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BLACK AT REED Black alumni look back at the challenges they faced, the mentors they found, and the strategies they used to make the college more inclusive—and more just.
THANK YOU The Center for Life Beyond Reed gratefully acknowledges the generosity of Reed alumni, families, faculty, and staff who help turn Reedies’ aspirations into actual opportunities through Career Advancement and Summer Internship funding. Our students’ words speak more loudly than ours:
Thank you so much for helping me to engage in research about immigration through a PhD program in political science. With the Career Advancement fund, I paid for GRE practice test materials and fees as well as graduate school application fees. Without this fund, applying to graduate programs would have been a lot more challenging.
Thank you to the Career Advancement Fund, which allowed me to purchase EMT clothes to keep me safe while working in the field. I am very thankful to be able to work in my community helping people on what might be the worst day of their life. Because the fund helped me, I have summer employment offers to be an EMT! LEX COLEMAN ’24 UNDECIDED
MARIANA BEYER CHAPA ’21 POLITICAL SCIENCE AND FRENCH
I received $159 from the Career Advancement Fund to purchase Leetcode Premium, a software engineer interview prep tool. Having access to this tool increased my proficiency in data structures and algorithms as well as company-specific challenges, and I got final-round interviews with Google, Blackstone, Palantir, IBM, and Roblox. This summer, I’ll be a software engineering intern with Roblox. Coming from an underprivileged background, I am thankful for this fund—both for myself and other Reedies.
Your generosity allowed me to do an internship at HOLDING Contemporary, an art gallery in Portland, OR. As a gallery intern, I was able to test out a future career path, and the Career Advancement Fund allowed me to buy job-appropriate clothes and pay for expenses like transportation, rent, and utilities, as the internship was unpaid. The opportunity changed my semester and gave me invaluable experience.
PRASUN GHOSH ‘22 COMPUTER SCIENCE
You can support Reedies: MAKE A GIFT: giving.reed.edu VOLUNTEER: alumni.reed.edu/volunteer/index.html HIRE REEDIES: reed.edu/beyond-reed/employers/index.html
EMMA JANE HAAS ’22 ART
photo by Meika ejiasi
Departments 4 Eliot Circular
News from Campus
8 Advocates of the Griffin
All Things Alumni
26 Reediana
Books, Films, and Music by Reedies
30 Class Notes
News from our classmates.
37 In Memoriam
Honoring classmates, professors, and friends who have died.
Daniel Greenberg ’62 guided Reed for four decades. Clarence Allen ’49 was a seismologist of the first magnitude. Zusaan Fasteau ’68 hit transcendental notes. And too many more
48 Subject of Inquiry
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Exploring Reed’s unique curriculum
Features 12
The Long Arc
Prof. Mary James has been working to reshape Reed’s trajectory on race for three decades.
“What Have We Been Through?”
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Alumni of color look back on life at a predominantly white institution through the lens of the ongoing civil rights movement.
By Brandon Zero ’11 16
Seizing the Moment
COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF TULSA M C FA R L I N L I B R A R Y S P E C I A L C O L L E C T I O N S
Frustrated by Reed’s Eurocentric curriculum, these students went rogue and built their own DIY alternative. By Brandon Zero ’11
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Learning From the Past
Protestors in 2016 looked to the experience of an earlier generation— and adapted their tactics to suit new circumstances.
In Our Own Words
Reed asked Black alumni from the 1960s to the present day to reflect on their time on campus. Here’s what they said.
2. Geraldine Turner ’32 3. Prof. William Couch [English 1953–55] 4. Prof. James Mureithi [Black studies 1970–76] 5. Prof. William McClendon [Black studies 1968–76]
By Brandon Zero ’11 20
ON THE COVER 1. Inez Freeman ’48
6. Prof. Mary James [physics 1988–]
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Truth and Justice in Tulsa
The Ground Breaking unearths the sinister history of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. By Josh Cox ’18
7. Clifford McGlotten ’70 8. Linda Howard ’70 9. Mary Frankie Forte ’71 1 0. Prof. Pancho Savery [English 1995–] 11. Kathryn Mapps ’86 1 2. Graham Jones ’97 1 3. Melody Harvey ’10 1 4. Imani Jackson ’14 1 5. Tessa Verbal ’19 1 6. Nick Frangenberg ’19 17. Addison Bates ’20
Reed Magazine june 2021
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‰
This Must BeThe Place
june 2021
www.reed.edu/reed-magazine 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97202 503/777-7591 Volume 100, No.2 REED MAGAZINE editor
Chris Lydgate ’90 503/777-7596 chris.lydgate@reed.edu writer/In Memoriam editor
Randall S. Barton 503/517-5544 bartonr@reed.edu writer/reediana editor
Katie Pelletier ’03 503/777-7727 pelletic@reed.edu class notes editor
Joanne Hossack ’82 joanne@reed.edu
Pull Up The Roots On my walk to campus each day, I see Black Lives Matter signs on lawns and in windows. Some are weathered, having been up for years; many others appeared last summer in response to the murder of George Floyd. The phrase Black Lives Matter was created as a hashtag on social media by Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza in 2013, when the man who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was found not guilty, and it exploded into a movement that continues to gain force. Those words—in our neighborhood, on campus, and throughout Portland, on t-shirts, banners, and billboards—make this movement visible and present. They represent actions, demands, and mandates. Like many Americans, I grew up and spent my early life in segregated spaces. I was surrounded by white people. Areas where Black and Indigenous people lived were referred to as dangerous, and my family never went there. What I did not understand until I was much older was that I was part of a system that organized my life and the lives of Black and Brown people within hierarchies of privilege. Because I benefited from this privilege, I was unaware of the violence and abuse that propped up systemic racism all around me, a system I participated in whether I knew it or not. My ignorance of the system just meant that it was working exactly as it was designed to do, to perpetuate inequality. When I went to graduate school in the 1980s, I studied feminism and was later drawn to racial justice theories and queer studies. The 2
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art director
so-called culture wars were in full swing, and it was clear that what was happening on college campuses had implications well beyond the gates. The intellectual project was to dismantle interlocking systems of oppression, within disciplines and in the world. I became a professor because I believed that colleges and universities were a force for positive change in society. Over the decades that I have spent at predominantly white institutions, I have sought to be mindful of the assumptions I bring to campus about race and identity and to foster inclusive environments. I have not always gotten everything right, and I continue to learn and grow as Reed’s president. Reed has a values statement that commits the college to doing anti-racist work, and this past year, many academic departments have formulated new plans to implement anti-racist practices. Our Office for Institutional Diversity provides resources and opportunities for support and growth. In listening to stories from current and past students, I know that many feel and have felt excluded and marginalized. In these days of heightened awareness, Reed must continue to rise to the challenges of the times. I often quote the words of James Baldwin as my inspiration for life-long learning and action: “The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.” This moment matters. Black Lives Matter. Audrey Bilger President of Reed
Tom Humphrey tom.humphrey@reed.edu grammatical kapeLlmeister
Virginia O. Hancock ’62 REED COLLEGE RELATIONS vice president, college relations
Hugh Porter director, communications & public affairs
Mandy Heaton Reed College is an institution of higher education in the liberal arts and sciences devoted to the intrinsic value of intellectual pursuit and governed by the highest standards of scholarly practice, critical thought, and creativity. Reed Magazine provides news of interest to the Reed community. Views expressed in the magazine belong to their authors and do not necessarily represent officers, trustees, faculty, alumni, students, administrators, or anyone else at Reed, all of whom are eminently capable of articulating their own beliefs. Reed Magazine (ISSN 0895-8564) is published quarterly by the Office of Public Affairs at Reed College. Periodicals postage paid at Portland, Oregon. Postmaster: Send address changes to Reed Magazine 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd, Portland OR 97202-8138
Mailbox Write to us! We love getting mail from readers. Letters should be about Reed (and its alumni) or Reed Magazine (and its contents) and run no more than 300 words; subsequent replies may run only half the length of their predecessors. Our decision to print a letter does not imply any endorsement. Letters are subject to editing. (Beware the editor’s hatchet.) For contact information, look to your left.
The Green Issue
The March 2021 issue of Reed Magazine may just be the best ever—from the made-from-straw paper to the perfect fit between covers (back and front) and subject matter to the coherent and very impressive account of an academic program that came too late for my cohort but makes me proud now. Constance Putnam ’65 Concord, Massachusetts
Whole Lotta Lave
As a former doctoral student of Lester Lave ’60, I was thrilled to see his seminal work on the health effects of air pollution get a mention in the March issue of Reed Magazine. In the article, you noted that three economists—Joule Bergerson, Jay Apt, and David Keith—singled out the social importance of Lester’s work on air pollution in a column for the New York Times following his death several years ago. It is a great testament to the wide-spanning influence of Lester’s work that none of those three are actually economists. Joule Bergerson is a chemical engineer at the University of Calgary. Jay Apt is a physicist, technologist, and former astronaut at Carnegie-Mellon. David Keith is an applied physicist at Harvard. All were colleagues of Lester’s at Carnegie-Mellon at one time or another. All are leading scientists working on climate and other environmental problems, and all were influenced by Lester’s ability to bring economic thinking to environmental science and technology. In fact, this is a higher compliment than if Bergerson, Apt and Keith were economists, because it speaks to Lester’s unique ability to communicate across academic fields. This interdisciplinary skill was very rare when he was doing his pioneering research in the 1960s and 1970s, and it is now recognized as a key component of addressing energy and environmental challenges, global climate change among them. Convergent science is now the rage, but (as usual) Lester got there decades before most others did.
Keep up the good work! I love getting the magazine—just thought you might like some more info about the folks you cited in the article. Seth Blumsack ’98 Spring Mills, Pennsylvania
Mardy in Wyoming
I enjoyed your March 2021 article on Mardy Murie’s role in the creation of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the passage of the 1964 National Wilderness Act. But in highlighting her Alaska work, you misrepresented Mardy’s life. Born in Seattle in 1902, Mardy was five when her family moved to Fairbanks. Following her marriage to biologist Olaus Murie, the two settled in Jackson, Wyoming, where Olaus was to pursue research on the health of the native elk herds. Mardy lived in Jackson and then in Moose within spitting distance of Grand Teton National Park until her death—76 of her 101 years. When I served as an instructor in the winter field ecology program at the Teton Science School, I regularly took my students to meet Mardy. One group of high schoolers seemed to wonder why we had gone to visit some old lady. How was this related to days out on skis, sleeping in snow huts, avalanche studies, identification of animal tracks in snow? Mardy served tea and cookies, then sat down and began leafing through a photo album. At one photo, a student stopped her. “Wait, who’s that?” “President Johnson.” Mardy was leaning over Lyndon, holding his hand to guide him as he signed the Wilderness Act. “The president?” The student asked. “Yes,” Mardy said, and turned the page. Mardy Murie’s was a powerful and gentle voice for the wild in both Alaska and Wyoming. Two in the Far North chronicles her life in Alaska while Wapiti Wilderness attends to Wyoming. Oh, that photo of Mardy you ran—she had the same look of delight when she was a hundred years old. David Romtvedt ’72 Buffalo, Wyoming
Making the Grade
I read with great amusement Andy Kessler’s column in the Wall Street Journal suggesting that Reed’s grading system is a touchy-feely embrace of a mediocre education. Kessler has it backwards. If mediocrity is a real threat, a traditional focus on grade point averages does not prevent it but actively encourages it. (Ignore for the moment the elitism and regressive politics inherent in any discourse about “mediocrity.”) What Prof. Oleson may be too diplomatic to state is that de-emphasizing numerical grades in
favor of qualitative comments discourages what is today euphemistically called “strategic learning” and in older generations was dismissed as “grade grubbing.” That environment frequently gets in the way of actual learning and often poisons the relationship among student, instructor, and subject matter. It makes both teaching and learning less rewarding and less enjoyable for students and faculty alike. If the primary goal of higher education is to determine within three decimal places who is best able to regurgitate information on a fully predictable exam, then putting numerical grades on every assignment is an excellent approach, and Kessler is right to criticize it. If the primary goal is to determine who has learned the knowledge and skills from their courses, and grades are tools instead of goals, then Kessler is looking in the wrong direction, and Oleson is defending a proven strategy. As with any approach, Reed’s grading philosophy has its downsides, and it is not necessarily suited for every kind of pedagogical context, but that is also true of Kessler’s more mainstream approach. Uninspired learners who are perfectly content to squeak through a class with a 1.0 (a D grade) will hardly be motivated to excellence by an abundance of numerical grades. Scott Rausch ’92 Seattle, Washington While I agree completely with Prof. Oleson’s defense of Reed’s grading practices, there’s no need to malign the policies of Hampshire College. As a Reed grad married to a Hampshire grad , with an ORGY daughter (Math ’19) and a son entering his final year at Hampshire, I feel I’m in a unique position to defend both colleges against accusations of lax or meaningless grades. The written feedback that Hampsters receive would look eerily familiar to Reedies, as would the conference format of most classes and the attendant paper conferences. While it’s true that no letter grades are issued at Hampshire, I can assure you that the professors’ standards are not lax, and completing a class for credit carries quite a bit of meaning for the students. As my son begins work on his required senior year project (known as the Div III), and having recently witnessed my daughter’s thesis process, I’ve come to see Reed and Hampshire as two sides of the same academic coin, in which admittedly quite different paths to graduation require their own kinds of academic rigor and result in a well-rounded liberal arts education. Katherine Wolff ’01 Portland, Oregon Reed Magazine june 2021
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Eliot Circular news from campus
THE BIGGEST LAB ON CAMPUS Kit Gurin ’22 pull invasive canary grass to study how native plants and animals adapt and respond. Students made some exciting discoveries this semester, including a family of coyotes, and a rare crustacean called the Stumptown Scud. The experiments continue next semester. See more at /www.reed.edu/reed-magazine.
photo by tom humphrey
Encompassing the headwaters of Crystal Springs Creek, the 28-acre Reed Canyon has long beckoned students to explore and reflect. But these days, they’re learning, too. Students in Biology 308: Restoration Ecology with Prof. Julia Michaels study ecological theory and put it to the test; here Lulu Maturo ’23 and
Eliot Circular
Power And Ice photo by lauren labarre
Biochemist Joins National Academy of Sciences Reed grad Rachel Klevit ’78, professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington, has been elected to the nation’s top scientific organization, the National Academy of Sciences, in recognition of her groundbreaking work on the structure and function of proteins, which has major implications for understanding breast cancer and neurodegenerative disease. Prof. Klevit has been widely hailed for her work in using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to identify the structure of critical biological agents, including the Cys2-His2 zinc finger fold, found in proteins that bind to DNA, and ubiquitinization enzymes, which play a key role in breast cancer. Being chosen for the National Academy of Sciences is a prestigious achievement reserved for the world’s most eminent researchers. Altogether the NAS has elected 22 Reedies. Reed ranks No. 12 in the nation when it comes to producing fellows in the NAS and its allied academies in medicine and engineering. Reed also ranks No. 1 in the nation in the proportion of STEM majors who go on to earn PhDs in STEM fields. Prof. Klevit earned her BA from Reed in chemistry and wrote her senior thesis on alkaline phosphatase with Prof. Will Bloch. After Reed, she won a Rhodes Scholarship (the first woman in the Pacific Northwest to do so) and went to Oxford University to earn a D. Phil in chemistry.
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For more than 50 years, the Watson Fellowship has enabled scores of Reedies to embark on research adventures around the world. Anthro major Alisa Chen ’21 will do it on ice skates. Alisa will spend a year exploring the power and privilege dynamics of ice hockey, a sport they grew up playing in Michigan. Their Watson itinerary will take them on a tour of far-flung places to see the game in action—Canada, Sweden, India, Iceland, and Hong Kong. “My project is about seeking out ice hockey experiences that are centered in
community, that are working towards inclusivity and trying to diversify who’s on the ice,” Alisa says. The Thomas J. Watson Foundation offers graduates from top liberal arts colleges a chance to spend a year traveling abroad in pursuit of a singular passion. The program aims to develop global leaders through journeys of self-discovery. Alisa is the 71st Reedie to be selected as a Watson Fellow since the program began in 1969. Read more at reed.edu/reed-magazine. —ROMEL HERNANDEZ
Build Reed in Minecraft It’s got bricks. It’s got gargoyles. It’s even got rain. Yes, Reed College has materialized in the realm of Minecraft, thanks to the painstaking efforts of Christopher Bruns ’86, who has embarked on an ambitious project to recreate a model of campus on the legendary construction platform. A recent stroll through the model revealed breathtaking details, including the sundial over the Sallyport, and llamas (!?) grazing on the Great Lawn. But the best part is that you can join the fun. Find out more at tinyurl.com/reedcraft.
Thank you to Reed’s alumni volunteer leaders Reed is incredibly grateful to the dedicated alumni leaders who have continued to demonstrate their commitment to the college and alumni community this year by adjusting strategies, initiatives, and events to a virtual world. Thank you so much for everything. It is an honor to work with you, and we couldn’t imagine better partners during a pandemic.
Alumni Board Melissa Osborne ’13, President alea adigweme ’06, Vice President Dave Baxter ’87, Secretary Jinyoung Park ’11, Past President Mo Copeland ’82, Alumni Trustee Christine Lewis ’07, Alumni Trustee Darlene Pasieczny ’01, Alumni Trustee Lisa Saldana ’94, Alumni Trustee Jon Bates ’67, At-Large Member Sirius Bonner ’05, At-Large Member Molly Case ’12, At-Large Member Shirley Gibson ’94, At-Large Member
Liz Gilkey ’01, At-Large Member Andy McLain ’92, At-Large Member David Messner ’90, At-Large Member Rennie Meyers ’15, At-Large Member Peter Miller ’06, At-Large Member Salim Moore ’11, At-Large Member Govind Nair ’83, At-Large Member Laramie Van Duzer Silber ’13, At-Large Member Jac Nelson ’13, Presidential Appointment Eve Lyons ’95, Chapter Leadership Council Member Andrei Stephens ’08, Chapter Leadership Council Member Alexia Cassimatis ’89, Chapter Leadership Council Member
Alumni Fundraising for Reed Steering Committee Kyndra Homuth Kennedy ’04, Co-Chair Cori Savaiano ’11, Co-Chair Keith Allen ’83 David Buckler ’85 Caroll Casbeer ’10
Katie Connolly ’00 Jay Hubert ’66 Advait Jukar ’11 Charli Krause ’09 Katherine Lefever ’07 Christine Lewis ’07
Jan Liss ’74 Heather Rode Niemi ’00 Dylan Rivera ’95 Andrew Schpak ’01 Lara Simonetti ’20 Michael Stapleton ’10
Joel Staudinger ’19 Anne Steele ’70 Andrei Stephens ’08 Carlie Stolz ’13 Marcia Yaross ’73 Janet Youngblood ’68
Chapter Leadership Council Andrei Stephens ’08, Chapter Leadership Council Chair, New York Co-Chair, and CLC Representative Carlie Stolz ’13, Austin Chair Dieter Dehlinger ’01, Bay Area Chair Eve Lyons ’95, Boston Chair and CLC Representative Justin Corban ’04, Chicago Chair Andrew Korson ’04, Denver Co-Chair
Erica Weaver ’05, Denver Co-Chair Johanna Colgrove ’92, Europe Chair Alexia Cassimatis ’89, CLC Representative Peter Miller ’06, New York Co-Chair Leslie Vickers Jones ’83, Portland Representative Wayne Clayton ’82, Southern California Chair Bennett Barsk ’82, Washington, DC, Chair
Advocates of the Griffin
News of the Alumni Association • Connecting Reed Alumni Around the Globe
EDITED BY KATIE RAMSEY ’04
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Help Us Help Reed
THE ALUMNI BOARD WANTS YOU
At first glance, life at Reed has looked very different this past year. Learning has taken place both virtually and in person; fewer students live on campus; COVID-19 protocols are fixtures of day-to-day life. Yet, students have continued their quests for knowledge—and Reed has stepped up to support them in a multitude of ways. Whether it was increased financial aid, medical expenses, rent and housing security, or other assistance with urgent needs, Reed made sure that every student received what they needed to continue their educational journey. In these times, alumni support for Reed is more important than ever. As a nonprofit, Reed relies upon the philanthropy of its
The Alumni Board and the Alumni Programs and Annual Fund Office invite nominations for service on the board. We seek alumni who are demonstrated leaders with a capacity for creativity, dedication, and resourcefulness to further the goals of our three committees: Committee for Young Alumni; Diversity and Inclusion Committee; and Reed Career Alliance. The Alumni Board is a global service board dedicated to the mission of creating the best possible alumni experience through the work of its committees. The Alumni Board recruits for and oversees its working committees, which carry out programs and initiatives to benefit the alumni community. To nominate yourself or someone you know, start by scanning this QR code. Nominations are due by Saturday, July 17.
Reed Magazine june 2021
community—especially alumni—to make possible all of the opportunities, experiences, and mentorships that define Reed as a remarkable place to learn. Every gift makes a meaningful and direct impact in the life of a fellow Reedie. As Reed alumni, we all know more than anybody the enduring value of a Reed education. We hope you’ll join us in supporting fellow Reedies by making your gift today. Visit www.reed.edu/givingtoreed or use the envelope in this magazine. Kyndra Homuth Kennedy ’04 and Cori Savaiano ’11 Alumni Fundraising for Reed Steering Committee Co-Chairs
photo by lauren labarre
LETTERS FROM MEMBERS OF THE DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION COMMITTEE I have a story for you. It’s the fall of 2004. I’m trekking up Woodstock to the beauty supply store, an establishment making bank on all the freshfaced little weirdos who live down the street. In 2021, this shop is no longer—lost forever to the sands of time—perhaps metamorphosed into the expansion of Ace Hardware (thanks, Google Maps). But it’s not 2021 yet. It’s 2004. I buy a lot of bleach, the strength of which none but a professional ought to have wielded, and in my dorm sink (Bragdon, “the new one” back then), I dye my hair green— for fun, yes, but also in the hope that at last people might stop confusing me with the other Asian girls at Reed, international students included. It does not work. I think I would have been more surprised if it had. Which is to say, where race and racism are concerned, if that’s what sticks out after all this time, I had a fairly average, disappointing but frankly, expected, experience. I’ve had scarier, but you probably guessed that already. After all, it’s 2021. Last year, I joined the Reed DIC out of casual curiosity, unaware that other schools had these, unaware that businesses had these. I had no idea what kinds of work we’d do. But the other members were thoughtful and kind and I felt this sense of, oh yeah, like perhaps I’d avoided alumni organizing because I’d yet to connect with a purpose that reflected the relationship I wanted to have with Reed.*
Specifically, one that acknowledged the multitude of other realities, like mine, woven into our time on campus. Casually curious as well? Join an affinity network. We’d love to meet you. Jen Go ’08 she/her/hers * Short of showing up at Renn Fayre with a backpack full of glowing, gyroscopic plastic toys that I hand out for free, but that’s a me thing. Don’t worry, I’m getting vaxxed and The Hovering Ball Brigade is coming.
I remember making a conscious decision, in my first weeks as a Reed student, to seal off the complications of my identities and lived experience. To the best of my ability, I would be nothing other than a devoted academic. I would not be a person who used nonbinary pronouns, nor someone whose wellbeing depended on networks of people with queered worldviews. I would not be a person shaped by working class culture and resource precarity. I would not be the first in my family to pursue a liberal arts degree, would not pay mind to the chasms in my cultural and institutional know-how. Hum 110, Ancient Greek, Bio, Intro to Judaism— after my first few days of class, every nerve in me understood that if I were to make good on the opportunity that was a Reed education, I would have to make Reed, for better or worse, my whole life. Why did belonging and succeeding at Reed preclude me being my whole self? To this
PATHFINDERS TO THE RESCUE Are you a recent alum who hasn’t quite figured out what to do, career-wise? The Committee for Young Alumni (CYA) is launching a new initiative aimed at helping you figure this out! Building on the Communities of Purpose advising model used at Reed, the Pathfinder Initiative pairs you with an alumni volunteer in a specific community of purpose. As these Pathfinders are just a few years ahead of you, they can offer
recent experience and advice for a constantly changing world. To find out more, visit the Committee for Young Alumni page at alumni.reed.edu or email alumni@reed.edu. Are you 5–10 years out from Reed, have a few years’ career experience, and want to volunteer to be a Pathfinder? We need your help! Email alumni@reed.edu to get connected. —THE COMMITTEE FOR YOUNG ALUMNI
day—along with pride, amazement, and deep gratitude—I harbor an unresolved ambivalence toward my alma mater and the highs and lows of those years. In 2020, curiosity (and Zoom) brought me back to Reed for the first time since my graduation. At the Forum for Advancing Reed, I found myself connecting with other alumni in both the First-Gen and LGBTQIA2S+ affinity networks, and have continued to do so in the time since. These and the network for alumni of color have long been needed, and I’m grateful to the members of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee for bringing these spaces to life. I remember, as a student, walking along the Great Lawn, deep into Renn Fayre one night, and saying to friends, we ought to have a weeping tent here. What makes the affinity networks so valuable is that they are a place where we can connect over the truths of our lingering ambivalence—our adventures, successes, and tales of creative adaptation, alongside our wounds, confusion, and hard feelings. At least, this is a potential that I see and value. I also see, in our collective joys and sorrows, a repository of hard-earned wisdom, marked by profound love for the institution, and giving rise to the will and energy to contribute to a shifting status quo at Reed College. Jac Nelson ’13 they/them Learn more about the Diversity and Inclusion Committee and how to sign up for the Alumni of Color Network, First-Gen Alumni Network, and LGBTQIA2S+ Alumni Network at alumni.reed.edu.
FORUM FOR ADVANCING REED SAVE THE DATE! OCTOBER 22–24, 2021 Connect with Reedies, learn what’s happening at Reed right now, and discover ways to get involved at the Forum for Advancing Reed, Reed’s official volunteer weekend. As we go to press, we are unsure of the format for this year’s event (in-person, virtual, hybrid) but we do know it will be informative and fun. For now, please save the date! Find out more at ww.reed.edu/advancing-reed.
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BLACK AT REED Black alumni look back at the challenges they faced, the mentors they found, and the strategies they used to make the college more inclusive—and more just.
The story of Reed has mostly been told from the perspective of white people. When people of color have been included, their stories have usually been filtered through white reporters, white editors, and a conceptual framework constructed by white people. In this feature, we aim to turn the lens around. We invited Black alumni from different eras to open up about their experiences at Reed. At a moment when America is finally coming to grips with an ugly legacy of white supremacy and structural racism, we hope these stories will illuminate a side of Reed that has too often gone unspoken. What follows is an attempt at montage. Discrete snapshots from separate lives show scenes worthy in their own right that, when displayed together, speak to the ineffable texture of a history. A professor’s journey to reshape Reed’s trajectory on race across three decades. A student’s search for her place in a curriculum spurs an extracurricular ethnic studies program to supplant absences across Reed syllabi. Reedies Against Racism activists grapple with recent struggles. And voices long overlooked add their own scenes in their own framing. This is a gesture at capturing a fragment of Black life at Reed. Brandon Zero ’11 Guest Editor
Brandon Zero ’11, guest editor, at Reed in 2010.
12 THE LONG ARC
Prof. Mary James has been working to reshape Reed’s trajectory on race for three decades. 16 SEIZING THE MOMENT
Frustrated by Reed’s Eurocentric curriculum, these students went rogue and built their own DIY alternative. 18 LEARNING FROM THE PAST
Protestors in 2016 looked to the experience of an earlier generation— and adapted their tactics to suit new circumstances. 20 IN OUR OWN WORDS
Reed asked Black alumni from the 1960s to the present day to reflect on their time on campus. Here’s what they said. 24 “WHAT HAVE WE BEEN THROUGH?”
Alumni of color look back on life at a predominantly white institution through the lens of the ongoing civil rights movement.
An Unresolved Chord. We found this powerful photograph (likely taken in the early 1960s) in the special collections of the Hauser Library. While the image was carefully preserved, there is no record of the student’s name—a telling omission in a history that has so often been overlooked or erased. If you recognize this student, please tell us at reed.magazine@reed.edu.
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THE LONG ARC
Prof. Mary James has been working to reshape Reed’s trajectory on race for three decades. BY BRANDON ZERO ’11
When Prof. Mary James [physics] arrived on campus in 1988, she joined a faculty that was almost 100 professors strong. She was the only one of them who was Black. The whiteness of campus was hardly a coincidence. In 1964, Reed won a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to recruit outstanding Black high school students. Ultimately some 92 Black students came to Reed through the grant. Many of these students objected to a curriculum that systematically excluded Africa and African Americans. They staged sit-ins and rallies for a Black studies program, a cause that rived the campus in two. The faculty narrowly approved the program in 1969, but as the Rockefeller grant dwindled, so did the number of Black students; without them, the program became an easy target for budget cutters. After a few years, the program was eviscerated; all that remained was bitterness
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MARY JAMES In the history department, for instance, the retirement of an expert on the British Empire prompted a search for a historian focused on the perspective of the colonized instead of the colonizers. An upcoming opening in the department targets experts in Africa, the Middle East, and perhaps Southeast Asia. Performing arts curricula now fully integrate the contributions and expertise of artists across race, sexual orientation, and gender expression. “ Those curricula look entirely different than they did 30 years ago,” she says, “and the faculty members have almost completely turned over in that time.” Some changes are more subtle. Imagine walking into your intro chemistry class as an eager new Reedie. As other students file into a packed Vollum lecture hall, the projector displays a picture of a Nobel laureate or other substantial contributor to the
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This chart compiles data from multiple different historical sources. For years where data are missing or incomplete, we used estimates, indicated by the dotted line. Before 1991, we couldn’t locate reliable data for most categories; however, we did locate some older data for Black enrollment in the 1960s and 1970s, thanks to the Rockefeller grant. “Unknown” students choose not to identify their race or ethnicity, but are often white. International students can be of any race or ethnicity. Source: Reed College Office of Institutional Research. See also “The Black Studies Controversy at Reed College, 1968–1970,” by Martin White ’69, in Oregon Historical Quarterly, Spring 2018.
800 800
10501050 10001000 950 950 900 900 850 850 800 800
150 150
100 100
100 100
BLACK BLACK
50 50 0
50 50 0
0
1975 1975
1970 1970
1965 1965
1985
150 150
1985
200 200
1980 1980
250 250 200 200
1980 1980
1975 1975
1970 1970
1965 1965
250 250
1960 1960
14 Reed Magazine june 2021
of a mail-in vote. “People did not want their votes to be visible to the entire faculty,” she says. Ultimately the resolution passed by a wide margin, triggering the formation of the inaugural Committee on Diversity. Another key moment arrived in 2011, when President Colin Diver appointed Prof. Williams as the first dean for Institutional Diversity. Prof. James took over in 2014. “I didn’t want to repeat the missteps of the ’60s and ’70s. Anything we were going to do needed to be integrated fully into our existing structures,” she says. “Enhancing the curriculum was going to be structural. In many disciplines the emerging subfields concern the study of texts, creative products, and lived experiences of marginalized peoples around the world. As you have retirements, how can you reenvision the department curriculum and needed expertise to capture this knowledge?”
1960 1960
and resentment among the faculty, ill will that still echoed when Prof. James arrived. “There was some bad history between these factions,” she remembers. Prof. James had cause for hope in 1992, when the trustees brought in a new president to heal some of the divisions within the faculty. This was Steven Koblik [1992–2001], who set up one-on-one meetings with every professor on campus to learn more about their hopes and fears. In her meeting with Koblik, Prof. James broached the topic of race. “I talked about my physics research, and said we should seriously diversify—and he told me: Not on my plate, not gonna happen,” she remembers. She refused to give up. The arc of her progression from sole Black faculty member to dean for institutional diversity looked long indeed in those early years, but she was determined to make it bend. Year by year, she saw movement. In 1988, prominent Black lawyer Linda Howard ’70 joined the board of trustees and pushed for campus diversity to be an institutional goal. In 1995, Prof. Pancho Savery [English 1995–] joined the English department and became the first Black tenure-track faculty member to teach Hum 110. The reinforcements kept coming. The arrival of Prof. Crystal Williams [English 2000–13], Prof. Paul Silverstein [anthropology 2000–], and Prof. Nigel Nicholson [classics 1995–] provided fertile ground to bid for action on diversity. In 2004, James and her allies put a resolution on the faculty floor for the upcoming campaign, circumventing the zero-sum mindset of curricular changes on a finite budget. “If you say, ‘We wanna do this new thing,’ taking away this old thing is hard, as opposed to, ‘We’re gonna be raising new funds, and we want diversity to be part of the expansion.’” The politics of the resolution were fraught. Prof. James recalls that the normal process of a raised-hand vote in the faculty meeting was tabled in favor
0
photo by anna harris
field. Today, like every day of the past semester, that featured innovator is a woman or a person of color. These images tell a powerful story about who can be a chemist without anyone having to say a word. “One of the big changes is that we’re centering the student experience much more, and the experiences of students from historically marginalized groups in particular,” she says. “You can’t argue with someone about how they feel. I emphasize over and over that the ways in which students experience their environment is the data. How we think they ought to experience their environment, that is not the data.” Prof. James’s structural approach means that all curricular enhancements have broad support across many stakeholders. For instance, the new comparative race and ethnicity studies program, like most interdisciplinary programs, involves tenure-track
Prof. Mary James, dean for institiutional diversity and A.A. Knowlton Professor of Physics.
faculty members across several departments. These departments all have a stake in the program. Prof. James is optimistic about Reed’s current and future efforts to become a more inclusive, equitable,
and anti-racist institution. “The president is very committed, as are the vice presidents and deans, to being part of the national conversation and calls to action regarding effective and lasting change.”
14501450
TOTAL ENROLLMENT TOTAL ENROLLMENT
14001400 13501350 13001300 12501250 12001200 1150 1150 1100 1100 10501050 10001000 950 950 900 900
WHITE WHITE
850 850 800 800
2015 2015
2010 2010
2005 2005
2000 2000
1995 1995
1990 1990
1985 1985
UNKNOWN UNKNOWN
250 250 200 200 150 150
HISPANIC HISPANIC
ASIAN & PACIFIC ISLANDER ASIAN & PACIFIC ISLANDER INTERNATIONAL INTERNATIONAL
100 100 50 50
NATIVE AMERICAN NATIVE AMERICAN
0
0
2020 2020
2015 2015
2010 2010
2005 2005
2000 2000
1995 1995
1990 1990
1985 1985
Reed Magazine june 2021 15
SEIZING THE MOMENT
Frustrated by Reed’s Eurocentric curriculum, these students went rogue and built their own DIY alternative. BY BRANDON ZERO ’11
It’s the fall of 2011. Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” tops billboard music charts, perhaps playing in the still-corded earbuds of student iPods as their owners scan the Quest for the latest antics of reigning presidents Barack Obama and Colin Diver. Maya Campbell ’15 returns to campus after an overnight for high school seniors the year before to start her freshman orientation. It’s two days into O-week before she realizes the five or so Black students she’s spotted on campus thus far are increasingly likely to represent the extent of her new home’s “diversity.” As she explores campus, a Jamaican flag hanging in a dorm room sparks her interest—is someone here Jamaican? Maya has family from the island. She gets a reply that the flag owner is not; they just like the aesthetic. In an orientation training on cultural sensitivity held in the chapel, Campbell is the only Black person in the room. She’s from a city near Washington, DC, where less than half of the population is Caucasian. A white student in the chapel, though, remarks that it’s the most diverse room he’s ever been in. And in class, the cultural omissions pile up. Humanities 220 is a cultural exploration of European modernity, moving from the Enlightenment to the post–World War II era. “Slavery doesn’t come up until the very end of class,” Maya said, pointing to a course reading of Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism. “We spend all this time in Europe and a foray into Oceania, and we
16 Reed Magazine june 2021
talk about world fairs and don’t talk about [the] human zoos there. A very strange thing that Reed didn’t want to acknowledge, because the faculty didn’t want to acknowledge it.” Humanities was only the start. Maya sought out classes on race and ethnic studies, at least in part to find community. But debates about Blackness proved hard to stomach when she alone was a member of the group being discussed, sitting in as a kind of avatar for an entire people. “In class, I was often one of the only, if not the only, Black students in all of my classes,” Campbell said. “It was alienating—I often found myself taking classes centered around race and ethnic studies, but I often found myself feeling like the ‘representative’ of all Black people in those classes. “The amount of self-doubt I felt there has really shifted my confidence as a student,” said Campbell, who is now an editor for the California Law Review and is finishing law school at UC Berkeley. “Moments in class, I was paralyzed of saying the wrong thing or being a bad representation. For many students, I may have been the only Black student they ever encountered. What would Reed have been like if I weren’t carrying all this extra anxiety around? What would my grades have been like?”
A Turning Tide
To some extent, Campbell found out. From the time she arrived on campus in 2011 and the time she graduated four years later, Black enrollment rose over 20% from 51 students to 62— more than ever in Reed’s history. Campbell recalls seeing groups of half a dozen Black students spontaneously forming to chat on the Quad—a
phenomenon that only a year prior might have looked more like an allcampus assembly. The appointment of a dean for institutional diversity, and a greater campus emphasis on diversity, was beginning to bear fruit too. [See page 12.] “It felt like it dramatically changed the environment of the school; I didn’t feel as alone,” Campbell said. “I remember one of my friends saying that we could finally ‘choose who we could actually like’ instead of having to default befriend every Black student in class.” And Reedies were doing work on the ground to change the campus experience of students of color and the curriculum that helped shape it. Alex Cherin ’12 and Imani Jackson ’14 recruited Campbell to join a group called DIY African American, Latinx, and Native American Studies (DIYALANA) during that same long, isolating freshman year. The group fought to create an ethnic studies major at Reed with a novel tactic: educate the student body. Cherin said he grew impatient with circulating petitions and holding forums to diversify the curriculum. Why wait? Cherin and Jackson recruited faculty who had already cultivated specialties unplumbed by a Eurocentric curriculum to give lectures, Tuesday talks, and Paideia courses on their research. Suddenly, a Hum 220 student could study changing gender roles and class structures in the mid20th century in conference, and then drop in on an extracurricular lecture on contemporary singer Sam Cooke’s influence on historical memory and cultural identity. Prof. Margo Minardi history 2007–], an eager ALANA participant, lectured on Massachusetts abolitionists. Her talk focused on the work
photo by Meika ejiasi
of slavery opponents who situated Black American participation in the American Revolution in the historical narrative to bolster the case for emancipation. Meanwhile, the student group’s core, led by April Kaplowitz ’15, continued to bring Reed and outside faculty lectures to campus with an explicitly postcolonial focus. In 2016, ALANA evolved into a new group called DIVERSIFY where students and alumni gave the lectures. Campbell, by then a graduate, returned to campus to talk about her research on Black Power and radical social movements. “We filled up whole classes in Eliot,” Campbell says. “And that eventually turned into Reedies Against Racism.” The push was the latest in a long line of efforts that would ultimately result in a comparative race and ethnicity Studies (CRES) major in 2018. Pause for a moment. In 2012, Campbell had to explain who Whitney Houston was to a classmate with whom she was trying to commiserate about the singer’s recent death. By 2016, academic lectures on Sam Cooke were on the books and guerilla proto-CRES lectures were packing Eliot classrooms. Cherin returned to campus in 2016 as a staff member and says he was surprised at the increase in Brown and Black students since his graduation four years earlier. Correlation and causation make for fickle bedfellows, but this much is clear: a rise in non-white faculty and students accompanied a campaign to supplant a white curriculum. Remember Campbell’s words? “What would Reed have been like if I weren’t carrying all this extra anxiety around?” Perhaps new students won’t have to ask themselves the same question.
Maya Campbell ’15 in Latham Square in downtown Oakland.
Reed Magazine june 2021 17
LEARNING FROM THE PAST Protestors in 2016 looked to the experience of an earlier generation—and adapted their tactics to suit new circumstances. BY BRANDON ZERO ’11
Dial your time machine to 2016. Intermittent protests were already commonplace across the nation in response to fatal police violence against unarmed Black people; a group of Reedies gathered on September 14th to stage a sit-in on the Quad in an action typical for a small college. But when another senseless death flashed across the headlines, actor Isaiah Washington called for a boycott of workplaces and classrooms nationwide. Reed ’s campus responded. Students and professors gathered in an impromptu Infoshop meeting so crowded it was standing room only. People shouted demands for a scribe to record on the Infoshop’s classically oversized paper. “It was interesting to see the range of what people wanted,” said Justice Storm del Castillo ’20, who was a freshman at the time. “And there was a bit of back and forth.” Something like consensus formed around 26 demands that would later be levied against the school’s administration. Among them? Designate Reed as a legal sanctuary for immigrants. Draft an official anti-racism statement for the college. Create an ethnic studies program. Reboot Hum 110. And endow
18 Reed Magazine june 2021
a social justice grant. A few days later, the group staged an open mic on the Quad and finally gave itself a name— Reedies Against Racism (RAR). But how to achieve these goals? Over the next year and a half, RAR would deploy a wide array of tactics, ranging from traditional protests like rallies, teach-ins, and sit-ins to newer tools like YouTube and Facebook to enlist allies among alumni. Some tactics proved highly effective, while others—such as shutting down humanities lectures—backfired. Fundamentally, however, the campaign was rooted in the experience of a previous generation of activists. “We were thinking about the ’60s,” said one RAR organizer, Addison Bates ’20. “I was in conversation with Ron Herndon ’70 a bit, one of the students who occupied in the ’60s.” RAR members sought advice to avoid the pitfalls of previous studentled activist movements at Reed. LESSON 1: Build on Past Successes. The work of previous generations of student and faculty activists was essential in putting some of their goals within reach. For example, the Multicultural Resource Center (created in 1993) provided a physical space on campus for Black and other historically underrepresented students. The Ad Hoc Committee on Diversity (2004) had been pushing for more diverse hires among the faculty. The Office for Institutional Diversity (2011) worked on creating a more inclusive campus. Student activism prompted the faculty to start planning an ethnic studies program in 2011. Each of these victories built critical momentum and showed that change was not only possible, but beneficial. LESSON 2: Keep Up the Pressure. The protests of 1968 led to the creation of a Black studies program, but the gains were short-lived. Once the students moved on, the faculty was free to cut the program. A single rally wasn’t enough.
So RAR organized a series of silent protests at Hum lectures, where students displayed posters inside the lecture hall and sometimes occupied the stage (but did not interrupt the lecturer). The protests continued through the entire school year and served as a powerful reminder that the movement was not going away. But the importance of persistence was underlined by RAR’s longest and most divisive tactic—the occupation of Eliot Hall. Activists had also targeted Eliot in 1968 and found it to be a vulnerable pressure point. “We got the faculty’s attention and I don’t think we would’ve if we hadn’t occupied Eliot Hall and wrote letters,” said Mary Frankie Forte ’71 of the sit-in she
photo by tom humphrey
A selection of communications, notes, and photos documenting campus activism in 2016–17, collected in the Reedies Against Racism folder in Reed’s archives.
and others staged. “They can’t show up, they can’t go to work, they can’t teach class because we had Eliot Hall.” Inspired by earlier generations of activists, RAR organized a similar action in October 2017, occupying the treasurer’s and president’s offices. But there was a key difference, which brings us to: LESSON 3: Adapt. Previous occupations of Eliot had been all-or-nothing affairs. The protestors barricaded themselves inside and kept the doors shut. The all-in approach ratcheted up the pressure but was impossible to maintain for very long—after a few days, food ran low, tempers ran short, and there was the nagging issue of
falling behind in your classes. By contrast, RAR staged a much more fluid action. Protestors didn’t block administrators from their desks, but simply camped out in the offices and corridors, working on their laptops. They took turns going to class, taking showers, and eating meals in commons. This unusual and at times uneasy coexistence didn’t trigger a crisis so much as lay a siege—but it was a siege that lasted for months. By the time the last students cleared out of Eliot in December, many of RAR’s goals had been either met or soon would be. President Kroger declared Reed a sanctuary campus. The college adopted an anti-racism statement. The faculty revamped Hum
110 to include a unit on the Harlem Renaissance and the history of Mexico City. The faculty also approved a program in comparative race and ethnic studies. Thanks to generous donors, Reed established a fund to support social justice work. But if progress has a shape, it does not resemble a straight line; RAR’s list of demands now includes new improvements. “I want students of color at Reed now to know that even with all these problems, it’s no one’s job to make the institution better—not students at least,” said del Castillo. “But the fact that people do try, I feel that’s meaningful.”
Reed Magazine june 2021 19
IN OUR OWN WORDS Reed Magazine surveyed Black alumni across the years about their experience at the college. In an attempt to capture the variety of lives impacted and enriched, here’s a sample of the responses, edited for brevity and clarity.
MILESTONES IN BLACK HISTORY AT REED
WHAT WAS YOUR LIFE LIKE ON CAMPUS? HOW DID YOUR BLACKNESS INFLUENCE YOUR EXPERIENCE OF REED RITES LIKE PAIDEIA, THESIS PARADE, HUM CONFERENCE, AND/OR DANCES ON CAMPUS? I really loved being a student at Reed, but it definitely wasn’t a place where I felt affirmed as a Black student. Even now, 20 years later, I can remember walking into the Hum lecture hall, and there was this sea of white students, and this older white guy at the podium below, and me. The feeling of being out of place really hit home in my first seminar following that lecture. Students were discussing The Iliad as if they’d been groomed to have these sorts of discussions all the time. Reed was a place where I felt free to explore who I was and how I wanted to be in the world, but it wasn’t an environment where ideas about what it meant to be minoritized in white spaces was explored. And the dances? Wow, that was
1932 1947
1953 1958 1964
Geraldine Turner ’32 becomes Reed’s first Black graduate.
Prof William Couch Jr. becomes Reed’s first Black professor.
Eastmoreland bar refuses to serve Inez Freeman ’48 because she is Black. Incident sparks the “Fair Rose” movement to end discrimination by hotels and restaurants in Portland.
20 Reed Magazine june 2021
Rockefeller Foundation makes $275,000 grant to help Reed recruit minority students.
Paul Robeson holds a concert at Reed in the face of McCarthy discrimination.
like an anthropological study on non-rhythmic flailing. It was, um, different. ALICIA BRIZZI ’02 I am from the San Francisco Bay Area, which is very diverse, but I had gone to a wealthy private school in Portland for my last three years of high school. So I had already experienced the culture shock of being in a mostly white learning community, in a mostly white city and state, before getting to Reed. In fact, compared to my high school, the students at Reed were friendlier and easier to relate to. KATHRYN MAPPS ’86 It was unlike anything I’d ever gone through before. I grew up outside of DC in one of the most diverse areas in the country. Moving to Portland and then attending Reed, where I was one of a very small handful of Black students in my year, was jarring. Being a Black woman was even harder—I spent
a lot of time not really knowing how to navigate romantic relationships or even friendships. There were a lot of cultural shocks during my first year— I didn’t really know how to culturally relate to a lot of my classmates. MAYA CAMPBELL ’15 I lived on campus two out my four years at Reed. During my freshman year, I was harassed so often by CSOs that I chose to live off campus. I was routinely asked leading questions, followed off campus, not believed when I told the truth. Reed didn’t do a great job at educating its students on racism. We had kids who wanted to fight for black liberation and study in CRES [Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies] courses; we also had a kid who called me a “negroid.” One other experience I had was when Thesis Parade had the theme ‘Bling Bling’ or something like that. That was a lot… NICK FRANGENBERG ’19
1968 Formation of the Black Students Union. BSU goes on to occupy Eliot Hall to demand a Black Studies Program.
Reed Magazine june 2021 21
IN OUR OWN WORDS It was definitely eye opening. All of the campus events showed me how much Black creations are appreciated, but how little Black students are cared for. For example, playing early-2000s hip hop/RnB while banning Lewis and Clark students (the majority of whom were Black) from campus. TESSA VERBAL ’19 The Reed college experience was a major change for me. Coming from Oakland, I was used to a diverse high school (teachers, staff and students). I was not as academically prepared as many of the white students, their backgrounds and experiences were so different from mine, but I was a hard worker. Being the only black in classes at Reed did not bother me, except when a student used the “N” word just one time. Humanities did not make sense, seeming irrelevant. I did participate in many of the school activities and enjoyed them. Joining the Black Student Union and taking a few Black Studies classes gave me a feeling of belonging as well. However I remember so many black students were unhappy and left Reed because they did not feel that they belonged.
1969
Prof. William McClendon is hired to lead the Black Studies Center.
I would not say I felt “out of place” at Reed but at times I did not feel “in place” either. To this day, I still question whether Reed is a good place for black students. MARY FRANKIE FORTE ’71 At the time, I was too naive to realize how alienating my blackness was. I was eager to be part of the community and internalized any negative experiences. From a professor telling me I was dyslexic to other Black students telling me it was not possible to be friends at Reed. While I know the education I received at Reed was topnotch and sparked something in me, it’s hard to put into words what that experience was and whether or not I would have done it differently. The further I get from graduation the more confused I am about Reed as an institution. JENNIFER YVETTE TERRELL ’98 I didn’t participate. Too busy being married and working and studying.... CLIFFORD MCGLOTTEN ’70
1975 1985 The faculty’s Educational Policy Committee declares that Black Studies is not an essential part of a liberal arts education, effectively ending the program. Black enrollment hovers near zero.
22 Reed Magazine june 2021
Students occupy President Bragdon’s office to put pressure on Reed to divest endowment from US multinationals operating in South Africa. The trustees ultimately adopt the Sullivan Principles, but do not take the step of full divestment.
Horrible. Constant micro-aggressions or fullblown racism from professors and students alike. Absolutely no support for or understanding of Black students. I went at a time when [the] BLM [protest movement] was just starting. In an effort to show “solidarity,” white and nonblack Reedies were constantly posting and talking about Black death. It caused a lot of anxiety and rage. It felt like the only way I was allowed to be Black was through being angry at racism. JAELIN COLA ’17 While I was thrilled to be accepted to Reed, my campus experiences were severely detached from the mainstream. I’m certain this was attributed to my not living on campus, attending college in my late 20’s and early 30’s and being Black. Neither of my parents had attended college, so I didn’t arrive with the same foundation as many of my contemporaries. The Reed rites were simply foreign to me; I didn’t understand them, and no one seemed to care if I participated or not. KIMBERLY LOVING ’00
My Blackness was a major influence on life on campus. Campus had a handful of Black students who were spread far and wide on campus. In regards to the other events, being Black impacted my participation because there was no emphasis or recognition of Black people, so I was more a guest in the white culture on campus. MILES CRUMLEY ’07 I struggled in Hum because it felt like a study in white identity. Many students at Reed at that time were from the coasts and imposed their narrow beliefs about the South onto their perception of who I was. It took a long time for me to build up the confidence to speak up. ERICA LEE ’12 I sometimes thought that Reed had a hard time understanding that “Black” is very culturally diverse; we are a diaspora all over the world. One who didn’t grow up in the United States is not going to understand the perspectives and experiences of one who did. MELODY HARVEY ’10
1988 1993 1995 Students create the Multicultural Resource Center (MRC) as a home base to address issues of identity, culture, and oppression.
Prof. Pancho Savery [English] joins the faculty. For many years, his Black Athena lecture in Hum 110 is one of the only moments when the Eurocentric nature of the course is challenged.
BSU organizer Linda Howard ’70 (who also founded Renn Fayre) joins board of trustees and pushes for more diversity.
Reed Magazine june 2021 23
“ WHAT HAVE WE BEEN THROUGH?” Alumni of color look back on life at a predominantly white institution through the lens of the ongoing civil rights movement
BY BRANDON ZERO ’11 AND CHRIS LYDGATE ’90
Alumni panelists spanning nearly two decades of graduating classes assembled for the college’s inaugural Race & Reconciliation summit in February. On the docket? Reflecting on the challenges of the past and confronting the vestiges of racism that linger today. Chair of the diversity & inclusion committee of the alumni board, alea adigweme ’06, convened the panel via Zoom to share memories, highlight victories, and steer the way forward.
Among the most contentious topics were how to navigate a campus social structure oblivious to white supremacy and whether panelists support the college going forward. The group was united in their ambivalence about their social experience on campus. “In my small circle, I felt connected,” said Yuka Nagashima ’92. “But I never had the expectation that I would feel included. Now I realize that’s sad.” Austin Campbell ’11 and his friends—including people of color and white allies—ran for various offices during his student years, responding to lack of progress on racial issues by reaching for power. Runs at Honor Council, Senate, and his own stint as Vice President proved helpful to the creation of a diversity statement in 2009, he said. Victories aside, the conditions that made them necessary stung.
“When I left Reed, I got on a train and was like, ‘See you never,’” Campbell said. “I felt like I tried to make change and got pushback. But I also formed a lot of strong relationships with other students of color.” Alumni of color reflecting on their time at Reed do so from a high vantage point. A year into the largest civil rights movement of our time, the fruits of student-led protests are too numerous to enumerate. Dedicated mental health counselors with specialties in Black health? The college’s hiring process is underway. Paid student positions for the Multicultural Resource Center and Black Student Union? Check, and Check. Designate campus as a sanctuary from immigrations and customs agents? Checkmate. President Kroger published a letter of support for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in 2016 and noted the college will not cooperate with federal deportation investigations. Reedies Against Racism and predecessor groups have secured many of their demands since regular occupations of Hum 110 lectures began in the fall of 2016.
1997 2004 2011 2012 2014 2015 2016 Nooses and graffiti targeting a Black professor spur debate on equity. Ad-hoc committee on diversity formed.
Graham Jones ’97 becomes first Black student body president. He is one of only 7 Black students at Reed.
24 Reed Magazine june 2021
Students found DIY-ALANA (for do-it-yourself African American, Latinx, and Native American Studies) and invite professors to give lectures on subjects such as the Harlem Renaissance.
Prof. Crystal Williams [English] becomes first Dean for Institutional Diversity.
Milyon Trulove becomes Reed’s first Black dean of admission.
Civil-rights leader Kathleen Saadat ’74 issues stirring challenge at Commencement. “You must look for places where humanity will be served by deconstructing structures that harm people. And you must help to create new structures. It’s easier to tear it down than to build it back up.”
Reedies Against Racism (RAR) begins series of demonstrations and protests.
President Kroger reaffirms longstanding policy and declares Reed a santuary college— one of the key RAR demands.
photo by Jaimie Milner
So how do alumni support student activism? “Activism takes different forms,” said Sirius Bonner ’05, MALS ’10, who worked in the Admissions Office after graduating. “If you have money, how are you using the money? If you have connections, how are you using the connections?” Funding Reed after graduation is no academic exercise for the panelists, who evinced nuance in their willingness to support the college. The college’s ability to redress harms is a precondition for Lilia Raquel Rosas ’94 to give her support. For Yuka Nagashima ’92, who gained a marriage and preparation for a career, donations that can improve the college are a fair deal. Alea gives her time and experience, while Austin earmarks funds for future financial aid recipients. Passing the torch, the panelists gestured toward the value of setting an example for future Reedies. Representation in alumni groups and providing context for previous struggles might help point the way forward. The panel was convened by alea adigweme ’06, chair of the alumni board’s diversity & inclusion committee.
2017
2018 2020 2021
First Hum 110 lecture of the year called off due to interruptions from protestors.
Faculty approves a major in comparative race and ethnicity studies (CRES).
Reed adopts an anti-racism statement.
Faculty votes to expand Hum 110 to include units on Harlem Renaissance and Mexico City.
RAR occupies Eliot Hall.
Social Justice Research and Education Fund helps students pursue independent projects.
Community Safety launches antiracism initiative to strengthen diversity and equity training for CSOs. Juneteenth is official Reed holiday.
Black tenured and tenure-track professors include; Mary James [physics], Pancho Savery [English], Mark Burford [music], Derek Applewhite [biology], Samiya Bashir [creative writing], LaShandra Sullivan [anthro], Simone Waller [English], and Leia Harper [psychology]. This list doesn’t include visiting faculty.
Reed Magazine june 2021 25
Reediana Books. Music. Film. Send us your work!
EDITED BY KATIE PELLETIER Email reed.magazine@reed.edu
Truth and Justice in Tulsa C O U R T E S Y O F U N I V E R S I T Y O F T U L S A – M C FA R L I N L I B R A R Y S P E C I A L C O L L E C T I O N S
Photo montage of crowds of people watching the fires burning in the Greenwood community of Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 1, 1921.
The Ground Breaking unearths the sinister history of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. Words are flying from every corner of the packed auditorium. Members of Tulsa’s Black community crowd the forum of the Public Oversight Committee for the Tulsa Race Massacre Graves Investigation. They are there to ensure the committee understands the significance of the official search 26 Reed Magazine june 2021
for the dead, an endeavor which had only just begun in 1998, almost eight decades after the event. The tension is palpable, almost visible, like a heat shimmer. Which makes sense—the pressure has been building for close to 100 years. A voice rings out: “They don’t want the truth to come out.” This is hardly an exaggeration; the horrific events of Tulsa’s 1921 race massacre were purposefully obscured for decades. More than anything, The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice, by Scott Ellsworth ’76, is a testament to how easily history can be suppressed, altered, erased, or forgotten.
In 1921, the nightmare began with an ambiguous downtown encounter between two acquaintances: Dick Rowland, a Black shoe shiner, and Sarah Page, a white elevator conductor. Detectives question Page about the incident but seem unconcerned;she presses no charges against Rowland, and no all-points bulletin is dispatched. But rumors fly; the next morning, officers arrest Rowland and hold him in the courthouse jail. A lynch mob of armed, angry white men gathers outside. The town’s new sheriff, out-oftowner Willard McCullough, defies the
C O U R T E S Y O F U N I V E R S I T Y O F T U L S A – M C FA R L I N L I B R A R Y S P E C I A L C O L L E C T I O N S
fanatical crowd, refusing to cede Rowland into their custody. As the tension mounts, a small group of 20 Black veterans arrives and offers to defend the courthouse. The sheriff declines and they leave, but their presence sends a violent panic through the white crowd. Soon A postcard showing a group of detainees being marched past the corner of 2nd and Main in Tulsa under armed the mob has grown to more than 2,000 men. guard, June 1, 1921. When false rumors reach the Black veterans that the white mob is taking the courthouse, they rally 75 of their own to offer support Ellsworth grew up in Tulsa. As a kid, he to having a nest egg to pass along to the once again. When they arrive, they find the knew something had happened, but it wasn’t next generation.” situation even more precarious. The sheriff until he was 12 years old that he would learn Six years after graduating, Ellsworth refuses them once more, but this time, as what. Boredom led him and his friends to turned his Reed thesis into a book, Death they are leaving, a white man accosts a Black the Tulsa City-County Library, where he was in a Promised Land. Published in 1982, it veteran, asking him what he plans to do with first introduced to the microfilm reader. It was the first complete history of the mashis gun. The veteran replies that he will use was through this piece of machinery that he sacre. But it told only part of the story—it it if need be. A struggle ensues. Soon a shot would learn the truth about the massacre focused on the event more than the erasure. rings out, the first of the uncountby reading through old issues of So almost 40 years later, he returned to the able multiple that will rip through the Tulsa World and Tulsa Tribune. subject once again. the air that night. Those shots and By the time Ellsworth left One of the strengths of this book is the the murders that accompany them Tulsa to attend Reed College in power with which Ellsworth conveys the are only the beginning. 1972, he had set aside his interest human dimension of the tragedy. Another Ellsworth pulls no punches in the massacre. When he began is the respectful, yet personal manner in with his tense chronicle of what casting around for thesis topics, which he writes about the survivors and happens next, when the white however, he suddenly remem- their descendants, particularly in the tender Tulsans descend on Greenwood, bered the “race riot” he had read passages in which he recounts the stories of the heart of Tulsa’s Black commuabout. He sought out the director those to whom he has grown especially close. The Ground Breaking: nity. He describes in matter-of-fact An of Reed’s Black studies program, These relationships are the driving force American City and Its detail the execution of an elderly Search for Justice Prof. William McClendon, who behind one of the book’s main themes: Black couple who were kneeling By Scott Ellsworth ’76 pushed him to dig deeper. That what happened to the bodies of the masin prayer when white aggressors summer he went back to Tulsa sacre victims. After a conversation with broke into their homes and placed pistols to to research and write. And the immensity George Monroe, a friend and mentor who their heads. He reports the buildings loot- of the tragedy finally hit home. survived the massacre, Ellsworth realizes ed, burned, and destroyed when a frenzied “For as I slowly wrote out all the names how important this question is to Tulsa’s white mob ripped through the Black dis- of the businesses that had been destroyed, Black community. He makes it part of his trict, murdering at will, aided by the police, the human dimensions of the loss slowly mission to find the bodies—a quest that national guard, and airplane bombs. And took root inside me. No longer was it thir- becomes a roller-coaster of anxiety as he he straightforwardly recounts the fate of a ty-five square blocks or eleven hundred and his community partners are constantlegless, blind Black man who was attached homes and businesses that had been loot- ly stymied by various obstacles. Even here, to a car by one of his stumps and dragged ed and burned. Now the losses had a name. however, he writes with a deft clarity that through the city. They were Mary Hoard’s hair salon, Arthur ensures the reader shares his frustration but Yet despite these atrocities, for many and Annie Scarbough’s tailor shop, and Dr. is too excited by the prospect of discovering years the history of the massacre was not Travis’s dental office. And with the physi- what happens next to put the book down. —JOSH COX ’18 well known. The Ground Breaking explores cal destruction came other losses as well, why and how. from dreams of sending a child to college
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REEDIANA The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative H. Porter Abbott ’62 has published the third edition of his highly regarded textbook. The new edition is informed throughout by recent developments in the field and includes one new chapter and several new sections. (Cambridge University Press, 2021) A few years back, Porter also published Falling Slowly Dreaming of Flight, a collection of poems and stories. (Ajbabnoktet, 2016)
Breaking This third book of poetry by Brittney Corrigan ’94 is a collection of poems that respond to stories in the news over the past several years. Many of the poems take on issues that are difficult to grapple with, including gun violence, suicide bombings, politics, climate change, and natural disasters. The collection is meant to be emotionally challenging but ultimately hopeful. Order at brittneycorrigan.com/ breaking/ (Word Tech Editions, 2021)
In Writing the Hamaťsa: Ethnography, Colonialism, and the Cannibal Dance Long known as the Cannibal Dance, the Hamaťsa is among the most important hereditary prerogatives of the Kwakwa_ka_'wakw of British Columbia. In the late 19th century, as anthropologists arrived to document the practice, colonial agents were pursuing its eradication, and Kwakwa_ka_'wakw were adapting it to ensure its survival. Aaron Glass ’94 offers a critical survey of attempts to record, describe, and interpret the dance under shifting colonial policy. (UBC Press, 2021)
Mahalo
Photographs of Khmer Sites and Monuments This collection of photographs by Barbara Anello ’77 depicts not only the monuments and sites, but the work Cambodian archaeologists, architects, and heritage preservation professionals are doing now toward preserving Khmer cultural heritage. The photographs also offer glimpses of the life of the thousands of people who live inside these cultural heritage sites and continue to worship at these temples, much as their ancestors have done for almost a millennium. (Artstor 2021)
Murkey’s: A Rabbit Noir In his new book for all ages, Lou Cook ’78 spins a light-hearted mystery about an ex-cop, Bunz, and his intellectual spider pal, Webbs. Moose M’Boy is out of the moosegow and back in town with his prison sidekick, Smilin’ Moose. Murkey’s Diner, the best place on the docks for pie and coffee, is in their sights. But why? Bunz and Webbs uncover a 10-yearold crime. (Brap! Productions, 2019)
Covid ’19 True Fictions: Stories Before; During and After—When Mostly Good Things Happened Jim Freeman ’78 has published a collection of interconnected short stories peopled by car detailers, carpet cleaners, hospice volunteers, soldiers, teachers, fishermen, and just plain folk. (Xlibris Press, 2021). Jim is also the author of Ishi’s Journey: From the Center to the Edge of the World (Naturegraph Pub, 1992) and many other titles.
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Michelle is living in limbo after graduating from college. It’s pretty easy to do when you live in paradise. When her bubble of self-doubt is burst by a spate of uncharacteristically bold choices, she finds herself embroiled in not one, but TWO bad romances: her own and her best friend’s. This new book by Jennifer Yasutake Stagner ’96 is “a genre somewhere between trashy romance and Asian Pacific Island literature.” (Independently published, 2021)
Take Me With You Kindred Powell’s youth is marked by a secret that her white mother and Black father kept from her. When her father goes missing from LA’s Skid Row, Kindred must drop everything to find him. This novel by Vanessa Carlisle ’01 explores the relationships, struggles, and triumphs of a queer sex worker living in Los Angeles. (Running Wild Press, 2021)
Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to PostExtractivism in Ecuador In 2007, the Left came to power in Ecuador. In the years that followed, the government and grassroots activists came to blows over the extraction of natural resources. Thea Riofrancos ’06 unpacks the conflict between these two leftisms and shows how a commodity-dependent economy and history of indigenous uprisings offer a unique opportunity to understand development, democracy, and the ecological foundations of global capitalism. (Duke University Press, 2020)
Bar L.M. A new, handmade, whimsical cocktail book by Lindsay Matteson ’07 features 30 original cocktail paintings and recipes (including house-made syrups). The recipes are original creations from 14 years of career bartending around the country at such bars as Amor y Amargo, Pouring Ribbons, and the Flatiron Lounge in NYC, as well as Barnacle and The Walrus and the Carpenter in Seattle, WA. (etsy.com/ shop/BarLM)
BOOKS ABOUT REEDIES
The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard Informed by previously overlooked correspondence, years of archival research, and a close reading of everything written by its subject, John Birdsall’s biography of James Beard ’24 looks beyond the public image of the “Dean of American Cookery” to give voice to the gourmet’s complex, queer life, and, in the process, illuminates the history of American food in the 20th century. (W.W. Norton & Company, 2020)
Refresh your Reed gear this summer bookstore.reed.edu Reed Magazine june 2021 29
Class Notes These Class Notes reflect information we received by March 15. The Class Notes deadline for the next issue is September 15.
Class Notes are the lifeblood of Reed Magazine. While a Reed education confers many special powers, omniscience is unfortunately not among them; your classmates rely on you to tell us what’s going on. So share your news! Tell us about births, deaths, weddings, voyages, adventures, transformations, astonishment, woe, delight, fellowship, discovery, and mischief. Email us at reed.magazine@reed.edu. Post a note online at iris.reed.edu. Find us on Facebook via “ReediEnews.” Scribble something in the enclosed return envelope. Or mail us at Reed magazine, Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd, Portland OR 97202. Photos are welcome, as are digital images at 300 dpi. And don’t forget the pertinent details: name, class year, and your current address! As of September 2019, new class notes are available online in pdf form in our digital magazine. If you have any questions or concerns, let us know.
EDITED BY JOANNE HOSSACK ’82
1951 70th reunion 1952
Ted Ullman sent us a description of an early undertaking following his 1966 appointment to organize a startup called Synvar Research Institute. “In 1970 we had developed a novel analytical method (FRAT™) that used antibodies for detecting abused drugs in urine. Following validation by a government lab, we received a call from Jerome Jaffe, Nixon’s drug czar, asking us to deliver 100,000 tests and three 450-pound instruments to Vietnam in seven days to initiate a planned mass screening program. Somehow we managed to do it. Drug addiction was rampant among our troops, and the program received much public attention. Some focused on false reports that our test results were poor. Additionally, there were complaints and threats about abridgment of civil rights. In fact, the test accuracy was very good, users were not punished, and thousands were sent home and went through successful rehab. The program continued until the end of the war in 1972. Synvar changed its name to Syva Company, and my group ended up creating many new immunochemical methods for a wide array of clinical
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assays that are still sold today by Siemens (EMIT™), Perkin Elmer (LOCI™), and others. In all, I was blessed by a very exciting career. It started at Reed.” After a 55-year career in chemistry, Ted (like Byron Rubin ’65; see our June 2019 issue) chose to sculpt; his work is in wood and is influenced to some degree by chemical shapes. (Any more chemists turned sculptors out there? Send pics of your work!)
1958
In 2020 the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation awarded Mary B. Williams its Excellence in Stewardship Award for her care and documentation of the Weaver-Dallas House, which has been the family homeplace since 1840, passing through five generations of her family. “Dr. Williams represents the fourth generation of independent female ownership of the property . . . During her stewardship of the property, Dr. Williams has painstakingly studied and documented the history of her family, preserving many antiques, artifacts and original features in the house.” Mary writes, “The ‘painstaking documentation’ is actually the result of my having experimented with using an
Ted Ullman ’52 with his wood sculpture Singularity.
app-development program to organize and present the huge amount of historically interesting material: artifacts, antiques, material written by all five generations, and evidence preserved in the physical structure of the house. It turned out to be a wonderful way to present the information EXCEPT THAT digital presentations are easily orphaned by operating system changes. My app can still be explored on a Windows computer, but not on the present Apple operating systems. I feel great sympathy for librarians and archivists who are trying to find ways of preserving digital materials for the future.”
1959
On May 1, international best-selling author Anne Hillerman was a guest on Just Read It, the YouTube book discussion series hosted by Caroline Miller (also MAT ’64). During the half-hour program, Hillerman explained why she stepped into her father’s moccasins to continue the Tony Hillerman series that features Navajo sleuths Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn as they patrol the Four Corners Indian reservations of the American Southwest. Hillerman also discussed her latest book, Stargazer, and provided background on her additional character, detective Bernadette Manuelito. Hillerman’s interview will be in the top slot of Just Read It until June 30 (www.youtube.com/wZyho0AyHZA).
1960
Michael Nelken has produced six kids and two books! “The kids are doing well. Still working. Still trying to decide what to be when I grow up. Counted elephants in Sri Lanka, lots. Counted monkeys in Costa Rica, lots. I am good
A lasting hurrah from Michael Nelken ’60.
with numbers. A friend got the virus. Now I grow my tortillas in my own yard so I won’t have to touch my face.”
1961 60th reunion 1962
The third edition of H. Porter Abbott’s Cambridge Introduction to Narrative came out in January. Porter also published a collection of poems and stories in 2016. (See Reediana.)
1963
Bernard Dickman is a winner! “Fourteen years ago I won the NPR puzzle contest and appeared on the show. Recently I won again. I’m 78. I figure that the way things are going I’ll be 92 next time. (I keep trying; good for the brain.) Enjoying retirement giving talks to groups as Master Gardener, heading a retirees’ group at our library, participating in an environment action group, writing programs to solve the NPR puzzle, playing clarinet, and, of course, playing poker (brings back the old days in the Foster-Scholz basement).”
1964
Graham Seibert spends most of his time with his three children, aged four months to nine years, in the homogeneous backwater of Kyiv, Ukraine. He notes that the Ukrainians’ slavery also ended at the time of the US Civil War, the slaves having been the Ukrainians themselves. Following that, the country was ravaged by several Bolshevik-led famines, most notable being the Holodomor, followed by which it was repeatedly devastated by armies of both the Soviet Union and Germany. After the three and a half remaining decades of communism during which the people continued to repress their curiosity and inventiveness, they were wholly unprepared for economic and political freedom. Graham comments that the legacy of corruption continues, but surprisingly, the country enjoys more freedom of expression than the liberal democracies of the West. Graham’s children are getting an education relatively free of indoctrination. The people remain traditional. A search will locate the articles that Graham periodically publishes on the pleasures of living and raising a family in a country not riven by the diversity issues facing the West.
1965
Canada adopts maple leaf flag.
1966 55th reunion
Jay Hubert let us know that Tom Witten, who is professor of physics at the University of Chicago, is chair-elect of the American Physical Society’s Topical Group on Statistical and Nonlinear Physics. GSNP’s focus spans nonlinear science—including dynamical systems, chaos, and complex systems—as well as the application of concepts of statistical mechanics to non-equilibrium systems like granular media, biomolecules, and polymers. The group now has about 1,400 members.
1967
Deborah Young wrote at the end of December, “As the pandemic grinds on with haircuts off the agenda, my now white hair is pulled back in a bun. Perhaps this is why I find myself thinking more often (always fondly) of Dean Ann Shepard ’23 [1926–68]?”
1968
“I was not a success story at Reed,” recalls Will Worrall. “I tried major after major, but none of them fit well. I finished my thesis because I was persistent, rather than brilliant. I handed it in nearly a year late, weeks past the final deadline. Somehow, the economics department graciously accepted it. I became a computer programmer (a solid ability I’d learned at Reed, but not in any class). Next, I was a back-to-the-land hippie, then a
Jesus freak. I held various jobs over a 15-year period. I went to grad school and received an MA in clinical psychology (1993). However, I wasn’t good psychologist material, and they flunked me out of the doctoral program. Once more, I was a poor match to my major. I ended up working for, and retiring from, the State of Oregon. I also won the Oregon Senior Spelling Bee in 2014. Academically and professionally, I have been an underachiever. However, I have discovered that life is more than achievements. I have been happily married to my wife Janis for over 30 years. By God’s grace (will you print that?), I have exorcised a few hobgoblins, and I am facing up to a couple more. Life has been good.”
clockwise from top left: Emerson Mitchell ’71 and Johanna Meyer-Mitchell ’73 on their wedding day, June 12, 1971, in Coulee Dam, Washington. Graham Seibert ’64 and family: wife, children, and mother-in-law. Left to right: Marge Goldwater ’71, Sara Patton ’71, and Matthew Kangas ’71 enjoy a week on Whidbey Island in 2018. Sibylle Hechtel ’72 skis Horseshoe Bowl.
1969
Too dazed and confused to send in a class note?
1970
Jeffrey Kovac fully retired from the faculty of the University of Tennessee in July 2020 after 44 years of service. From 2011 to 2020 he was the director of College Scholars, the interdisciplinary undergraduate honors program in the College of Arts and Sciences. For the past several years he has been writing articles for the online Oregon Encyclopedia (oregonencyclopedia.org/about/authors/354/). He has written about Reed presidents (William Trufant Foster [1910–19] and E.B. MacNaughton [1948–52]), faculty Reed Magazine june 2021 31
(Arthur F. Scott [chemistry 1923–79]), and alumni (Howard Vollum ’36 and Hans Linde ’47). He is also the president of the board of directors of the Flying Anvil Theatre, a small professional theatre in Knoxville.
1971 50th reunion
Remember when friends could vacation together? That’s what Marge Goldwater, Sara Patton, and Matthew Kangas did for a lovely week on Whidbey Island in 2018. Marge came out from NYC and hosted Seattleites Sara and Matt in a cottage with a view. “The three of us are serving on our class’s 50th reunion committee so I figured a three-year-old photo might not come amiss,” wrote Sara. Three weeks after graduation, Emerson Mitchell married Johanna Meyer (now Meyer-Mitchell) ’73. They are still married, making this their 50th wedding anniversary year. Due to the pandemic, they don’t anticipate a large party. They have two children, one on each coast, and seven grandchildren. Spencer Smith, director at Seapoint Books + Media in Brooklin, Maine, has been named to the board of directors of Independent Publishers of New England.
1972
Sibylle Hechtel is celebrating 25 years of teaching skiing for Vail Resorts! We share the sad news that influential educator Bob Slavin died in April. Look for his obit in the next issue.
1973
Can you send a class note from the dark side of the moon?
1974
Leo Rubinfien published an essay, “My Eyes Are Infamously Greedy,” in the
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February 11, 2021, issue of the New York Review of Books.
1975
Patricia Goldsmith retired this past year and is waiting for the damn virus to abate so she can get back to traveling, taking classes, and reconnecting with friends.
1976 45th reunion
“2020 looked like it was going to be the date of death on my tombstone,” Michael Redden wrote in January. My chronic cardiomyopathy finally went too far and I was on my way out, as I went into Kaiser on Labor Day with heart, liver, and kidney failure. But luckily, I passed all the tests and was found a good candidate for a heart transplant. I was flown down to Stanford University Medical Center, where I received a heart transplant on October 3, only four days after I arrived. I am feeling very good and am back to work half time, working exclusively from home. In my spare time I study Italian and French, play competitive bridge, and am planning to start hiking and golfing again soon.” Here’s to continued good health, Michael!
1977
Artstor has published Barbara Anello’s collection of photographs of Khmer sites and monuments and the work being done to preserve them. (See Reediana.) Janice T. Paine was pleased to be able to present a virtual lecture by her longtime friend and fellow alumna Helen Lessick ’76, in February. “Called ‘Public Art | Public Thinking,’ her talk was an overview of the recent history and current practices of public art for members and friends of the local arts agency in southwest Florida where I manage education programs. Public art is becoming
an increasingly lively topic here as city and county master plans are being finalized, and Helen’s background as an artist working in the public realm as well as her experience as an arts administrator and consultant was helpful for our diverse audience, which just happened to include my husband, Morgan T. Paine, who is associate professor of art and founding member of the art department at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers.”
1978
Lou Cook’s new book features a leporid sleuth with an arachnid sidekick. (See Reediana.) OK, we admit that we had to look up “leporid”—and are delighted to add this marvelous term to our vocabulary. Thanks, Lou! James Andrew Freeman’s 22nd book was published in April. (See Reediana.)
1979
Robert Clark retired from his position with the San Francisco Regional Water System as a senior water quality engineer with the intent to travel in 2020. Well, plans to go to the Passion Play at Oberammergau were changed, so Robert returned to work (part-time) to help
Clockwise from top left: Helen Lessick ’76, Janice T. Paine ’77, and Morgan T. Paine ’77 decompress after Helen’s virtual lecture, Public Art | Public Thinking. Pre Rup (Khmer:
ប្រាសាទប្រែរូប) 10th-century Shivite temple. Rajendravarman’s state templemountain, dedicated in 961 or 962, may also have been his funerary monument. Photo by Barbara Anello ’77, October 14, 2018.
Ross Day ’79 as he was in his Reed heyday.
with projects. He is delighted to remain free of all administrative and supervisory responsibilities. Janet Russell ’78 retired from 30 years of serving as a Presbyterian pastor in 2019. She is now a part-time accompanist, gardener, and grandmother, all of which she enjoys very much. After 40 years on the job, Ross Day retired at the end of last year from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he was an art librarian. He was subsequently named librarian emeritus. Among the Reedies joining him at his Zoom 40th anniversary celebration in November was Liz Gray ’77, fellow librarian and recent retiree, and his quondam supervisor at the Reed Art Slide Library. While his nonvirtual retirement plans remain on hold, he continues to toil as the archivist for the Automobile License Plate Collectors Association (ALPCA). Janice Grubin continues to practice insolvency law in New York City as cochair of the practice at Barclay Damon LLP. Her life is enriched by her wife and their dogs and drinking wine and reading crime fiction.
1980
Jed Diamond continues to act and teach acting and Alexander technique at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville/Clarence Brown Theatre. The MFA in Acting program, which he has led since 2005, was ranked in 2020 as #8 in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. He is intensely grateful for his Reed family: Kathleen McNally, Michael Bess ’78, Walden Kirsch ’78, Roberto Malinow ’79, Potter Palmer, Maggie Groening ’83, Steve Mounteer ’76, the late great David Baty ’79; for the
wild and wonderful crew of Magnifico Reforestation, who planted thousands of trees together in northeast Washington in 1980 while ash from Mt. St. Helens rained gently down upon their scruffy heads; for numerous other Reed friends; for the truly amazing faculty who challenged and supported him with care and attention above and beyond any call of duty, who helped him through and immeasurably strengthened him: Frederic Rothchild [music 1968–78], Bill Lankford [English 1977–83], Peter Parshall [art history 1971–2000], Lisa Steinman [English 1976–], Robert Knapp [English 1974–2020], Jack Dudman [mathematics and dean’s office 1953–85]. “Love and thanks to all. I cannot imagine my life without my experience at Reed, or without you all. Why would I ever want to?” After 20 years in Chicago and 18 in LA, Niall Lynch has moved out to Palm Desert, in the Coachella Valley. He is enjoying very much the scenery, the people, and the slow pace of life. Niall has worked in software development for 35 years, and is still in that profession, a bit more to the consulting side than as an FTE. He’s spending his spare time writing a novel and some short stories, preparing for his son’s upcoming wedding, and getting involved in the art world in Mexico.
1981 40th reunion
Congratulations to late bloomer Lisa (Steinmann) Charnock, who just completed her MFA in poetry from the Solstice Creative Writing Program of Pine Manor College.
1982
After 18 years as an editorial writer for USA Today and 33 years in print journalism, Dan Carney decided in December to accept his company’s umpteenth offer of a modest pot of money to go away. While he may return to writing, he is content for now to focus on the pressing matters of spending more time sailing in Maine and decompressing from his regimen of the last four years, which was to heave daily opprobrium at the depraved, corrupt, unfit, incompetent, congenitally lying weasel of a president known as Donald Trump. His final missive, which serves as a pretty good example of his recent work, ended thusly: “After an almost comically inept career in business that saw multiple bankruptcies, Trump turned to reality television to rewrite the script. Now, after losing an election, he is turning to unreality in a bid to rewrite the script. In the end, though, there is a word for people who lose elections. It is the same for people who repeatedly fail at business. We call these people losers.”
1983
Karen Parker has moved from Cleveland to Tucson to take a job at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. She’ll be doing inpatient geriatric consultation,
Tree planters, May 1980. Left to right, first row: Chris Wylie ’79, Allyson ? (with innovative breast supports—a Reedie for a time by love with Chris). Second row: Traci Hatico, Bob Drake ’79, Jim Moran (deceased; he was a brilliant and beautiful soul), Greg “Aki” Lewis (on one knee; an honorary Reedie through his brother Richie, back row), Aaron Branscombe, Dave Segaloff ’81. Third row: Jeffrey Brownwood ’80, Sam Fromartz ’80, Huggs McShane ’79 (tall, double masks), Jed Diamond ’80, Kathryn Kost ’82. Fourth row: Ed Mills ’80, Potter Palmer ’80, Richie Lewis ’79. Four Reed gents 40 years later, reuniting for a few days in Palm Springs. Left to right: Michael Bess ’78, Roberto Malinow ’79, Jed Diamond ’80, Walden Kirsch ’78. Niall Lynch ’80 wrote to us from Palm Desert, California. Karen Parker ’83 and her husband at Glacier National Park in 2017.
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Class Notes teaching attending in the hospital, and working on helping the hospital improve how they treat patients with complex medical, psychiatric, and social needs. “Any Tucson Reed groups available? Call me! Maybe we can get together in about nine months!”
1984
Libby (Vaughan) Wennstrom was hunkered down at home in Port Townsend as we entered 2021. “I caught the virus in London in December 2019—does that make this year three for me? I’ve been working from home for years, and my kids are (mostly) grown, so daily life hasn’t been as impacted as it might have been. Youngest just turned 20, so I no longer have a teen for the first time since the Bush administration. Still working in tech pubs (legal document automation). Looking forward to resuming travel (I can see Canada, but can’t go there!).”
1985
Cherry blossoms
1986 35th reunion carpeting the grass in pink
1987
Where are my friends now?
1988
Wes Overson has joined the San Francisco office of law firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton. Wes will serve as a partner in the firm’s internationally recognized intellectual property department and will be a member of the patent litigation team. “Wes is an outstanding addition to the firm and brings invaluable expertise for clients and colleagues to leverage,” said Wab Kadaba, chair of Kilpatrick Townsend’s intellectual property department. “Speaking for everyone at the firm, we look forward to working with him.”
1989–90
IMDb begins on Usenet in 1990 as a list of actresses with beautiful eyes.
1991 30th reunion
Deepak Sarma volunteered in August to be on the Moderna COVID-19 experimental trial! He’s been interviewed twice on the local news about this experience (search for “Deepak Sarma vaccine” at https://www.news5cleveland.com) and has written a piece for the Hastings Center (thehastingscenter.org), “Volunteering for a Covid Vaccine Trial: Fulfilling
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Hindu Obligations or Fostering Pharmaceutical Company Profits?” Keelin Anderson, Derek Oringer, and Cora the cat have moved to Madison, Wisconsin, after 30 years (eek) in Portland. Keelin will be working as a chaplain at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and playing in the snow every chance she gets.
watched the construction of the bridge and been at the grand opening too. We had a great conversation about the engineering involved in the construction and moving of the old bridge (what an elegant solution), the social implications of traffic and neighborhood design, and of course chemistry, as only three Reedies could do!” Moral of the story: “Wear your Reed insignia proudly; you never know who you could meet!”
1993
1994
1992
Elina Erlendsson is spending the year in Iceland. She directs global communications for Kerecis, the medical fish-skin company, which is based in the Westfjords town of Isafjordur. Rob Mack shared a Reedie encounter from last year. He and Daniel Schafer ’92 had stopped to rest on the deck of the Sellwood Bridge (the ride is quite steep, and Rob was doing cardio rehab after open-heart surgery). The pair were discussing a memory from the grand opening of the bridge four years earlier when a woman walking by commented on Rob’s Comrades of the Quest T-shirt. They quickly established that not only were they all Reedies, but they were all associated with the chemistry department as well, and shared multiple friends and idols worthy of great respect. “Eventually it dawned upon Dan and me that we had met the legendary Prof. Virginia Hancock ’62 [music 1991–2016]! And as she lives in the neighborhood, she had
Brittney Corrigan’s third book of poetry was published in February. (See Reediana.) Aaron Glass also had a new book published this spring. (See Reediana.)
1995
First book sold on Amazon.com: Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought, by Douglas Hofstadter.
1996 25th reunion
Jennifer Yasutake Stagner has published a novel set in Hawaii. Jennifer lives in the SF Bay Area with her husband and four children. (See Reediana.)
1997
RIP Allen Ginsberg.
1998
Snowboarding becomes Olympic sport.
clockwise from top left: Elina Erlendsson ’93 visits Iceland’s new Geldingadalur volcano. A mass of smoldering lava is approaching in the background. Keelin Anderson ‘92 is in Wisconsin and lgliooking forward to snow! Rob Mack ’93, Virginia Hancock ’62, and Daniel Schafer ’92 share a Reedie encounter. Wes Overson ’88 is now a partner in law firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton. Kimberly Loving ’00 visited Nairobi while finishing her MBA at American University.
solar system using electron microscopy and statistics; he is now the concisely titled Lord Kelvin/Adam Smith Research Fellow in Data Science at the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences at the University of Glasgow. Carey is putting her urban planning and radical training to use working in Scottish land reform. As soon as they’re let out of Glasgow they will be heading to the beaches of Argyll with their two sons, Hugh and Henry.
2002–03
Jimmy Carter wins Nobel Peace Prize.
clockwise from top left: Reedies at the wedding of Jacqueline Pitter ’99 [CIS staff]. From left to right: Hana Levay ’99, Lien Ngo ’99, T Solow [CIS staff], Jacqueline, Joey Lebow ’99, Caitlin Lebow ’99, Cameron Tanner [Residence Life staff]. Not pictured: Julia Staverosky ’02, Gary Schlickeiser [CIS staff], Hailie Roark [CIS staff]. Carey Doyle ’01, Josh Einsle ’00, and sons Hugh and Henry on their Glasgow doorstep, month 3 of lockdown
2004
Anees Ahmed sends greetings once again from Southern California! “This past December was the worst month I’ve ever had as a physician—as many of you know, SoCal is the epicenter of the nation’s COVID-19 crisis. Being only 30 or so miles from Los Angeles, where they are getting hit hard, our hospital continues to be running at maximum or over capacity. We lost 64 souls over the four weeks, including 10 on December 30. We had patients admitted to the hospital but having to spend the night in the ER hallways and in the tent outside the hospital with temperatures below 40°F. As much as I love connecting with families, as you can imagine, it’s been mostly tough conversations. Our nurses and staff are working so very hard; it’s been emotionally and mentally taxing on all of us. As I continue my second year of residency, I’ve completed three full months in the hospital, so from now on, only monthly weekend duty, though just last week (second week of January) I did five emergency protocol backup night shifts, which were also very busy. I also recently received both doses of the Pfizer vaccine. Please stay safe, everyone, and mask up!”
Anees Ahmed ’04 receives the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on December 17, 2020, at Chino Valley Medical Center. Shane MountRubenfeld ’06 and son Hugh. .
2005 1999
Jacqueline Pitter got married in October 2019 to Kelly Dews, with many Reed alumni and staff in attendance.
2000
In June 2019, Kimberly Loving visited Nairobi while finishing her MBA at American University. “We met with industry leaders to study venture venture capital and private equity investment in the coffee, tea, and tourism sectors.”
2001 20th reunion
Vanessa Carlisle’s novel Take Me With You was released June 1. Vanessa notes, “Among other distinctions, it’s one of very few novels about a sex worker written by a sex worker.” (See Reediana.) Carey Doyle and Josh Einsle ’00 have been locked down in Glasgow, where they moved shortly before the COVID19 pandemic, for most of a year. Josh continues to make pretty (quantitative) pictures of the oldest minerals in the
Massive dwarf planet Eris discovered, along with its moon, Dysnomia. The pair are named, respectively, for the GrecoRoman goddess of strife and discord and her daughter, whose name means “anarchy/lawlessness.” Perhaps those of you who are now parents can relate.
2006 15th reunion
Thea Riofrancos had a solo-authored book published in summer 2020. (See Reediana.) Shane and Whitney Mount-Rubenfeld welcomed Hugh Harmon MountRubenfeld to the world in August 2020, Reed Magazine june 2021 35
Class Notes and it’s just now sinking in. There are very few decent photographs of all three of them, what with the global health crisis and all.
2007
Lindsay Matteson has written and illustrated a cocktail book! “I’ve been bartending since my senior year at Reed. I worked at some of the top cocktail bars in New York City, including Pouring Ribbons and Amor y Amargo, where I was the head bartender. A few years ago I relocated to Seattle (yeah, I missed the West Coast). I am now the bar manager at The Walrus and the Carpenter here in Seattle. When the shutdown happened last March I was filled with anxiety. I, like most Reedies, need to be busy—I need my mind going and working, and I didn’t know how I was going to fill the time. I also live alone, and was worried about my mental health. My favorite part of bartending is getting to connect with people every day, to learn, share, and provide an ear. Without my bar, I did not know how I could continue to create these connections that are essential to our lives. I turned to an old passion—painting. I started painting images of my cocktails. I turned this into a 30-day email subscription: one painting and original recipe delivered to your inbox for 30 days. I then turned this into a print book! I formatted the pages myself, and had a local print house do the printing. I’m incredibly proud of this project. This is something I created from start to finish (except for the actual printing, of course). I think so often we think of ourselves ‘I can’t’ or ‘That’s not me’ or ‘Someone else needs to show me how to do this.’” You’ve shown us how to do it, Lindsay! (See Reediana.)
2008
Can you see Russia from your house?
2009
On October 10, 2020, Brittany van der Salm (nee Taylor) married Paul van der Salm under an ancient oak tree at Adeline Farm in Woodland, Washington. Meg Huntington ’10 served as a safely masked bridesmaid, Sia Ziegler ’08 and Europa Babbini were present in person, and Alexandria Cook ’08, Anu Samarajiva, Sandra Voss, and TC Proctor joined via Zoom. Ella Stern ’11 was allegedly too busy being a doctor and delivering babies to attend. Brittany is in her fifth year working as a policy consultant for
36 Reed Magazine june 2021
long-term Medicaid services for people with disabilities. Paul has deep roots in banking in Vancouver, Washington, and currently works as a relationship banker at Northwest local bank Columbia Bank. Together they are focused on community change, family, Portland sports teams, and eating cookies.
2010
Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano disrupts air travel in Europe for a week in April, not that you noticed while you were finishing your thesis.
2011 10th reunion
Iceland’s Grímsvötn volcano erupts on May 22, disrupting air travel in northwestern Europe for three days. Hope you weren’t planning to fly directly to Reykjavik after commencement!
2012
On December 12, 2020, Erik Kindel and Rebecca Switzer ’13 were married at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, California. Erik and Rebecca met during their freshman year Noize Parade, and while they were fast friends, they didn’t begin dating until they were reintroduced to each other by Marvin Bernardo ’13 at a board game cafe in LA in 2014. While the COVID-safe ceremony was attended only by family, their virtual wedding party contained 6 Reedies, with nearly 40 more Reedies joining in over Zoom. They hope to one day celebrate with their many Reed friends in person when the pandemic is over.
2013–14
AFTER MORE THAN 150 YEARS, US NAVY FINALLY STOPS SENDING ALL MESSAGES IN ALL CAPS, introducing new messaging system, Navy Interface for Command Email (NICE).
2015
“Dear class of 2015,” writes August Wissmath, “We made it . . . I would hope . . . moment of silence for those who did not survive 2020. This past year marked our five-year reunion, which was pleasantly virtual, unlike Reed’s coursework for fall 2020 and spring 2021. We should not have been surprised that Reed stayed open, given that we entered an institution that enabled a pervasive drug culture culminating in the death of not one but two bright young alumni only years before we entered the college. But those libertarian policies did not deter us. We went to classes, drank coffee far too late
at night, and studied Foucault, Wollstonecraft, and second-year physics texts until our eyes ran bloodshot. We celebrated the end of each semester with joy and champagne. We feasted at feast and sat in the naked tree, before it was shamed out of existence. We learned to manage impossible workloads and moved forward into professional lives outside of Portland. So here’s to us. For thriving amidst the odds; for striving against the impossible; and for imagining that even Sisyphus and his rock feel joy.”
2016 5th reunion Nevertheless . . .
2017–20
. . . you persisted!
Erik Kindel ’12 and Rebecca Switzer ’13 on the rooftop of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, the venue where they were COVID-safely married. Brittany van der Salm (Taylor) ’09 married Paul van der Salm in October!
In Memoriam EDITED BY RANDALL BARTON Email bartonr@reed.edu
A Titan of Reed
Daniel Greenberg ’62
February 23, 2021, in Los Angeles, California.
Emeritus trustee Daniel Greenberg’s wise counsel and unwavering support guided the college for more than 45 years. He served on Reed’s board of trustees from 1975 to 2020, including eight years as chair. Dan’s careful stewardship, business acumen, and insistence on excellence helped transform every area of the college. During his tenure, admission became more selective, graduation rates went up, the curriculum expanded, and many notable campus buildings were constructed. In 2009, as board chair, he launched the most ambitious fundraising campaign in Reed’s history, which attracted donations totaling more than $200 million. “Being asked to join the Reed College Board of Trustees turned out to be one of the most
exciting moments of my life,” Dan said. “I found Reed to be one of the most extraordinary places I’d ever known. Having the opportunity to serve as chairman of the board was something I dreamed about doing.” By every measure, Reed grew vastly stronger during Dan’s time on the board. The endowment rose from $5.8 million to more than $600 million, the faculty expanded from 91 professors to 145, and the six-year graduation rate improved from 43% to 77%. “Dan joined the board at a very challenging time in Reed’s history, and his support and guidance can be felt throughout the college,” said President Audrey Bilger. “We will take time to remember Dan for his dedication to the college and his enthusiasm for its academic mission. For today, I will remember him for the kindness he showed me during my transition
to Reed and for his boundless energy and intelligence. Reed is a better place because of him.” Dan was born in 1941 in Minneapolis, but moved to California when his father, Mayer Greenberg [trustee 1971–74], joined his uncle Lou to form Telecor, a company that eventually became the distributor for Panasonic in the western United States. Dan’s mother, Ruth Greenberg, was an artist, conchologist, and lifelong traveler who sculpted in wood, traveled by canoe in the South Pacific, and ran the Tidepool Gallery in Malibu. A generous supporter of Reed, she established the Ruth C. Greenberg Chair of American Indian Studies. She also inspired Dan’s lifelong interest in art; he is recognized as a major collector and contributor to the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, California Institute of the Arts, Reed Magazine june 2021 37
In Memoriam HONOR THEIR
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Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Corning Museum of Glass, and many more. Dan started at Reed at the age of 17. His cousin had liked the college, and Dan was looking for a school far enough away to prevent weekend visits home. “That was a must,” he said, “and I was looking for a place with some intellectual rigor.” He found it. Reed was sparkling with brilliant minds exploring an intense curriculum. Dan was one of the first students to move into the new cross-canyon dorms, where he lived all four years. He quickly encountered leading faculty. His “dorm dad” was Prof. John Hancock [chemistry 1955–89], and he reveled in conferences led by Prof. Rex Arragon [history 1923–74]. “He would pierce you with his eyes and ask if you were prepared to participate in discussion,” Dan remembered. “You really got your hands around some of the material, and it was a great experience learning how to participate in a fundamentally different kind of way.” “Dan was a man of many dimensions,” said his classmate and fellow trustee Don Engelman ’62. “Art, flowers, wine, and food commanded his attention and drove his activities along with a zeal for service and strength as a businessman. His art collections in glass, photography, wood, and ancient jade have seeded many leading museum collections, and his garden blossoms with orchids, begonias, fuchsias, and ranunculus. He was fond of treating his friends to fine meals with excellent wine, and delighted when the food was completely consumed. My anticipation of future times with him must now devolve to the fond memories I will carry forever.” Dan wrote his thesis, “A Study of the American Radical Right” advised by Prof. Kalesh Dudharkar [political science 1959–88], and went on to law school at the University of Chicago. While he was in Chicago, President Kennedy was assassinated. The martyred president’s call, “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country,” set a tone for the times. “I was part of a generation,” Dan said, “who really believed that service to one’s country was paramount.” After law school he served in the AirForce reserve, then worked as an attorney with the California Department of Water Resources. This experience sparked a lifelong passion for protecting the environment; he later served on the board of Earthjustice and other nonprofits. At the urging of his father’s business partners, he joined Telecor as president in 1967. Before long, he turned a Telecor subsidiary named Electro Rent into one of the nation’s largest companies in the business of shortterm rental and leasing of personal computers, engineering workstations, and electronic test equipment.
Susan Steinhauser entered his life in 1974 and was welcomed to Reed when President Paul Bragdon [1971–88] and Nancy Bragdon hosted their engagement party. Susan and Dan’s marriage in 1985 formalized a dynamic partnership that included frequent visits to the campus, generally three times a year. Dan played many crucial roles as trustee. He served as chair of the board; member of the executive committee; and member of presidential search committees in 1991 (President Steve Koblik [1992–2001]), 2001 (President Colin Diver [2002–12]), and 2012 (President John Kroger [2012–18]). He and Susan provided leadership and financial support to Reed’s campaigns, which would not have succeeded without their advocacy and generosity. Their support was instrumental to several essential programs and initiatives, including the environmental studies program; the Performing Arts Building; the Gray Campus Center renovation project; the President’s Summer Fellowship; the Greenberg Distinguished Scholar Program; technology infrastructure; admission; and the Annual Fund. During some of the college’s—and the nation’s—most tumultuous economic times, Dan stepped in with confidence and optimism. A candid and compassionate voice, he provided common sense, a focus on results, and historical perspective. Dan kept the board and the administration focused on Reed’s academic mission and its fundamental commitment to student learning. This ethos informed his wise counsel, leadership, and unwavering support. He cared deeply for the board as a whole, working diligently during his time as chairman to strengthen the trusteeship committee, and remained an important voice in governance issues as a member of the committee during the remainder of his time on the board. On behalf of the entire Reed community, in 2020 the board of trustees gratefully recognized Dan’s dedicated service and extraordinary leadership by conferring upon him the status of trustee emeritus. At the heart of Dan’s engagement with the college were his faith in the power of Reed’s educational model and his hope that the intense intellectual environment would support students as well as challenge them. He often recalled how many of his classmates left Reed before they graduated, and he loved the opportunity to help students succeed. His final gift to Reed will establish the Greenberg Steinhauser Summer Fellowship for students to engage in ambitious summer projects and the Greenberg Steinhauser Research Fund to support studentfaculty collaborative research. Dan is survived by his wife, Susan, and his brother, Phillip Greenberg.
Seismologist of the First Magnitude Clarence Allen ’49
January 21, 2021, in Pasadena, California.
One of the world’s premier earthquake experts, Clarence contributed greatly to the field of seismicity—the science of measuring the frequency and likelihood of seismic upheaval at a particular location. He was born in Palo Alto, California; his father was a professor at Claremont Graduate School. In 1942, Clarence entered Reed. But his excitement about that first year at college was soon overshadowed by a world at war. With the United States’ entry into the war, Clarence’s father and brother immediately volunteered for service. Too young to enlist, he threw himself into his studies, choosing to major in physics because it was the most challenging discipline. By the end of his freshman year, he was old enough to join the Air Force cadet program. He spent much of the war in training, flying over various portions of the United States. “I had a choice between training to be a pilot, a bombardier, or a navigator,” he said. “I chose the latter. I was more interested in maps than airplanes or bombs. Very few things are as challenging and as much fun as navigating.” In mid-1945, he was sent overseas and landed on Okinawa, the site of one of the bloodiest campaigns in the Pacific Theater. He flew over Hiroshima and Nagasaki shortly after they were bombed and never forgot the devastation. In one sense, the war was a lucky
break. Clarence’s work as a B-29 navigator and his developing interest in geographical issues clarified his future. Wiser and more mature, he returned to Reed in 1946, realizing this was an opportunity to broaden his horizons and pursue things he hadn’t done before, such as the history courses he took with Prof. Dorothy Johansen ’33 [history 1934–84]. “ The best teacher I ever encountered anywhere in my education was Dorothy Johansen,” he said. “She almost made a history major out of me. She was demanding and stimulating, with a great critical mind matched by enthusiasm and knowledge.” As a student in her Northwest history course, Clarence wrote a paper on the origins of the geographical concept of the Willamette River. He spent a summer in the Library of Congress going over old maps and experiencing the excitement of doing original research. He discovered that early geographers (operating mainly on information from the Lewis and Clark expedition) could not imagine that a river as significant as the Willamette had its origin in the Coast Range, but must originate in the Rockies, perhaps at Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Clarence claimed to have done more research on that paper (which won the 1948 Armitage Competition in Oregon Pioneer History) than on his senior thesis on photo optics advised by Prof. William Parker [physics 1948–79]. Despite Prof. Johansen, Allen stuck with physics, but by his junior
year, he began to question his future in that discipline. “I don’t have a primarily theoretical mind,” he said. “I began to realize that I wanted something more practical, particularly where I could be outdoors.” After Reed, he went on to the California Institute of Technology, focusing on geophysics, geology, and seismology—which Clarence called “sort of a good accident.” Seismic geology became his specialty, and he joined the faculty at Caltech in 1955. His 1957 paper on the San Andreas Fault provided the foundation for the study of ground motions in California. In the following decades, he carried out geographical field work around the world, helping many countries evaluate earthquake hazards and develop seismic policies for use in the construction of dams, the storage of radioactive waste, and other projects. He was one of the first U.S. scientists to visit China, logging more than 14 trips to that country and serving as a consultant on two major dam projects. He wrote many scholarly papers and authored an influential textbook, The Geology of Earthquakes, with Robert Yeats and Kerry Sieh. Clarence was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the National Academy of Engineering in 1976. He also served as president of the Seismological Society of America and the Geological Society of America and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Clarence never forgot the importance of Reed in developing his “passion for science.” A number of his fellow Reed alumni in the NAS felt the same way, and the group approached the college. “We wanted to do something special for Reed in appreciation of the academic background we had acquired there,” he said. The result was the NAS Research Fund, to which Clarence made a lead gift of his summer home on the Olympic Peninsula. That fund supports significant summer research by teams of Reed faculty and students. In recognition of his contributions to understanding geologic faults and stresses, the Seismological Society of America awarded him its highest honor. The Carnegie Institute awarded him its first G.K. Gilbert Award in Seismic Geology. Clarence retired from Caltech in 1990. He was an avid fly fisherman who looked forward to steelhead and sea-run cutthroat trout fishing in coastal Washington. He never forgot the stimulation of his classes at Reed with students who were not scientists: “The chance to associate with and learn from people whose backgrounds and interests are utterly different from your own is one of the great benefits of a Reed education.”
Reed Magazine june 2021 39
Musician Hit Transcendental Notes Suzanne (Zusaan) Kali Fasteau ’68
November 20, 2020, in Monroe, New York.
Suzanne was a musical globetrotter who employed what she called “comprovisational” techniques to weave together a sound featuring African polyrhythms, Turkish reed sounds, haunting vocals, and free jazz. “Like a painter, I select from the vast palette of vocal sounds that reach my ears, and nonlogically and nonverbally combine them to express feelings that transcend national boundaries,” she explained. Growing up in New York and Paris, she was surrounded by relatives who were classical musicians, and she studied piano, cello, flute, voice, composition, and ballet. “My brother brought home jazz records,” she remembered, “so alongside Bartók and Bach, Gregorian chants, and Debussy, I heard Bobby Timmons, Thelonious Monk, Erroll Garner, Muddy Waters, Ray Charles, Harry Belafonte, and Miles Davis. When I was 14, I dreamt that I was playing Bach at a piano recital and forgot the music, so I improvised the rest of the piece; it was well received. When I awoke, I tried it on the piano and commenced developing my improvisational skills.” Known as Susan at Reed, she wrote her thesis, “The Wheel Within a Wheel: An Investigation of Ecstatic Religion,” advised by Prof. Gail Kelly ’55 [anthropology 1960–2000]. Anthropology didn’t relate directly to a musical career, but Suzanne credited it for developing her mind and providing a framework for her musical and geographical wanderlust. She spent summers in the South campaigning for civil rights and drawing inspiration from traditional Delta blues artists. Reveling in the sound of soul artists like Aretha Franklin and Fontella Bass, the voice and oud of Egyptian artist Hamza El Din, and the Indian music of Ravi Shankar, Suzanne also found inspiration in fellow Reedies, such as jazz pianist and composer Larry Karush ’68. “I learned a lot from listening to him practice in the chapel for four years,” she said. She also tipped her hat to Laura Fisher ’68 and her band of rockers, and to the musical humor of Tom Rossen ’65, David Labby ’66, and Peter Langston ’68. “When Charles Lloyd’s quartet played at Reed during the spring concert of 1967, they blew the whole campus wide open with beautiful and expansive sounds,” she remembered. “That occasion was a pivotal event for my musical direction.” Soaking up transcendent theories and realities she was exposed to at Reed, she lived off campus in an old Victorian house and reveled in the high 40 Reed Magazine june 2021
wit of patrons at the campus coffeehouse and the incisive thinking that was the coin of the realm. After graduate studies in ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University, Suzanne followed diverse musical directions and lived the life of an itinerant musician—the music was everything. In 1972, she embarked on a 13-year, 16-country musical odyssey with her husband, Donald Rafael Garrett, a onetime John Coltrane sideman. The couple formed an improvisational jazz ensemble called the Sea Ensemble and released several albums. When Suzanne and Donald parted ways in 1977, she retreated for a time to Paris and then spent two years in India and Nepal. While she was studying classical Indian vocal technique in the holy city of Varanasi, a guru gave her the name Kali. She finally returned to New York City, formed the label Flying Note to release her music, and taught Introduction to World Music at Friends World College in Huntington, New York. An accomplished multi-instrumental musician, Suzanne played more than 15 instruments, including the soprano saxophone, piano, Turkish ney flute, shakuhachi (Japanese vertical notch flute), kaval (a “folk” version of the ney), mizmar (a small reed pipe), sanza (African thumb piano), sheng (large Chinese mouth organ with bamboo pipes), berimbau (long Brazilian one-stringed bow), cello, synthesizer, drums, timpani, and gong. “I think the aspect of blowing—wind instruments and voice—is particularly invigorating and opens you up in a physical way,” she said. “Any instrument is only an extension of your body, and breathing is the key to your energy and expression on all of them. I believe that the musician is the channel through which the divine musical energy flows, and the specific instrument is merely an extension of the body.” She was particularly fond of the bamboo flute. “Music opens doors for me wherever I go,” she said, “especially the bamboo flutes, because so many cultures value them as sacred instruments. The flute case is shaped like it might be a rifle. Going through customs, they stop me, people gather ’round very sternly and say, ‘What’s in the bag?’ I pull out a flute and play some notes and they melt—‘Oh, please come this way.’ When you bring music, you bring joy.” Her goal was to bring together beautiful sounds from all over the world. In her concerts, she didn’t perform the traditional music of any cultures, because other people were already doing that and duplication was not her purpose. As one critic observed, Suzanne’s music was “no anodyne ‘world music’ potpourri. Her music is alternately poignant, shocking, and bewitching.” “Calling Fasteau a ‘composer and multiinstrumentalist’ is like calling Einstein a ‘clever
little guy,’” wrote Kyle Gann in the Village Voice. Danish music writer Jens Jorn termed her work “musical expression of a power I have never experienced before. Fasteau played in a continuous stream, as if the music just floated from her.” “I’m here to create a dynamic synthesis that I’ve been calling world jazz for many years,” she said. “My music offers in microcosm a positive suggestion of our planet’s future, the global culture, by bringing together sounds from many countries.” Aware that such versatility might be considered suspect in a society increasingly focused on specialization, she argued, “When you put hours into playing each of several instruments every day for 30 or more years, there is a cumulative effect that informs your musical concept.” In 1991, Suzanne married James Carlton Jamison II in New York. She led a workshop on her theory of improvisation at Reed’s musicthemed 2008 reunions. She taught people of all ages around the world to make and play bamboo flutes, and conducted seminars on world music and improvisation at Friends World College, Pacifica Graduate Institute, the New School, New York Open Center, and Berklee College of Music. She formulated her theory of spontaneous composition, titled “The Tao of Music,” in 1974; it was published in five languages in music journals internationally. In all, she recorded 20 albums, 16 of them on her own label, Flying Note Records. “Music and sound are the most powerful forces in the universe and provide the most complex and concentrated stream of information directly to people’s minds, bodies, and spirits,” she said. “New kinds of music have always been feared and reviled by the powers that be, both political and cultural, because of its power to change people’s minds.”
R. Monteith Macoubrie ’42 December 24, 2020, in Portland, Oregon, of natural causes at age 101.
Teacher, journalist, and photographer, Monte was born in Olathe, Kansas, and moved to Portland with his parents and younger brother, John Macoubrie ’47, when he was 11. At Reed, he wrote his thesis, “A Study of Milton’s ‘Areopagitica,’” advised by Prof. Barry Cerf [English 1921–48]. A veteran of World War II, Monte earned his wings as an enlisted flight crew corporal with the 111th Transport Squadron. After the war, he worked for a year as a journalist with the Longview Daily News and then returned to Reed to earn his master of education. He taught English and journalism at Girls Polytechnic High School and Madison High School, and, upon earning his high school counseling certificate in 1958, was assigned to Lincoln High School as a counselor. In 1973, Monte returned to teaching English at Cleveland High School, retiring in 1979. For 90 years, Monte was a member of Westminster Presbyterian Church, where he was ordained as an elder and deacon and edited the in-house newsletter. A mentor to the church’s political refugees in the 1980s, he helped Iraqi political refugee Ayad al Mayahi become a citizen. “I never did get around to marrying,” Monte said, but he considered Ayad his adopted son and Ayad’s children as grandchildren. Monte lived in the house in Northeast Portland his parents built in 1956 until moving to Holladay Park Plaza in 2008, where he spent his final 12 years sharing life stories, presenting photo displays, and starting a cat society, having adopted two while living there. He was involved with more than 15 conservation organizations and supported the Southern Poverty Law Center, the League of Women Voters, Amnesty International, the Urban League, the NAACP, OSPIRG, Planned Parenthood, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He was a fan of both opera and the symphony and belonged to several art associations. Monte was a photographer who processed his own film and did his own printing, most in black and white. Every year he took a trip abroad, returning with hundreds of slides. His estate will be divided between Reed College, where a Macoubrie scholarship fund has been established in his name, and the Presbyterian Foundation Fund.
Margery Feldman Senders ’42
October 27, 2020, in Portland, just shy of her 101st birthday.
Marge could remember her early days in Portland where she watched her father crank the car to get it started. Years later, she watched men walk on the moon. She attended Lincoln High before coming to Reed, which she attended for one year. While at Reed, she was skiing at Timberline and met Bruce Senders of Albany, Oregon. They married a week after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. She and Bruce moved to Seattle to open a branch office of the family business, Mount Hood Soap Company. Her sons Steven and Geoffrey were born in Seattle, and in 1955, the family returned to the Portland area. When the boys got older, Marge and Bruce traveled the globe, their favorite destination being Portofino, Italy. In the summer, they spent time in their cabin cruiser taking in the San Juan Islands and Victoria, B.C. After her husband’s accidental death, Marge continued to travel with her younger sister. On a trip through Cambodia and Vietnam, the tour guide referred to the two white-haired ladies as “the mountain goats.” Marge volunteered at St. Vincent Hospital, the Assistance League, the Portland Youth Philharmonic, the Portland Art Museum, and William Temple House Thrift Store. She was a lifetime member of the Multnomah Athletic Club, where she made many friends. A swimmer and tennis player in her youth, she became a track walker in her later years. She believed that physical fitness and a good diet would extend her life, though she did enjoy a Scotch in the evening. Well into her 90s, Marge continued to attend exercise classes five days a week and was an inspiration to others in the class. When she had rotator cuff surgery (twice), she made sure the fabric on her sling matched her purse. Marge’s life went full circle; she died just one block away from where she was born. She is survived by her sons, Steven and Geoffrey.
Frances Hulse Boly ’44
November 2, 2020, in Portland, at the age of 100.
Born in Wichita, Kansas, Frances moved to Portland with her parents and four sisters in 1937, fleeing hard economic times. This uprooting came on the threshold of her senior year, and while she was reluctant to leave Wichita, she was enchanted by the waterfalls cascading down the Gorge as they drove along the old Columbia River Highway. She made friends at Grant High School and was chosen as a senior to be Grant’s Rose Festival princess and then the
1938 Queen of Rosaria. The newspapers nicknamed her “the Dust Bowl Queen,” and Frances began a lifetime association with the festival. With equal parts loyalty and good-humored irony about her perennially recurring “royal” state, she even once served as the emergency stand-in grand marshal for the Grand Floral Parade. After high school, Frances attended St. Helen’s Hall and Reed while working at Willamette Iron and Steel. She met her husband, Elwyn, an artist, musician, and real estate broker, on a blind date; they eloped to San Francisco and were married within a month. The couple reared six sons in their Alameda home. After Elwyn’s passing in 1970, Frances worked at Madison High School. She loved to garden; nothing pleased her more than whiling away a day puttering amidst her lilacs, lilies, and roses. She belonged to the Wilshire Garden Club, took a turn as its president, and traveled extensively. Frances liked hiking, volunteered for many years as a cook at the Albertina Kerr Center restaurant, and was a long-standing member of St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church. She is survived by her sons, Jeff, Craig, Paul, John, Bill, and Richard.
Harvey Bjornlie ’51
September 11, 2020, in Pacific Palisades, California.
Harvey was born in Great Falls, Montana, and attended Reed for two years before transferring to the University of Michigan, where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering. Upon graduation, he married Sheila Peterson of Great Falls ,and they relocated to Santa Monica, where Harvey began his career with Douglas Aircraft. They spent weekends at sports car rallies and immersing themselves in the contemporary art and design culture of Los Angeles. In 1957, they moved to Pacific Palisades, where they raised their four children. Harvey expressed himself creatively through photography, ceramics, and making sculpture from aerospace salvage. His love of art and the Southwest were combined in his passion for Navajo rugs. He spent most of his professional life at Douglas Aircraft and McDonnell Douglas in the area of multidisciplinary conceptual design. A highlight was working on the interior design of Skylab, the United States’ first space station. For that project, he moved his family to Florida, near the Kennedy Space Center, for one year. When that project completed, he returned to the West Coast, and following the 1973 downturn in the aerospace industry, he was laid off. An architect at heart, Harvey became a residential designbuild contractor. When aerospace rebounded, he returned to McDonnell Douglas in Huntington Beach, commuting from Pacific Palisades until he retired in 1985. Harvey’s professional accomplishments included awards in industrial design and registering patents in fiber optics technology. He was always concerned with the planet and the human impact on the environment. When he retired at age 55, he found fulfillment in defending wild Reed Magazine june 2021 41
In Memoriam lands and fostering future generations of stewardship. For many years, Harvey and Sheila were deeply committed o the Topanga Canyon Docents, teaching schoolchildren and the greater community about the value of nature by leading walks through Topanga State Park. In 1989, Harvey and Sheila purchased a cabin at the edge of the Lewis and Clark National Forest in Montana. Spring through fall was spent there with family and friends, engaging in the local community, and exploring the natural and cultural history of the region. Harvey advocated for clean and healthful public lands through the Montana Environmental Information Center. He is survived by his children, Dena, Andrea, Stuart, and Kara.
Joe L. Spaeth ’53
December 19, 2020, in his sleep at home in Corvallis, Oregon.
Joe spent his early years in Seattle, and then his family moved to Long Beach, California. As he neared the end of high school at Long Beach Polytechnic, he began considering colleges. “My major motivation was to get back to the Northwest,” he remembered. “My parents and I thought that a small college would be a great idea and I thought a college in the Northwest would be a great idea.” His friend Charles Mayo ’53 told him about Reed. At Reed, Joe used his job at the physical plant to gain access to the steam tunnels under Old Dorm Block to hide and transport the Doyle Owl. He claimed it was the original concrete Doyle Owl, based on photos from the 1920s; it weighed hundreds of pounds and took multiple people or a hand truck to move. Joe wrote his thesis, “Academic Freedom at the University of Washington and the University of California,” with Prof. Charles McKinley [political science 1918–60]. Focusing on “Communist” investigations and loyalty oaths, it was a risky topic in 1953, given the activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee at the time, and one that would become especially fraught at Reed the next year with the dismissal of Stanley Moore for refusing to cooperate with an investigation. 42 Reed Magazine june 2021
Joe also met his wife of 57 years, Mary Nichols Arragon ’53, at Reed. She was the daughter of Prof. Rex Arragon [history 1923– 74] and the sister of Margaret Kendall Arragon Labadie ’43. Following a three-year engagement, the couple married in the Reed chapel in 1954. He received a master’s degree in 1958 and a PhD in 1961, both from the University of Chicago in sociology. Joe credited Prof. Howard Jolly [sociology 1949–70] with converting him from political science to sociology. His first positions were at units affiliated with the University of Chicago, primarily the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). After three years in research positions at UC Berkeley, he returned to NORC as a senior study director. In 1971, he joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with joint appointments in the department of sociology and the survey research laboratory. Starting as an associate professor and research associate professor, he became a full professor and research professor in 1981 and remained in those positions until his retirement in 1993. With Gertrude Selznick and Charles Glock, Joe cowrote The Apathetic Majority, a study of public responses to the Eichmann trial, demonstrating how widely public opinion varies on the basis of education, income, race, and degree of sophistication. He also cowrote Recent Alumni and Higher Education: A Survey of College Graduates, a general report prepared for the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, published in 1970. After retiring in 1993, he and Mary moved back to Oregon and settled in Corvallis. They took up golf, which they played for a number of years as members of the Corvallis Country Club, and traveled extensively. Joe was an accomplished gourmet home cook and did the New York Times Sunday crossword in pen. He loved reading in a broad range of areas from social history to Nero Wolfe detective stories. He is survived by his sons, Donald Spaeth ’78 and Alan Spaeth ’84.
Karl L. Metzenberg ’54
December 5, 2020, in Santa Barbara, California.
Born in Chicago, Karl learned to sail when he was 9 years old. He came to Reed, where he met people who changed his life. After leaving Reed, he started Caffé Espresso, the first “Italian” coffee house in Portland, in 1958. Looking at its patrons, the Oregonian commented, “They are this generation’s intellectual youths. They favor Sartre and Hemingway and admire Pogo. They accept Ferlinghetti but think it ostentatious to pack a copy of Howl.” Two years later, Karl sold Caffé Espresso and moved to Los Angeles, where he opened Book Bargain Center in Westwood Village, which became a ’60s cultural hot spot. He purchased
three acres in Laurel Canyon with two friends and built what they called “the compound.” Karl worked as a story analyst in the motion picture industry at both Paramount Pictures and MGM, including five years on Star Trek. As a professional photographer, Karl photographed musicians such as Kate Wolf, Ned Doheny, and Jackson Browne, including the album cover for Browne’s “Running on Empty.” He served on the board of directors for L.A.’s Watts Towers, and his historical photographs of them were used in their restoration. He worked on several Roger Corman films with director Bruce Clark. A car accident in 1977 cut short Karl’s photographic career. He survived the accident, but without most of his left leg. His prosthesis didn’t stop him from sailing, camping, or traveling abroad. He got his prosthetists to make him an oak peg leg, which he wore every Halloween, even winning a contest for best all-around pirate. He married Janet Z. Giler in 1984, and a year later their son Conrad was born. The family moved to Santa Barbara from Los Angeles in the ’90s. Karl is survived by Janet, Conrad, and his daughter, Madison.
Theodore Edlin ’57
December 15, 2020, in Berkeley, California, of lymphoma.
Ted was a true Renaissance man who worked in many fields, including construction, rocketry, computers, law, energy conservation, and politics. He came to Reed f r o m Wa t e r b u r y, Connecticut, where he grew up in a secular Jewish family. He paid for tuition in part by working construction and jockeying in a gas station. He wrote his thesis, “A Study of the Aging of Evaporated Thin Silver Films,” with Prof. Jean Delord [physics 1950–88]. Years later, he would be instrumental in helping to establish the Jean Delord Scholarship. He worked in the aerospace industry for Douglas Aircraft on the development of rocket launches. Ted came to learn that firms making money on cost-plus government contracts would not applaud his reducing costs in his area by 75%. After a break to get his JD from UC Hastings College of the Law, he worked in the early computer industry as an attorney/manager for several firms in the late ’60s and ’70s, all of which failed, but which launched folks who later became billionaires and luminaries of the computer industry at Xerox PARC, Adobe, and Microsoft. Ted’s own group went to NASA Ames, where they managed to get ILLIAC IV, the first massively parallel computer, up and running. It became the first network-available supercomputer, beating the Cray, and for a while was the fastest computer of its time. Moving on to the energy field, Ted had positions with the Energy Commission of California,
working with IGOP (Intergovernmental Loan Program), SERI (Solar Energy Research Institute), and Lawrence Berkeley Labs on energy conservation. He was also in his element doing construction on a couple of small apartment buildings that he and his former wife, Dorothy Moore Edlin ’56, owned in Berkeley. Known for his dry, eccentric wit, Ted was an endearing curmudgeon who, as one friend said, gave “feisty” a positive spin. For nearly half a century, he was active in Berkeley politics, opposing rent control and advocating for better city management. He chaired the Housing Advisory Commission, was a member of the Fire Commission, and was generous with his time, helping those needing advice or legal work, brainstorming on city initiatives and political strategies, or helping with construction. Ted’s lymphoma was diagnosed only 12 days before his death, partly because he continued his energetic lifestyle until nearly the end. He is survived by his son Aaron Edlin, his stepson Noel Edlin, his girlfriend Janet Rothman, and Dorothy Edlin, his former wife of 43 years.
Donald H. Flanders ’58 December 11, 2020, in Washington, D.C.
Donald grew up an only child in Seattle, where his father owned a small grocery. He attended Franklin High School, where he received the Rensselaer Polytechnic science award in 1954. At Reed, he wrote his thesis, “Maxima and Minima of Functions of Several Variables,” with Prof. Joe Roberts [math 1952–2014] advising. Having received financial aid at Reed, years later he established the Don Flanders Scholarship for minority students. After earning a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Maryland, College Park, Don taught for a year at Macalester College in St. Paul and then at American University in Washington, D.C. He joined the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency within the United States Department of Commerce, and was named an outstanding employee in the office of administration. He became chief of that office’s application branch. Don was active in the Big Brothers organization and after his retirement participated in the governing of the River Park housing cooperative in southwest Washington, D.C. Reed was Don’s top philanthropy, but he also supported the symphony, opera, and the Shakespeare Theatre.
Herschel B. Snodgrass ’59
November 24, 2020, in Portland, from multiple myeloma.
An internationally recognized astrophysicist for his work on sunspots and solar magnetism, Herschel began life in Portland. His father, Herschel R. Snodgrass ’36, became radicalized during the Comintern (Communist International) movement, and the family was forced to flee Portland in the ’30s. The senior
Herschel eventually became a professor of physics at what is now UC San Diego. Encouraged to savor art, music, and nature, the young Herschel grew up in a family dedicated to exploring the meaning of existence and maintaining a wonderful curiosity about things. He disdained the notion that “time equals money.” Choosing the college that had served his father so well, Herschel B. came to Portland aboard the Shasta Daylight. “There was a whole train car reserved for Reed College students and it was absolutely marvelous,” he recalled. “I met these people and they were completely transfixed with the same stuff I was transfixed with. We spent the entire time entertaining the dome car with our loud discussion about transfinite numbers.” He fell in love with the Gothic buildings on campus, set amidst the gloaming. “My first impression was absolutely passionate,” he said years later, “and I still love the place.” He majored in physics and wrote his thesis, “The Relationship Between the ‘F’ Band in Silver Chloride and the Absorption of Thin Silver Films,” advised by Prof. Robert Martin [physics 1956–62]. He also worked for Martin on a summer research program, living with the Martins in their home. He remembered the “vicious” carrom games that Martin’s wife, Roberta, set up for students. “Reed was the door out of childhood,” he said. “It set me on a course that I have followed ever since. The math I learned was the thing I value the most. It shaped my whole esthetic about scientific work.” During graduate school at the University of Maryland and UC Berkeley, he became active in the Free Speech Movement and was jailed for occupying the administration building. After a postdoctorate at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in New York City, he was invited back to Berkeley to teach. Herschel worked as a research associate in mathematical physics and as a teacher, but after three years he quit, in part over protest against the Vietnam War. What followed was an eight-year hiatus in New York, where he studied piano with Edith Oppens and taught environmental studies and astronomy at the New School for Social Research. He received a research fellowship at Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, where he became “incarnated” as an astrophysicist. While at the observatory, he married Zan Tewksbury, a former student. In 1984, he took a position as a visiting associate physics professor at Reed; two years later, he was offered a job at Lewis & Clark College. He spent summers doing research on the solar magnetic activity cycle in a continuing association with Mount Wilson, supported by grants from the NSF. In 1987, Herschel was one of 10 people named in Astrophysics News of the Year. He taught at Lewis & Clark for 30 years,
winning admiration for both his excitement for physics and his genuine concern for the development of his students as both scientists and humans. “I’ve gone from a place in my life where I was interested in research and my own personal development to a point where I began to enjoy sharing it with people,” he said. “That was sort of my mission as a teacher, to help people find something that gives them joy and enhances their human attributes, their love for each other, and their love for the world in which they live. And if physics is an agent for that, then terrific!” Music also played a big role in Herschel’s life. At a young age, he played the clarinet with what later became the Portland Symphony, and relished the works of Schubert, Shostakovich, and the Incredible String Band. His final partner was Gerd, with whom he reconnected after many years of being friends. As a father, he enjoyed reading Tolkien to his two children and taught them how to walk without flashlights in a darkened forest without being afraid. He celebrated the beauty he found in the work of such heroes as Saul Steinberg, Sviatoslav Richter, and Greta Thunberg. Asked how Reed students should be prepared for the future, he responded, “Give them a lust for learning and encourage their lust for life, and show them that these are not incompatible. By all means, emphasize the notion of learning how to think.” Herschel is survived by his children, Carl and Emma, and his brother Vince.
Frances Manbeck Taber ’60 February 7, 2021, in Wenatchee, Washington.
Frances received her high school diploma from Nürnberg American High School in Germany and majored in German at Reed. After earning a master’s degree at the University of Oregon, she taught humanities and languages at Wenatchee Valley College. While living in Wenatchee, she met Warren Taber, and they married in 1967. In addition to Warren’s children from a previous marriage, they had one child, Michael. After moving to the Oregon coast and then to Seattle—where Fran taught speed-reading courses and worked as a licensed securities broker and real estate agent—she and Warren returned to the Wenatchee Valley. They built a log cabin with a cherry orchard in a narrow canyon near Cashmere, Washington. Fran raised gardens and practiced a philosophy of “light living” and self-sufficiency. An ill-fated attempt to make a business of raising worms and compost led to her opening a small store that purveyed worms, but she added books and local arts and crafts to the mix. That modest enterprise, Homesteader Book Store, grew into a thriving bookstore and hangout for liberalminded readers. Fran ran the store for 15 years, taking on a partner the last few years so she could fulfill her dream of running sled dogs with Reed Magazine june 2021 43
In Memoriam Warren in the snow and ice around Fish Lake. As rugged as she was literate, Fran lived for five years in a small cabin with 16 dogs. When Warren died in 2000, she refocused her work on small-farm agriculture and valley improvement. She was one of the founders of the Wenatchee Valley Farmers Market and was named Farmers Market Lady of the Year in 1980. Fran was editor and publisher of Washington Tilth Producers’ quarterly magazine and helped develop Community Farm Connection, a nonprofit marketing support group for local small farmers. She served on boards of the Wenatchee Downtown Association, Wenatchee Farmers Market, Community Farm Connection, Riverfront Park Advisory Committee, and the Community Resource Center at Wenatchee Valley College. Her many accomplishments included bringing National Public Radio to the Wenatchee area. An avid hiker, backpacker, and camper, she was an active volunteer for the Boy Scouts, Wenatchee YMCA, and the Chelan-Douglas Land Trust. She is survived by her son, Michael Taber, and her three stepchildren, Constance Taber Inglin, John Taber, and Jeanne Taber.
Peter R. Dehn ’61
January 11, 2017, in Portland, from acute myeloid leukemia.
Born in Munich, Germany, Peter fled Nazi persecution with his family in 1939, escaping to Quito, Ecuador. He received a scholarship to attend Groton School in Massachusetts and did not see his family again for many years. He enrolled at Reed, but interrupted his studies to serve in the U.S. Army. When he returned to campus, he met Dorothy Hurt ’61, and they were married in the Reed chapel in 1960. Peter was employed as a social worker in a variety of public and private agencies. He also turned his photography hobby and Groton letterpress experience into a partnership with his wife called Dehn Graphics. Dorothy was the calligrapher, graphic designer, and typographer. In retirement, the couple raised standard poodles and certified several dogs to work as therapy animals in local hospitals and clinics. After Dorothy died in 2008, Peter kept busy with volunteer work, particularly with anything that might take advantage of his Spanish fluency. A fixture in the neighborhood where he’d lived for more than 50 years, he was always ready to talk your ears off, but also to pitch in to clean a drain or shovel a walk. He is survived by his two daughters, Natasha Dehn ’85 and Diana Wiltrud Dehn.
Jon Westling ’64
January 15, 2021, in Boston, Massachusetts.
A motorcycle-riding scholar of medieval European history, Jon had a 46-year career at Boston University, spanning professor, 44 Reed Magazine june 2021
administrator, and president of the university from 1996 to 2002. B o r n i n Ya k i m a , Washington, he flourished at Reed, where he pursued an impressive range of interests. He majored in history and wrote his thesis, “Council under Edward IV,” with Prof. Richard Jones [history 1941– 86]. He also worked part time as a DJ at a local country and western station under the radio name of Johnny West. “[The name] was regarded as so appropriate that when he left the job, they continued to use the name for his replacement,” recalls Prof. Robert Reynolds [physics 1963–2008], who knew Jon when they were both on the faculty at Reed. “He had a natural ‘radio voice.’”Jon also joined the Freedom Riders, and took part in a sit-in in Virginia in 1963 that earned him several days in jail. After graduating from Reed, Jon studied history at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship. He taught at Centre College in Kentucky, UC Irvine, and UCLA, and at Reed from 1968 to 1971. He came to Boston University in 1974 to produce films for the U.S. bicentennial. Though that project didn’t materialize, BU’s president took notice of the 32-year-old and drew him into his administration. Jon was named provost in 1984 and later became executive vice president and president. As BU president, Jon worked tirelessly to make the university a world-class institution. He spearheaded the development of BioSquare, a $700 million research and business park in Boston designed to enhance collaboration between BU and the biomedical industry, and oversaw the 1996 creation of Boston Medical Center through the merger of Boston City Hospital and BU Medical Center. Jon is survived by his children, Emma, Matthew, and Andrew; his wife, Nicole; and his former wife, Elizabeth Westling.
Darunee von Fleckenstein Wilson ’84
December 30, 2020, in Rowayton, Connecticut, of complications from leiomyosarcoma.
Darunee’s parents were among the first United States Peace Corps volunteers to serve in Thailand, where she was born in Chiang Mai. She grew up variously in Hawaii, while her father, Fritz von Fleckenstein ’61, completed his doctorate in agricultural economics at the University of Hawaii; in Thailand, where her parents adopted her sister from an orphanage; and in Papua New Guinea, where Darunee assisted her father with his research. Ellen Kimura Eades ’85 remembered that Darunee played the white queen in a human
chess game at Renn Fayre her senior year and founded and led the Reed madrigal group, which incorporated international music as well as English-language madrigals. “We learned the Pennywhistlers’ song ‘Shto Mi E Milo’ which was featured in a film about Reed College, the Zulu freedom anthem ‘Tina Sizwe,’ the Mandarin-language version of the 23rd Psalm, ‘Fine Knacks for Ladies,’ and ‘Never Weather-Beaten Saile,’” Ellen recalled. “Darunee was passionate about Shakespeare and a dearly beloved resident of the Reed house the White Barn.” Darunee wrote her thesis on Falstaff advised by Prof. Robert Knapp [English 1974–2020]. She was accepted into the U.S. Peace Corps for an assignment teaching English at the University of Sana’a in the capital of North Yemen, where she met her future husband, William Wilson, who was working for the British Council in Yemen. Returning to the United States in 1986, Darunee took a position at the Peace Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C., as a part of the team managing programs in Thailand, Papua New Guinea, and the Comoros. She married William in 1989, at the Anglican church in Amman, Jordan, where William had been transferred. Shortly before the Gulf War, the couple relocated to Phoenix, Arizona, where William studied for an MBA and Darunee graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State University with a master’s in secondary education. The couple settled in Rowayton, Connecticut. While William pursued a career on Wall Street, Darunee taught at Rowayton Elementary School and Roton Middle School. She was deeply involved in Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church in Darien, serving on the vestry, teaching confirmation, and working with church staffers to rewrite the three-year confirmation class. She is survived by her husband, William; her daughters, Miranda Ruth and Charlotte Dagmar; her parents, Fritz and Ruth von Fleckenstein; and her sister, Penny Fleckenstein.
Samuel Wade Hagerman ’88 February 28, 2021, in Portland, after a long illness.
Sam was born in Billings, Montana, and spent a significant part of his childhood at “the cabin” on the East Rosebud River. He loved visiting
MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL STUDIES
the ranch near Wyola, Montana, learning about livestock and life from his uncle Bud. From his uncle Jick, who owned and ran Chief Mountain Services, he learned about business. From first grade on, Sam excelled in school, and when he began playing saxophone in fourth grade, he excelled at that too. In high school, he participated in an international student exchange program in Kenya. Sam’s time at Reed was a seminal experience and provided a bedrock of friends with whom he was connected for the rest of his life. During his sophomore year, he started playing sax with bassist Steve Lew ’89, drummer Yorck Franken ’91, and guitarist/vocalist Kermit Rosen ’91. Together with manager Matt Karlsen ’88 they formed the band Slack, which toured the United States and made two albums, Bigger than Breakfast and Deep Like Space. After Reed, Sam cofounded Hammer & Hand, an innovative Northwest construction firm, with classmate Daniel Thomas ’89. They built a highly respected company which became a leader in green/sustainable, net-zero, and passive house construction. He mentored his employees to become consummate professionals who continue to build the legacy that Sam envisioned. He was elected the first president of the Passive House Alliance United States. Under his leadership, Hammer & Hand earned many awards, including a 2015 Housing Innovation Award from the U.S. Department of Energy. Utilizing historic building science, he was honored to work on a commission for the royal family of Bhutan, building a law library and college. While building his company, gathering awards, raising his son, and geeking out on construction technology, he enjoyed pursuits such as beehives, saxophones, remodeling, saunas, pickling, Halloween, koi, lunar eclipses, rooftop gardens, and fishing. Sam loved to travel to Hawaii, the Oregon coast, Costa Rica, and California, and while in Europe and Asia, he participated in international building science events. In 2008, Sam conquered non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He is survived by his son, Dexter Hagerman, Dexter’s wife Cassandra, and their baby daughter Isabella Renee Hagerman, as well as a large extended family and an even larger group of friends worldwide.
“As a professional dance artist, I have found the MALS program to be a deep well of creative inspiration. The ability to engage in thoughtful discussion in a range of academic disciplines has deepened my understanding of how art both reflects and shapes life. Reed faculty have been kind, engaging, and dedicated to my growth as a student, really pushing me to explore my intellectual curiosity in a safe environment. This in turn inspires me to explore new, meaningful frames of thought in my daily life as a dancer.” —MALIA MIHAILOFF MALS ’24
photo by King Puffin Photography
Learn more at reed.edu/MALS.
In Memoriam
Emiliano [Yano] Navarrette ’98
Amy Katherine Heil ’92
Yano majored in English at Reed, but transferred to the University of Texas at Austin to complete his bachelor’s degree. He returned to Portland for law school at Lewis & Clark, but did not finish that degree. He worked for the Texas Water Commission. “There are many of us who loved him deeply,” said Eve Lyons ’95. “He had an amazing deadpan humor and was so smart and so insightful in very quiet ways. After Reed, he and I used to play pool at the Id on Division Street. He would always make me laugh and he gave great hugs.” In his final hours, Yano asked his girlfriend to read him a favorite passage by Socrates, and she reached out to Eve for assistance. “I couldn’t find it,” Eve said, “but Sarah Braun Hamilton ’97 knew it. Is there anything more Reed-like than that?” “As far as I know,” Sarah said, “he was talking about Socrates’ supposed last words: ‘Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius; pay it and don’t forget.’” Yano is survived by his two sisters; his parents, James and Irene Navarrette; his girlfriend, Rahni Nicole Hanley; and his infant son.
January 13, 2021, in Mosier, Oregon.
Known as Amy Kat by her family, Amy was the fifth and youngest child born to F. Charles W. Heil ’60 and Patricia Willard Heil ’58 in Portland. She was raised in southwest Portland, where she attended West Hills Christian School and Wilson High School (now Ida B. Wells High School). A bright and creative student, she sang in the choir and wrote for the school newspaper. If all her stories were to be believed, she must have had 40-hour days. She studied political philosophy at Bard College and at Reed before joining the U.S. Air Force in 1991, and completed her bachelor’s degree at William Carey College while on active duty. An eight-year career as a medical technician took Amy to bases in Texas, Mississippi, Japan, and California. Taking every opportunity to excel and exceeding every limit placed before her, she was deployed to the Persian Gulf and to the Balkans. Upon leaving the air force, she returned to Portland, where she met and married Justin Williams. Their daughter, Brooklyn, was Amy’s pride and joy. In 2005, the family moved to Hood River, Oregon, where Amy and Justin opened a successful restaurant, Sushi Okalani. In 2013, she married John Worsley ’92, and later that year the new family moved to Mosier so Brooklyn could attend Mosier Community School. Amy supported the charter school enthusiastically, filling their home with art purchased at benefit auctions. She was also the creative force behind two short films she made with John, Mayhem in Mosier (2014) and All Our Sins Remembered (2016), which won Best Adaptation at the 2016 Columbia Gorge International Film Festival. As a Quaker, Amy worked passionately for peace, volunteering virtually for the Friends Committee on National Legislation as well as Veterans for Peace. She attended rallies, protests, and marches and wrote a number of opinion pieces for the Hood River News promoting peace and understanding. Amy had a playful sense of humor and almost invariably charmed those who met her. She enjoyed telling stories, loved fostering rescue dogs, and was proud of being a “softie” who cried at car commercials. She passed away unexpectedly on January 13, 2021, with her husband John at her side. She is survived by John; her daughter, Brooklyn Williams; her daughter in spirit, Alison Dye; her father, Chuck Heil; her four siblings, including Benjamin Heil ’84; and Justin Williams. Amy was a devoted pet mom to three Welsh corgis, Myra, Meatloaf, and Merlin.
46 Reed Magazine june 2021
November 22, 2020 in Manor, Texas, of cancer.
Prof. Hubert (Hugh) Chrestenson [math 1957–90] January 2, 2021, at home in Sublimity, Oregon.
Raised by his grandparent s in Grandv ie w, Wa s h i n g t o n , P r o f . Chrestenson enlisted in the U.S. Navy after finishing high school and ser ved in the Nav y reserve, retiring with the rank of lieutenant commander. He married Doris Jean Carrell in 1947. After earning a bachelor’s and a master’s degreefrom Washington State College and a PhD in mathematics from the University of Oregon, he taught at Purdue University, and then at Whitman College for three years. In 1957, he began his 33-year career teaching mathematics at Reed. “Hugh was probably the most charming, wonderful guy you’ll ever meet,” said Ken Belson ’87. “He had this wonderful way of staring at the board. You’d ask him a question and he’d put his hand on his forehead and look like he’d never heard that question before. Like ‘Wow! How are we gonna answer that question? Gee.’ He’d come out with a perfectly rational answer or description that just made so much sense. He’d scribble a little bit on the board, and it never failed—I was just completely struck by it—the class always would end right before the bell, within two seconds of the bell. It didn’t matter whether he had taken seven minutes of Q&A or two minutes. He
somehow knew when we were getting it or not getting it on a given day and he would leave just enough room. He’d know we needed five minutes to ask extra questions or two minutes or seven minutes. He’d answer the last question, look at you (finger snap), and the bell would ring. There was no clock in the room. He never wore a watch. There was no warning bell or anything like that. But he was the most self-effacing, disarming professor, especially for math folks like myself who just really were intimidated.” While at Reed, Chrestenson studied Banach algebra as a National Science Foundation Faculty Fellow at Yale University and served as a visiting professor of mathematics at the University of Ghana as a Fulbright grant recipient. He spent a sabbatical year in London. In addition to publishing articles in professional journals, he coedited A Century of Calculus: Part I 1894–1968. Prof. Irena Swanson ’87, head of the mathematics department at Purdue University and a former professor at Reed, had Chrestenson for her first teacher as well as her thesis adviser. She recalled a class exercise where students were to prove that the field of complex numbers is not ordered. “I was a novice at proof writing and needed help,” she said. “Mark Galassi ’87 and I were showing Hugh a step in our reasoning, prompting Hugh to exclaim in his humorous shocked voice that we cannot assume that -1 is smaller than 0. Prof. David Griffiths [physics 1978–2009] happened to be walking by and promptly told Mark and me to come instead to the physics department where they do know that -1 is smaller than 0. There were several ‘aha’ moments from this class, when things just fell together nicely and I could see the next glimpse of the universe. My teaching and my prompt grading have definitely been influenced by Hugh.” It was a time, she remembered, when Reedies were advocating more for “free love” than matrimony, and one professor “spent precious class time expounding on how two mathematicians (mathematics students) shouldn’t get married, because it just won’t work. Hugh, instead, was very supportive of Steve Swanson ’84 and me getting married, as we did at the end of my junior year. As a wedding gift, Hugh gave us a wooden fruit bowl that he turned himself; we still have it, use it, and treasure it.” Outside the classroom, Chrestenson fished for steelhead in the winters, and hiked and camped with his family. He and Doris built a rustic vacation cabin in the Trask River valley of Oregon and planted hundreds of trees on the surrounding land. Chrestenson enjoyed working in his woodshop, making toys for grandchildren and furniture and cedar chests for every branch of the family. After retiring in 1990, his first project was to build a retirement house in Forest Grove, Oregon. “We helped with putting the roof on with a few other people,” Swanson recalled. “At some point, Hugh fell through the roof frame but caught
himself by his elbows. The rest of us froze in inaction, but after a moment Hugh said, in his characteristic cool fashion: ‘Hm, I think I’ll need a ladder under my feet.’” The surrounding 20 acres of forest land kept him busy planting trees and harvesting firewood. After completing the house, Chrestenson fulfilled a lifelong dream by learning to fly small aircraft. He crafted beer in the basement, moved books for the Forest Grove Library book sales, and enjoyed the outdoors. He and Doris took many trips, including to Vietnam for his son Dale’s wedding. In 2016, they moved to Sublimity, Oregon. He is survived by Doris, his wife of 73 years; his son Dale; his daughters, Susan Danielson and Mary Chrestenson-Becker; and his brothers, Chris and Ted Thompson.
Prof. Mason Drukman [political science 1964–70] January 6, 2021, in Oakland, California.
In addition to teaching, Prof. Drukman enjoyed a varied career as a factory worker, short-order cook, broadcaster, political scientist, author, publication founder, editor, administrator, and freelance writer whose pieces appeared in numerous publications. He grew up in Canton, Massachusetts, and after receiving a bachelor’s degree from San Francisco State University got his graduate degree from UC Berkeley. In 1964, Drukman and three other new professors, Kirk Thompson [political science 1964–71], Howard Waskow [English 1964–72], and Jon Roush [English 1964–70], arrived on Reed’s campus from UC Berkeley, where the Free Speech Movement was about to be born. Roush recalled that when he and Drukman were standing in the Reed quad that first fall, Drukman looked around and said, “You know, I could get used to spending the rest of my life here.” But they soon grew disillusioned. Reed had a high dropout rate, and it seemed to Drukman that many students were leaving because “they felt somewhat constricted here, or unsatisfied here, or at sea here.” “It’s not that they were looking for some kind of paternalistic institution,” Roush explained, “but they were certainly looking for a richer life than they were finding at Reed.” Advocating for change on campus, these and other professors new to Reed earned the name “the Young Turks.” They felt that the focus of a Reed education had become too predicated upon preparing students for graduate school and wanted to prepare students not only for academia, but also for the world. In the spring of 1965, several of them began meeting informally as CRAP, the Committee to Reform Academic Practice. “We gave ourselves that name as a kind of self-deprecating notion of what we were doing,”
Drukman said. “We didn’t realize that junior faculty are expected to keep their mouths shut for the first year or so.” Hip, brash, and fresh out of graduate school, they didn’t think twice about suggesting changes to the college’s most significant curricular elements. Pressing the Reed faculty to pass an unprecedented resolution protesting police presence during protests at UC Berkeley, they soon came to believe that the “Old Guard” was threatened by their efforts. “I think [the Old Guard] identified with the college, and what happened here was what happened in their lives—was their life,” Drukman said. “It felt as though there hadn’t been new ideas for a long time. It felt kind of stuck where it was. Some of where they were stuck was a very nice place. But some of it felt kind of stultifying.” Thompson and several students put forth a kind of manifesto complaining about the difficulties of student life and the disappointments students had with the curriculum. The reaction was explosive. In addition to his involvement on campus with things like the Friends of FSM, Drukman became active off campus with peace activists. In the late ’60s, he ran an umbrella committee made up of other antiwar movement associations in and around Portland. The Young Turks also supported the idea of a Black studies program, which finally passed with a vote of 57 to 55. “There was a year when we got some changes made,” Drukman said. Two powerhouses on the Faculty Advisory Committee and on the faculty in general, Marvin Levich [philosophy 1953–94] and Richard Jones [history 1941–86], were both on leave that year. “When they came back, they reversed everything that we had done.” Drukman had reached the end. “The faculty meetings felt like death to me,” he said. “It was so tense, and so boring. I mean the combination of tense and boring is deadly.” When it was decided that Kirk Thompson would not be awarded tenure, Roush, Drukman, and Waskow resigned from their posts, though Drukman and Waskow had already received tenure. Roush, Drukman, and Waskow eventually departed academia altogether. “The one thing we got through that stayed was the period between semesters where students were given credit for creative ventures of their own,” Drukman said. “Paideia. That was our invention.” However, credit is no longer given for Paideia classes. Drukman is survived by his wife, Anne Barrows; his son, Max Drukman; his daughter, Sasha Crehan; and his brothers, Melvin and Robert.
Prof. William Peck [philosophy 1961–2002]
January 29, 2021, in Portland, following a long illness.
Bill and his identical twin brother, Robert, were born in New York City and raised in Hinsdale, Illinois. The two were very close as siblings, sharing a love of literature, languages,
music, and baseball, and were a great balance and support to each other from childhood through elderhood. They attended prep school together at the Wooster School in Danbury, Connecticut, and then went on to college at Yale, after which they traveled Europe and worked in the Sierras. Bill met his wife, Janet Diethelm of Bronxville, New York, at his best friend’s wedding. The couple shared a love of culture, travel, humor and languages. After a first date at a Miriam Makeba concert in Harlem, they traveled back and forth between New York and New Haven to see one another and married in 1961. At Yale, he received both a bachelor’s degree and a PhD; his area of study was German philosophy, and in particular the work of Emmanuel Kant. He was hired by Reed in 1961 and remained a professor for 40 years, savoring those years of teaching and scholarship and becoming a member of the American Philosophical Association. Bill felt fortunate to have a position which enabled him to study his passion and teach others about it. “My dad loved Reed with all his heart and soul,” said his son Christopher Peck, “including his colleagues on the faculty, his students who he thoroughly enjoyed teaching, singing in the choir, participating in Renn Fayre, and the overall academic and social environment that makes Reed College unique. He was grateful that he got to spend his entire academic career at Reed teaching philosophy and humanities among other areas of interests in aesthetics and linguistics.” Bill was a wonderful father to his children, an avid Trail Blazers basketball fan, and a true intellectual who loved reading and discussing ideas. In 1967, he and Janet purchased a home in the Eastmoreland neighborhood of Portland where they lived for 35 years. They celebrated their 59th wedding anniversary a month before he died peacefully with her and his children at his bedside. Bill is survived by his wife, Janet; his daughter, Margaret; and his son, Christopher.
Pending Prof. Charles Wu, Prof. Jack Scrivens, Prof. Jane Todd, Dudley F. Church ’42, Robert W. Young ’42, Joan Chrystall Cutting ’44, Jane Furkert Houser ’48, Carol Hasson ’49, Laura Jean Watson Jory ’49, Charles H. Lee ’50, Betty Killman Wozencraft ’51, Lorene Schmidt Burman ’52, Berenice Stocks Jolliver ’52, Sherma Neusihin Shelley ’52, Barbara Giblett Russell ’53, Harriett McWethy Straus ’54, David Wrench ’54, Rita Udell ’54, James Barry Hoaglin ’55, Kenneth Love ’55, Ruth Oser Newman ’55, Richard Udell ’55, John “Jack” Elmore ’57, Harry Warren Taber ’57, Inge Ruth Leeds Love ’58, John Steventon Neeley ’58, Kim Schuefftan ’58, Henry Van Meter Stevens ’58, Edmund Gion ’59, William Bilderback ’61, Diane Carrithers Carlisle ’63, Robert Morris ’65, Bernard “Biff” Bueffel III ’66, David L. Garrison ’66, Michael Moran ’67, Lynn Ann Meisch ’68, John Oliver ’68, Robin Thomas ’68, Thomas W. Findley ’70, Victoria Palmer ’70, George David Redpath ’71, Robert Slavin ’72, Robert Mare ’73, Philip O. Smith ’73, Robert Granville, Jr. ’76, Jonathan Pharazyn ’76.
Reed Magazine june 2021 47
Subject of Inquiry
Exploring Reed’s unique curriculum
Hands Up Thirteen minutes is a long time to hold your hands above your head. And yet, that is exactly what the audience is asked to do in Hands Up: 7 Playwrights, 7 Testaments (2015), a play studied by my students in Theatre 207, Race and Identity in American Theatre. The play was commissioned following the police shooting of a young, unarmed Black man, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, and the protests and violent police response that followed. It premiered in Portland in 2016, directed by Kevin Jones and produced by Portland’s Red Door Project. This image shows actor La’Tevin Alexander performing the final monologue of that play, asking the audience for “a showing of solidarity.” My students study plays like Hands Up to understand what we mean when we use the term “race,” and how performance can give us a unique lens through which to understand this social system. In Hands Up, when the actor asks audience members to hold their hands in the air and keep them up for the entire monologue, he is asking the audience to bear witness to both the pain and the resilience of Black Americans in a context of white supremacy and institutional violence. But he is also asking the audience, both Black and non-Black, to engage across their differences in an embodied act of solidarity. “I’m asking you to be uncomfortable with me for a moment, for this moment in time, let’s attempt to experience the same experience together,” he implores. —PROF. KATE DUFFLY [THEATRE 2012–]
photo by Sierra Bri Ponce Rickards
“I continue to give every year to reflect my gratitude for how my Reed experience transformed my life, my vision, and my sense of possibility of the ways of being in the world.” –WAY N E C L AY T ON ’82
Southern California Alumni Chapter Chair
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ONWARD WITH PRIDE: Ashlee Cook ’21 and fellow seniors approach the graduation tent wearing special stoles to represent their multicultural, first generation, and queer identities.
