Rob
For more than fifty years, Dean’s
has been a special
place for Black residents of North Portland.
its walls
talk,
IN JULY DEAN’S Beauty Salon and Barber Shop
of Northeast Portland threw a customer appre ciation block party. They had reason to celebrate. The business—founded in 1956 by the parents of UP Regent Kay Dean Toran ’64—had recently earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places for its cultural and historical significance to the Black community in Portland.
The block party was a beautiful intergenera tional celebration. Kids played jumbo-Jenga. Elected officials spoke. There was music and spoken word. Portland’s Black newspapers were there. When Kay took the mic, she started by praising her late parents. “They had a vision,” she said, and outlined their hopes to create a business that would allow them to take care of their family and be part of a community. It’s safe to say they succeeded. “We want to thank the customers for being part of a success story,” she added.
university requires a commitment, particularly on the part of the faculty who teach and research, to the understanding that the human person is not merely a knowing machine. The person is essentially constitutively oriented toward meaning, value, and transcendence. For me this is what we Christians call God.”
It was celebratory. Joyous.
It was a community.
Over the summer, fifteen UP faculty
A
a pilgrimage
the Basse-Normandie region of
where
Fall
Designer Darsey Landoe
Associate Editor Cheston Knapp
Contributors Karen Bridges, Danielle Centoni, Hannah Pick
Cover UP’s 21st President, Robert D. Kelly; photo by NASHCO Photo
Portland is published three times a year by University of Portland.
Copyright © 2022 by the University of Portland.
rights reserved.
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When you read Rosette Royale’s piece, “A Sacred & Historic Space,” I think you’ll feel part of that celebration, too.
University of Portland has good reason to celebrate as well. On September 23, 2022, Robert D. Kelly became our new president.
I expected to be impressed by the inaugura tion ceremony. And I was. But I did not expect to be moved. The love and support in the room was overwhelming. Individuals from more than 100 higher ed institutions and community organizations were at the event. Rob’s wife, Bridget Turner Kelly, spoke of their preparation and the strength of their faith. Their children—via video—offered their own congratulations.
One of Rob’s former colleagues, Fr. Brian Linnane, SJ, president emeritus of Loyola University Maryland, said, “To be a true Catholic
The final event of the day was a dance under a big tent on the Academic Quad. There were bub bles. There were popsicles. Faculty, staff, family and friends of the Kellys, priests, students, and alums were all out there shaking a leg together. It was fun. The band played their hearts out. It was celebratory. Joyous. It was a community.
Now? Well, now the party’s over, and we are back to the work of addressing our community’s needs and challenges, though none of that negates the good reasons to celebrate. The pan demic has made us all give up too many occasions to break bread and be together and dance. We sincerely hope this issue is full of stories “oriented toward meaning, value, and transcendence.” That is a verrry high bar, we know, but it’s what we’ll always strive to bring you.
Jessica Murphy Moo, Editor
IN EARLY SEPTEMBER , Walter Thompson-Hernández ’09 returned to The Bluff for the first time in more than 10 years to share his short film—If I Go Will They Miss Me—for which he won a 2022 Sundance award. It is currently being adapted into a feature. A former New York Times journalist, Walter is the host of the podcast California Love, and the author of The Compton Cowboys: The New Generation of Cowboys in America’s Urban Heartland
The 12-minute film, written and directed by Thompson-Hernández, was inspired by a recent event. On January 14, 2020, Delta airlines dumped roughly 15,000 gallons of jet fuel on an area of Los Angeles that included residential neighborhoods and six schools. The New York Times reported that children were playing outside at one of the schools and that 60 adults and children reported minor injuries. The film was also inspired by Walter’s childhood. He grew up in a community under that same flight path and, like the film’s young protagonist, often dreamed about flight.
About 75 people—students, faculty, staff, and alums—came to the Brian Doyle Auditorium for a screening and conver sation with Walter about his career, his education, his experiences at UP, how he navigates his career, where he finds belonging, how he sees “beauty in the hood,” and the choices he made for the film (the actors are all family and friends).
Toward the end of the session, a firstyear student asked a question about home and wrestling with the thoughts, perhaps even guilt, one might feel about those left behind.
“This film is also about that,” Walter said. “It’s also about the airplanes that take us places, places my family has never been or never will go. Something pro found happens the first time you leave home. For me everything changed. And
I had the realization that nothing will ever be the same. We are different. When we try to come back and pick up with the people we left, people look at us differ ently, speak to us differently. When you go to university or graduate school, that means something to some people and you are no longer who you were. That’s something I think about every day.
“I spend more time outside of home than in my home at this point. What is home? How do I define home? Is home a physical place? Is it an emotional place?
Is it spiritual? I think for me, the past twelve years, home has been more emotional and spiritual than it has been physical. I think that helps me make sense of all the opportunities. It’s what I’m doing. I’m making and creating home wherever I go.”
AN EMPTY SPORTS FIELD —it’s a lonely image. Without the excitement of a game, it enters the kind of purgatory we asso ciate with unused toys. It has only the caretaker to keep it company and minister to its needs. To give it food and water, nurse its ailments, and protect it from rot and pests.
As I walked by Merlo Field in July, I found this lone devotee out there, pacing behind a large broadcast spreader that had fertilizer blooming around it like Pig-Pen’s dust cloud. At one point he paused, took a knee, and placed his palm on the grass, as though blessing it. So tender was the gesture that I felt like I was witnessing a private moment between old friends.
Kevin White has been UP’s Athletics Field Manager for seven years. Under his direction Merlo has twice been named the best college soccer field in the country. You could say he’s outstanding in the field of fields. As a younger man, he’d dreamed of becoming a golf course architect and kept a note book where he’d doodle ideas for holes and course routings. But before pursuing a degree in turf management, he attended culinary school and worked as a baker for a little start-up grocery store called New Seasons.
“I like to think of myself as a science-minded person,” he said. “Which is what appealed to me about baking. Getting the ratios right, that was part of the challenge.”
The similarities between baking and growing grass are more striking than they might appear at first blush. Like golf greens, which Kevin maintained during the first leg of his turf career, Merlo sits atop a bed of sand, fourteen inches of it, a growing process akin to hydroponic farming. The inert mate rial provides excellent drainage, and by removing the finicky variable of natural soil, Kevin can ensure the grass gets all the
nutrients it needs to thrive. Follow the recipe and he’ll end up with a field that looks good enough to eat.
On the day we met, Portland was in the grips of a heatwave and Kevin planned to hit the grass with extra water to cool it off. Sensors buried in the sand give him readings of the field’s moisture, salinity, and temperature, but on especially hot days he’ll trust his eye to find the areas most affected by the sun.
I followed him out onto the field, which was a vivid Crayola green. The sprinklers shushed like a chorus of annoyed librar ians as they dowsed the far end. Something about the scene urged you to go barefoot.
“Be my guest,” Kevin said, and I doffed my kicks.
The grass was tacky underfoot, as though the blades had been dipped in honey or sap, and surprisingly soft. It’s mostly perennial ryegrass, a hardy bunchgrass favored by places like Wimbledon and The Masters. But Kevin also throws in a dash of Kentucky bluegrass, a resilient rhizome grass that spreads underground and helps with infill after routine wear and tear.
As I walked around, though, I noticed that the field still looked a little young in places, with the incomplete coverage of bar gain hair plugs.
“It’ll be full in another week or so,” Kevin said, confidently.
Like a lot of certified sports field managers, Kevin does everything he can to avoid using pesticides and other harsh chemical treatments. To rid Merlo of thatch, organic matter, and weed seeds, particularly those of his arch-nemesis, annual bluegrass, he’s adopted a relatively new technique called fraise mowing. At the end of each school year, right after commence ment, Kevin uses a special harrow to tear up the lush sward he’s fostered all season long, composting more than a hundred
tons of it. It’s a sacrifice you make full of fear and trembling, that feels like a huge mistake. But when it’s done right, it removes all the unwanted gunk while leaving the root system unharmed. There follows a dicey stage when the field is vul nerable to the sun, as your head would be after a buzz cut, and he has to guarantee it stays nice and moist.
Listening to him describe all the field demands of him, I wondered whether he dreamed about it.
“Not dreams,” he said. “But I do have nightmares. They’re all water-related.”
A couple weeks later I sat in the stands with my six-year-old son for opening day, a men’s and women’s double header. The field was indeed full, luxuriantly so. Snipped to a uniform one inch, it had freshly painted lines that put me in mind of Frosted Mini Wheats. As the women’s game began, I did my best to
describe for my son everything happening on the field. When you cut bunchgrasses, I said, they send out new shoots called tillers as a defense mechanism. And those elegant stripes you see are created by the mower—it bends the grass ever so slightly, causing it to reflect sunlight. I quoted a favorite pas sage from the Talmud that goes, “Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, ‘Grow, grow.’” Not yet embarrassed by his old man, he offered me some of his popcorn and continued to listen with the attention of an acolyte. At halftime, with the women up 4-0, the sprinklers kicked on to rewet the field, which makes for a fast and consistent playing surface. Sunlight hung in the water, creating a rainbowy mist, and through this heavenly veil you could see Kevin out there, fixing divots, looking every bit like Merlo’s angel.
—Cheston KnappHARVESTING SEASON MEANT being awake before dawn, sitting in a car, head against the cold window, listening to the radio broadcaster dandondole a mi gente ánimos, cheering my people on for the day ahead of them, working under the hot sun with a picking bag around their shoulders. Before work mi amá would drop me off with Eufrasia, who had taken care of me since I was three months old. I was with her until I was old enough to put the picking bag over my shoulders.
But one morning, mi amá took me somewhere that wasn’t Eufrasia’s living room. I was probably confused and scared, and I remember hiding behind her, crying, holding onto her very tightly. La maestra Quina, of Oregon Child Development Coalition, walked over to tell me everything was okay.
My memories of OCDC are a little foggy, but I’m sure that everything that day was, indeed, okay. We’d sing “Elena la Ballena,” ride bright red tricycles around the playground, run over to the fence that divided OCDC and Mid Valley Elementary at recess to say hi to older siblings, and have field trips such as eating Estela’s quesadillas from La Taqueria Los Tres Amigos across the street and feed los patos down the block by the ACE Hardware store.
When we all got to elementary school, there were new children who didn’t look like us and couldn’t understand us. There were teachers who spoke Spanish differ ently from us and taught us songs we had never heard before. But we had each other. We shared a language, a culture, and struggled to fit in.
I had the great privilege of returning to OCDC as a Family Advocate this summer, as part of my Interns for Justice program through UP’s Moreau Center for Service and Justice. As Family Advocates, we focused on ensuring that our stu dents were safe and healthy. Because our counties were at high risk for COVID cases, we got health referrals from teachers every day, checked the students’ temperatures, and communicated their symptoms with parents. We normally had a medical provider on site to examine
children who were feeling ill. We worked directly with them to translate for fam ilies, provide cultural context to providers, and make the children feel safe and comfortable. We also worked from Monday to Saturday, as early as 4 a.m., to help the families escape the heat.
Returning to OCDC was powerful for me; the experience demonstrated that their goal of setting children up for suc cess was far from just a dream. We were heard, we were supported, and most importantly, we were given a space to be ourselves and embrace who we were. We were all migrant children with dreams to fly high. After OCDC, we faced inequity and discrimination in an education system that forced us to abandon our culture and language, but we persisted. Now, I am here.
ANAÍS LARIOS-MALDONADO ’24 is a secondary education and Spanish major.
The Phil Knight Invitational (PKI), co-hosted by UP, will take place over Thanksgiving weekend. Eight men’s teams and four women’s teams will compete at the Chiles Center, the Moda Center, and Veterans Memorial Coliseum. The Pilots’ men’s team will be joined by North Carolina, Alabama, Iowa State, Michigan State, Oregon, UConn, and Villanova. The women’s PKI field features Iowa State, Michigan State, North Carolina, and Oregon. All games will be televised on ESPN networks, including the men’s and women’s championship games, live from the Moda Center on Sunday, November 27.
For more information, including brackets and scheduling, visit www.rosequarter.com/hoops/phil-knight-invitational.
Pilot fans can reserve team-specific sessions by contacting the Pilot Box Office at (503) 943-7525 or emailing taylord@up.edu.
ON SEPTEMBER 14, 2022 , Cecilia González-Andrieu, a theo logian from Loyola Marymount University, delivered the 2022 Zahm Lecture, UP’s annual lecture on faith and reason. González-Andrieu stated that education—and access to this education—is the key, not only to understanding our present-day realidad, but also to understanding how to change it, how to improve it. Education, she said, is “integral to the flourishing of human dignity, as a human right, and as an engine for all other human rights.”
She challenged the audience to see past her presence at the lectern and to see her friend Fatima, also a Latina immigrant
living and working in the United States. Fatima, too, had a dream of being a maestra, but she had to give up her educa tional aspirations to take care of family. “Fatima should be addressing you today,” González-Andrieu said. “I am a reminder that the systems of our world have made this impossible.”
“Feed the hungry,” she said of Jesus’ teachings and the value of education. “Feed the hungry and then make sure they never go hungry again. Change the systems. Heal the world.”
If we don’t act, she cautioned, “then we have sent God to the peripheries. It is God we have silenced and erased from our midst.”
DiaryHer impeccable handwriting documented nearly every day, ages 13-17.
Grandma said I could keep the book I’d found in a drawer, so I didn’t tell my mother for a while. By then I had absorbed every page.
Church, movies, popcorn.
Bucky was important, whoever he was. She washed her hair. Underlined No freedom at all. I combed through soft yellow pages hungry for drama. She got a new skirt! Her throat was sore! One day Carroll almost fell out of his seat. But who was Carroll?
Later (News flash) he came over for dinner and dried the dishes. Movies cost ten cents.
She started college at 16 and lived at home. And she used the word “boring” which would be banned from our own house. She even said, “very boring” many days in a row. When she found me one hot summer afternoon, soaking up her notes, she grabbed the little red book back from me. Mom, you said boring! Why can’t we? She said, I gave you a better life.
NAOMI SHIHAB NYE, who visited UP this fall as part of the Schoenfeldt Distinguished Writers Series, is a professor of creative writing at Texas State University and self-described “wandering poet.” Her recent books include The Tiny Journalist Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners, Cast Away, and Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems She received the 2019 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle and in 2021 was voted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
FILIP ZIVKOVIC ’10 transferred to UP as an undergraduate tennis player sixteen years ago and never left. As the new head coach of the women’s tennis team, he hopes to create the same sense of community and hospitality for his players that he has found here, first as a player, then as an assistant coach, and now at the helm of a team.
“I look at what Leggs [basketball coach Shantay Legans] has done,” he said. “The way he’s built a family atmosphere, I want that for my team. I want them to win for one another.”
Zivkovic grew up in a war-torn Serbia and remembers the hardships of hyper-inflation and playing on courts that had once been run by the Communist government. Blessed with talent and an industrious work ethic, he soon found himself competing with the best young players in the country, including Novak Djokovic. Coach Zivkovic is tall, strong, and nimble, and imagining him coming to net behind one of his 135 mph serves would fill an opponent with a specific kind of dread. Those who played against him at UP during the season he went a record 18-0 in singles must still have nightmares about trying to slip a passing shot by him. He credits coach Aaron Gross for helping him become one of the most deco rated Pilots in program history.
“Gross really knows how to develop players,” he said, “how to prepare them for both the physical and mental parts of the game.” Player development has since become the cornerstone of Zivkovic’s own coaching philosophy. But as much as he cares about the players’ games, he wants above all to be a good mentor.
“I’m somewhere between a friend and a parent,” he said. “It’s not casual, though. There’s a lot of respect there, and it goes both ways.”
Outside the Pilot House a couple weeks after news broke that Zivkovic would be the next head coach, several people approached to congratulate him on the promotion, giving him high fives, fist-bumps, and pats on the back.
“If I weren’t coaching here, I think I’d be doing something else,” he said. “This is the place for me.”
University of Portland was ranked #1 in the “Regional Universities— West” classification for 2022–23 according to U.S. News & World Report magazine.
Robert D. Kelly, UP’s 21st president, comes to the role with faith, experience, and hope for transformation.
ASK ROB KELLY about a time when he found his own Catholic education to be transformative— because he firmly holds the belief that higher education should be a transformative experience for students—and he’ll tell you about a defining undergraduate experience at Loyola University Maryland, his Jesuit alma mater.
One of his political science professors brought the student newspaper to class and read an article about a charged incident that had happened on campus. A janitor had set up a “caution” sign while mopping a building’s floors, and a student (unnamed in the story) intentionally kicked it over.
While clearly disrespectful, what about the incident merited discussion in a class about power and powerlessness?
Consider how gender and race might affect our reading of the story. When we learn that the student was male and the janitor was female, how does this affect how we interpret the power dynamics at play? When we learn that the student was white and the janitor was Black, how does this further change our reading of the incident?
In part, Rob Kelly remembers this class because it helped him understand that what he was studying had real-world applications. But there’s also what happened next. After the pro fessor had finished reading the article, and before the discussion began, a student in the class raised his hand and said, “The student in that story is me.”
A tense silence filled the room. And the pro fessor ended up dismissing class.
What Rob particularly admires is that the professor came back to the next meeting ready to return to the challenging moment. “I thought it was brave to end the conversation, and I thought it was even more brave to pick it back up,” he said.
The need for open dialogue, however difficult, would become a focus of Rob’s work and scholar ship. In that classroom, we can also see seedlings of Rob’s professional interest in student affairs— how does one turn a problematic moment into an opportunity for student growth?
Student growth and student belonging have since become two guideposts of his career.
In large part, Rob has found growth and belonging in his own education through the love and support of family, teachers, and mentors.
Kelly was born and raised in New Jersey, in a loving family of four. His father worked for the United Parcel Service and was involved in labor regulations for workers. His mother was a tele phone operator for Bell, later AT&T. His parents, who met in high school, believed in the strength and values of a Catholic education for their sons.
In fact, as soon as his father learned about Rob’s appointment as president at University of Portland, he drove straight over to Sacred Heart to thank the principal, Sr. Frances Salemi, who taught Rob in fourth grade. (I spoke to Sr. Frances, and she, too, is proud. They posted about it on their Facebook page.)
One of his former mentors at his undergrad uate alma mater was Susan Donovan—now president of an independent Catholic school, Bellarmine University. She remembers that Rob was very engaged in student body leadership and that he had a maturity beyond his years. “The Rob you meet today is the Rob you met in college— poised, thoughtful, prepared, intentional, and considerate.” He created a student advisory group for the president there, a structure that is still in place 30 years on. Back then Donovan used to joke that she would probably be working for Rob someday. When he joined the school’s board of trustees, that prediction became more or less true. He continued his education, eventually earning his PhD in education policy, planning, and administration from University of Maryland. He has held leadership positions at Loyola University Maryland, Seattle University, University of Vermont, Loyola University Chicago, Union College,
and Colgate University. During this time, he became a mentor for students and young colleagues.
“Rob really is one of those people who makes you feel that you belong and you matter. He made that a reality for me,” said Matt Razek, who worked with Rob as a student at Loyola University Chicago and went on to a career in student affairs.
KC Mmeje, now the vice president of student affairs at Southern Methodist University, responded to Rob’s professional mentorship—“He lights up the darkest of spaces,” Mmeje said. “He’s an easy person to follow.”
Mmeje’s personal experience resonated with Rob’s vision of what an edu cation can mean in the life of historically underserved students. “Rob understands the pivotal role that education plays for first generation stu dents, that there are opportunities and experiences they wouldn’t have without that education.”
Lori White, president of Depauw University, who also comes from a student affairs background, hopes UP students are ready to work with a president who wants to involve them. “He will invite students into con versations about what UP is and what UP will become,” she said.
Fr. Stephen Sundborg, SJ, the former president of Seattle University, said, “I think students will be amazed at the access they have to him. That they will be able to know who their president is.”
It’s impossible to talk about Rob Kelly and his career and where he belongs without mentioning his brilliant wife, Bridget Turner Kelly. They met at University of Maryland while they were both earning their PhDs. Rob left her love notes on her car window between classes. “I’d never met anyone like him,” Bridget told me. Her scholarship is in multiculturalism and diversity and equity in education, and she has researched and written extensively on mentorship and retention of Black
faculty at predominantly white institutions. Two of her academic essays on student success and retention at historically Black universities have been cited in Amicus briefs in cases heading to the United States Supreme Court.
Rob finds her support and amplification of Black women to be inspiring. “She is a great teacher and a great researcher, one of those rare people who can do both well.”
They just celebrated their 20th anniversary. They married during their time at University of Vermont—Rob in student affairs and Bridget in a tenure-track professorship. She earned tenure while faculty at Seattle University and continued with tenured positions at Loyola University Chicago and the University of Maryland.
She also knows the college president life. Her father was one. During her younger years, her father was an associate dean of MIT’s graduate school. Her mother, a clinical social worker, saw student clients at Wellesley College. Bridget recalls her father holding retreats for Black MIT students in the ’70s and ’80s, finding ways to support them and encourage them. Her father eventually became the president of Knoxville College, a historically Black college, and she and her family lived on that campus. “They say you marry your father,” she said with a smile.
Their two beautiful children, Alex and Addison, are settling in well in Portland, and they’ll all soon have a presence on campus when they move into the president’s residence on The Bluff.
Through one lens, Rob Kelly’s education and career have taken him on a path that zigzags across the country. But viewed through another lens, his career is a straight and clear path to the presidency of a Catholic university.
Rob and Bridget are both deeply spiritual people, and Catholic social teaching and social justice are important components of this faith.
“He is rooted in Christianity,” said Fr. Sundborg, “and in his family and student development at the university.”
“Faith development in a college environ ment—it’s a place where I feel most at home, most whole,” Rob said. His own faith grew up in that environment, too.
In New Jersey, he went to Sacred Heart School until eighth grade, and he was an altar server at St. Peter’s Prep. When he decided to join the Catholic church, he says he felt he was coming home.
He is looking forward to leading a Holy Cross school. He believes that charism matters. Fr. Brian Linnane, SJ, the former president of Loyola University Maryland, noted Rob’s new partner ship with the Congregation of Holy Cross, and, with confidence, said, “Rob will lead through the values they maintain.”
Rob has come to University of Portland at a challenging moment.
When was the last time the institution—faculty, staff, and students— emerged from a global pandemic and all that it entailed?
Like so many of us, Rob had to dig deep into his faith during the pandemic experience. He admits that homeschooling was “not my strength.” And the period involved so many soul-searching challenges. “I remember people saying, ‘I just saw the murder of George Floyd. How are you doing?’” He said he felt despair. “I think it’ll be a while before we understand what that isolation did to all of us,” he said. He can see that healing still needs to happen.
There were bright spots. During the pandemic lockdown period, the Kellys made the best of things through rituals involving a regularly updated Spotify list and dance parties with the kids and Friday night takeout dinners (kids got to choose). He was grateful for the family time, and he was grateful that he had a home to go to.
Now that home is here in Portland.
When he arrived at UP for his interviews, he walked around The Bluff with Bridget on a tour that was supposed to be one hour and turned into several. He left thinking, “This is where I will serve. This is where I want to be.”
In a recent roundtable discussion on Oregon Public Broadcasting, Rob
was asked what he’d like to achieve at University of Portland. In addition to his hope that UP can be a “national leader in issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice,” he said, “As University of Portland, I hope we’ll be able to say that we are anchored in Portland, engaged in Portland, [and] that we are the premier Catholic university of the West Coast, offering unparalleled experiences for students to be seen and heard in their entirety.”
In a later conversation, he mentioned he wished he’d changed “premier Catholic univer sity” to “transformative Catholic university.” He thinks that’s more active and more all-encom passing. He wants to include students, faculty, and staff in that transformation. “Ideally,” he said, “it transforms everyone.”
JESSICA MURPHY MOO is the editor of this magazine.
“Faith development in a college environment is a place where I feel most at home, most whole.”Far left: The Kellys at the Chapel of Christ the Teacher. Center: Rob with Fr. Ed Obermiller, CSC, and Fr. John Donato, CSC. Above: At the Inauguration ceremony.
This summer, fifteen University of Portland faculty members embarked on a pilgrimage to the Basse-Normandie region of France. Their goal? A deeper connection to the school’s Holy Cross roots, including the order’s abiding commitment to community.
Their experience was animated by the question: How does an “I” become a “We”? Portland magazine asked the pilgrims to share their memories and impressions. From short, inspiring lectures delivered on their tour bus to private reflections and prayers, what came in was a rich tapestry of moments—humble, challenging, holy—that serve as a testament to the staying power of Blessed Basil Moreau’s vision of co-discipleship.
You can learn that half of infinity is still infinite. That your body can trick its own pain receptors. That colors exude energy. That addiction to devices demonstrably diminishes our humanity. That just two kinds of gears make everything on any vehicle possible. That great singers are physics experts. That a tiny piece of plastic illuminates all the light we cannot see. That the original Rosie the Riveter was a composite of a woman’s face on a man’s body. And perhaps the biggest “aha” of all: that every single one of these facts is inextricably linked to the others.
Karen Eifler Director of the Garaventa Center and professor of education
The Holy Cross charism of interdependence teaches us that we are all connected and beloved in the sight of God, that we are never to consider brothers and sisters as “other” or lesser. The tremendous and tragic loss of life represented by these spots is a visceral example of what happens when we lose sight of that lesson.
My late father enlisted in the army and started boot camp after his high school graduation. He was in training when D-Day took place. He never saw combat and felt like he missed out on defending his country like the other brave soldiers. Some were his friends who never returned. His army job was to process the honorable discharges once the war was over. He was obsessed with Omaha Beach and D-Day movies. He always wanted to visit. The day I stood on that beach and heard stories about the bravery, fear, bloodshed, and determination so many years ago, was overcome with sadness and joy. He was always brave to me.
Gregory Pulver Associate professor of drama
This cloistered Benedictine community of women is a vivid example of the “source material” that Moreau drew upon in laying out the original Constitutions. The Congregation of Holy Cross draws from the local culture, so there is a Benedictine strain, notably a balance of apostolic work with prayer. The visit was also a beautiful way to explore and experience the eclectic spiritualities that comprise Catholicism.
On the first day there, Sr. Cecile, OSB, gave us a tour of the monastery and said that we are all called to be saints. This was a challenge for me. I don’t know many people who aspire to sainthood. I think of someone like Mother Theresa, people who led their lives beyond themselves for no personal gain. It seems almost impossible to achieve. Later that evening, I brought my questions to Fr. Jim Gallagher, CSC, and he encouraged me to think about saint hood in a different way. He spoke about his grandmother, who he thinks is a saint. She isn’t famous, but to him, sainthood is answering the call to live a good life. I feel a lot more hopeful about the idea, as if it could be a challenge and an aspiration.
Brian Fabien Dean of the Shiley School of EngineeringAlthough raised Catholic, I had never attended Complines or any type of daily prayer. Each night at St. Benôit we were invited to join the sisters as they used their collective voices to thank God for the day, asking for God’s grace and love in holding them through the night, whatever that night should bring. Each evening increased my peace in the certainty of those voices lifting up the same words of gratitude and acceptance. I grew to appreciate the calming effect of this meditative evening ritual that tethered my wandering mind to the moment. Sr. Cecile shared with us that, after many years at the monastery, she began to see God’s presence in the shifting light of the chapel. I sought that light and noticed the different ways it filtered through the stained glass at 7:10-ish each evening. But I also saw the light in this collective of women; in their intentional choice to pray, live, and work together; in their melody; in the way they tended to animals and humans alike; in their deep compassion and their expression of their spirituality through ritual; in their care and devotion to one another. The light streamed in, but it also seemed to be refracted outward, this collaboration of women altering its path, giving it shape and structure.
Christi Hancock Professor of historyA pilgrimage destination for 1500 years, this visit allowed the group to connect to the venerable traditions of Christian pilgrimage, an entirely different expression of prayer.
I suspect that there are places on this planet where the veil between humanspace and God-space is so thin that you almost exist in both realms at once; Mont Saint-Michel is such a place.
CRYPT CHAPEL IN CHARTRES CATHEDRAL Mother Mary of the Seven Dolors came here to pray when Pope Gregory XVI was considering approving her new community of Marianite Sisters of Holy Cross. These Marianites are one of three orders of women associated with the Congregation of Holy Cross.
Nicole Hanig, associate professor, director of vocal studies, performed Poulenc’s “Priez pour paix” in this chapel. Below is a translation of the closing lines:
Pray untiringly, we beg of you:
Pray for peace, the true treasure of joy!
Fr. Basil Moreau founded this parish church in 1857, twenty years after his fledgling community was up and running. Moreau is interred in the crypt there.
In the likeness that’s carved into his crypt’s stone top, Moreau faces left, he faces us, because he’s asking us,
“What will you do, then, to bring light and hope outside these walls? How will you serve? What actions will you take towards healing?”
And to me, “How will you teach and how will you lead so that others will know the joy of teaching, learning, wondering, leading, serving?”
These are action verbs, and these become action items on our to-do lists, but they are not things we check off because they are done. We are called to the promise of this work because it creates change for eternity, not just for today. We are called, maybe instructed, to look around and find out who needs us most, and to go to them. Our work is not done, and I finally understand, years later, something Fr. Bill Beauchamp once said: “When you pray, move your feet.”
Our work here is a prayer, and Moreau asks us, with a glance over his left shoulder, to keep walking.
Portland magazine would like to thank the pilgrims: Eric Anctil, Karen Eifler, Brian Fabien, Fr. Jim Gallagher, CSC, Christin Hancock, Nicole Hanig, Andrew Guest, Herbert Medina, Gregory Pulver, Shaz Vijlee, Shannon Mayer, Steve Mayer, Stephanie Salomone, Heidi Senior, Casey Shillam.
How an early struggle with words—along with two heroic reading specialists—paved the way for a young educator’s teaching philosophy.
BY CLAIRE BREIHOLZ ILLUSTRATION BY JAMIE LETOURNEAU
I DON’T THINK that I was fully aware that the Reading Room was remedial because we were always having fun. Mrs. Anderson and Mrs. Botkin were always throwing parties. Sometimes the parties involved words and hats; sometimes they involved “Flying Tootsies” (Tootsie Rolls tossed in the air as a form of celebration).
Outside of the Reading Room, words were painful. They were traps.
It didn’t help that my sister, Camille, three years younger, had outpaced me. The pain of reading seemed only to belong to me. My mom, a teacher herself and dedicated to improving my reading, would have me read to her at night. I crawled through simple books with rhymes like “Bill” and “hill.” When the words didn’t come out right, Camille would sometimes correct my mistakes.
In the Reading Room—which I frequented from ages six to nine—I somehow didn’t care about making mistakes. I even took risks.
I don’t know why I picked a book about Pompeii—I think I chose it at random—but I do remember the book changing my life. In my mind I became a newscaster, reading and reporting on the disaster with Mrs. Anderson and Mrs. Botkin as my captive audience. “Once there was a town named Pompeii. Say: pom-PAY,” I exclaimed in my best reporter voice. “Near the town there was a mountain named Vesuvius. Say: veh-SOO-vee-us.” Mrs. Anderson and Mrs. Botkin’s explosions of laughter gave me confidence; my usual red-hot embarrass ment was replaced with pride. Turns out Pompeii...Buried Alive! was the book that unlocked my confidence to read. As I persisted, as I built my confidence, words and stories took me to places I never imagined I’d visit. I read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Little House on the Prairie series over and over and over again until the story was part of me. Like me, Laura was a sister, and like me, Laura was determining her place in the world. With every move, Laura’s pioneer family persisted and adapted to new environments, and they always stuck together. As I grew older, the characters
and authors expanded. I’d confer with these fictional and author friends: What would Toni Morrison say? What would Juror 8 think of Ray Hinton’s experience on death row?
Now, as an English teacher myself, I aim to create my own Reading Room, inspired by my reading heroines, Mrs. Anderson and Mrs. Botkin. I have, on occasion, worn a themed outfit to class and celebrated with flying Hi-Chews. The lessons—from persistence to fun to laughter—that grew from the learning environment my teachers created are at the very core of my pedagogy. I am the struggling reader and writer. I know what it feels like to be trapped by words, but I also know what it feels like to be freed by them.
I now understand that stumbling over words is not shameful. When I teach Romeo and Juliet to my ninth graders, we read it aloud as a class, and boy do we stumble. The Elizabethan language tries to stop us—sometimes it succeeds. But we struggle together. There is no shame culture when reading aloud in my class. We all make mistakes—especially me. By the third act, I usually have a waiting list of students lined up to read Romeo, the Nurse, and Tybalt. And by the end of the play, practically everyone has volunteered to read. At the end of the school year, the vast majority report that Romeo and Juliet was their favorite unit.
I love teaching reading because reading unlocks the world—even if the key doesn’t open the door at first. I tell my students to find what they love—pioneers? social justice? aliens? Minecraft?—the subject doesn’t matter. When you read what you love, you will love what you read.
Mount Vesuvius—of all the subjects—led me to my reading life and to my career. A copy of Pompeii...Buried Alive!—a high school graduation gift from Mrs. Anderson—sits in my class room to remind me where I started.
CLAIRE BREIHOLZ ’20 teaches English classes at Jesuit High School in Portland. She earned a BS in Secondary Education and English from University of Portland.
motion, she combed her fingers through Norris’s hair. The stiff curls transformed into soft, volu minous waves.
“You can see the color on the top and the edges,” Brown said. She gave Norris a hand mirror.
“It’s starting to look really cute,” Norris replied, admiring her reflection.
BY ROSETTE ROYALE PHOTOS BY JESSE ROWELL JR.FIVE DAYS A week, the first customer usually rolls into Dean’s Beauty Salon and Barber Shop as early as 6 a.m., so it was no surprise that, by 10 a.m. on a recent Saturday, the shop pulsed with life. Near the front windows, hair dryers roared. Toward the back wall, water whooshed down a shampoo bowl, hairdresser-talk for the sink where clients get a scalp massage and hair rinse. In an adjoining room, barber shears buzzed, and over the speakers, old-school R&B singers crooned about love, family, and pride.
Amid the hubbub, Kimberly K. Brown chatted with her aunt Kay Dean Toran ’64. The pair discussed plans to meet in a couple days, but what went unsaid was what drew them there: Dean’s is a family business, one that’s occupied the same one-story brick building in Portland’s Albina neighbor hood since 1956. It’s the oldest Black-owned salon in Portland, maybe even in all of Oregon. Brown and Toran have spent much of their lives inside the walls of 213-215 NE Hancock Street, growing up near barber brushes and pick combs, Marcel irons and hair clips.
Once they confirmed their plans, Toran left, the bell on the door ringing behind her, and Brown focused on straightening up her styling station. She kept at it for several minutes and then walked across the salon and tapped the shoulder of a customer who sat under a hair dryer. Brown lifted the dryer’s bonnet-hood that covered Janice Norris’s head.
“You’re dry,” Brown said. “C’mon.” She turned off the machine.
Back at Brown’s station, Norris sank into the styling chair. Shiny strands of her hair were wrapped around large blue rollers. Working gently, Brown pulled each roller free, and Norris’s hair sprang back and sat atop her head in shiny, dark brown coils.
“Make my curls look great,” Norris said.
Above her mask, Brown’s eyes focused, and, using a practiced, steady
For several minutes after Brown finished, Norris remained in the styling chair as they talked about their lives. Part of their rapport came with the territory—“I talk for a living,” Brown joked. “I just do hair on the side.” But they share a long history, too: Brown has been doing Norris’s hair for thirtyeight years, longer than any of her other clients. And they go back even further. Brown’s mother used to style Norris’s mother’s hair. Now, Norris’s two daughters are clients. “One’s married, moved away,” Norris said. “But when she comes into town, she comes to Dean’s.” Her other daughter, who lives nearby, can come more frequently.
“They also come for the community,” Norris said, “where you can talk about, you know, what’s hap pening in the world, what’s happening in our cities.”
Ask anyone who comes to Dean’s to share their thoughts about what’s happening in the city, and they’ll tell you the same: Portland has changed. Of course, a similar claim could be said of just about anywhere. But what they see around Dean’s, in the place where they grew up, hurts. The gentrifica tion, the dwindling number of Black homeowners, the hollowing out of community. The changes in the area, particularly around Dean’s, have been acute. Yet somehow, as rents have skyrocketed, as new developments have shot up, as neighbors have been forced out, as COVID-19 has stuck around, Dean’s has remained. How?
Perhaps it’s tied to the deep meaning barber shops and beauty parlors carry in many Black communities. “It’s a safe place for Black people,” Brown reflected, “but it’s also a very sacred place for Black women. It’s the only place we have that’s ours.”
This importance has been validated by the U.S. government. Earlier this year, the building that houses Dean’s was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In a 58-page application, a team of nominators asserted the site deserved designation because it not only represented “a financially successful Black-owned business,” but it had also embodied “a safe, welcoming gath ering space for its clients within Lower Albina’s postwar African American community.”
Of course, in some historic places, history continues to be made—and, days later in Brown’s home, Toran, the unofficial family historian, shared how the shop that still runs today grew out of the dreams and determination of two modest people: her parents, Benjamin and Mary Rose Dean.
EVERY DREAM BEGINS somewhere, and Toran said the dream that led to a shop in Portland began in her parents’ hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. There, while a junior at A.H. Parker High School, patriarch Benjamin read about the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the momentous journey in the early 1800s from the Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean and back again. Clark’s descriptions of Mt. Hood and the Columbia River con tained such beauty, they captivated the teenager. Benjamin told Toran that, at the time, he remembered thinking, “One day, I’m going to see that.”
His desire to travel out West gained traction in the early 1940s, when, in response to the United States’ war effort, construction mogul Henry J. Kaiser opened shipyards in North Portland, Swan Island, and Vancouver, Washington. When word of potential jobs in the Northwest spread to the Southeast, Benjamin sensed an opportunity for his wife and three children, the youngest of whom was Toran.
Job-based opportunities had long been on the mind of Mary Rose. She’d attended the same high school as Benjamin, where, along with learning about Lewis and Clark, students were taught the importance of Black people owning businesses. Mary Rose took that lesson to heart. A licensed beautician, she’d graduated from a local branch of the Madam C.J. Walker Schools of Beauty Culture, founded by the legendary Black entrepreneur whose business acumen turned her into the country’s first self-made female millionaire.
Toran said that, as a beautician, her mother “always believed she would be able to anchor the family’s financial resources on that Black business, while my dad had a job outside the home.” Not only did that job prove to be outside the home, it was also outside Alabama. Heeding the call he felt
as a teen, Benjamin, in 1943, drove to the Northwest with Mary Rose’s sister and brother-in-law. They settled in Vancouver, where Benjamin began work as a shipyard welder. Several months later, Mary Rose and the children boarded a train and followed Benjamin to a place they’d never been. While they may have been four adults and three children, the Deans and their relatives were part of a much larger exodus known as the Great Migration, a decades-long mass migration that transformed the country.
From roughly 1910 to 1970, some six million Black people bid farewell to the South, with its devious, deadly Jim Crow-era practices, and set out for new frontiers, where they could soak up, as writer Richard Wright pro claimed, “the warmth of other suns.” Many chose New York City, Washington, D.C., Detroit, Chicago, even Los Angeles, where relatives had already gone. But some, like the Deans, didn’t follow others. They blazed their own trail and sought the “sun” of the Pacific Northwest.
Tragically, many of the millions who fled racism in one part of the country found it waiting for them elsewhere. U.S. Census figures reveal that in 1850, the year before Portland was incorporated, 821 people called the city home and only four of them were Black. Oregon became a state in 1859, and, in the years that immediately preceded its admission, racist policies of exclusion ensured few Black people would reside in the state. The result was clear decades later: By 1940, 305,000 people lived in Portland and only 2,000 were Black.
Even so, the sun’s warmth still broke through, thanks in part to the Emergency Shipbuilding Program. The Black population swelled. By 1944, more than 20,000 Black people lived in and around the state’s largest city.
For their first few years in the Pacific Northwest, the Deans lived in a wartime housing project in Vancouver called Bagley Downs. Then the family moved into Portland, where Benjamin worked as a janitor at the Federal Reserve Bank, while Mary Rose, licensed in a new state, did hair. By devoting one salary to cover expenses, they were able to dedicate the second salary to savings. They used those savings to buy a house at 121 NE Hancock Street (Mary Rose’s sister and brother-in-law settled nearby). The house, which came furnished and included an upright piano, cost $950. They paid for it in cash, said Toran. Mary Rose opened a beauty salon in the basement, and Toran remembers the salon floor being lain with linoleum. “It was a onechair shop,” Toran said. “That’s where she really built the business.”
Proudly Christian, Benjamin and Mary Rose were also diligent, and they worked hard to overcome everyday obstacles to ensure a strong and secure future. The parents continued to put aside one of their salaries, and years later, they dipped into those savings again to buy a smaller house next door. Their second house cost $250. To the east of that second house sat a vacant lot, which seemed the perfect place for a stand-alone shop. But purchasing a vacant lot and paying to construct a building on it was sig nificantly more expensive than buying land with a completed house. Who, they wondered, would offer a business loan to a Black family so they could fulfill their dream?
IN TRUTH, BY the time the Deans moved into Portland, their options for where they could live and buy property were already limited. Not long before their arrival, in the 1930s, a new program offered government-insured mortgages to homeowners across the country, with the aim of forestalling a wave of foreclosures that might follow the Great Depression. And it worked—but over time, the parameters outlining who qualified for those mortgages became more restrictive. The federal government established the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, which created color-coded maps to depict the perceived financial risk of an area. Areas believed to be the most financially risky were designated in red: a practice now known as redlining. Many redlined areas were neighborhoods where Black people lived, which destroyed the ability of countless Black families to acquire mortgages.
One area in Portland open to Black homeowners, and therefore the Dean family, was Albina. Housing stock in this section of northeast Portland was tight—and became more so after May 1948, when a flash flood in nearby Vanport, the country’s largest wartime housing project and Oregon’s second most populous city, displaced thousands of Black families. Many migrated to an already crowded Albina.
Yet even as the area served as the cradle of Portland’s Black postwar community, families still found their entry into the neighborhood blocked by discriminatory practices. Aspirational homeowners sometimes pursued alternative means to obtain properties, such as tapping a white acquaintance, someone they may have known through a job or family connection, to act on their behalf. In such a scenario, a white person would buy a home, then sell it directly to a Black family they knew. Yet procuring a bank loan to purchase a lot and construct a building, even for a working-class Black family like the Deans, who already lived in Albina, was trickier.
This reality did little to deter the family, even when the bank Benjamin frequented denied his loan request. Instead, he and Mary Rose discussed their plans. He spent his nights in the family’s dining room, drafting blueprints for a future shop two doors down, while Toran watched, fascinated. When she eventually asked where he learned drafting, his answer was swift. “Parker High School taught us everything,” he said.
And perhaps part of that “everything” was to be alert for opportunity. As Mary Rose continued to see customers in the basement salon, Benjamin, by then a licensed barber, cut hair at a nearby barbershop. One day at work, he noticed a flyer on the floor advertising business loans. After being rejected by his own bank, could this be the help they needed?
Benjamin followed his intuition and took his blueprints to the loan office on the flyer, where he was asked to fill out an application. Benjamin knew that to list both Dean family homes was a risk, because if something went wrong with the loan, his family could lose everything. He made a calculated decision: He’d only list one property. Of course, this wasn’t the whole truth, but with nowhere else to turn, he needed to ensure that his family always had a home.
When the loan officer asked if the application contained all current prop erties, Benjamin said yes. They agreed upon a $10,000 loan with a two-year repayment plan. And with that, the officer approved the application.
Then the officer told Benjamin he knew Benjamin owned a second house; he knew Benjamin had withheld that information. But the officer said he understood why Benjamin had made that choice. He shared that in his tra dition—he was Jewish—safeguarding the family was paramount. “I knew you were protecting your family,” the officer said. “And that is the reason why I know you will pay this loan back.”
This was a story Benjamin told to everyone, Toran said, as a way of showing how people of different races and faiths could work together to improve lives and strengthen communities. Benjamin had been aware that Black and Jewish people had often been allies in the fight for civil rights. Now that allyship was personal. He and Mary Rose worked tirelessly to pay off the loan in two years.
But now that they had a loan, they had to build the salon. “My dad and my mom knew that to get this together,” Toran said, “to be able to do this, they were going to have to rely on the Black professionals in our community.” They called on an electrician, a plumber, and others. By the time the wires were run, the water line connected, the fixtures complete and the styling chairs set in place, it was 1956—and northeast Portland had a new Black hair shop.
While it’s customary now for anyone to enter a unisex salon, during that era, barbershops and beauty salons did not share spaces (whether this was due to local regulations or social customs isn’t clear). To accommodate this practice, the building’s interior was split in two, with barbershop clients entering through the west door and salon clients through the east. (An interior doorway adjoining both spaces was constructed in 1977.) Outside, a sign projected from the front brick wall: Dean’s Barber Shop Beauty Salon.
By the time the wires were run, the water line connected, the fixtures complete, and the styling chairs set in place, it was 1956—and northeast Portland had a new Black hair shop.
DEAN’S LOCATION PLACED it in the heart of a thriving Black neighborhood, and within walking distance were grocery stores, a tavern, a nightclub, a BBQ joint, a doctor’s office, even a funeral parlor. Business boomed. At the shop’s peak, Mary Rose had three beauticians working for her, and Benjamin had the same number of barbers working for him. Toran recalled it was a well-known neigh borhood gathering spot. “It wasn’t like church, and it wasn’t like a party,” she said. “It was a place to go: the center of attention in Northeast Portland.”
Life, and business, flourished. The Deans were now raising four children. Mary Rose and Benjamin took their family on day trips to the Pacific coast; they drove cross country to visit relatives in Alabama and see other places with vibrant Black communities, Toran said.
As she continued recounting her family’s history, her older sister and Brown’s mother, Gloria, entered the room and listened in. Gloria didn’t speak, but her eyes sparkled and grew moist as the tale unfolded.
Seated nearby was Brown, who remembered being young and taking some of those cross-country journeys with her grandparents Benjamin and Mary Rose, whom she called Papa and Nana. Brown said Mary Rose wanted them to witness Black folks creating success all over the nation. “It wasn’t just Portland,” Brown’s grandmother reminded her. “[There] was the surrounding world, the surrounding country where Black people were doing as well or even better.”
Though in many places, some Black people struggled. Back in Oregon, Benjamin visited Black prisoners in the state penitentiary, and when some obtained a barber license while incarcerated, he hired them after their release to work at Dean’s. On numerous Thanksgivings, Toran said it wasn’t unusual for unknown people to be seated with them at the table. If a Dean child asked why, Mary Rose would reply, “They didn’t have any place to go.”
When it came time for Toran to consider where she’d go for col lege, she felt drawn to Howard University, a historically Black university in Washington, D.C. With Howard being so far away, her parents suggested an alternative: If Toran attended school for two years in Oregon, they would cover her tuition; then she could go wherever she wanted. Toran agreed, and following in her brother’s footsteps, she attended the University of Portland. There, she bonded with other Black women students and relished the open debate in classrooms. Instead of staying two years, she graduated four years later with a B.A. in liberal arts with a focus on sociology, psychology, and philosophy.
But change was inevitable. Transportation and urban renewal projects displaced countless Black residents in Albina. Shops closed; neighbors left. Through it all, Dean’s hung tough. Then in 1979, Mary Rose passed away. By this point, Benjamin was semi-retired, and the beauty parlor’s operation was transferred to Toran’s older sister, Gloria (she smiled when she heard her name mentioned). After Benjamin’s death in 1996, Gloria ran the entire business. When she could no longer run the shop, Dean’s was taken over by her daughter Brown.
Toran said that, seen through the lens of history, the shop stands as the personification of her parents. “That’s what the shop says to me today: That they realized their dream and it lives today.”
Brown agreed, adding that her grandmother stressed not only a sense of ownership in the business, but also the need for its continued stewardship. “She would say stuff like, ‘Well, you know, this is your shop. This is the family shop,’” Brown recalled. “‘You have to take care of this right here, because this is who we are.’”
THAT SENSE OF caring had been evident in the shop days before, on that active Saturday morning.
After Brown had finished the hair of her longest client, she turned to her next customer, Sharon Nickleberry Rogers, who sat under another hair dryer. Rogers has a standing appointment, every other Saturday, 9 a.m. As soon as Rogers sat in Brown’s styling chair, she and Brown started talking, the conversation flowing as it shifted topics: paying for overpriced plane seats, racist movies, watching racist movies while sitting in overpriced plane seats, Covid. They discussed a local chef who planned an event to honor Juneteenth, the recently designated federal holiday that commemorates June 19, 1865, when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, received word they were free, two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The event was called “Feed Black Portland.” Oxtails were on the menu.
Rogers estimated that she and Brown have known each other some 50 years, since the third grade. She has been coming to Dean’s for decades, and when she thought about the gentrification that’s gripped the neighborhood, the loss of generational wealth, she shook her head. “Today, you can’t afford to buy a house in northeast Portland,” Rogers said.
Yet northeast Portland is where Dean’s sits, so she returns to this brick building in this sec tion of the city every other week. For as long as she can remember, Dean’s has been a pillar in the community. “It’s nice to know it’s still here,” she said.
Once Rogers left, it was Brown’s turn to get her hair done. She was heading to a baby shower for her second grandchild, and she wanted to look nice. Brown left her styling station and sat in Sylvia Riley’s chair. Riley has worked at Dean’s for 15 years. Riley’s specialty is braiding, and while Brown had tended to Rogers, Riley had braided someone’s hair with a speed and dex terity that seemed implausible (“It’s not in your wrist, it’s not in your arm, but these three fingers,” she’d explained, wriggling her thumb, pointer, and middle fingers). But Brown didn’t want braids. She wanted waves.
From a canister at her station, Riley pumped out a dollop of foam wrap, a liquid settling lotion that turns to foam when aerated. With her left hand, she spread foam on Brown’s hair; with her right, she used a white, fine-tooth comb to con tour the damp hair. The two talked about the baby shower and within 15 minutes, Brown’s hair was a study in geometric principles, a coiffure constructed of uniform, rippling waves. Brown stood up from Riley’s chair. She gath ered her items. Soon, she’d be with family, though being in Dean’s, she knew, was being with family as well.
“It’s like I tell people all the time,” she’d say later. “When I walk in the shop in the morning, first thing I do, I say, ‘Hey, Nana and Papa. Thank you for looking out for the shop for me.’ Then I keep it moving.”
And even as change moves the world around the shop, Dean’s won’t be moving from its spot anytime soon.
ROSETTE ROYALE is a Seattle-based writer and storyteller who focuses on stories of culture and place. He’s working on a memoir about being a Black queer person who goes bushwhacking in the Olympic temperate rain forest.
“When I walk in the shop in the morning, first thing I do, I say, ‘Hey, Nana and Papa. Thank you for looking out for the shop for me.’ Then I keep it moving.”
ON A RECENT walk down to the Franz River Campus, where construction of UP’s newest building has been hum ming along all summer, I spotted a male osprey circling overhead, performing his mating ritual, a dizzying sky dance accompanied by a screeching chorus of “Pick me! Pick me!” The silence of his potential mate, hidden somewhere in the trees above me, suggested she just wanted to be friends. Off in the distance the St. Johns Bridge rose like a queen surveying her realm, and below it the Willamette River was so calm and peaceful it seemed charmed still. Idyllic scenes
like this are precisely what the E. L. Wiegand Environmental Laboratory will enable professors to study with their students, as they continue to search for ways to protect, preserve, and restore natural habitats.
“It’s going to be transformative for us,” Steve Kolmes told me, with the cautious optimism of a scientist trained to mea sure his dreams against reality. As the newly retired, outgoing department chair, he’s particularly thrilled to see the building so close to the finish line. He co-founded the Environmental Studies program back in 1999, well before most of UP’s peer institutions had a similar course of study, and it exemplifies the school’s commitment to interdisciplinary learning. In addition to a degree in environmental science, the program offers an ethics and policy concentration. As a discipline it explores the complex ways we relate to the world, how we influence our environments and how they influence us in turn.
“You could think of it as an anti-discipline in this way,” said professor Norah Martin, the incoming department chair.
“It takes all these moving parts—science, philosophy, and policy—working together to figure out how to solve the prob lems we face.”
Kolmes will greet the lab with a mix of pride and relief. It’s as though he and his longtime colleagues had spent their careers assembling the edges of a beautiful puzzle, but they were always missing one piece, a piece big enough to fill the center: a devoted teaching lab. Having secured that space, and an exciting young faculty to take the reins of the department, they can look upon the whole puzzle and call it good.
“We’re one of the fastest growing departments in the College of Arts & Sciences,” he added. “And it’s hardly sur prising. Students nowadays recognize that climate change is the existential challenge for their generation. Good lab space like what we’re getting is only going to continue to attract good students. Our goal has always been to give them everything they’ll need to meet the challenges their future depends on.”
For years the program has been making do with a small computer lab and a modest space in Romanaggi Hall they outgrew long ago. Running experiments has required a scrappy MacGyver mindset—necessity is the mother of invention, after all. But as a result, students have been doing much of their research out in the field. This is an excellent, and necessary, means of knowledge production, of course, but the up-to-date equipment that professors have now will help them teach a new generation of scientists how to craft a reliable, sophisti cated picture of reality, one they can consult while making assessments and predictions.
“With the lab in place, and the flume,” Kolmes said, “we can check all the boxes.”
THE FLUME? YOU’D be forgiven for thinking, as I did, that the university had invested in one of those rollercoasters you ride in a crudely fashioned canoe, the kind of ride that ends with everyone inside gleefully soaked. Turns out a “flume” is also what scientists use to study how rivers move and change over time, what they call “fluvial geomorphology.” It was, of course, the arrival of one of these apparatuses—and not a private Splash Mountain—that had Kolmes and assis tant professor Kristin Sweeney, whose brainchild it was to bring one to campus, so excited. And it’s just as impressive. This state-of-the-art piece of lab equip ment will give undergraduates here access to research and observational opportunities they’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else on the West Coast. It’s a tremendous boon for a school UP’s size.
Designed and manufactured by the Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory (SAFL, rhymes with “baffle”) in Minneapolis, the flume is a customized piece of experimental machinery. SAFL is part of the University of Minnesota, but its influence stretches far beyond where it sits on the banks of the Mississippi. Its engineering arm produces some of the most sophisticated, cutting-edge devices for studying fluid mechanics in the country, if not the world. What the Swiss are to watches and Army knives, SAFL is to aquatic gadgetry. Typically, they collaborate with a scientist, engineer, or research team to build a bespoke mechanism that will test a specific idea or hypoth esis, an instrument that’s programmed to gather a particular kind of data or make a specialized sort of measurement. But UP’s flume is a little different.
“While still research-grade, this is more of an educational flume,” said Erik Steen, the SAFL engineer heading up the project. “It has to be really flexible.”
You can think of the flume as a cake slice of a river, one that our professors can fully control. To grasp why they’d need a segment of a river, it helps to know what they’re studying. The simple answer is sediment. The movement of sediment. That’s what causes rivers, and the landscapes they move through, to change over time. When Kristin Sweeney teaches her geomorphology class and lab, she likes to connect the shape of larger landscapes all the way back to the way individual grains of sediment move.
Paying attention to a single piece of gravel sounds a lot like a Buddhist exercise, and in doing so, scientists, like monks, see
infinitely more than simple pebbles and specks of dirt. They see time. How the Earth has evolved over mindboggling amounts of time.
Instead of playing her lab students YouTube videos of gravel bumping along a riverbed, Sweeney will now be able to show them in person, providing a necessary step in the scientific process, the ability to test formulas and ask questions of the river. It’s not just one river, either, not just “the Willamette” or “the Columbia.” With the ability to tailor how much water flows through the flume and how fast, as well as the amount and size of sediment in the water and on the bed, they will be able to create a number of fluvial environments to observe and experiment on.
“It’s sort of a jack of all trades,” Steen said.
You can think of the flume as a cake slice of a river, one that our professors can fully control.
The suspended load is sediment borne along by the water’s turbulence; the bedload is all the material that rolls, slides, and hops along the stream bed.
The data acquisition carriage has a 3D laser scanner, an optical rangefinder, and a sonar rangefinder to monitor all the activity in the channel.
Users control the amounts of water and sediment that enter the flume from the headbox.
LET’S TAKE A step back and try to wrap our heads around what this contraption looks like. For the flume’s chassis, its main body, imagine a massive aquarium nearly forty feet long, longer by a hair than the average city bus. To allow for easy observation of the channel, it will live on a heavy-duty, waist-high platform. Pity that poor platform: the channel can hold about two thou sand gallons of water, which clocks in at a whopping 16,660 pounds, or roughly five grown hippopotami.
Functionally speaking, the flume is an eco-conscious closed system. After the water and sediment flow through the channel, the sediment is separated from the water, which is funneled into one of three 750 gallon holding tanks. There it’ll wait to be pumped back through the recirculation pipe and reenter the channel, keeping the experiment going. The flume’s peak flow rate, how fast the water moves through it, is 2,244 gallons per minute. Consider, for context, that the rate of a typical household shower is six-to-twelve gpm. Your faucet’s about three. The most powerful fire hydrants in the land, the ones with blue tops, pump out 1,500 gpm. 2,244 gpms would fill your bathtub faster than you can spell “Mississippi.”
And there, in a nutshell, you have the basic mechanics of an open channel flume. Impressive, sure, especially at this
scale. But what truly sets a SAFL flume apart from the field are all the high-tech bells and whistles that generate the scads of information that scientists need to make their picture of the world.
On the downstream end, the bedload sediment is filtered out and weighed in real time. And athwart the flume sits the data acquisition carriage, monitoring the action from above like a traffic helicopter. It has a 3D laser scanner that zaps the riverbed and produces point cloud images of the data it col lects, which look something like riverbeds painted by Georges Seurat. The second sensor is an ultrasonic rangefinder, which can be used to measure the slope of the water’s surface. Finally, there’s a sonar rangefinder that hangs suspended in the water, pings a single point on the floor—not unlike what a whale or dolphin does during echolocation—and records changes to that point over time. Unlike optical rangefinders, the sonar one works well even when the suspended load clouds the water. Take all these readings together and you get a rich, complex picture of a river’s behavior.
WITH THIS KNOWLEDGE in hand, scientists can make a whole host of predictions and recommendations for how best
to conserve rivers and their habitats. How will putting in or removing a dam affect sediment transport, upstream and down? How would either change conditions for the creatures that call the river home? And civil engineers, like associate professor Cara Poor, will be able use it as they explore new conservation techniques and demonstrate phenomena that students might not be familiar with, like the killer hydraulic jump.
“That’s when water goes over a dam or a weir and forms a dangerous standing wave at the bottom. [The flume] is going to be great for studying stream restoration, too,” Poor said. When a stream has been affected by a flood or excessive ero sion, engineers shore up the banks with rocks. “It’ll help us understand the size of rocks we need to use.”
And it’s no secret that decades of unchecked industrial activity filled the Portland Harbor with pollution. The city’s remediation efforts, along with the investment and efforts of UP, have gone a long way to cleaning up the mess. But there’s still work to be done.
“The sediment down there is almost completely contami nated,” Steve Kolmes said. “And its movement is one of the major issues for the city. Understanding how it’s moving is an important step in fixing the problem.”
Literature professors are fond of pointing out that rivers are symbols of change, of time passing and life taking its course. As Kolmes discussed how the flume sets the program up to do research-grade experiments and how fortunate it is that the lab is situated right on the banks of a river that students can go out and observe, it was easy to recall an adage like “No man steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” His voice seemed to swell with pride, with the satisfaction that comes with fulfilling a long-held ambition. The department he helped start more than two decades ago seems poised for something of a superbloom.
“We had Environmental Studies 1.0,” he said. “And now we’ve been staffing up with this young, exciting new faculty and it’s like Environmental Studies 2.0 is taking over. The lab and the flume, they complete the launch pad for the new faculty.”
What future is the flume bringing to campus? What exciting discoveries and collaborations will it lead to? What fresh pas sions will be seeded in the new lab? Only time will tell, as it ferries us around the next bend in the river.
CHESTON KNAPP is Portland magazine’s senior writer and associate editor.
Evan Petcoff ’48 recently celebrated his 100th birthday. To mark the occasion, the WWII veteran gathered with friends from near and far. Warmest wishes from everyone on The Bluff, Evan!
Jim Carleton ’59 wrote in with memories of tide pooling with his father, Blondel H. Carleton, who was a professor of biology at UP from 1948 to 1975. After reading Tara Prest holdt’s article about tide pools in our summer issue, he wanted to make sure that people know they can also do it in Boiler Bay. His father always brought home a five-gallon glass container of sea water for his lab, and when asked by a passerby what he was doing, he said, “Just draining the ocean.” The Boiler Bay’s Intertidal Research Reserve is just north of Depoe Bay.
This past summer the Buckley Center Gallery presented “Facing You,” a retrospective exhibit of artist Reed Clarke’s oil paintings.
Clarke graduated from UP in 1965 and took a roundabout path to his portrait work. While studying psychology at UP, he discovered writing and poetry, which led him to the pres tigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop for graduate school. While he was there, he also studied painting. Aware, as he says, that “an MFA and a dollar would buy you a cup of coffee,” he pursued a PhD in counseling and psychology, specializing in addiction treatment.
“I’ve always been interested in people, whether you use the term ‘therapy’ or ‘art’,” Clarke says.
After teaching and administering a study abroad program
at Oregon Episcopal School, he became a counselor in a community mental health program. He worked for many years for Providence Health Services.
In 2004, Clarke devoted himself full-time to painting.
Inspired by Renaissance painting and Rembrandt, Clarke is drawn to human form and expression. Sometimes his por traits are timeless; sometimes they are inspired by the world around him.
Even at seventy-five, he shows no signs of slowing down.
He quotes Michelangelo when describing his current artistic practice: “still, I am learning.”
AMANDA WALDROUPE is a journalist and writer based in Portland.
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David Stauffer ’74 and his wife, Laura (Nissinen) Stauffer ’83 celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary. Congrats on such a milestone!
This summer we heard from Barb Troxel ’81, ’84 , who retired from a fortyyear career as a nurse. A brush with cancer has left her feeling thankful for her time on The Bluff, and she shared memories of living in Villa Maria. She also recalled standing outside the dorm and watching the dual mushroom clouds of the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980. She went on to have a successful career as a Flight Nurse, flying missions to Yokota, Seoul, Okinawa, Elmendorf, and others, before entering private practice. We’re boomeranging all glad tidings your way, Barb!
David Atherton ’99 recently became the principal of Molalla High School in Molalla, OR. Since 2012, he has held the position of principal at Clear Creek Middle School and was assistant principal at Sam Barlow High School for six
Emmanuel Aquino ’13 received a 2022 Educator of the Year award for grades 6–8 from OnPoint Community Credit Union. He attributes his success to his time at UP and the School of Education. A bilingual educator, Aquino teaches 8th grade language arts and social studies in Spanish and English, with about half of his students being English lan guage learners. At Beaumont Middle School in Northeast Portland, he creates his own curriculum and translates his lessons. In the summer, he participates in planning insti tutes with other dual language teachers in PPS to align and develop his curriculum.
Aquino’s quiet nature, combined with high expectations, allows him to forge strong relationships with students and families. As many families struggled with food shortages during the pandemic, Aquino delivered boxes of groceries to students who didn’t have transportation. He works hard to communicate with parents, involving them in their child’s academic journey. When he identifies a struggling student, he works with his colleagues to develop a plan to help meet that student’s specific needs and also tutors them outside of school hours.
Part of his success in the classroom comes back to his goal of making his curriculum relevant to his students. He proactively answers the common question, “Why do I need to know this?” and consistently checks in with his students to ensure they are connecting with the material. Gaining his students’ perspective and feedback influences his teaching approach and provides him with an understanding of what each of his students needs to be successful.
years prior. Specializing in Language Arts, he has also taught at multiple Oregon high schools and has received several awards and grants for his service to education.
Dan Watson ’99 was recently promoted to CEO of Neil Kelly Company, the largest home improvement firm in the US. He previously served as the CFO for the company, which is celebrat ing its 75th anniversary this year. In addition to his work with Neil Kelly, Dan has served on the boards of the
Portland Children’s Museum, Portland Center Stage, and St. Mary’s Cathedral. He enjoys spending time in the great outdoors with his wife, Emily, and their three young children.
Tommy Pham ’09, MBA ’11 has been named on the Portland Business Journal
“40 Under 40” list for launching and serving as president of the Raiden Science Foundation. The Raiden Science Foundation was created to accelerate gene therapy development for UBA5 disorder, which his son suffers from. In an interview with Portland Business Journal Tommy says that finding a cure for UBA5 will “pave the way for personalized medicine for those suffering from rare diseases and offer hope and inspiration for families impacted today and tomorrow.”
Alyssa Veliz ’11, Lovett Harris ’12, and Marcus Carter ’09 helped pack the house to support their friend Walter ThompsonHernández ’09 when he was on campus to screen and discuss his short film, If I Go Will They Miss Me. (For more on the film and the event see page 3.) Their support was so appreciated!
We heard from Richy Carrillo ’13 that he married fellow alum O Catedrilla Carrillo ’13. They met in their very first college class at UP: Theology 101 taught by Fr. Charlie Gordon, CSC.
A recent article from The San Diego Union-Tribune detailed the experiences of Reid Buchanan ’16, focusing on his relationship to running and what led him to San Diego. Since his time running for the Pilots, he has made several running accomplishments, including becoming the first American to win the 12K Bay to Breakers in San Francisco since 1986 and finishing ninth at the 2021 Olympic Trials in the 10,000 meters. In the article, Reid expressed that his goal is to qualify for the marathon at the 2024 Olympics.
We recently learned that Jordan (Anderson) Evans ’16 and Steven Evans ’18 got married on August 6, 2022. Jordan works as a registered nurse at Portland VA Medical Center, and Steven is a marketing manager at 5G Open Innovation Lab. He also signed with the Portland Timbers Football Club during his time at UP. Congratulations to the newlyweds.
Rebecca (Dollar) Smith ’03,’17 , assistant professor of education, was recently awarded a Fulbright to study in Ecuador. While there, she and her husband, Hank Smith ’03, ’21 met up with Mario Vernaza ’73, an old friend of her mom’s (Peggy Palmesano Dollar ’73). She was grateful to be welcomed into his home, and it was clear to her that his memories and relationships from UP are deeply rooted and very much alive, just like hers. Thanks for sharing, Rebecca!
O Catedrilla was a nursing major and Richy studied communications while playing for Pilots men’s soccer from ’09 to ’12.
“This school is a major part of my life and I always tell people to apply,” Richy told us. They now have a young daughter named Alessandra.
Chris Jordan ’17 and Marissa Renda ’17 founded Benefit Pet Products their junior year and later partnered with Townie Shades founder Nick Ost ’16 in 2018. They originally started the business as a pitch idea for UP’s $100K Challenge Venture.
Today, Benefit Pet Products specializes in plantbased dog treats and supplements—uniquely formulated for dogs with sensitive diets and allergies in mind. They sell on Amazon, across west coast grocery stores, and soon on Chewy.com.
Elijah Jalil Paz Fisher ’18 recently received his MFA in acting from the University of Montana. For his final creative project, he wrote a performance piece called Screamin’ From the Zoo, which he’ll be performing for his high school alma mater. He developed four different characters based on versions of himself and played each. The piece culminates with all four coming together to sing a song called “Freedom.”
Whatever he goes on to do next, he’ll continue to push for freedom. For everybody, but also for all of his different selves.
Jesi Robison ’21 nabbed a dream job before she even grad uated—working on Guillermo Del Toro’s stop motion animated film of the beloved children’s story Pinocchio Robison became part of an international team of crafts people working on the film from Portland to Mexico to England. She worked hands-on with the film’s puppets, including as a “puppet wrangler.”
“When they’re animating the puppet, they’re doing a lot of extreme things,” Robison said. “Sometimes the armatures or the silicone don’t (withstand) the poses or expressions. Every so often, a puppet would break or tear.”
When such misfortune struck, she would ferry the pup pets—which ranged in size from a few centimeters to two or three feet—to the “puppet hospital” for repair.
The film sets Carlo Collodi’s 1883 novel in Fascist-era Italy, a different interpretation and setting than the Disney classic. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Del Toro said that, given the political setting, “The virtue Pinocchio has is to disobey. At a time when everybody else behaves as a puppet—he doesn’t.”
Robison worked on Pinocchio for two years, until pro duction wrapped in August. She now works for Portland Revels, as a props designer. Next up is the company’s Midwinter Revels show Andalusian Night: A Celebration of the Solstice. Instead of puppets, she works with the objects actors use on stage, all of which play a pivotal role in how a story’s told.
Amanda WaldroupeGrace Nguyen ’19 was named Overlake Medical Center’s DAISY of the Year 2022. The DAISY Foundation Award recognizes extraordinary nurses who go above and beyond their duties to help patients. Congratulations, Grace, for fulfilling Overlake’s mission of compassionate care for every life they touch.
Victor Rodriguez Valdovinos ’20 recently returned to Guatemala to participate in a surgical mission trip through Faith in Practice! While there he translated for patients during a triage, helping to set up around seventy surgeries in four days, with only three surgeons. Overall, he saw his role as that of a compassion ate nurse and a global citizen committed to providing healthcare to communities around Guatemala. Thanks for all that you do, Victor!
Sophie French ’22 has been signed by the Portland Thorns Football Club as a National Team Replacement player. This is her first professional contract after her two seasons playing with the Portland Pilots. As a Pilot, she made 27 appear ances and 11 starts as a defender for the women’s soccer team. She now plays as a defender for the Thorns with the jersey number 52. Congratulations to Sophie!
We were thrilled and touched to see so many women’s soccer alums in the stands at a recent game against the University of Oregon. A huge shout out to everyone who made the effort to be here, including Tracy Nelson, Ariel Viera, Rachel Lusby, Holly Pierce, Hannah Griffiths Boston, Noelle La Prevotte, Rachel Khaw, Hanna Armendariz, Rachael Rapinoe, Nicole Pratt, Emily Wooton, Joy Boswell, Angela Harrison, Jody Lim, Patti (DeVito) Morganson, Catherine Lester, Sophie French, Taryn Ries, Kelsy (Hollenbeck) Parker, Ruth Exley, Elsa Hume, and Cindy (Griff) Kappes . And let’s not forget the team’s fearless leader, Coach Michelle French. Pilot Pride runs deep!
Frank LaJoy ’47 passed away peacefully on June 21, 2022.
Born in La Grande, OR, Frank moved with his family to Portland and graduated from Roosevelt High School before enrolling at UP.
During WWII, he served in the Navy and returned to become valedictorian of his class and student body president. Frank met his wife, Mary, in 1947, and they raised five children together. He began a successful business career with Standard Insurance Company, where he was the Certified Life Underwriter. Frank was incredibly dedicated to his clients, who were always grateful of his attention and care.
Even long after retirement, he’d read the newspaper and if he saw that one of his clients had passed away, he’d call the surviving spouse to walk through the policy he had sold to them. His number one priority was his family, who will miss his support and generous spirit.
Joseph Galati ’50 died May 5, 2022, at ninety-six years old. Born in Southwest Portland, he served in the Navy’s Pacific Fleet during WWII. He studied mechanical engineering at UP. A devout Catholic, he met his wife at a Young Christian Workers dance and together they raised three children. As a craftsman, he reveled in building projects, includ ing a marvelous tree fort for his kids. He remained active well into his nineties, splitting wood, golfing, and tending to his prized
vegetable garden. He will be remembered for his devotion to his family and his steadfast faith.
Bruce Rogers ’50 passed away on June 23, 2022. Born in Portland, he attended Washington High School and UP, where he graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. He married his wife, Patricia, in 1960, and they had two daughters. Bruce worked at the Bonneville Power Administration for thirty years. Bruce enjoyed skiing, spending time at his cabin on Elk Lake, volunteering at the local elementary school, and serving on the United Methodist Church Extension Society.
Leonard “Len” Stoffer ’51 died peacefully at home on April 20, 2022, at the age of ninety-two. Len graduated from UP and served in the Army, before beginning his career at IBM. He went on to work for US Bank for thirty-five years, retiring as a vice president. He is survived by his wife, Mary, and five children.
L. Samuel “Sam” Miller ’54 died at home on August 19, 2022. Sam graduated from Burr & Burton Academy in Manchester, VT, and received his BA from the University of Portland, as well as a master’s in political science from UVM, where he also coached the alpine ski team. He and his wife, Mary, raised three sons and celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary in March. Sam had a lifelong
interest in history, politics, and outdoor activities and was an avid skier, fisherman and hunter, the love of which he passed on to his sons.
James Horace ’55 passed away in his sleep on July 9, 2022. Born in Chicago, IL, he became a proud UP Pilot, a lifetime financial supporter of the school, and a member of the VIP Chiles Center Premier Donor Club. After graduation, he became a successful electrical instru ments salesperson, before retiring in 2020. A lifelong bachelor, James enjoyed driving his Austin-Healy sports cars, traveling to Hawai'i with friends and family, and taking yearly excursions with a group of fellow UP alumni.
Bob Nottingham ’56 passed away peacefully on April 18, 2022, at the age of ninety-one. A Portland native, Bob attended the University of Oregon for his undergraduate education, and there met the love of his life, Hallie Williams. They were married for seventy years, and had three daughters, five grandchildren, and two greatgrandchildren. He graduated from UP with a degree in business administration and had a robust and exciting career with Freightliner before retiring in 1991. Bob will be remembered for his special gifts of sharing his knowledge with others and encouraging family and friends to try new things.
William “Bill” Owens ’56 passed away on July 20, 2022.
A graduate of Grant High School, he was awarded a track scholarship to UP, where he joined the AFROTC and the drill team. After graduation, he served as an Air Force Supply Officer. Bill went on to have a rich and varied forty-six-year career in sales and marketing.
He will be dearly missed by his wife, three daughters, two stepsons, twelve grandchildren, and eleven great-grandchildren.
Martin Arrigotti ’58 died peacefully on June 23, 2022, surrounded by his family at his home. Martin grew up in Portland and attended Central Catholic High School before enrolling at UP. He went on to get his degree in dentistry from the Universi ty of Oregon Medical School.
He practiced in NE Portland for over thirty years. Martin and his wife, Sharon, raised five children together, and he took an active part in their lives. He loved downhill skiing and, in retirement, enjoyed racing his 1964 Catalina, a car he’d bought brand new.
Eugene Comfort ’61 departed this world on June 21, 2022, after a lengthy battle with Alzhei mer’s disease. Eugene grew up in Portland and graduat ed from UP with a degree in industrial administration.
He met the love of his life, Catherine Manion ’60, on campus. He spent his career with Pacific Metal Company, where he ascended the corporate ranks, working beside his father for much of the time. He loved fishing,
classic cars, being outdoors, and tinkering. He will be remembered as a loving, devoted husband and a generous father and grandfather.
Vernon “Vern” Jones ’61 died on May 5, 2022. Vern grew up in Portland and attended Cleveland High School. After graduating from UP with a degree in engineering, he joined the Air Force and married Nancy O’Donnell. After his service, he flew for West Coast Airlines, which eventually became Delta. He retired in 1995 as the captain of a 757. Vern enjoyed wood carving, skiing, hunting, fishing, and golf, but he most loved spending time with his family and sharing his hobbies with his sons and grandchildren.
Michael McCoy ’61 passed away on July 16, 2022. He earned a BS in engineering physics from UP and a PhD in applied mathematics from Oregon State University. He was the chair of the mathematics department at UP from 1968 to 1973 and was a full-time professor. His work was used by organizations like Bonneville Power Adminis tration, Power Systems Research, and Becker Capital Management. He raised five children and will be remem bered for his love of solving real-world problems.
Richard “Dick” Cunningham ’62 passed away on June 3, 2022, at the age of eightythree. A Portland native, he attended Central Catholic High School before enroll ing at UP, where he studied music. A born teacher, Dick worked in public education for more than forty years, as a teacher, principal, and
superintendent. He coached cross-country, baseball, flag football, wrestling, and basketball. Dick loved to garden, play golf, read, go to the beach, and take pictures. But he loved his wife, Diane (Montgomery) Cunningham ’64 and nine children above all else. Please note Diane’s notice below. They passed away a mere 18 days apart.
Patricia Guss ’62 passed away on August 30, 2022. After graduating from UP, she served four years in the Peace Corps, in Honduras and Tonga. She then worked as a nurse with the Valley Migrant League, as an ICU nurse, a visiting nurse, and did volunteer hospice care. Pat was passionate about helping the less fortunate and regularly supported people in Honduras, as well as numerous other organi zations. In retirement, she joyfully served the homeless through a foot care and sack lunch program. She will be dearly missed by all those whose lives she touched, particularly her husband, Irvan, and daughters, Patti and Monica.
Daniel Bernard “Bernie” Harrington ’62 passed away of natural causes on November 10, 2021. Bernie grew up in Butte and served in the Air Force after high school. He went on to earn a BS in chemistry and zoology from UP and a PhD in anatomy from SUNY Syracuse. Years of brilliant professorship followed at NYU and Marquette. He helped raise two daughters and three stepchildren and was a devoted husband and father. He was a gifted singer and guitarist and will be remembered for his kindness and good humor.
Verna Gaul ’63, OSF of the Clare House, in Dubuque, IA, passed away on July 4, 2022.
She entered the Sisters of St. Francis on August 25, 1943, and made her final profession of vows on August 12, 1949. Sr. Verna received her bachelor’s degree in music education from University of Portland and her degree in library science from St. Cloud University in St. Cloud, MN.
She ministered as a teacher in Iowa at Remsen, Norway, Mapleton, Keota, Haverhill, Worthington, Guttenburg, St. Mary and St. Martin in Cascade, Granville, Sioux City, and Crescent City, CA. May she rest in peace.
Jeanne (Wren) Zerr ’63 passed away on April 14, 2022. Born in Cottonwood, ID, she graduated from UP with a degree in nursing.
She worked at Providence St. Vincent Hospital for more than fifty years, where she helped develop protocols for surgical patients with diabetes. In 2016, she was recognized for her lifelong achievements, particularly her dedication to the poor and vulnerable. With her husband, Elmer, she raised six children, serving as PTA president and Cub Scout leader. Her family, friends, and acquaintances will remember her as a kind, loving, strong, and resilient woman, whose hugs made you feel like everything would be ok.
Dennis “Denny” Bean ’64 passed away on December 12, 2021, at the age of seventy-nine. Born in Mt. Angel, he attended UP, where he was a pitcher on the Pilots baseball team. He went on to get a JD from Willamette College of Law and practiced in Oregon
for fifty years. Denny was a man of integrity and always tried to do the right thing. He was a master gardener and loved to fish, golf, and attend live sporting events of all kinds, especially when a family member was playing.
Dennis was an excellent father, grandfather, uncle, great-uncle, and friend, and he’ll be missed dearly.
Joan Brenner ’64 passed away peacefully on April 22, 2022, at the age of seventynine. Joan was born in Mineola, NY, and moved to Lake Oswego as a teenager. After attending UP, she worked as a high school English and humanities teacher for over thirty years. A devout Catholic, lifelong philanthropist, and dedicated volunteer, Joan will be remembered for her quick wit, love of teaching, prowess as a professional Blackjack dealer, and her ability to “tell it like it is.”
Diane (Montgomery) Cunningham ’64 passed away on June 21, 2022. An extremely gifted pianist at an early age, Diane studied music at UP, where she met the love of her life, Richard “Dick” Cunningham ’62 (please read his notice above). She went on to teach lessons and play for weddings, funerals, local events, and church services. She spent the bulk of her career in parish ministry, serving the marginalized and disadvantaged. A prolific writer, she published articles, essays, and poetry. She and Dick were married for fifty-nine years and raised nine children.
According to family lore, she had the ability to call dolphins whenever she went to the beach.
Our heartfelt prayers and condolences go out to the families of the following individuals. Requiescat in pace.
Robert Senko ’64 passed away peacefully at home on July 13, 2022. He graduated from Jesuit High School and earned an engineering degree from UP. Bob had a passion for flying that led him to a twenty-six-year career in the Air Force. He flew the A-1 in a tour to Vietnam, including flying on the SonTay raid in an attempt to rescue POWs, earning him a Silver Star. He married his wife, Marilyn, in 1964, and together they raised three children. For many years, he and Marilyn managed a vineyard on their property in Banks.
Florian Shasky ’65 passed away on June 26, 2022. A native Oregonian, Florian earned a BA from UP and an MA from the University of Washington. For years he was the head of special collections at Stanford’s Green Library. He went on to establish a practice in rare books and manuscripts and was the first person to create online and video catalogs. Florian shared his deep knowledge of English and passion for teaching when he joined the faculty of Sequoia High School. He loved to travel, particu larly with Donna McKinney.
Gwen Edwards ’67 died at her home on February 18, 2022, with her best friend and husband by her side. Gwen attended Alhambra High School in Martinez, CA, and graduated from UP with a BSN degree. She then began her career as an ICU nurse at OHSU. In 1968 she married her husband, Doug Edwards ’67, an Air Force fighter pilot. After twenty-four years of stateside and overseas living, Gwen and Doug settled in Vancouver, WA.
Gwen was a strong, creative, and striking woman, with boundless curiosity and passion for discovery. Gwen will be remembered for her boldness, zest for life, and enlightened worldview.
Robert James Clark ’68 passed away peacefully at home on June 21, 2022.
Bob attended Oregon State University and was a lifelong Beaver Believer, always decked out in orange and black on game days. He earned his MBA from UP and spent his career in the lumber industry. He loved spending time with his family at their cabin on Wauna Lake, their “slice of heaven.” His well-lived life exemplified kindness, devotion, hard work, humility, and faith.
Terrance “Terry” Finn ’68 left this Earth peacefully in his sleep on June 11, 2022. He was seventy-six. Born in Portland, Terry attended Central Catholic High School and graduated from UP with a BA in history. Terry met his future wife, Alicia, in 1972, and they celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary a week before he passed away. Together they raised three kids, his pride and joy.
Terry loved writing and published three memoirs. He will be remembered as a loyal friend, a lover of nature, and a doting father.
Barbara Nizich ’69 passed away on May 28, 2022, in Seaside, OR. She graduat ed from UP with a degree in chemistry and earned a master’s in Chinese medi cine from the Oregon College of Oriental Medi cine. A devout Catholic, she spent many hours volun teering for the poor through St. Vincent de Paul. Her
hobbies included traveling, gardening, sewing, baking pies, and cheering on all her children and grandchildren. She will be remembered most for her gentle spirit, her faith, and her devotion to her family.
John Teske ’70 died in his sleep in Mill Creek, WA, on April 14, 2022. John grew up in South Bend, IN, and went on to earn his degree in political science and business from UP. In 1975, he met his wife, Diane, and togeth er they raised two children. As an industrial engineer, Jack had a rewarding career in the aerospace industry, retiring from Boeing in Seattle. He was a loving father and husband.
Roy Reinhart ’71 passed away on April 26, 2022. Roy was a Level 2 Radio Engineer in the Coast Guard for twelve years. He served during both the Korean and Vietnam Wars. After the service he went on to work as an Energy Conservation Engineer for Bonneville Power, from which he later retired. He married the love of his life, Lauralee, in 1968. The two of them loved participating in church activities, particularly church campouts and church festival trips all around the world, including Canada, Mexico, Hong Kong, Brazil, Africa, and Italy. Roy was witty, intelligent, educated, and always willing to lend a helping hand.
Alice Kienberger-Iverson ’72 passed away on August 3, 2022. Born in Hunter, ND, Alice attended Luther College in Decorah, IA. After graduation, Alice took a position as parish assis tant in Fergus Falls, MN. In 1954 she met her hus
band, Walter, and they raised six children. Alice served off and on again as choir director and organist. She entered the master’s in library science program at University of Portland and, after graduat ing in 1972, took a position with Judson Baptist College as head librarian.
Ronald “Roy” Still ’77 passed away on July 15, 2022. Roy served in the US Coast Guard during the Korean War and received the Korean Service Medal and the National Defense Medal.
He met his wife, Patricia, in 1953, and together they raised three children. He joined the Portland Police Bureau as a patrolman and retired thirty years later as the Chief of Police. His love of Portland led him to run for mayor. He hosted a radio talk show on KGW before starting a successful real estate business with his wife. Most knew Ron as a natural-born leader, and he captivated people with his charisma. He’ll be remem bered for his sense of humor and love of his family.
Fred “Larry” Byler ’78 died on August 17, 2022, with his wife and granddaughter at his side. Born in Eugene, OR, he attended Madison High School in Portland before joining the Navy. He served as a communications technician and was stationed in places like Adak, Shemya, Alaska, and Taipei.
In 1978 he graduated from UP and worked for Clark County Sherriff’s Office for twenty-five years. He was on the faculty of Clark College, where he taught administra tion of justice. Larry liked boating, playing poker with friends from Alta Lake, traveling and just relaxing.
William “Bill” Bishop ’80 passed away on August 17, 2022. Born in Findlay, OH, he graduated from Van Buren High School. Bill enlisted in the Army and earned a Purple Heart and an Air Medal of Honor flying and working on helicopters during the Vietnam War. Bill earned a BA from San Jose State College and moved to Portland, OR, where he worked as a helicopter mechanic. Later, Bill joined the Portland Police Bureau, where he served with distinction. He earned a master’s in criminal justice from UP. Quiet and reserved, Bill made a difference in so many people’s lives and they will remember him as a great guy to be around.
Kirk Robinson ’82 died on May 19, 2022. Kirk was born in Portland and graduated from Beaverton High School in 1960. While working at the Faucet Tavern, he met his wife, Sheryl Ann, and they went on to have two sons together. After earning undergraduate and gradu ate degrees from UP, he worked for the Bonneville Power Administration and retired in 2008 after twentyseven years of service. Kirk enjoyed skiing and riding bikes competitively and had a passion for gardening, and for years he played Santa for the community around Welches. He was a devoted family man and loved watching his grandchildren grow into young adults.
Wallace Thrash ’82 died on June 12, 2022. He grew up in Sacramento, CA, and attended UP, graduating with a degree in physics. He was a naturally gifted musician and could take apart and fix just about
anything. He began his career in electronics in the Air Force and went on to work for Hewlett Packard for twenty-six years. In his time there, he was awarded several patents. He and his wife, Christina, had three children. He will be dearly missed by his family and friends.
Linda Anthony ’84 passed away on August, 20, 2022. She was seventy-seven years old. Born in Cavalier, ND, she settled in Seattle, WA, where she raised her four children. Linda worked hard her whole life. Everything she did, she did 100%. While working full time and raising a family, she earned a bachelor’s degree in business from UP and eventually went to work for the Multnomah County Health Department. She loved traveling and was always ready for an adven ture, and she was also an avid video poker player. Family and friends will miss the spark she brought to everything she did.
Teri Cettina ’86 passed away peacefully in her home on July 7, 2022, surrounded by her family. Born in Bountiful, UT, she later moved to Portland and graduated from UP. Passionate about writing, she became the editor of the UP newspaper her senior year, and she also worked for Portland magazine. She went on to work as an accomplished freelance writer, specializing in parenting, financial, medical, and lifestyle publications. Teri was, and will always be, an inspira tion to those who knew her. Teri loved to travel, garden, organize, sew, drink good coffee, and laugh. She is
survived by her husband and two daughters.
Michael Kennedy ’86 died on June 16, 2022, at the age of seventy, with his wife and children beside him. Mike grew up in Gardena, CA, served in the US Army, and graduated from Cal State Dominguez Hills. He earned his master’s in teaching from UP. Mike worked as a teacher for the Portland Public School system for thirty years. Mike and his wife raised four children in an old house, full of love, easy laughter, art, and an active sense of justice. Mike was genuine, gener ous, and a lifetime friend. With his goofy humor and kindness, people of all ages felt at ease around him.
Joan Siderius ’87 passed away from cancer on August 21, 2022. She was fiftyseven years old. She graduated from Holy Names Academy in Seattle and earned a bachelor’s in nursing from UP. Joan went on to work in NICU and OB departments, where she served countless families and their babies with her trademark humor and compassion. She and her “handsome husband,” Mike, were married for twenty years, and raised three children together. Joan was a member of Trinity Luther an Evangelical Church and loved Jesus with all her heart, as well as dancing, road trips, gardening, and making others laugh.
Gail Janice Wrzesinski ’87 passed away on June 14, 2022. Born in Montana, she graduated from Montana State University and moved to Onalaska, WI, in 1961. She returned to school at fifty-five, earning
her master’s in nursing from UP. She went on to work as a nurse and professor for twentyfive years. She and her husband, Charles, raised five children together and were great travel partners. She loved her family and attended all her grandchildren’s and greatgrandchildren’s sporting events and concerts.
Karen Michelle Wray ’91 passed away on May 17, 2022, surrounded by family and friends. Born in Port land, she graduated from Scappoose High School and went on to earn a BA from UP, as well as an MA and JD from Lewis & Clark. She was a flute player, a tap dancer, a 4-H member, a granger, and an exchange student in Belgium. She loved to travel and visited places like Australia, China, India, Alaska, the Panama Canal, Europe, and all over the US and Canada. She was a devoted friend and daughter and enriched the lives of everyone she came in contact with.
Jerry Arshinoff ’96 passed away on July 6, 2022, after a valiant battle with cancer. Born in Montreal, he earned undergraduate degrees from McGill University and the University of Calgary, and a master’s in education from UP. He worked as a principal, an executive director of a nonprofit, an investment advisor, and a politician. He met his wife, Diane, in Calgary, and together they had five children, with whom he stayed in close touch throughout their lives. He enjoyed watching hockey, horses, back-road trips in “the Real Canada,” nature, bad jokes, and afternoon naps.
Lori McKinley ’98 passed away unexpectedly on December 27, 2021. She grew up in Anacortes, WA, and attended Western Washington University before earning her master’s in education from UP. She excelled in her career as a teacher and librarian and even homeschooled her grandchildren during Covid, ensuring they wouldn’t fall behind. Her family was always her priority, and she celebrated every holiday from Thanksgiving to Father’s Day. She knew how to make people feel special.
Brian Bell ’14 passed away on April 21, 2022, from complications related to colon cancer. He was thirty-eight years old. Brian grew up in Damascus, OR, graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in business and finance, and went on to earn his master’s in finance from UP.
A devoted husband and father of two young children, Brian was a champion of a proper work-life balance and encouraged others to focus on what matters most in life. He will be remembered for his quick wit, his generosity, his love of cooking, and his devotion to his family.
Matthew Liu ’16 passed away on June 18, 2022, after a tragic work accident.
Born and raised in Hawai'i, he loved water sports. Growing up, you could always find him at the beach, surfing, body boarding, snorkeling, or soaking up the sun. After graduating from UP, Matt started his career at Kiewit, where he found a home for his ingenuity and creative thinking. Matt was a genuinely selfless guy, with a heart as big as his
smile, and a magnetic personality. His death is an incomprehensible loss to those who loved him dearly.
Andrew Barton ’22 passed away on May 20, 2022. Born in Lakewood, WA, Andrew graduated from Lakes High School and received his BS from UP. He worked as an EMT for Metro West Port land. An Eagle Scout, he loved outdoor activities like hiking and camping, particularly building campfires. He was a fly fisherman, kayaker, YMCA lifeguard, bladesmith, kickboxing instructor, and captain of the West Sound Warriors ice hockey team. He once saved his grand mother’s life and summited Mount Rainier when he was fourteen years old. Affable, kind, inspiring, and happy, Andrew brought joy to everyone around him, and he’ll be dearly, deeply missed.
Cody Yamakawa passed away at the age of 20 on July 10, 2022. He was a loving and compassionate son, brother, grandson, cousin, and friend. Cody was majoring in environmental science with a minor in psychology at the University of Portland and had a passion for making this world a better place to live in. Cody loved music, anime, video games, and spending time with his family and friends. He will be dearly missed by all those who knew and loved him.
Susan “Sue” and “Suki” Brown died on June 10, 2022, due to complications from Lewy Body Dementia. Sue was a lifelong learner and was passionate about education. She received her
master’s in education from Oglethorpe University and a doctorate in education from the University of Central Florida. She special ized in multicultural education and classroom strategies. As a professor she taught at Elmira College, UP, and UCF. Sue loved to read and had a good eye for photography. She loved her two kids, traveling, and spending time outdoors.
Joyce Dodson died unex pectedly of pneumonia on April 29, 2022. She was eighty-six years old. Born in Columbus, OH, she married her husband, Virgil, on May 9, 1953. They moved to Portland in 1960 and soon found a home at UP, where they both worked. The Dodson award for outstanding physical plant employees is named in their honor.
Phyllis Krohn died on July 7, 2022, of natural causes, surrounded by family. Phyllis had four sons and dozens of grandchildren and was a member of Open Door Baptist Church. She will be remembered for her love of beachcombing, for being a foster parent and frequent volunteer, and her commit ment to caring for animals.
Thomas Langley died peacefully on June 18, 2022, surrounded by his family.
He was eighty-five years old. Thomas and his wife, Joan, had three kids and lived all over the country. His favorite thing was being Santa, from downtown Macy’s to Pioneer Courthouse Square to UP, where he was known as “Praying Santa.”
Sandi Miller passed away on June 28, 2022. Sandi moved to Portland and attended
Portland State University. She married Ralph Miller, a UP Board of Regent, on December 15, 1985. She and her husband have supported eight to 13 students through annual scholarships since 2005. Sandi served on the Board of Directors of the Oregon Humane Society and the Southwest Washington Humane Society and was a docent at The Living Desert in Palm Desert. From 1994 to her death, she divided time between the Pacific Northwest and Palm Desert, California. She loved animals, and she and Ralph enjoyed five cats and one dog during their marriage.
Joyce (Bisbee) Murphy passed away peacefully in her home on May 12, 2022, at the age of eighty-one. Raised in Waterville, WA, Joyce graduated from Eastern Washington University with a degree in elementary education. She met her husband, Jim Murphy, in 1964, and together they raised four children. Teaching was always one of Joyce’s passions, and she continued to serve her neighborhood by volunteering to tutor at the local elementary school and St. Rita’s. She will be remembered for her selflessness and her commit ment to serving others.
Betty Terry passed away in her sleep on June 22, 2022.
She was ninety-seven years old. As a lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest, Betty had friends from near and far. She was the mother of four children and many grandchildren, and her large family filled her with pride.
For thirty-two years, Betty worked at the UP bookstore, before retiring in 1994, much to the chagrin of her many friends on campus.
FIFTY YEARS AGO , I was dropped off a couple of blocks from Notre Dame, a newly admitted student with my steamer trunk at my feet. In those days, steamer trunks were standard equip ment for college students. They contained everything we’d been told we’d need at university, and they were all the luggage we had. Mine was blue with black trim and silver-colored fit tings. Stenciled across the top were my name and my new address: 215 Sorin Hall, Notre Dame, Indiana.
Over the next few years, the trunk followed me from one dorm room to the next, and to the off-campus house I would share with my friends senior year. After graduation, I kept the trunk, but its function changed. It became a depository for relics of my childhood, like the autographed pictures of base ball players that I wrote away for when I was thirteen and my forty-five rpm records (e.g., “Kind of a Drag” and “The Eggplant That Ate Chicago”). My birth certificate with a note of the doctor’s first words to my father after my birth: “He’s a big one. He’s a really big one.” Yellowed clippings of articles I wrote for The Milford Daily News. Notebooks recording my impressions of the first Ingmar Bergman films I saw. Then, relics of my brief career with Hemingway Transport (“A Whale of a Truck Line”).
My business career ended when I entered the seminary. After ordination, souvenirs of years teaching in Africa and of studying in England found their way into the trunk, along with odds and ends from decades of teaching at Notre Dame and the University of Portland. In sum, the trunk came to testify to the extraordinary variety afforded by an ordinary life in Holy Cross.
Now, I’ve accepted an assignment with our Holy Cross community at Notre Dame University Bangladesh. I am as far away as I could possibly be from that steamer trunk—currently in storage—but it’s clear to me that so much of my life is in there. My family, my identity, my small victories and failures, my faith. No matter where it is, I will continue to carry it wher ever I go.
FATHER CHARLIE GORDON, CSC , taught at University of Portland from 2006 to 2022, where he was also Co-Director of The Garaventa Center for Catholic Intellectual Life and American Culture. He is currently assigned to Notre Dame University Bangladesh.
5000 North Willamette
97203-5798
The Moreau Center for Service and Justice once again partnered incoming students with inspiring local nonprofits to build community through shared service and elbow grease. They gardened, landscaped, assembled food boxes, and met some lovely neighbors along the way.
