Since 1911 to be exact. Fierce For Your Freedom.
480896FR-16
Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
| Monday, June 20, 2016 | 15
Colfax nurse gave more than a lifetime of service the doors in the surgery unit sounded like they were opening and closing.” Ah, the stuff of legends. One of the tour guides for the event orothy Harvey appreciated the was Carol Larson. Larson would regale tender care she received from members of her tour group with the the doctors and nursing staff story of her grandmother. during her 90-day stay at St. Ignatius When Gregory and Jewell heard Hospital in Colfax. the story, they started digging into the It was 1945 when she was admitmyriad boxes of paperwork left at the ted. Harvey was in her last trimester hospital decades ago. of pregnancy and suffering from preThey found those hand-written notes eclampsia. Her blood pressure was left by the nurses. high and her weight was low. The search revealed 11 other Her doctor would come to the hospatients mentioned in the notes who pital and give her an injection every reported experiencing Sister Johanna’s evening to keep the blood pressure comforting ministrations. normal. “From what we can see from the The shots were painful, but a nurse, notes, all of the patients were on the Sister Johanna, afterward would sit on third floor and were very ill,” they the side of the bed and stroke Harvey’s wrote. “Most were terminal. There were hand. This action kept her calm and a couple that survived.” allowed her to fall asleep. Dorothy Harvey was among the latThe good sister continued her attenPhotos by Geoff Crimmins/Daily News ter. tive actions until Harvey’s baby was Who or what made those nightly born about 40 days after admittance. A house for some of the nuns who worked in St. Ignatius Hospital is seen through rounds at St. Ignatius may never be She then stopped the visits. a broken window in the vacant hospital in Colfax on March 13. known with 100 percent certainty. But Harvey asked about the nun who then it probably doesn’t matter. Belief visited every night. missed and seven remained,” according mid-1960s, it was generating quite and faith are weird that way. Harvey “Where is Sister Johanna,” Harvey a buzz as being haunted, especially to the site. “The first death was recordasked of a duty nurse. after it was abandoned in 2003. An old would probably agree. ed on June 23, 1893, when F.E. Marin, After Harvey died, Larson was The story goes the nurse replied building where death was a fact of life a railroad employee, was crushed looking through some papers and hapthere was no Sister Johanna working at between railroad cars.” can’t help but be saddled with such a the hospital. legacy. And area residents and visitors pened on the receipt for Harvey’s 90There have been several reports of day hospital stay. The total was $130, The nurse, Sister Marciana, did a alike are prone to add their takes on post-mortem appearances by Marin. little digging and found a Sister M. the place, particularly after furtive noc- but no mention how much, if any, Much has happened at St. Ignatius Sister Johanna received for her “extra Johanna Zumstein had worked at the turnal visits. since it closed as a hospital in 1964 duty.” hospital in the early part of the 20th By 2007, a major change occurred. after it faced the financial burden century, but had passed away at St. Twelve University of Idaho students of extensive remodeling or losing its Ignatius in 1928. Murf Raquet is a retired editor who worked at the buoyed by stories the hospital was an license. Rather than start a massive Daily News for nearly 30 years. After two years away Harvey had often said Sister abandoned — and haunted — insane fundraising effort for Ignatius, one was Johanna spoke softly with an accent asylum went looking for a scare or two. from the business, he was ready to put fingers to started for a new facility, Whitman keys again. — possibly Swiss. The hospital’s records Community Hospital, which opened What they got was arrested for tresindicate Sister Johanna was born in passing, said Gregory and Jewell. in 1968. It has since morphed into the Switzerland. The incident spurred the “city and Whitman Hospital and Medical Center. Carol Larson, 47, Harvey’s grandcommunity groups that boarded up the In the meantime, St. Ignatius daughter, heard the stories as a child remained an impressive six-story edifice windows and locked the doors to make and remembers being told of the good it safe and to prevent vandalism,” they just off Main Street in Colfax. It also sister. wrote. served as a home for the developmen“My grandmother didn’t believe in In late 2015, the chamber and the tally disabled at one ghosts,” Larson said. Colfax Downtown Association got pertime. “But she always told mission to use the building as part of a In the 1980s and me, ‘I knew she was fundraising effort and offered exclusive ’90s, nursing assisthere every night.’ ” ghost hunts and tours. tants “described seeHarvey died at 88 “Apparently the legend of St. ing shadow figures Ignatius Hospital was more widespread in 2012. Susie Barbee, down the hallways, than expected,” Gregory and Jewell hearing brooms drop her daughter and wrote. “Over 1,600 people from all over violently to the floor Larson’s aunt, lives in the United States have gone on tours and hearing people the Yakima area. or hunts in St. Ignatius. Paranormal talking in empty The nurses at the groups, psychics and fans of the popular rooms,” said Valoree hospital kept copious paranormal TV shows have gone in to Gregory and Becky notes on their patients, experience it for themselves.” Jewell in an email but it took years before People on those tours reported feelto the Daily News. those notes would surCarol Larson ing cold drafts, hearing doors slamming, Gregory is the uniface and reveal some Granddaughter of Dorothy Harvey, fied executive director being bumped by something unseen, interesting stories. anomalies in digital photos, or just havof Colfax Downtown The hospital was former St. Ignatius patient ing a sense of unease. Association, founded in April 1893 “A group of high school students Colfax Chamber by the Sisters of Charity of Providence heard what sounded like a group of of Commerce, Historic Preservation in a small frame building, according people running up the marble stairs Commission and Colfax Arts Council. to the Whitman Hospital and Medical Jewell is a volunteer with the the down- towards them,” they wrote. “The Center’s website. Decorated steps lead down from the guides shined their lights towards the town association. “The first patient was a pneumotop floor of the vacant St. Ignatius darkness of the stairwell, only to find While it may not have housed statenia case on May 2, 1893. In the first Hospital building in Colfax on March 13. it deserted. Once the footsteps stopped, of-the-art medical practices since the month, ten were admitted; three disBy Murf Raquet For the Daily News
D
“
My grandmother didn’t believe in ghosts. But she always told me, ‘I knew she was there every night.’ ”
16 | Monday, June 20, 2016 |
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
Foster’s clinic attracted cancer patients to Juliaetta D
Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
r. Robert Foster, who practiced “magnetic and suggestive healing” in Juliaetta from 1903-10, had attracted “sufferers from every known disease” from multiple states, including digestive and nervous system disorders to spinal and skin disorders, a 1911 report in a supplement to Juliaetta-Kendrick Heritage Foundation the Juliaetta Sun said. Foster Sanitarium as it was in the early 1900s. Now refurbished as a private home. When current owners moved in, white The Foster Institute of Healing and linen still lined the walls. its claims skin cancer and other ailments — ulcers, colitis and even polio Electricity and the Chicago School of — could be cured using nonsurgical Psychology. means drew hundreds of visitors to the Abandoning formal studies in intertown, resulting in a short-lived financial nal medicine, his approach embraced windfall for local merchants. “applied psychology, natural foods Foster, 35, and his wife, Nana Nichols, got off a steamboat in Lewiston and self-assertiveness.” Foster and his trainees posed neither objections to nor and hired a hack for the 20-mile ride criticisms of traditional treatments, but upriver to Juliaetta to visit a friend whom Foster had met in California and overall claimed to follow “no particular rules, creeds nor dogmas,” only the “scireportedly cured of a serious health entific facts” of living “in harmony with problem. Nana fell in love with the the absolute laws of life.” Potlatch River Valley — the verdant Foster was said to be generous, hills, embowering pine trees, musical river gurgles and, yes, those enchanting particularly toward patients without syringa. Soon the couple was immersed incomes or resources to pay for his services. in rearing a family and developing He cured many skin cancers with Foster’s practice, known first as Foster’s Latah County Historical Society his “burner” treatment. The “burner” Osteopathic Sanitarium and then the Dr. Foster and his trainee graduates: first row left to right, Dr. Ulysses G. Marsh, meant application of a paste consisting Foster School of Healing. Dr. Foster, Dr. J.E. DeBaun and Dr. Stephens. Second row: Dr. John Noble and Dr. of a brown liquid mixed with flour to As a young man, Foster said, he the cancerous area on the skin. The Frank Bozarth. had discovered his natural gift to help number of applications depended upon sick people when he was wrapping his more than get well themselves. They it was all day or all night. the size of the cancer; but usually the strong arms around a sick baby and When it was time, the cancer, which reportedly boosted Juliaetta’s appeal to burner killed the growth overnight, through powers even he did not know, outsiders. Over 50 businesses thrived, according to those successfully treated. was a smooth, slippery mass similar transferred the high fever from the and Foster was said to be the key to to an oyster, would be pulled cleanly After the paste had been applied, small body to his own. He became critiJuliaetta’s economy. away from the healthy skin. After the a very thin layer of clean cotton cloth cally ill with the fever, slowly recovThe economic boom came to an end with feathered edges was placed on the cancer was removed, Foster cleansed ered and began studying medicine to most abruptly when Foster moved his the skin with alcohol and salve. cultivate professionally the art of heal- treated area. Foster then brushed coloWhen treatment was completed, the family and school to Clarkston, for ing. He trained under a cancer special- dion — a syrupy solution of nitrocellulose, ether and alcohol still in use today skin was beautifully smooth, the doctor multiple reasons, the trigger appearist in Kentucky and said he received ing to be an altercation he had with claimed. — over the cotton to keep it in place. his first medical diploma in 1889 from What were the actual ingredients in a banker that resulted in a broken Before applying this mixture, however, an unnamed source. The next year he Foster’s preparation? Although he was leg for Foster. Despite protests from Foster always warned his patients graduated from the American School known to order large quantities of blue Juliaetta electors, business owners ahead of time of the burning sensation of Magnetic Healing in Missouri, and and citizens, he would not return. In vitriol (copper sulfate), it was mere they would feel. He assured them it 10 years later from the Louisville Clarkston he established the Foster speculation as to what he really used. would hurt; but in turn, he mentally (Kentucky) School of Physicians and Health Home. Similar to his School Whatever they were, the secrets prepared them to handle the pain. Just Surgeons. He continued his educaof Healing, it too gained national the same, people who were treated with were handed down to Foster’s son, Dr. tion in short-term programs, graduthe burner were seen frequently up and J.R. Foster, who, before his death, had notoriety. He remained in Clarkston ating from the National School of until he died in 1934. an extensive cancer treatment followdown the wooden sidewalks and dirt Osteopathy, Chicago, in 1902 and, in 1903, from both the St. Louis School of roads of Juliaetta, trying to walk off the ing in Portland. Subscribers to the Foster School did — Carolyn Gravelle and Joann Jones pain. They walked and walked whether Suggestive Therapeutics and Medical
20 | Monday, June 20, 2016 |
Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
A person for the people By Josh Babcock Daily News staff writer
W
hether it be defending beaten students in her third-grade class, or working to provide affordable housing to low-income senior citizens as mayor of Pullman, Karen Kiessling has been a person for the people, and her mark on Pullman proves it. “If I saw something that wasn’t right, I had no hesitation to say it wasn’t right,” Kiessling said. And that’s exactly what she did when she watched her third-grade teacher beat one of the poor kids in her class over the back with a wooden paddle when he didn’t finish his math homework. “When she finished beating him he left the room, and he never came back,” she said. “I think there was a sense of justice and fairness that was so terribly violated by that.” Kiessling said she cried and felt sick during the incident. She was the only student to leave the classroom. After exiting the room, she said, she left school and ran all the way home to someone who would listen. “I said I don’t want to be there; my mother said you don’t have to be,” she said, telling the story. “Fortunately, she didn’t try to explain it away.” Just like the young boy who never came back, after Kiessling’s mother addressed the principal, the teacher never came back either. But she doesn’t credit the incident for making her a defender of the people, rather she credits her mother and her upbringing. Kiessling, the product of two Danish immigrants who found each other in Montana, said she came from a long line of strong women, and her mother was a natural listener and a dedicated member of the League of Women Voters. It just so happened those were the same skills, as well as a sense of fairness, Kiessling took with her when at 34 years old she served as Pullman’s youngest and only female mayor during her first and only term, from 1976-80. Forty years later, her mark can still be spotted in the city today, mostly through projects that directly affect the well-being of its residents. Pullman’s transportation system, Kenwood Square and Pioneer Square, High Street’s cut-off from Main Street, the brick designs in the sidewalks downtown and planting trees downtown were all completed with Kiessling at the helm. Observing City Council meetings
Courtesy photos
Karen Kiessling taking the oath of office January 1976 in the Pullman City Council chambers. Robert Patrick, city attorney ,is administering the oath. for the League of Women Voters of Pullman, she said there were times Mayor Jim Dunne wasn’t very courteous to people who spoke to the council, but it was never enough to make her run for mayor. In fact it was never Kiessling’s idea to run for mayor. She said what sparked it all was a phone call from Ross Farmer, a teacher and city councilor, who asked if she wanted to run for the Pullman School Board. “I kind of laughed, you don’t get any pay, and half the community hates you,” she said. Then he suggested she run for mayor. After one hour, in an effort to get off the phone with her friend, she regretfully said she would run if the incumbent at the time ran unopposed. Kiessling tried to call back to tell Farmer she was reconsidering the idea, but she couldn’t get through due to a busy signal. The next few days, Kiessling tried to find someone to file for the position, but had no luck. Despite a high school career compatibility test that pegged Kiessling as either a movie star or mayor, Kiessling said it would have never occurred to her to run for office in a million years. “I didn’t know anyone, no one was going to vote for me. It was absolutely ludicrous,” she said. “I just got sick of the phone calls, they just wouldn’t stop so I said OK, OK, OK. I’ll file.” After her husband, Nick, told her he
Kiessling. 1976
Kiessling. present day
would back her, Kiessling filed. “It was Friday afternoon, five minutes to 5 p.m.,” she said. “I was mortified.” Kiessling said she started to back away from the counter after she said she would like to run for mayor, and the man behind the counter asked her a second time if it was mayor to clarify. “He said mayor, and it sort of echoed off the walls, the typing all stopped, and then it started again, and I’m just cringing. I started to back up and I bumped into Nick, so I straightened my shoulders out and I said yes, mayor,” Kiessling said. She was laughed at by some and had her doubts, but she won by a 3-1 margin and the headline in the Pullman Herald read, “Kiessling topples Mayor Dunne.”
During her term, Kiessling wasn’t always admired by the people for every decision, she said sometimes she was caught trying to make one group happy, while upsetting others, like the one time Halloween fell on Sunday and she moved it to Saturday, but she noted she always was fair and listened. “I would like to suggest people look around them and see who they think should be an elected official,” Kiessling said. “Who can listen? Who is open minded? Who is honest? If you think you know someone with the heart and will to serve, then it’s important you suggest it to them.” Josh Babcock can be reached at (208) 883-4630, or by email to jbabcock@dnews.com.
Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
| Monday, June 20, 2016 | 21
Work is part of life, and Schweitzer loves it By Garrett Cabeza Daily News staff writer
I
t’s easy to get up and go to work when you don’t consider your job actual work. Edmund Schweitzer, founder of Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories in Pullman, is one of those people who enjoys his career and does not think of his job as boring labor. “We’ve always got so many exciting things going on, new technologies and projects,” Schweitzer said in an email. “Every day is different and I can’t wait to get up and come to work. A lot of days, I come home with more energy than I came in with in the morning.” Schweitzer said he doesn’t have many hobbies. “I guess my work is also my hobby,” Schweitzer said in an email. “Thomas Edison said it best, ‘I never worked a day in my life. It was all fun.’” Schweitzer works hard, but he said he takes time off from work, “especially in the beautiful Palouse summers.” Schweitzer said he loves spending time around Lake Coeur d’Alene with family and friends. He also likes reading about economics and politics. “By the way, I don’t understand the popular concept of work-life balance,” Schweitzer said. “Work is part of life. How do you pull work out of life, and frankly, why would you?” Schweitzer said when you’re at home and you want to think about work, you should if you love your job. He said work is an activity that brings so much to life and it seems wrong to try to categorize different things as work and different things as life. “Makes as much sense to me as trying to undo a pot of lentil soup back into lentils, carrots, onions and so on,” Schweitzer said. “It’s now soup, and (that’s) great. “I feel sorry for folks that haven’t found the joy in their work. Life is too short not to enjoy what we do. Not every minute is going to be fun every day at work of course.” From a company that started out in Schweitzer’s Pullman basement in 1982 to a company that now employs about 4,500 people around the world, expansion has been common, if not constant, since SEL opened. It is now one of the 40 largest companies that are at least half employee-owned. Most of that growth has come on the Palouse, where, short of the two state universities, SEL is the biggest employer. He frequently speaks on government’s overreach in regulating business. About 10 years ago when real estate prices were spiking, he pushed Pullman to develop more affordable housing for his employees. SEL’s success has allowed Schweitzer, both the company and the family, to be one of the bigger phi-
Courtesy SEL
Edmund Schweitzer started Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories in his Pullman basement in 1982 (Above). It now employs about 4,500 people around the world with its headquarters still in Pullman (Right). important. The Schweitzers have the lanthropists on the Palouse. In 1998, kind of values most people only talk Pullman got a $2.1 million aquatic about. They are longtime residents of center, courtesy of Ed and Mary Pullman and their three children have Schweitzer, and in 1999 they pledged been raised here, attending Pullman $500,000 to a new Pullman Regional schools — where two are still in high Hospital. In 2006, SEL donated $1 school.” million to Palouse Discovery Science But Schweitzer does not dwell on Center for its new building. SEL the past often. Instead, he says he donated $2 million to the University looks to the future. of Idaho College of “I had no idea Engineering to help we would grow this create an endowed much over the years,” chair in the colSchweitzer said. “But lege’s Department we did, and we are of Electrical still growing. We’re and Computer developing new roots Engineering. all the time.” In 2010 Ed and his Schweitzer said second wire, Beatriz, there are opportunidonated $1.7 million ties everywhere as he to the Girl Scouts. In quoted Edison again. 2013, they donated $1 “As Thomas million for improveEdison said, ‘Most ments at the Boy Edmund Schweitzer people miss opporScouts’ Camp Grizzly. SEL founder tunity, because it’s In 2015, SEL and dressed in overalls the Schweitzers each and looks like work.’ ” pledged $1 million to According to an article about the ongoing airport runway realignSchweitzer in The Spokesman-Review, ment. He recently gave $700,000 Schweitzer usually gets out of bed to ward new surgical services at between 5 and 5:30 in the morning. Pullman Regional Hospital. “I love to get up early with a fresh As early as 1999, the Daily News mind, enjoy the morning, and think,” editorial board said, “Schweitzer, and Schweitzer said. “That’s the best his wife Mary, are unusual people” time for me to sit in a chair with no unlike many who give big donations distractions, no music, no TV, no comlocally. “The ‘giving back’ for the puter and just think. And maybe get greater good that the Schweitzers do out a pad of paper and jot down a few seems so much more personal. They ideas.” are our people, our neighbors. They Schweitzer earned his bachelor’s are still living and the gifts that they and master’s degrees in electribestow on this Pullman community cal engineering from Purdue. After benefit the children and the famigraduating from Purdue in 1968, he lies living here now. Their gifts will worked for the Department of Defense impact the children in a way that is
“
I feel sorry for folks that haven’t found the joy in their work. Life is too short not to enjoy what we do.”
for five years before joining a small Bay Area defense contractor. Schweitzer’s father urged his son to go back to college after Schweitzer said he was not happy with his career. So, Schweitzer headed north to the Palouse and enrolled at Washington State University in 1974. “I came out here because WSU was one of the few universities to maintain their interest in electric power,” Schweitzer said. “So many electrical engineering programs had gotten away from it as they built up their efforts in what they thought were new and more glamorous areas like aeronautics due to the space program in the ’50s and ’60s; the digital revolution with transistors, semiconductors and microprocessors; and then computers and software.” But Schweitzer said WSU had excellent faculty that had current interests, activities and a lot of experience. In 2014, Schweitzer was given the WSU Regents’ Distinguished Alumnus Award. “I just fell in love with the area,” he said. “I like living and working in a college town. It only takes me a few minutes to get to work or to get out of town and in the beautiful countryside.” When it comes to retirement, that may never be in the cards for Schweitzer. “I don’t ever want to stop,” Schweitzer said. “Let’s keep moving forward … I’ll probably keep working at SEL until the younger folks finally throw me out kicking and screaming.” Garrett Cabeza can be reached at (208) 8834631, or by email to gcabeza@dnews.com.
22 | Monday, June 20, 2016 |
Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
The Connellys: A family legacy of support By Samantha Malott Daily News staff writer
W
hile many associate the Connelly family name with the founding of Tri-State Outfitters, their legacy on the Palouse reaches far beyond offering outdoor enthusiasts a local shopping option. “It is community support, and especially supporting those who, through no fault of their own, are dependent on support for their survival,” said Gerard Connelly. Connelly, 64, is the son of Tri-State Outfitters’ founder, Lee G. Connelly. “Our lives and how I was raised, kind of revolved around my sister and those in her generation with disabilities,” Connelly said. His older sister Annie was born in 1949 with a cognitive disability, still referred to as mental retardation at the time, he said. Doctors told his family Annie likely wouldn’t live past her teen years and should be institutionalized, but his mother, Doris, wouldn’t even consider that, he said. As she grew up, her IQ was the equivalent of a 4-year-old, he said. She died in 2008 at the age of 58, greatly surpassing the doctors’ expectations, he said.
“Mom said her purpose was to spread joy, and she definitely did that,” he said. “She was really fun to be around.” When Annie reached the age to begin school, Connelly said public schools were still permitted to prohibit students with disabilities from attending. In response, his father founded the Moscow Opportunity School in 1953. It was the first school in Moscow to allow children with disabilities, he said. As those from Annie’s generation grew older, the struggle became focused on who will care for them as their parents die, he said, and thus began Stepping Stones. Annie was a charter member of the group home for adults with developmental disabilities, he said. Since then, some things have changed. As schools are no longer allowed to prohibit students based on handicaps, the Moscow Opportunity School was liquidated and became a foundation to provide grants, Connelly said. The group home aspect of Stepping Stones was sold to Milestone Decisions in the 1980s and Stepping Stones now also functions as a foundation. Connelly serves as the president
Books by Priscilla Wegars Imprisoned in Paradise: Japanese Internee Road Workers at the World War II Kooskia Internment Camp by Priscilla Wegars (AACC, 2010) "Imprisoned in Paradise" uncovers the history of a unique detention and road building facility located on Highway 12 adjacent to Idaho’s wild and scenic Lochsa River. From 1943 to 1945 the Kooskia Internment Camp held an all-male crew of some 265 socalled “enemy aliens” of Japanese ancestry. Most were from the U.S., but some were kidnapped from Panama and Peru. 323 pages • $19.95
of the board of directors for both Milestone Decisions and the Moscow Opportunity School, along with serving as the chairman of the board of directors for the Stepping Stones Foundation. He is also the president of the local St. Vincent DePaul Society and is on the board of directors for the Idaho Community Foundation, which provides up to $7 million annually to nonprofits across the state. “That kind of life really stems from growing up in a family with someone with a disability ... and the perspective, empathy and sense of mission in life that provides,” he said. “I believe that is the primary characteristic of the Connelly family.” Connelly also took that aspect into the business world when he took over the reins of the family business in 1977, at 26. “I looked at myself as less of the owner, but the steward with an obligation to the community,” he said. Tri-State Outfitters donated between $80,000 and $200,000 to local nonprofits each year, he said. Connelly said part of that was marketing, but also to be a force of good for the community. “Tri-State is by far and a way over the decades, the most successful independent retailer,” he said. It all started with a small Army surplus store his father, Raymond Hayes and Joe Nicholson organized after he returned home from World War II. In 1951, Lee Connelly took ownership of the store from his founding partners and moved to South Jackson Street and again in 1958 to what is the current site along West Pullman Road, taking on the discount era of
shopping. Connelly said in the 1950s having a store on the outskirts of town with a parking lot, was going against everyone’s advice. There were no Wal-Marts or K-Mart’s at that time, he said. Lee Connelly died at the age of 52, from a sudden heart attack. “I was only 17,” he said. “He’s been gone for 48 years and I still miss him, and I’m sure I always will. He has always been my number one role model.” After his father’s death, his mother decided to keep the business and soon after bought the property next door and expanded the building to its current size, he said. “She deserves a lot of the credit,” he said. The biggest challenge came when the national competitors arrived in the 1970s. Tri-State was really struggling, prompting a re-invention of the store’s position in the market. Connelly said instead of providing a range of discount items, such as WalMart does, it was decided to focus on providing quality products for one area. Being in northern Idaho and looking at the strongest supplier relationships the store had, it was decided to focus on the outdoors. Exciting highlights of the store’s operation include several burglary attempts during the time the store was located at Fourth and Jackson streets. One attempt was successful as bold thieves removed a portion of glass in the store’s front and escaped with considerable merchandise. The following account from the Idahonian 50th Anniversary Issue
As Rugged as the Terrain: CCC “Boys,” Federal Convicts, and World War II Alien Internees Wrestle with a Mountain Wilderness by Priscilla Wegars (Caxton/AACC, 2013) "As Rugged as the Terrain" digs deeply, and brilliantly, into the fascinating history of Idaho’s Civilian Conservation Corps recruits (1933); federal prisoners (1935-1943); and Japanese, Italian, and German internees (1943-1945) at their isolated, mountainous, work camps. 393 pages • $21.95 For more information, visit webpages.uidaho.edu/aacc/kooskia.htm For PowerPoint presentations, contact pwegars@moscow.com To order, call Caxton Press at 1-800-657-6465 (press 5 for publishing); visit their website, www.caxtonpress.com; or buy from your local bookstore. All author’s royalties benefit the University of Idaho’s Asian American Comparative Collection (AACC)
Cindy Connelly
This photo of the Connelly family, including Monica, Zach, Cindy and Gerard was taken Oct 7 at Portland, Oreg., during the Portland Marathon this year.
Legendary Personalities of the Palouse describes events of the night of Aug. 9, 1957, when Lee Connelly foiled an attempted burglary as he returned to the store and surprised the would-be burglar. Lee G. Connelly, owner of the store, met the youth face to face in his store about 7:30 p.m. Friday. Both had loaded guns in their hands but not a shot was fired. Connelly said Saturday: “I guess I just talked louder than he did.” The incidents were reconstructed by Connelly and investigating officers as starting when Connelly went to his store at 7:30 p.m. to pick up two air mattresses for a friend. “I unlocked the front door and went in, locking the door after me,” Connelly recounted. “I noticed several guns laying around on the floor near the gun case and close to the shelves of ammunition. I guess I stepped over and picked up one of the guns and, as I raised up, came face to face with the young man. He had a small revolver in his hand.
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
Courtesy Photo
Gerard Connelly, age 16, with his dad Lee Connelly, age 51 “Then I commenced getting scared, but I guess he was scared too. I don’t think it was a question of what was said but rather which of us could
talk the louder and I finally won that battle. I told the boy to give me the gun and he did. I told him I was going to call my lawyer and went
to the telephone and dialed the police. I didn’t know but what he had an accomplice somewhere in the store and I didn’t want him to know I was calling the police.” Connelly’s conversation with Mrs. Harry Becker, night clerk at the police station, “was incoherent, but made enough sense for me to know something was wrong and officers were dispatched,” Mrs. Becker said. Officer Edward Manley went to Tri-State and Deputy Sheriff William Logan went to pick up Chief of Police H. B. Thoreson. Manley said he arrived at the store and saw that Connelly had a man covered with a gun. “I told him to keep him covered while I handcuffed him.” A moment later Logan and Thoreson arrived. “Then I began to breath again,” Connelly recalled. Sinclair had been in Moscow “about four days” after being stranded here with a “broken down Air Force truck” en route to a new radar installation near
| Monday, June 20, 2016 | 23
Cottonwood. He had been staying at a local hotel and told officers he was getting short of money. He said he had planned the burglary and had hidden in the store when employees left for the night, officers said. Employees said they recalled seeing the youth around the store Friday afternoon and one recalls asking if he could help him. Sinclair had replied that he was “just looking.” Sinclair apparently hid in the shoe department at closing time. Officers surmised he was making sure of the correct ammunition for the guns when Connelly interrupted him. The Connellys sold the business in 2010, with locations now in Moscow, Lewiston, Coeur d’Alene and Moses Lake, but continue to own the property the stores sit on. Samantha Malott can be reached at (208) 883-4639, or by email to smalott@dnews.com.
Legendary UW coach got a running start in Idaho G o to Seattle and most people can tell you about Clarence “Hec” Edmundson. He was one of the University of Washington’s most successful coaches. But it was the University of Idaho that gave Edmundson his start. The UI has been graced with the presence of many athletes possessing more natural talent than Edmundson, but it’s doubtful the school has had many who worked as hard. Day upon day he ran through the Palouse countryside. He gained fine endurance. He also developed a gracefulness unusual among those who run distance races. Sports writers around the country frequently noted the beauty of his stride. During his years on the Idaho track team he lost only two races, even though he regularly ran in multiple events. His school marks lasted for years, despite advances in training methods and equipment that made long-standing track records almost unheard of. In 1908, while still an Idaho student, Edmundson became the university’s first Olympic athlete, competing in the 800-meter run. Edmundson continued to train after completing his collegiate eligibility and between 1909 and 1912 became the nation’s best half-miler. In 1912, he again made the Olympic team in the 400 and 800 meters, making it to the finals in both events. Upon graduation, Edmundson
Clarence “Hec” Edmundson became a legendary track and basketball coach at the University of Idaho.
Special Collections and Archives, UI Library
became a teacher and coach at Coeur d’Alene High School. In his first year, his team won the Idaho interscholastic track and field meet. Administrators at Broadway High School in Seattle noticed that feat and hired him. He remained there only one successful
season before his alma mater lured him back to Moscow as a track coach. Edmundson’s gifts as a runner were matched by his talent as a coach. Throughout his long career he turned out winning teams. By 1914, he had molded the Idaho track squad into a
regional contender. In 1915, Edmundson resigned over a salary dispute. He spent the next season coaching track at Whitman College in Walla Walla, but after receiving a petition from Idaho students asking that he be reinstated, the university rehired him in 1916 as both track and basketball coach. While continuing his successful track coaching, Edmundson also built the university’s first powerful basketball teams. His 1916-17 squad finished second in the Northwest Conference, and his 1917-18 team went 10-2 and became conference champions. That group of athletes remains one of the school’s outstanding basketball units and the inspiration for the UI’s nickname, the Vandals, because of the way Edmundson’s players devastated their opposition. Edmundson permanently left the UI after that season. His string of coaching successes had gained national attention, and the university was unable to offer a large enough salary to keep him in Moscow. In 1918, he coached track at Texas A&M and, in 1919, went to the University of Washington to head the track and basketball programs. There he became a Pacific Northwest coaching legend, and the building housing the UW basketball arena is known as Hec Edmundson Pavilion. — From the Heart of a Hundred
24 | Monday, June 20, 2016 |
Legendary Personalities of the Palouse
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
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Short’s Funeral Chapel - Serving Moscow Since 1921
Funeral procession circa 1920 with men in WWI uniforms.
Early 1960’s locale on 1st & Washington Street.
Short’s Funeral Chapel dates back to 1921 when Howard Short moved to Moscow and purchased Grice Undertakers. The present location was constructed in 1982 and is located at the corners of Sixth and Park Streets in Moscow. Certainly, commitment to the citizens of the Moscow area and Latah County established by the Short family continues today. From the beginning it has been the desire of the firm to help people through the most trying time of their lives. Those who work at the funeral home have always derived satisfaction by serving each family as they would one of their own. We believe that every life is worthy of celebration. A funeral is a time of celebrating the dignity of life and provides a unique occasion for family and friends to share expressions of love and appreciation. Keep in mind that a funeral is a meaningful event and one that, properly planned, can help ease the pain of separation that naturally accompanies death.
Present location since 1982.
Our Family Serving Your Family
1225 E. 6th Street, Moscow (208) 882-4534 • www.shortsfuneralchapel.com