Portland Magazine Autumn 2012

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SOME THINGS That I have noticed here at the university over the past twenty years, things that give me the joyful willies, tiny things that are not tiny at all in the least whatsoever: the way the women’s soccer team took their shoes and socks off after yet another victory, and sat in cheerful ragged circle on the sweet moist field, and then wandered up into the stands to sit with children and shake their startled hands and sign tickets and jackets and shirts and hands and one tiny forehead, whose owner beamed like the sun. The way some tall shy lean children here walk around in their Army and Air Force uniforms on Tuesdays, uncomfortable and proud and scared and proud. The way sandhill cranes float over campus in October, so high up you can hardly see them, although you can hear their dark basso gurgling quarwk, and the way people who hear them will touch passersby on the elbows and say hey, listen, cranes! The way students say hey, Father when a priest ambles by, and the priest, no matter which priest he happens to be, almost always knows the long child by his or her first name, isn’t that amazing? The way the wind shifts around during the day and what was the seethe of cedar in the morning becomes the whew of industrial paint from the vast roiling shipyards below the bluff. The way you can almost always find one person young or old weeping quietly in the dark in the back of the chapel, near the Madonna. The way water burbles in the chapel all day all night ever since the day the chapel opened its new huge walnut doors as big as bears.

The way alumni at reunion seize each other by the hand with actual no kidding ferocious glee and shake hands much longer than the usual business deal. The way the bell tower startles visitors who did not know the tower spoke so boomingly and ringingly. The whir of golf carts carrying older priests hither and yon. The wealth of orders of nuns who grace the place. The way ballboys at basketball games sprint out bravely into the thicket of lank and burl to mop the floor where a muscled hero fell a moment before. The way the baseball coach grins at comic remarks offered by the folks in the rain in the wooden bleachers, and how there is always a cigar going somewhere in the stands even though there is Absolutely No Smoking whatsoever. The way a solid shot to right field occasionally hits Corrado Hall smack in the eastern shoulder with a resounding crack! and the way the hall sneers and rolls the ball back toward the field. The sound that foul balls make when they land with a crunk! on the hoods of cars parked near the baseball field.

The milling of grinning graduates in leis and serapes and bright scarves just after graduation and the way the dense crowd of graduates and families and friends calves here and there into hilarious photo opportunities. The whirl of hawks and eagles in mating dances high over campus in spring. The way you can see the flicker of the huge fireplace in the Commons from way across the quad at night and it looks wonderfully warm and friendly and gentle and alluring and when you walk through the door and turn toward the fireplace someone says hey come sit with us! and you do, and somehow that’s not a little thing, that’s a huge thing, and somehow that matters deeply, and somehow that is the University, in ways that I cannot explain very well, hard as I try. n Brian Doyle is the editor of this magazine, and the author most recently of a novella, Cat’s Foot.

F E A T U R E S 16 / Firefighters, photographs by Lawrence Hudetz Five alumni, photographed in the houses where they work.

22 / The Courage to Change Your Mind, by Elizabeth Samet A West Point professor on “cultural pathology” and on the most important lessons she teaches her cadets.

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24 / The Letter, by Brian Doyle Ash Wednesday, 2012, and the official end of a remarkable teacher’s tenure.

26 / South, photographs by Katie O’Reilly A cheerful University biology professor in Antarctica.

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34 / The Really Dangerous Idea is the Gospels, by Heather King “The Church is inevitably imperfect…how could a Church made up of us be anything but imperfect?”

36 / Call Me Jim, by Robin Cody Years ago the University hired a young track coach who was perhaps the finest miler on the planet; notes on the entertaining and beloved Jim Grelle.

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4 / The University’s Class of 2028, in Jacksonville, Texas 5 / Coach of the NBA champions: the beaming Erik Spoelstra ’92 6 / The straight dope about University students, by Paul Myers 7 / Cape Santa Maria, Bahamas, 3:31 p.m., May 26, 2012 8 / What colleges are really good at: an essay by Bill McKibben 9 / The first Molly Hightower Scholar: Haiti’s Jean Francois Seide ’16 10 / My dad: an essay by Father John Donato, C.S.C. 11 / The autumnal campus: Father Mark Ghyselinck, C.S.C. 12 / What the University is really good at: an essay by John Orr 13 / The most WCC wins ever: women’s basketball coach Jim Sollars 44 / Alumni news and class notes 45 / The remarkable mechanical engineer Buzz Aldrin ’70 54 / Jordon Foster ’11 in Tanzania with the Peace Corps

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THE UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND MAGAZINE

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Cover: a Laysan albatross, photographed by Hob Osterlund on Kaua’i.

For more of Hob’s riveting work with albatross, see the Kaua’i Albatross Network at albatrosskauai.org.

Autumn 2012: Vol. 31, No. 3 President: Rev. E. William Beauchamp, C.S.C. Founding Editor: John Soisson Editor: Brian Doyle Tall Confident Grinning Designers: Matt Erceg & Joseph Erceg ’55 Mooing Assistant Editors: Marc Covert ’93 & Amy Shelly Harrington ’95 Fitfully Contributing Editors: Louis Masson, Sue Säfve, Terry Favero, Mary Beebe Portland is published quarterly by the University of Portland. Copyright ©2012 by the University of Portland. All rights reserved. Editorial offices are located in Waldschmidt Hall, 5000 N. Willamette Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97203-5798. Telephone (503) 943-7202, fax (503) 943-7178, e-mail address: bdoyle@up.edu, Web site: http://www.up.edu/portland. Third-class postage paid at Portland, OR 97203.

Canada Post International Publications Mail Product — Sales Agreement No. 40037899. Canadian Mail Distribution Information —Express Messenger International: PO Box 25058, London, Ontario, Canada N6C 6A8. Printed in the USA. Opinions expressed in Portland are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University administration. Postmaster: Send address changes to Portland, The University of Portland Magazine, 5000 N. Willamette Boulevard, Portland, OR 97203-5798.

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L E T T E R S IS THE UNIVERSITY WORTH SUCH A PRICE? Generally I am not responsive to crabby people voicing different opinions than those I hold sacred. However, the letter that you published under the above title in the Summer 2012 issue drove me straight to my computer to write this.

I am the proud mother of Cody Sandell, University of Portland Class of 2007.

Because my husband died when Cody was a toddler, I raised him and his two sisters by myself on a salary of less than $30,000 a year, without welfare, food stamps, or other governmental assistance.

There were lean times, believe me. But the one thing that I always told my children was that it was vital to obtain a good education.

Getting a good education is like receiving the skeleton key of life: with it you can open many locked doors that would be impassable without that all-important key. My children never questioned that they were to attend college; the only question was which.

It being evident that affording college was going to be difficult, I tried to impress upon them the need for excellence in their pre-

PHOTO COURTESY BR. LARRY STEWART C.S.C.

Brother Donald Stabrowski, C.S.C. (here in about 1962), long the University’s provost, left this summer for Notre Dame, where he will help run the Holy Cross order in America; see page 15. What a loss.

LETTERS POLICY We are delighted by testy or tender letters.

Send them to bdoyle@ up.edu.

Letters come in so many forms. Tia White-Toney ’13 is in Fremantle, Australia, on the University’s semester-abroad program there, and was moved by this art in the chapel at Notre Dame U. “John’s Gospel,” writes Tia, “ says ‘at the place where he had been crucified there was a garden...’ Too often, I forget there is growth and beauty after darkness...” college years. Scholarships were going to be a major source of funding, so academics, activities and personal growth were emphasized in our household, probably to (my) obsessive level. Everyone had to take music; everyone had to have a sport; everyone had to participate in summer study; everyone had to volunteer for community service. Everyone, every year, period. In addition, if one of the kids or their friends were struggling in a subject, the others stepped in to help with tutoring.

With this background, Cody entered the University in 2003. Scholarships in hand, my son moved into Corrado Hall. Although he did not graduate with any fancy awards, his degree in finance from the Pamplin School of Business got him his first job out of college making more money than I had made per year during his whole life. In addition, his education was far more than he expected.

He made new friends and contacts within the campus community that have been invaluable to him over the last five years. His education was far more than academic. Compromising and learning to work with others, striving for common (and uncommon) goals,

leading others when necessary, reaching out to those in need, learning about the value of home and country, expanding a network of colleagues and friends, playing more soccer, and having fun — these were all his experience on The Bluff.

Today, instead of me taking care of him, he is trying to take care of me. In response to the anonymous writer who questioned the value of a University of Portland education, all I can say is that he or she utterly missed the point.

People can take away your money, family, pride, possessions, and even your life, but they can never take away your knowledge and education. It will be with you always. It is something that grows with time and forms you into who

you are and will become.

There is no price too high for excellence. By that light, the University of Portland is a bargain, trust me!

Charlee Sandell Sequim, Washington

FREEDOM? The Summer 2012 issue was fine. That’s a great magazine, so custom-fitted to the university; and even the fundraising plugs are done with seamless grace and humor. My one quibble would be with Father Tom Doyle’s notion of “freedom” (the essay “To Lead Out”). Freedom is free. Limits and restrictions are another thing entirely. Parents, teachers, adults, colleges should try to teach kids about the limits to freedom, but limits aren’t part of freedom, and most of us figure that out sooner or later, paying different sorts of prices.

“You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough,” as William Blake says. And I do think the years between our youth and our adulthood should be full of limit-smashing.

Guy Maynard Eugene, Oregon

Found on the wall of Clark Library before its total reboot started this spring…

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S U M M E R hypnotists and comedians, cake-making, outdoor movies, campus street fairs, lots of dances, art gallery visits, rock-climbing, “foam parties,” grocery store bingo, laser tag, ice-skating, and an air-guitar contest.

(December 1), and the annual glorious Advent Concert in Saint Mary’s Cathedral (December 8), where we will all remember the ebullient late Roger Doyle. Sigh.

THE SEASON

STUDENT LIFE Among the 800 freshmen who flooded onto campus in late August: Amelia Hillier, from Patrick Henry High in San Diego, who never missed a day of high school. Wow. ¶ Returning students will discover that the Clark Library is now, essentially, virtual; during the year-long renovation, the library’s services are all over campus. The completely rebuilt library reopens next May. ¶ Effects of the Rise Campaign on student life already: expanded facilities for student-athletes in the Chiles Center, and more funds for student scholarships, grants, and service-project travels. ¶ The residence life staff’s Pilots After Dark programs starts in September, with all sorts of late-night and weekend adventures for students: among previous hilarities have been mystery bus trips, trampoline contests, visiting

THE UNIVERSITY

ARTS & LETTERS On campus October 29 for a free talk and reading from her work: the terrific Oregon essayist Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Riverwalking and editor of Moral Ground, about our crucial responsibility for God’s profligate creation. Call Brian Doyle for details, 503.943.8225. ¶ On campus October 22, for a free lecture in the Chiles Center at 4 p.m.: the eloquent and relentless activist for life Sister Helen Prejean, of Dead Man Walking fame.

Sister Helen’s talk is followed by the University’s annual Red Mass (all welcome), celebrated by Archbishop John Vlazny of Portland; after that there’s a reception for Sister Helen, for which tickets are required. Call 503.943.7702 for info. ¶ English department visiting writers this fall: novelist Anna Keesey, October 2, and poet Wayne Miller, November 12. Ask Herman Asarnow for details: asarnow@up.edu. ¶ On stage in Hunt Theater this fall: On the Verge, October 3-7; Machinal, November 917; Waiting for Lefty, November 28-30; and The Maids, December 6-8.

Twelve Angry Jurors will be on the boards in February, and Musical in April. Among the many concerts, most in Buckley Center: the Women’s Chorale, University Singers, and Jazz Band (October 7), the Women’s Chorale at the Grotto in Portland (November 28), the University Orchestra

Changing hats this fall: provost and politics professor Brother Donald Stabrowski, C.S.C., who moves to Notre Dame to be assistant Holy Cross provincial, after 24 cheerful years on The Bluff (see page 15); Father Jim Lies, C.S.C., who leaves the Garaventa Center for Catholic Life to be vice president for students at Stonehill College in Massachusetts; and Arts & Sciences dean Father Steve Rowan, who moves back to Seattle to run all the Catholic schools in that archdiocese. ¶ Speaking of the Garaventa Center, some (free) fall events: Cambridge professor John Morrill, on English Catholic history in the “age of dungeon, fire, and sword” (September 25); Catholic Relief Services CEO (and University regent) Carolyn Woo, on Catholicism in America (September 26); Notre Dame law and theology (whew) professor Cathleen Kaveny, on law and morality (October 11); Creighton University theology professor Father William Harmless, SJ, on mystics (November 1); Vanderbilt University Bible scholar Amy-Jill Levine, on the Jewishness of Jesus (November 29), and the annual entertaining film and faith series, starring education professor Karen Eifler and theology professor Father Charlie Gordon, C.S.C. (all fall). See up.edu/garaventa for details. ¶ And congrats to its new director, the exuberant

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FROM THE PAST Born in the late summer that infuses so many of his stories: Raymond Douglas Bradbury, on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois, the town he sang in his masterpiece, Dandelion Wine.

Bradbury died June 5 of this year, at age 91, writing happily to the end. One of the greatest American writers, period. ¶ November, 1805: U.S. Army Captains William Clark and Meriwether Lewis and their companions camp for a night at Sauvie Island, downriver from the University, on their way to the coast for the winter.

They called the local residents Mulknomans, a word probably derived from the word nemathlonamaq, which means downriver from the falls. See the new book Multnomah by Jewel Lansing and Fred Leeson for more about today’s county. ¶ November 4, 1975: the University confers an honorary doctorate on the visiting composer Aaron Copland, who had such a ball on The Bluff that when he died he left a complete set of his scores to the University; it is held in Clark Library, with esteem. ¶ November 11, 1483: the future Catholic monk Martin Luther is christened with Saint Martin’s name; on the same day in 1922 the terrific American writer Kurt Vonnegut is born in Indiana.

ARTWORK BY MARY MILLER DOYLE

Leaves of brown they fall to the ground, sings the great Irish poet Van Morrison, who just celebrated his 67th birthday August 31. The Man, we note, earned has earned two honorary doctorates from colleges in his native Ulster; could one on The Bluff be far behind? ¶ The University’s vaunted cross country teams (the men were eighth nationally last year) and soccer teams open play this fall; women’s soccer aims at its third national title. ¶ Fall break: October 15-19. Issue of academic warnings: October 19. Coincidence?

Father Gary Chamberland, C.S.C. ¶ On campus October 29: David Kappos, UnderSecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) under the U.S. Dept. of Commerce. His talk is free and ought to be riveting: contact Kim Spir for details, spir@up.edu.

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THE CLASS OF 2028 should, if all goes well, feature all of these cheerful kindergartners at West Side Elementary, in Jacksonville, Texas. Mondays are “college shirt days” at West Side, and their teacher, Francine Tyson ’96, has taught them all about purple and white, the words Pilots and Wally, and the nice man who sent them their cool shirts — University president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., who has this photo in his office, signed by all the students. Do we have Rise Campaign targets that elevate and delight and open doors for kids like these? Good heavens, yes. The School of Education, which issues so many grinning talents like Francine Tyson…the University’s campus Child Care Center…the School of Nursing, from which so many students will go salve and help heal kids…the biology department, working to figure out medicines and repair and clean air and water…the Shiley School of Engineering, figuring out how to deliver that clean water…the Pilot summer sports camps, where kids begin to discover their own wild mammal grace on courts and fields… see rise.up.edu…or heck just pick up the phone and call Diane Dickey at 503.943.8130.

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The first alumnus in University history to coach a team to a National Basketball Association title: the calm, courteous, unflappable Erik Spoelstra ’92, who led his Miami Heat to the 2012 championship against the former Seattle Sonics, now called the Oklahoma City Thunder. “It’s not about who gets the ball or what plays we run,” he told this magazine. “If we play as we should, each man sacrificing, each man trusting the other, good things will come. It’s about sharing the ball, not who gets it last. Unselfishness is everything. Truly great teams are about trust.” Amen to that, coach.

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COURTESY OF NBA PHOTOS/MIAMI HEAT

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THE FACTS From a recent talk to the University’s regents by University health center director Paul Myers.

In my position, in charge of students’ health, counseling, and disability services, I am contacted by faculty, parents, administrators, counselors, clinicians, relatives of students, and the students themselves. I have access to mounds of data and records and reports. I am part of our early alert system for intervention with students at risk for academic, physical, mental or spiritual problems. I am an afterhours crisis counselor on campus.

And I am the dad of a UP student.

From these many vantage points I have learned a good deal about our students. Some notes: They are more diverse than they were for the last century. We were about 85% European-American for many years and it’s about 73%. In the past most of our students were local; now 64% come from outside Oregon.

Biggest growth: Hispanic students and Asian-Pacific Islanders. Two-fifths of our students are male, which is more than many private universities, and more of a feat when you consider we have a schools of nursing and education that attract predominantly female students. We remain about 47% Catholic, as we have always been — in a state where only 15% of people are Catholic. They come from smaller families with larger annual incomes than the past, in general; but our students borrow more from banks to be here than they did. Average family income and average amount borrowed are both creeping upward; one result of this, I worry, will be more pressure on students to choose majors that will pay more money; more pressure for return on investment, fewer arts and humanities majors.

They have much higher applicant grades than they did in the past.

Our incoming student SAT score is now 1210, with a grade point of 3.68; 46% of the freshmen were in the top 10% of their class. They expect to be successful, expect to be top rated and noticed. So one of the early challenges upon arrival on campus is finding that they are average among their new peers until they elevate focus and drive. A significant proportion of our students are unaccustomed to

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earning Cs or even Bs; I have taken crisis calls from tearful students and distressed parents over a freshman’s first B ever. I try to remember these are wonderful teachable moments.

They are more likely to grow in the complexity and diversity of spiritual experiences during their years here. While there is a noticeable decrease in the number of students who regularly attend religious services from first to fourth year, that is (a) a national trend and (b) not reflective of the rising number of students who participate in spiritual retreats, volunteer projects with clear spiritual contexts, etc. We also suspect that most students will return to more regular religious practice when they start their own families sometime in their late twenties.

Our students arrive with much more volunteer experience, and many more students, more than half, leave having had additional volunteer experience; also the number of graduates joining the Peace Corps, the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, etc., had doubled in recent years.

Eight percent of our freshmen arrive having been professionally treated for depression, six percent for an anxiety disorder of some kind, two percent for severe eating disorders. Our surveys show some 80% of female students have an uncomfortable, disruptive, or anxious relationship with food and body image concerns; 14% of our students seriously considered suicide in the prior 12 months (compared to 19% nationally among the same demographic).

National data suggests that 45-50% of college students have seriously considered suicide in their lifetime (usually in high school), that 9-12% have engaged in some kind of suicidal gesture or attempt, and that 9 in 100,000 kill themselves. College is actually a protective factor in that same-aged peers who are not in college have higher suicide rates. By the time they graduate, 15% of our students will have been treated for depression, and 37% will have used our counseling services. The most common number Portland 6

of counseling visits for a student is one; the average number of visits for counseling is five. The most common concerns in order of frequency are: mood disorders, anxiety disorders, interpersonal difficulties, body image/ eating problems, and substance abuse.

Our students drink alcohol in patterns and rates similar to national rates; our students’ marijuana use is lower — but more than their stillforming brains should have to confront. Our students use other illicit drugs at rates half the national rate.

Twenty percent of our students do not drink alcohol; twenty percent drink heavily. Facts: students who average 9 or more alcoholic drinks per week have grades in the D/F range.

Students who average 3 or fewer alcoholic drinks per week have grades in the A range. Another new trend: women are drinking and smoking more. Here I feel we are up against billions of dollars of advertising aimed directly at our students.

Four percent of our students are registered with the office for students with disabilities; more than half of these students either have attention deficit disorder, learning disabilities, or both.

As you can guess from this data, many of the challenges to student success are not academic; they are social, psychological, spiritual, and physical. More than 30% of referrals to our early alert system from faculty and staff were concerns about depression, suicidal thinking, and anxiety disorders.

I am often asked if today’s students are more stressed or distressed than those of the past, about as often as I am asked if they are more capable than their parents’ or grandparents’ generations. I’ll usually burble on for a while about increased drug marketing, rising awareness of disorders, the internet’s transformation of daily life, etc.; but then often I find myself thinking that in many ways our students are the same. Their greatest gift and their greatest weight is the same thing: youth. We are clearly attracting students with better high school grades and scores; those students are borrowing more money than ever before; they do appear to be suffering more from depression and anxiety, although I wonder if we as a society are simply much more aware and alert to this than we were.

But those are the facts, and what we do about them will shape the University of the future. n

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BREATHING GOD From a writing class taught by author and Oregonian columnist Steve Duin last spring. Steve asked his students to write about ‘religion.’ Highlights of their responses: I am a mystic of the ordinary. My experiences of inexhaustible ecstasy are simple. The smell of the fresh fall air…the way that maple leaves crunch underfoot…the elderly couple walking hand-in-hand. This is revelation.

This is when I feel and see God. It is the dethroning of my ego. It is emptying myself of myself. It is the chirp of a bird, being in the presence of another human being, the smell of a fire… it is everything. We literally breathe God with every breath. * In the past few years, I’ve questioned more and more how I feel about God — if chaos really can be part of some mysterious order. Some people say that life on earth is like the underside of a quilt — you can only see the

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mess of strings and knots, a mess of a pattern that you could never get right. You only feel the stab of every stitch, the searing pain of a million little pinpricks. Some people say that we can’t see the other side of the quilt, the pattern that always made sense. That each tiny stab was really God sewing your life together and though it may hurt, the pain you feel will one day turn into something beautiful.

I don’t know…sometimes I wonder if a belief in God is just a lack of belief in man.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that if people would spend half the time asking forgiveness of other people that they do asking forgiveness of God, the world would be a better place. * I was baptized by a priest who was and still is an alcoholic. He has since left the priesthood. He remains a family friend, but we don’t talk about his having been a priest any more.

My baptism seems to have set the tone for my religious life: Yes, I believe in God. Yes, I am religious. But something was always a little off.

I grew up in a Catholic family. We

went to Mass every Sunday. We said the customary prayers both at church and before dinner each night. But I have not found the comfort of God in a church; I found it in the Rocky Mountains, where I would gather with friends on a rocky bluff far above our camp and meditate on what I later learned were the words of Saint Francis: Make me an instrument of peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy.

This meditation instilled in me a sense of tranquility greater and more powerful than I had ever felt. As I gazed across the valley at the impossibly vast terrain beneath me, something clicked: I felt both incredibly small and infinitely important, and everything around me was both significant and insignificant.

Yes. God was with me then. For the first time, I heard Him. * I don’t pray. I don’t go to church.

I started believing in God because my mom told me to. But now, I believe in God because I need to.

May 26, 2012, Cape Santa Maria, Bahamas, 3:31 p.m. —in the white dress, Wanda Rozwadowska ’04, about 90 minutes, or a whole soccer game, away from being married to Andrew Wrisley ’04; in the salmon dress, crucial bridesmaid/seamstress Kim Pointer ’04. A startling number of alumni were in attendance, including many of Wanda’s soccer teammates and many of Andrew’s baseball teammates. Wanda says Pilot soccer players marry Pilot baseball players at a really remarkable rate; we will investigate.

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STRANGE & GLORIOUS From a recent talk by author and environmental activist Bill McKibben to a national conference of university magazine editors; our thanks to Bill for permission to excerpt. For more about Bill’s own creative and crucial work, see billmckibben.com.

I’ve spent my life as a journalist, so the thought of 300 editors as a captive audience is extremely pleasant for me; something like the fantasies that prisoners must have about jails being turned over to them…

But I digress. Let me begin by saying that I am almost completely uninterested in the thing that colleges always think that they’re doing, which is preparing people to go into the work force. That seems to me to be the least interesting job that a college performs; the really interesting action is what takes place during those four years, and what it might mean.

For example, why is it that colleges and universities are such crucial places in thinking and dealing with the greatest challenge of our time, climate change and global warming?

For one thing, scientists on campuses understand the thorough, sweeping, and frightening scale of change now underway. They understand that if we do not reverse the flow of carbon

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we will be living on a totally different planet. And their students understand this. And students these days, it seems to me have a different approach to student activism than in my day; now there’s less talk and more action, and many of the most powerful and creative activists on this issue, the people who are extremely organized, intelligent, and open to ideas, are students on campuses. The Campus Climate Challenge, the sorority chapters engaged in this work, the campus evangelical groups — it would take a week just to list all the campus activities and energies at play here.

Campus is the perfect place to face the greatest physical challenge we’ve ever faced as a society — far larger than putting a man on the moon.

That was about one man on the moon; this is about putting all of us on the moon, so to speak. If we do this right, we could transform the backbone of our economy. We could discover that this is the challenge that finally and beautifully unites alumni, students, faculty, trustees, and staff. What could possibly be a better teaching opportunity, a better practical education, a better example of the college mission in action, than helping to save the very planet on which we stand?

On my own campus [Middlebury] students have lobbied the state legislature. They have done detailed energy analyses on campus. They have helped changed our energy systems.

The University track team, 1926. The Pilots’ current harriers were eighth in the nation last year and welcome the state champions of California and Washington as freshmen this fall; the Pilot women, tenth in the West last year, look to regain their usual WCC title. Can you make a Campaign gift for student-athletes? Absolutely!

Call Colin McGinty at 503.943.8005.

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Biology faculty and students are involved. Economics. Chemistry. Food service. Everyone. And everyone becomes both teacher and taught. Isn’t that what a college is supposed to be at its best? Where many of the most significant moments of your life occur? People don’t remember freshman geography. They remember engagement, excitement, community, awakening, learning to work with ideas. That’s what makes college so strange and so wonderful, and the reason why people think back on it as the best years of their lives.

In current American society, college is the complete exception to the rule. It’s four years in constant close proximity to other people. It’s where community is the life, where you’re around other people all the time. And while that’s sometimes a little unsettling for freshmen when they arrive, I think it’s why college lingers so in our minds as such a wonderful place.

And it’s why those colleges that focus more and more on amenities like climbing walls and swimming pools, the colleges that are intent on providing single rooms for everyone, are engineering themselves right out of some of the best parts of the college experience. Focusing on amenities for the individual may work for marketing purposes, may certainly be attractive to parents, but it’s togetherness that students thrive on, and alumni remember for the rest of their lives. It’s a great tragedy, I think, when colleges don’t recognize this, and consider their mission only to prepare people to go out and earn as much money as possible. So often, in our society, becoming successful means becoming as isolated as it’s possible to be.

It seems to me that editors of university magazines are custodians of that kind of memory, of the kind of sense of possibility and community that is the spirit of college years. In many ways the college experience of communal creativity and responsibility is subversive and counter-cultural in our society. But what we treasure most about our college experience is exactly the creative energy and sense of passionate engagement that infuses real and profound environmental work; and it is this energy, which everyone possesses, of course, that might still save the day. How interesting it is to think that the essentially countercultural way of living that college life represents may be the very thing that saves our culture. n

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Beginning his first University classes this fall: Jean Francois Seide, the first student from Haiti to receive the University’s Molly Hightower Memorial Scholarship. Jean Francois grew up in the orphanage in Haiti where Molly and her dear friend Rachel Prusynski (left) worked before Molly died in the 2010 earthquake; Rachel and University donors have worked tirelessly to fund a full scholarship on The Bluff for students from the orphanage ever since. Jean Francois plans to study economics and social justice. For more on his remarkable journey, see www.friendsoftheorphans.org/jeanfrancois; for more on the University’s plethora of other creative momentous scholarships, see rise.up.edu; and to touch base with the wonderful (and now a new doctor) Rachel, try raprusy@gmail.com.

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MY DAD Notes on his patriarch by Father John Donato, C.S.C., associate vice president for student affairs. John’s lovely essay about his mom appeared in the Spring 2011 issue of this magazine.

I met my late father again two years ago, at Christmas. I was visiting my mother, her memory now almost wholly faded, and I opened an old box, and there were all the Christmas letters my father had written annually to my mother. They were married for 35 years, the last ten of those with my dad increasingly sick, but he wrote her a love letter every year.

I sat there with his letters in my hands and was flooded by memories. * My dad was one of seven boys in a family of eight children. His dad had emigrated from Sicily. My dad was the quietest and perhaps the brightest of the children. He loved languages and relished learning new words; he was the only man I ever knew who read dictionaries for fun.

He was good at numbers and details.

By age eight he had already purchased an accounting ledger and made entries in it for every penny he earned and loaned. He became a banker, naturally. His clients loved him. He loved to golf and fish. In winter he bowled and played poker.

He never swore, even on the golf course; he explained to me that vulgarity was for those who could not find proper words to express their thoughts and feelings. * He met my mother at a church dance, shortly after the end of the Korean War. He was with one of his old high-school flames when he encountered my mother at the dance, wearing pink shoes. Both of them were fine dancers; they danced; and my father, who had come with another young lady as his date, offered to drive my mother home. My dad’s date was not pleased. My mother quizzed her girlfriends about my dad — was he a good man? Did he come from a good family? Yes and yes. My mother accepted my dad’s offer. He fell in love with her immediately. He said when he came home that night, he was ready to get married, start a family, and make his way in the world. My mother, however much she was also smitten, made him wait a respectful nine months from meet-

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ing to marrying, and a year later they welcomed my older brother. * “If something should ever happen to you, I would continue, though as an empty shell of a man,” my father wrote to my mother, the first Christmas they were married. * I think my happiest childhood memories have to do with late afternoon, when my mother would cook a simple and delicious dinner, bathe, and then emerge radiant and perfumed for dinner. My dad would walk in with The Wall Street Journal under his arm and cigar and briefcase in hand.

Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin sang as my mother kissed him. Sometimes they would dance for a few moments.

She would often reach over during dinner and gently rub his neck. * My dad’s last Christmas letter to my mother ends with this question: “Do

you really know just how much I love you for just being you?” * When I visit my mom now, my mom with her memory wholly gone, she calls me Paul — my dad’s name. I find that I am proud to be called Paul. * He was quiet and pensive with me; I never saw then that he might be actually at a loss about how to handle me or teach and instruct me. For me he was the Wizard of Oz, a glaring, oversized presence, causing me to lose me sense of footing and confidence, to feel small and inadequate.

Yet he was patient with me, teaching me to throw and catch a baseball, ride a bicycle, bait a hook, reel in a fish, drive a car. I remember him teaching me how to steer safely out of a skid on snow and ice. We pracPortland 10

ticed losing control, skidding, spinning, learning to steer into the spin.

I remember practicing losing control for a long time. * In my deepest memory, the furthest back, I am in the diving board, high over a motel pool. I am scared and enticed by the height. My dad and my older brother have been diving off the high board and now it’s my turn. I tiptoe to the edge and glance down at the faraway pool and lose my breath and gasp and squeal that I can’t, I can’t. My mother calls encouragingly; my brother calls encouragingly; but I look to my dad, and he nods, and I leap. * When I was thirteen, my dad and I went fishing in Canada. The fish camp was deep in remote wilderness.

One morning my dad and I were in the boat when a tremendous elk stepped into the lake and swam to an island. I turned to my dad to tell him of this amazing sight, but he had seen it too, and I saw awe and wonder on his face. We were the only two people in the world to see this, and I know deep down that we both felt immense gratitude at such a gift. We couldn’t find words to tell anyone about this and so we never did; this is the first time I have spoken of it. * When I was fourteen my dad had a stroke; after that he was mostly bedridden for the next ten years, until he died, not yet sixty. By age sixteen, I knew I wanted to be a priest. My dad thought this a childish phase that would pass; he advised me, in no uncertain terms, to be a lawyer. We argued. We argued so bitterly I fled the house once. I was gone for two days. When I came home, exhausted and scared, my fragile father stood up from his couch, with a face so sad and loving, and told me that he loved me, and we would figure it all out, and if I wanted to go to college and work toward being a priest, that was fine. And in the years after that, as he grew weaker and weaker, more and more he would embrace me, and kiss my cheek, and whisper I love you, John.

I love you. Now I know that he always loved me, but was not strong enough to tell me so; only in his weakness did he grow strong enough for that; and I love him, and I always will, until the day comes when I can kiss him on the cheek and tell him I love you, Dad. I love you. n

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That’s Shipstad Hall (named for Eddie Shipstad, who started the first American traveling ice follies show, in 1936) behind this autumnal scrim of trees, in a painting by art professor Father Mark Ghyselinck, C.S.C. Father Mark is off to Austria this fall, as director of the University’s Salzburg Program.

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HOW TO THINK From a talk to faculty recently by literature professor John Orr. At the age of eighteen, I did not know that I had an accent. The circle of my existence at 18 was extremely small and circumscribed by ideologies that derived from my heritage as a third generation Texan. My childhood on a working farm was in many ways idyllic, though fraught with hardships, such as the lack of potable water in our house. At age 12, instead of a bar mitzvah, I received a .22 rifle, and between throwing a baseball endlessly against the side of the barn and shooting at any number of creatures and objects, I managed to pass lazy summers playing by myself. I was not immune to the racial, ethnic, and homophobic slurs that I occasionally heard from my parents and grandparents, though even my casually racist parents were shocked by the venom that spewed from the mouths of my relatives in Tennessee and North Carolina. I never doubted that many black welfare recipients drove Cadillacs, just as I never questioned that the earth was made in six days, or that there were communists actively at work all around me.

College seemed at first glance like more of the same. My circle expanded by only a few degrees. By default, I went to the Southern Baptist university in my hometown where my parents met and both of my older sisters had gone before they too married. In my parents’ perfect world, I would learn a few things that would enable me to be gainfully employed, meet a nice Baptist girl, and settle down to an updated version of their lives, complete with tap water one could drink.

And I did learn. College was where I realized that being smart was fun.

I became a sponge, and as a consequence of a core curriculum not so different from ours here at the Uni versity, I found myself learning information that previously I either would have ignored or refused to think about. Because of a chemistry course, I better understood my father’s work on the Manhattan Project during the war and his work in the oil fields. In geology class I learned to identify the various fossils that we chipped away in a creek bed on my grandparents’

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farm. In Bible class it became clear that the liquid involved in Jesus’s first miracle was in fact wine and not the grape juice that we drank during the Lord’s Supper at church. In American history, I learned a slightly more objective version of the settling of Texas than I learned in Texas history class as a boy. Somewhere in there I committed the unpardonable sin, and began to question the legitimacy of the myth of the glorious lost cause of the Confederacy in what my father still refers to as the War of Northern Aggression. In sociology class I was exposed to hard data about welfare, and the legendary Cadillac-driving welfare queens vanished into thin air.

A year later, for another sociology class, I found myself for the first time in the home of a black person, a single mother of three who was trying to do right by her son by getting him involved in Big Brothers.

I was fortunate to have dedicated professors there who provided the personal attention that smaller classsize affords and who, in many cases,

were committed to performing the office of the scholar as defined by Ralph Waldo Emerson: to aid students “by showing them facts amidst appearances.” And for this country boy, whose best friend at age 10 was a pig named Honey West, that process of demystification worked. My physical circle had not expanded significantly by age 22, but my mental one extended far beyond the horizon of the flat Texas plain. It is not an exaggeration to declare that I stand before you today the product of the liberal arts.

But my decision to stay in school and go into academia ill qualifies me to talk about the impact of the liberal arts on most students who take their skills into the workforce. Instead, I turn to two UP alumni. Randy Howell graduated in 2005 with a degree in political science and a minor in German. His year in Salzburg, a year teaching in Austria, and a master’s in international relations aided him in landing an internship with the State Department in Vienna, and Portland 12

while there he was encouraged to apply for a job opening up in the Department of Energy. He now, at age 29, is the officer in charge of securing non-weapons grade nuclear materials across all of South Asia. He oversees a budget in the many millions of dollars and travels extensively throughout the region. When he was asked last fall about how he got the job without a science background, he said the learning curve was steep in the first year or two but that the skills he learned here enabled him to master the dense material.

Or consider Matt Boule, Class of 2002. Matt majored in English. He went to Japan after school and learned Japanese. After two years teaching English, he was offered a job in a start-up apparel company and was soon in charge of international sales. The company is VisVim, and their clientele are rock stars and other rich individuals who are willing to buy $20,000 jacket or $4,000 shoes.

Matt never had a business class, yet he has set up stores on three continents and driven international sales past domestic sales in Japan. When asked how they were able to succeed in their fields without specific training in those fields, both Randy and Matt said essentially the same thing: here they learned how to think.

But we can do more. We need more classes that emphasize interrogations of texts, not simply reading to pass a quiz or regurgitate information on a test. We need more reading, writing, and speaking assignments that require students to demonstrate the ability to apply the information we expect them to know. We need to develop reading and writing assignments that engage students in real debates and discussions. We need to ensure that classes are reasonably sized in order to promote critical discussions, classes of an appropriate size where students cannot hide in the back and where faculty members are not going to shy away from more critical reading and writing assignments due to increased grading demands that come with them.

My favorite part of teaching here is aiding my students in learning how smart they are. That is our job — not to tell them what to think, but to help them know what they think and why, and to equip them with the tools to take their native intelligence and apply it to any situation that they will face as the circles of their lives inevitably continue to expand. n

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Jim Sollars Head Coach, Women’s Basketball

PHOTO BY JERRY HART

And former history professor on The Bluff, too, until 1997, when he gave up the classroom to teach solely on court.

Decent coach: the most wins of any West Coast Conference women’s basketball coach ever, 363. (“Most losses ever too, 395,” he says. “Don’t forget to write that.”) League coach of the year five times, also a record.

Seven post-season berths for the Pilots, who have risen as high as #21 nationally under Jim’s cheerful glare. Forty league all-academic team players, 40 league all-athletic players, four league players of the year, two All-Americans. Taught clinics in Ireland. Has welcomed players from all over the world on his team: this year’s team features women from Italy and Finland. Greatest accomplishments: wife Pam (M.Ed. ’89) said yes when he proposed, and they were blessed with four children. After 27 years of barking from the Chiles Center bench and enjoying the creativity and intensity of his lanky charges, is the season that begins this fall his last?

“Ah, who knows,” he says, grinning.

“By rights it should be. But we have all this talent, and you watch the kids grow over the year — that’s the best part of the game, to watch them grow and change and learn to stick together. I’d miss that terribly…”

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O N S P O R T S The University’s Athletic Hall of Fame has four new members as of June: cross country and track AllAmerican Pete Julian ’93, soccer superstar Tiffeny Milbrett ’95 (who was for a while there The Best Player in the World, what a line), Terry Pollreisz ’69, who played both baseball and basketball very well for the Pilots, and then coached the baseballers from 1987-1997, before managing in the Seattle Mariners system; and the affable Gayle Poff Ventura, assistant to the athletic director from 1964 to 1992, a remarkable stretch of patience and skill.

Baseball Drafted by the majors in June: pitcher Kyle Kraus, by the Boston Red Sox; pitcher Chris Johnson, by the San Francisco Giants; and pitcher Owen Jones, by the Dodgers.

Kraus has the most career wins ever by a Pilot pitcher, 27. ¶ Other alumni in the pros this summer: catcher Rocky Gale (Lake Elsinore Storm), and pitchers Austin Bibens-Dirkx (Harrisburg Senators), Chris Dennis (Tri-City Valley Cats), Ari Ronick (Richmond Flying Squirrels), and Zach Varce (Charleston River Dogs).

We love minor-league baseball we do.

Women’s Soccer The Pilots, having led the nation in attendance for the seventh year in a row (3110 per game), are aiming at their third national title. All-WCC scorers Micaela Capelle and Kendall Johnson (the latter after missing all last season with a blown knee) are back; among the new faces is forward Devlyn Jeter from Sacramento, where she captained her Elk Grove Club team, which counts among its recent alumnae Pilot stars Megan and Rachael Rapinoe and Stephanie Lopez Cox. Tickets are available for the Awesome Purple Machine, who close the regular home season November 3; see portlandpilots.com, or call 503.943.7117.

Men’s Soccer Back for the Pilots are all-WCC midfielders Steven Evans and Derek Boggs, and junior keeper Justin Baarts, who played every minute in goal last year; among the new faces are local lads Jordan Baeza (Aloha), Dustin Munger (Lafayette), Hugo Rhoads (West Linn), Jaime Velasco (Beaverton) and Connor Wear (Wilson High in Portland). The men have six home games this fall at home, all against WCC foes.

Men’s Cross Country The Pilot men, eighth in the nation last year, wel-

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come 14 new runners, among them California state champ Sergio Gonzalez, Washington state champ Jacob Smith, Colorado state 3200m champ Griffin Hay, and Adam Waldum of Texas (fourth in his vast state). Back for the men are NCAA championship meet veterans Joash Oroso, Scott Fauble, and Lars Erik Malde, among others.

Women’s Cross Country Among the new faces: Anne Luijten (Netherlands) and Lorea Ibarzabal (Spain’s national junior champ). Among local recruits: Maddy Duretete from Milwaukie and Helen Harder from Beaverton. Returning veterans for the Pilots, tenth in the West last year: all-WCC Marit Tegelaar, Merel van Steenbergen, Kellie Houser, and Lyndy Davis. Among the slated meets: the euphonious Toledo Bubblebuster, in Ohio.

Men’s Basketball New faces for the Pilots: guard David Ahern (Marin County’s player of the year), forward Jake Ehlers (twice Oregon 5A Player of the Year for state champ Corvallis High), guard Bryce Pressley (Jesuit High in Sacramento), and guard Oskars Reinfelds, a member of the Latvian National Team. Back for the Pilots are forward Ryan Nicholas (who led the team in scoring and rebounding), center Thomas van der Mars, and guards Kevin Bailey and David Carr.

Women’s Basketball Among the new faces are three Europeans: forwards Sara Ines Hernandez (Italy) and Annika Holopainen (Finland)

and guard Ellen Nurmi, who joined Holopainen on the Finnish national team. Jazmyn Johnson (Texas) and Alison Ryan (California) fill out the freshmen; Ryan will also join the Pilots’ track team in the spring. Among the veterans returning: forward Cassandra Brown, who scored a careerhigh 32 points against Santa Clara in the WCC tournament last year.

Tennis Back for the men: all-WCC junior Michel Hu Kwo, who won 12 matches for the Pilots last year and stands at 41-21 total for his singles and doubles career on The Bluff; for the women, all-WCC senior Valeska Hoath (11 wins) and sophomore Nastya Polyakova (10) are back.

Rowing The Pilot women rowers have already set an all-time University record; most National Scholar Athletes in a team’s first year, 8. The Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association honors students who have a cumulative grade point average of 3.5 or better.

Volleyball The Pilots, who led the nation in sets per match last year (4.14), hope to turn all that experience into victories, led by all-WCC senior Ariel Usher and junior Autumn Wedan, star of the Pilots’ thrilling five-set victory at Notre Dame last year. New faces include junior transfer Beth Carey, who spent the summer playing with the Australian national team in Vietnam.

SCHEDULES, TICKETS, TALES: SEE PORTLANDPILOTS.COM

Bemedalled Pilots at the Olympics: Sophie Schmidt, Megan Rapinoe, and The Best Women’s Soccer Player in the World, Christine Sinclair. University alumnus Derek Mandell also ran the 800 meters for Guam, in 1:58.

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O N B R I E F LY The RISE Campaign was, at presstime, up to $135 million of its $175 million target; one recent highlight was a May event that raised $1.3 million in three hours (!). See pages 54 and 55. ¶ The Campaign’s impact is already evident: Clark Library is being rebuilt this next year, reopening next summer; some 20 new scholarships will be awarded this year; and philosophy professor Alejandro Santana becomes the first E. John Rumpakis ’54 Professor of Hellenic Studies this year. Rumpakis, long a real estate legend in Portland, created the professorship to focus on the influence of Greek culture on western ideas and institutions; he also says he was inspired to make his gift in part by the happy memory of Father John Delaunay, C.S.C. – perhaps the best-loved Holy Cross man ever on The Bluff.

The New Holy Cross Provincial, succeeding former University president Father Dave Tyson after nine years: Father Tom O’Hara, most recently president of King’s College in Pennsylvania, and a 2012 honorary doctorate recipient on The Bluff for his service to education. Tyson’s tenure was remarkable: under his aegis the Congregation in America reunit-

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ed as the United States Province, savored its greatest vocational and financial successes in decades, and expanded its ministry, particularly in Africa.

Campus Graces Education professor Joe Pascarelli and administrative jack-of-all-trades Margaret Henzi died in the last few months, Joe after 20 years of teaching and Margaret after 42 years of beaming. The annual employee of the year award for office and clerical folk is named for her.

Gifts in their cheerful memories: Diane Dickey, 503.93.8130.

The National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance awarded Tommy Pham ’09, M.B.A. 2011 and colleagues a grant to work toward discovering new drugs for medical purposes; Pham and OHSU partners formed a company called Nzumbe, based in part of work done in the University’s entrepreneurship center ranked first in America.

The Shiley School of Engineering paired three of its civil engineering students with Honduran engineering students to work on water and sanitation projects for rural communities through Water for People; all the students then spent part of this summer on The Bluff working on data and designs, funded by the National Science Foundation.

Leaving The Bluff this fall, after a remarkable 24 years as politics professor, arts and sciences dean, and finally provost: the affable and brilliant Brother Donald Stabrowski, C.S.C. The Provost was dragooned this summer into returning to Notre Dame as assistant provincial of the Congregation of Holy Cross in America, a job he will do deftly and with his usual wit; but we will miss him very much. Our prayers.

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The Garaventa Center for American Catholicism welcomed a new director this summer, Father Gary Chamberland, C.S.C., who will also continue to run campus ministry; Father Jim Lies, C.S.C., moved to Stonehill College as vice president. ¶ Oregon State Police veteran Gerald Gregg ’81 succeeded campus safety director Harold Burke-Sivers this summer; the legendary Deacon Harold, a gifted spiritual speaker, will devote more time to his ministry energies, after 11 stellar years protecting students. Well done, Harold.

Thank you.

Among Recent Rise Campaign Gifts and Grants: $500,000 from Amy Dundon Berchtold and Jim Berchtold ’63, to create the Dundon Berchtold Fund for Moral Formation and Applied Ethics, and an Initiative in Ethics, designed to help the University meet its “aspirations both to form the moral character of its students and to conduct sustained ethical reflection in applied aspects of business, science, engineering, education, health care, and the arts.”

The gift will allow the University to start its long-planned Character Project – semester-long discussions of personal values, decisions, habits, virtues, vices, and the Christian narrative that transforms the moral life of the believer. Part of the project will be Dundon Berchtold Fellowships for students and professors. Very cool. ¶ Joe and Helen Allegretti pledged $250,000 for scholarships to the University during the May Campaign event, followed immediately by regent Ralph Miller and his wife Sandi, who matched that $250,000, soon after regent Mary Boyle and her husband Tim offered $100,000 as their matching gift. It was like a hilarious pinball game – all of which benefits students and their poor parents. Wow. Among Recent Student Feats: grants to teach in Austria for a year, for five students; grants to teach in France, to four; the Gilman Scholarships, for a year of undergrad study abroad, to three (among them Morgan Rapazo, from Hawaii, who will graduate at a startling 19 years old); Krista Colleagues awards for service and leadership, to three students; the Saint André Fellowship in Portland, to Taylor Bergmann; and a Focus the Nation grant to Dan Browne ’11, as one of the nation’s top rising young leaders in clean energy. Plus six Fulbrights to Germany, Spain, India, and England. Whew.

Firefighters Photographs and notes by Lawrence Hudetz We take them a little for granted, still. We walk past the firehouse, and we nod with respect, and we note with wonder how huge those trucks are, and we salute and wave at parades, and we don’t think about the incredible courage and grace and skill of firefighters, their medical and technical brilliance, their meager pay, their sleepless hours, the moments when they will come face to face with death, when they will save a life, when they will bend a story away from horror toward absolute gasping weeping relief. They do it all day and night, all around us, and we ought to celebrate them at least sometimes. So we do so here, with quiet prayers especially for the men and women and children who were murdered on September 11, and for the firefighters who instantly, with astonishing courage, rushed toward the horror to help, when every iota of their being must have been screaming to run in the other direction. They didn’t. Bless them.

-Editor

Captain Mark Bjorklund ’90, firefighter and paramedic, Salem, Oregon “I walked into work at the firehouse in the morning on September 11, 2001, and the televisions were all on and everyone was staring and it was silent. That day reminded us all how dangerous and unpredictable the job is. All through the history of the fire service there’s always been an intense feeling of brotherhood and sisterhood, and that’s ten times the case since September 11. I have a FDNY hat, given to me by a woman whose FDNY brother was murdered that day, and I wear it once a year, to remember. It’s like a family here, yes. I mean, you live here for a third of your life. We work 48/96, so we’re here two days and then off for four. You better get along. Humor is your best friend a lot of the time. Sure, we’re adrenaline junkies. I have to be honest and say we want exciting, we want to kill a fire. But what’s most satisfying is when you save a person, when you turn tragedy into rescue. We’re a lot more safety-conscious now, too – it used to be the life expectancy of firefighters was low because of the carcinogens they used in the old days. Firefighters used to be called leather lungers because they never had masks or air packs, they just dove in; the dirtier you were, the better you were…”

Brian Dundon ’03, firefighter and EMT, St. Johns Station #22, Portland Fire & Rescue “I got interested in firefighting during my sophomore year; I began by visiting Lakewood (Washington) Fire Department that summer, and I started taking fire tests as soon as I graduated. I tested up and down the west coast, from Seattle to Los Angeles, and east to Nevada. In Las Vegas I tested with 6,500 other candidates; in Portland I tested with 4,800. It’s an extremely competitive field and I am extremely thankful to be where I am now. Saint Johns is unique. We have the largest fire management area in the city of Portland. We’re responsible for Forest Park, Sauvie Island, Highway 30, Kelly Point Park, and even the University of Portland. There is a wide variety of calls in these areas, which is challenging. One particular call I will never forget was a “pin-in” on Highway 30 – the driver was pinned in his car and it was a battle for us to get him out. Rarely do we get to connect with patients after the call, but he was a special case. We visited him in the hospital and throughout his recovery, and to this day we have a relationship with him and his family...”

David Bessman ’12, firefighter and registered nurse, Scappoose, Oregon “I started off as an engineering major at the University and switched to nursing my junior year, and I wanted to have more experience on the emergency side of medicine. So I volunteered as a firefighter on Sauvie Island, not far from the campus. We had about 100 calls a year, most of them in summer, when the beaches are full. A year later I switched here to Scappoose, where we get 1,500 calls a year. I like the medical side of things, so I’m going to go full time into nursing; I am thinking of working in the Oregon prison system, and perhaps emergency room work after that. I like to be busy. I like the initial assessment part of the work, both as firefighter and nurse – trying to figure out exactly what the problem is, as fast and efficiently as possible. I like the assessment part – is it a stroke, is it a diabetic emergency? This is where it helps to be a nurse – I have more experience with patients and drugs, so I can suggest, for example, that someone taking a diuretic might be a congestive heart failure patient.”

Brandon Pratt ’10, firefighter and EMT, Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue “My dad has been a firefighter since before I was born – for McMinnville, then Salem, and Portland. All my life I saw him go out on calls. I grew up around it and I really liked the environment, the camaraderie, the humor, the personalities. I couldn’t wait to go on the rig and go out on my first call. I tested here at Tualatin Valley when I was a junior at the University. It’s a lot more popular a job now after September 11. People wave at firefighters now. They know how hard the job is. People say thanks to their fire departments. Kids wave at us. I’ve been on a few calls that were with kids, and those stay with you. My first fire was on my twentieth birthday. There was a burn victim at that fire. That will stay with me to the grave. When you go on calls like that it makes you happy to go home and see your family. That’s the hardest thing about this job. Sometimes we get very personal contact, a heart’s stopped, and we do CPR, and get the person to the hospital, but that’s it. We don’t see them again, we don’t talk to them again.

Sometimes the people do come thank us, which is great. We love to see people we helped...”

Chris McBride ’01, firefighter, Vancouver, Washington Mechanical engineering degree from the University. “Did forest firefighting during school to help pay tuition. Then I worked as a kayaking guide for a couple years while I was testing for fire departments. It’s very, very competitive. I tested all over. When I was testing it wasn’t unusual to go for 20 tests before you got hired. Most departments do a written exam, a physical agility exam, and then interviews with a few chiefs. There’s only so many full time positions and tons of guys want to become firemen. Most guys, this all they ever wanted to do. Side jobs are normal, though. The vast majority of side jobs are trades, construction, carpentry.

Some guys are nurses. Politics and budgets are the biggest problem; our staffing levels are always under attack. It takes a certain number of fire fighters to put out a fire no matter where you are, and to put it out safely. The standard is four guys to an engine; we have three. The fact is that the only people who see clearly what we do are people who have something bad happen to them.

The rest of the population never sees us. They don’t know what they’re paying for, and they don’t know they need us unless something bad happens. The thing is, though, that we love firefighting. There’s no other job you want. It’s the job you want to do on your days off. I wanted to do this since I was a kid. My mom has a photo of my friend Jeromy and me dressed in firefighters’ gear when we were little – he’s a firefighter in Spokane now, and I am here...”

The CourageTo Change Your Mind On having the guts to not be sure of yourself.

By Elizabeth Samet

n conversation a few years ago my father attempted to salvage the reputation of a public figure I regarded as indefensible (and about whom he was frankly ambivalent): “Well,” concluded my father, “at least he had the courage of his convictions.” Here was a truism, one I myself had countless times advanced in praise, yet suddenly

it sounded like a defense of last resort — disclosing for the first time the full force of a ruinous nihilism.

Boasts about the courage of conviction have from that moment seemed to me what protestations of patriotism once did to Samuel Johnson: “the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Having the courage of one’s convictions strikes

me as the most dangerous of virtues, the virtue of martyrs and fanatics alike, the virtue to which even those with bankrupt aims might always default. Thomas Beckett had that kind of courage in fatal measure; so, to the misfortune of the men he commanded, did George Armstrong Custer.

In the culture of impatience and

PHOTO COLLAGE: NEIL LESLIE / GETTY IMAGES

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demagoguery to which we are presently consigned there is apparently nothing so worthy of celebration as having the courage of one’s convictions; nothing — no cruelty, betrayal, or vice — more damaging to a political career than the depravity of having changed one’s mind. This is the larger cultural context in which I teach English to undergraduates on their way to becoming Army officers. There is also to my work a local, sub-cultural framework that only intensifies the prevailing societal prejudice in favor of defiant haste.

In military as in political life a premium is placed on decisiveness. There are good reasons for this bias, moments of crisis in a military career that require immediate action. Generals who refuse to move have always maddened those who await the results of their campaigns: “And, once more let me tell you,” Abraham Lincoln exhorted the dilatory General McClellan in the spring of 1862, “it is indispensible to you that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this... I beg to assure you that I have never written you, or spoken to you, in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as in my most anxious judgment, I consistently can. But you must act.”

Even when there is sound policy behind their inaction, seemingly idle military commanders provoke frustration. Consider the case of Fabius Maximus, who endured the incomprehension and disdain of his fellow Romans when he adopted the strategy of delay that ultimately defeated Hannibal.

Equally significant is the seductive romance that attaches to the splitsecond decision made under fire.

Tangible action soothes while invisible contemplation provokes suspicion: One wants always to be seen to be doing something. Premature demands for “deliverables,” “takeaways,” and the (short-circuiting) bottom line up front eclipse deliberation in military culture even when it is operating at the farthest remove from the field of battle.

In public life indecision is interpreted as weakness, and sometimes it is.

The fear of seeming weak prompts leaders to make quick work of decisions over which they ought to labor — and to be seen to labor. Sometimes, paradoxically, fear induces compensatory fits of paralysis, in which what ought to be an easy decision turns agonizing. Yet there is a difference not fully appreciated between the failure to take responsibility and the recognition that the time may not yet be

ripe for decisive action. I do not advocate leadership without principle, nor do I seek to encourage habits of vacillation or procrastination. Yet when discussion, debate, and reflection are likewise construed as signs of cowardice rather than of a confidence in one’s own capacity for measured judgment as well as a trust in that of the people with whom one has surrounded oneself, I begin to discern the lineaments of a cultural pathology.

It takes a rather different kind of courage to admit to not yet knowing one’s mind, to having altered an opinion in the light of new evidence or a reinterpretation of the old, or to having made an error in judgment. This is precisely the sort of courage Lincoln displayed in a letter to Ulysses S. Grant not long after the surrender of Vicksburg in the summer of 1863: “I do not remember that you and I ever met personally,” Lincoln began.

“I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done the country.

I wish,” the president continued, “to say a word further.” Lincoln then rehearsed his initial doubts about Grant’s operational decisions leading up to the Union victory: When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do, what you finally did — march the troops across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition, and the like, could succeed.

When you got below, and took PortGibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join Gen. Banks; and when you turned Northward East of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right, and I was wrong.

The elegance of Lincoln’s confession owes to its being wholly unforced. His misgivings might well have remained the president’s own secret without harming his relationship with Grant.

Nor does Lincoln seem concerned that his admission of a mistake will in any way interfere with his civilian authority over the military in the future. It takes a particular — and not the most common — kind of selfconfidence to behave in such a way.

One has inordinate difficulty imagining Donald Rumsfeld crafting such a message to former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, the Cassandra whose prediction about the troop numbers Autumn 2012 23

needed for the invasion of Iraq was publicly dismissed by then-Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz.

Working in a military environment, one sees the infectious, almost irresistible, ease with which self-confidence circulates, readying people for tasks they may not wish to perform and for missions that may cost them everything. Such confidence is an invaluable commodity in this world, but, like ambition, it has a double edge. My students have joined a culture in which no one wants to look uncertain, one in which bluster too easily passes for a justified confidence, one in which only the most secure can muster the courage to admit their lack of sureness when required. It is no easy thing to cultivate and preserve the quality of mind on display in Lincoln’s letter to Grant within such an institution, but I’ve come to think of it as the chief responsibility of those charged with preparing its novitiates.

I’ve found the most gracious, least dogmatic formulation of this state of mind in the essays of Montaigne, which I like especially to read with seniors: “As for our pupil’s talk, let his virtue and his sense of right and wrong shine through it and have no guide but reason,” Montaigne writes in “On the Education of Children.”

“Make him understand that confessing an error which he discovers in his own argument even when he alone has noticed it is an act of justice and integrity, which are the main qualities he pursues; stubbornness and rancour are vulgar qualities, visible in common souls whereas to think again, to change one’s mind and to give up a bad case in the heat of the argument are rare qualities showing strength and wisdom.”

Montaigne’s philosophy was refined by war as well as peace, in the public arena as well as the private retreat, through wide reading as well as practical experience. He is a staunch ally on a campaign to promote the value of changing one’s mind among those whose task it will be command confidence, to calm fear, to demand that others follow them to unhappy places even at the peril of their own lives.

To those who therefore can least afford to be accused of the vanity of absolute certainty or to be convicted of lacking the courage to think again. n Elizabeth Samet is a professor of literature at the United States Military Academy at West Point. She is the author of the terrific Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point.

the

LETTER H

e rose before six that morning, same as usual, and donned his sweatshirt, and went for a jog — three miles now, in a slight concession to age, rather than four. Then a shower and coffee and an hour of private prayer in his home chapel. It was Ash Wednesday. A light day for appointments, he says — everyone assumes you’re in church all day, which you are not, although I was celebrating a lunchtime Mass at the chancery, and the evening Mass in the cathedral. It was also his seventy-fifth birthday. An Archbishop of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, by canon law, must tender his resignation, by letter, to His Holiness the Pope by the close of business on his seventy-fifth birthday.

The mail is picked up at four in the afternoon at the chancery on Burnside Street. So His Excellency John George Vlazny, Tenth Archbishop of Portland in Oregon, the second-oldest archdiocese in America (behind only Baltimore), had some seven hours, after his arrival in his office on Burnside Street at nine in the morning on Ash Wednesday of this year, to write the letter that would close his career as not only Oregon’s pastor, but first among the Catholic bishops of Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.

I figured I would tackle it as soon as I got settled in the office, he says.

No sense putting it off. No, I didn’t worry about what to say. I knew what I was supposed to say, but I also knew what I wanted to say. I dictated the letter, as I usually do. I told the Holy Father that I was filled with the deepest appreciation for having received the call to be a bishop three times from His Holiness John Paul the Second, and that I was offering my resignation, and that I would await further information. The letter goes to the papal nuncio in Washington, and then he reports my resignation to the Congregatio pro Episcopis, the Congregation for Bishops, in the Vatican. In turn they report my news to His Holiness, and then the process starts. I am eventually asked to recommend a

terna, three men I think would be excellent candidates to succeed me.

The three names can be anyone in the world — I could even suggest you, although if the Holy Father chooses you, which he can, we would have to see about your ordination.

I wasn’t sad or regretful, no. To be honest there was almost a little glee, after 29 years as a bishop. When I was finished dictating the letter, I left the tape in a box by the door. My assistant Rozeanne retrieved it. Our habit is that she types up letters and gives them to me to look over and sign. In this case she waited until the afternoon to get to it.

I stared at the tape all morning but I just couldn’t do it, she says. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I knew that I should but I just couldn’t. Finally after lunch the Archbishop said I think you better get that letter done, Rozeanne, so I did. I gave it to him at about two o’clock. He made some tinkers and I made him a clean copy and he signed that and gave it back to me. We didn’t say anything. I put it in the envelope and stamped it. I remember that the stamp had a ship on it. I walked it down to the mailroom. Outgoing mail goes in a large white bin. A postman comes for the bin. Our mail goes to the main city post office on Hoyt Street. The letter goes to Washington, and then I think it goes into the papal nuncio’s diplomatic pouch for transmission to Rome.

You know what I would like to do when I am retired? says the Archbishop. I’d like to sit by the Sea of Galilee for a couple of months. Or maybe in the hills of Assisi. Just sit quietly and think and pray. It’s been a long road from being Johnny Vlazny in the streets of Chicago to that letter. Fifty years as a priest, thirty as a bishop.

Then I’d like to come home to Portland and just be on call. Visit schools, retreats, maybe teach a little. The archdiocese is in good health now. We’re out of bankruptcy, no parishes closed, the schools are all protected. The parishes are independent. I am the Autumn 2012 25

member of 124 parish corporations, you know. Vocations are up, Hispanics are better served, our children are protected against heinous crimes.

We’re in good shape. I know that my time will always be remembered for the bankruptcy. I don’t like that, but I know how history will read.

Archbishop, I say, there are an awful lot of people who think your honesty and humility and integrity dealing with crimes not committed on your watch is what will be remembered. You said you would protect our children, and be responsible to victims, and never lie, and you kept your promises, when many other men did not.

There was a moment, says the archbishop suddenly, when I was about to sign off on the bankruptcy, which would be the first ever in the American church, but which I felt we must do, to be fair to all victims and to protect parishes and schools from closure, and I hesitated for a moment, thinking that this might well cause me to lose my job; but then I realized that if you are not willing to let go, you are not doing your job. I suppose I would like to be remembered as a man who did his job with all his heart.

I never wanted to be an authority. I only wanted to be a good priest, and a good man, and a teacher of the greatest lesson I know.

Right about then the Archbishop’s next appointment is announced and the Archbishop and I shake hands and I look around his office, the last time I will ever see him here, and I note three things in particular: a shepherd’s crook, carved for him by a parishioner; a walking-stick owned by his predecessor Archbishop Alexander Christie, who founded the University of Portland in 1901; and a drawing by a child. This last is positioned so that he could see it all day, every day.

Every day, he saw a lovely drawing by a miracle. Every single day. n Brian Doyle is the editor of this magazine, and the author most recently of a novella, Cat’s Foot.

PHOTO BY STEVE HAMBUCHEN

By Brian Doyle

South On New Year’s Eve last year, University biology professor Katie O’Reilly set sail from the Beagle Channel, in Ushuaia, Argentina, headed deep into the Ice – first to the Falkland Islands, then to South Georgia Island, and finally to Antarctica, the seventh continent. Having studied and taught about seabirds (and vertebrate biology, and ecology, and much else) for more than twenty years, she was thrilled to be aboard the Ortelius. “The trip of a lifetime,” says Katie, who took thousands of photographs and kept an entertaining log – see crusingparadisebay.blogspot.com. Our thanks for these shots and for Katie’s cheerful energy and wit over the years. Katie, we note with pride, is off to New Zealand this winter, for a Fulbright grant semester studying blue penguins.

-Editor

King penguins, St. Andrews Bay, South Georgia Island. “One of the endearing qualities of king penguins,” says Katie O’Reilly, “is their inquisitiveness; I was under investigation by this individual as a south polar skua was pecking at my boots to see if I was (a) dead and (b) tasty.”

Leopard seal, Cierva Cove, Antarctic Peninsula.

“He was napping on an iceberg when our Zodiac engine and camera shutters woke him up. The wounds around his mouth are likely from the sharp beak and nails of a penguin as it fought back.

Leopard seals typically shake penguins until the meat is exposed, effectively eating them from the inside out, leaving the empty feather-covered skin to float at the water’s surface, providing food for scavengers like the southern giant petrel.”

King penguin chick and parents, Gold Harbour, South Georgia Island. “King penguins don’t breed in Antarctica like their larger cousins the emperor penguins, but they can be found in enormous breeding colonies on South Georgia Island. This colony had approximately 25,000 pairs. The chick here is about a year old and is chasing its mom or dad for some regurgitated fish. The bird to the chick’s left just fledged, losing the fluff and growing in waterproof feathers so now it can go out to sea and feed itself. Notice the southern elephant seal napping in the background; they also breed at Gold Harbour. Sharp-eyed readers may also spot the penguin with a cherry-red bill – a gentoo penguin. King penguins at this brown fluffy stage, by the way, are called Oakum Boys because they reminded early sealers of the fiber used to caulk ships.”

Adélie penguins, near Paulet Island, Antarctic peninsula. “Adélies are closely associated with ice and, along with emperor penguins, stand the most to lose with rising temperatures in Antarctica.

This small group was loafing on an iceberg near their large breeding colony at Paulet Island. Notice the enormous tabular icebergs in the background, formerly part of glaciers as they meet the sea.”

Katie O’Reilly’s particular and grateful and delighted thanks to Cheesemans’ Ecology Safaris (www.cheesemans.com).

THE REALLY DANGEROUS IDEA IS THE GOSPELS How could a Church made up of us be anything but imperfect?

I

find there are two types of people who attack me when they discover I’m Catholic. The first are lapsed or disgruntled Catholics who claim to be revolted by the Church but can’t stop talking about it. The second type, the Pharisees, are always trying to get me to say something bad about other (in their eyes lukewarm) members of the Church. None of these folks can bear the hideous gap between how a follower of Christ should be and how a person who claims to be a follower of Christ actually is.

But you have to be somewhat nuts to sign up for something that is basically impossible to achieve. As Thomas Merton observed: “We must remember that in order to choose religious life, you must be a misfit...”

Christ did not confine himself to politics. He didn’t say, We need more rights. He didn’t say, Let’s overthrow the Romans. He said, We need to live in total integrity and love. In order to do so, we need a Church, and because we are never going to do so perfectly, the Church will inevitably also be imperfect. To avoid the scandal of the Cross, which is in some sense to say the scandal of the Church, is impossible. How could a Church made up of us be anything but imperfect? What Church would take us except a Church that tolerated imperfection? Where else would we drag ourselves to pray for the people we resent at any given moment — our mothers, our spouses, our kids, our friends, our politicians, the other people in church — but to church? Where else would we go to be reminded of the perpetual death and perpetual rebirth but to Mass? In order to try resurrecting the Church we keep wrecking, we have to keep going to church — because we need Christ: to walk with us, to live.

Religion doesn’t mean acting better

than other people; it means, if we’re lucky, getting to act a little better than we used to, ourselves. As the writer Madeleine L’Engle observed: “We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”

You can’t do that if you’re driven by anger or fear. You have to have some kind of joy. And this seems to require looking at our darkest wounds: our resentments, our seemingly hard-wired patterns, neuroses, fears.

The things we’re ashamed of, the things we’re guilty about, the compulsive patterns we can’t shake free of, no matter how hard we try. That to me is the real challenge of Christ, and what sets me on fire about the Gospels.

We all want to learn compassion, but as we go about trying to be of service to the world, we are going to uncover some very difficult stuff, about ourselves, about others. And that’s what we have to work through. That’s the hard stuff, the hardest stuff there is.

Family stuff. Sex stuff. Our identity as a person who has a certain kind of career, or a certain political leaning.

Our “reputation in the community,” perhaps. We may end up “giving up” certain things, maybe many things, out of love. Money, maybe; sex for a time, maybe forever. But that’s where the joy comes in.

I keep thinking of that passage from Matthew’s gospel: “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” Jonah, that reluctant Old Testament prophet who had been three days and three nights in the belly of the whale. Jonah, who had Portland 34

been so pissed off and discouraged that he’d built himself a little hut. Jonah, who had sat in the shade and sulked.

The really dangerous idea is the Gospels. Dangerous because you consent to not be useful, to not be productive, to not be relevant. Dangerous because you never know whether you have staked your life, or whether you’re a sham and a coward. Dangerous because you offer up your entire self and you’re no better or kinder, no less petty or more generous, no more effective, squared away, or “together” than when you began. You’re more crushed, uncertain, and vulnerable. You’re more human. That’s the good news — but to be human is a perilous, perilous undertaking.

We are all just here with our broken, shattered hearts, hoping against hope for the Second Coming and trying to not kill ourselves or each other before it arrives. Expending our entire strength to eke out the tiniest act of kindness.

Rolling our rock, with Sisyphus, up a mountain whose top we’re never going to reach. Knowing that in the end we die alone and praying to be stand-up enough, just once or twice in our lives, to comfort someone else who is dying, as Christ had comforted the Repentant Thief who was nailed to the cross beside him.

That’s faith. That’s the Resurrection.

As Thérèse of Lisieux neared the end of her life, her older sister Céline, frustrated at having so much less charity than she would have liked, exclaimed, “Oh, when I think how much I have to acquire!”

“Rather,” Thérèse replied, “how much you have to lose.” n Heather King is a writer in Los Angeles.

Her most recent book is Shirt of Flame: A Year with Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, from Paraclete Press.

PAINTING, THE BEGGAR, BY GIOCOMO BALLA, 1902 / ART RESOURCES, NY

By Heather King

I

CALL ME JIM Years ago the University hired a young track coach who happened to be perhaps the finest runner on earth. Notes on the entertaining and beloved Jim Grelle.

By Robin Cody

n the summer of 1965 a pair of young distance runners — Bill Fairwell ’68 and Mike McCabe ’70 — worked out daily in Alameda, California, on the track at St. Joseph’s Academy.

An envelope addressed to Fairwell arrived one day from the University of Portland. Fairwell opened the envelope, and he and McCabe read a letter signed by Jim Grelle, announcing that he, Grelle, would be coaching Pilot runners in the fall.

“We couldn’t believe it,” says McCabe, who was about to be a freshman on The Bluff. “The Jim Grelle!?

We knew all about him from Sports Illustrated. Just that June, Grelle had set the American record for the mile.

Then in August, on ABC’s Wild World of Sport, we watched him run second to Jim Ryun when Ryun broke the world record. Amazing. When he beat New Zealand’s Peter Snell — the Olympic gold medalist — at the Vancouver Relays we went apoplectic. It was like they were bringing in Drew Brees or Aaron Rodgers to coach quarterbacks.”

“Imagine,” says Paul Kirkland ’69.

“I come from a Portland family of runners. The first time I met him I invited Mr. Grelle — the 3:55 miler — to dinner at my parents’ house. And it was, Call me Jim, from the start.

Never Mr. Grelle.”

“He won practically every indoor race he entered that year,” says McCabe.

“Here he had a wife and kids and a full-time job selling athletic gear to schools, and he was still competing at the highest level. Running with us was just a jog to him. He did his own workouts on the side. He didn’t throttle us. He didn’t pull out the big club to drive the green on a par four. More likely he’d take off with a weird gait, running like a goof, and we would have to sprint to catch up.”

“He’d mimic the gait of the world’s top runners,” says Dave White ’72.

“Jim Ryun. Peter Snell. Herb Elliott.

Kip Keino. Jim knew them all. He beat every one of them, at one time or another…”

Paul Kirkland — I was a party guy.

Several of us were. Saturday nights we went to D Street [The Division Street Corral, a dance hall known for wild drinking and fistfights]. Sunday morning workouts were not our idea of fun. We’d pile into cars and stagger out at his house, over by Jesuit High.

Mike McCabe — I’ll run those poisons right out of you, he’d say. Jim couldn’t be there every day, so he gave us taiThree of the best milers in the world in 1964: in order, right to left, Kip Keino of Kenya, Jim Grelle, and Jim Ryun.

Autumn 2012 37

lored and individualized workout sheets to follow. Bill Bowerman-style workouts, like what Steve Prefontaine would run. By the end of my freshman year — by Christmas time, even — I was running faster than I’d ever thought possible. That’s the point. All of us exceeded what we thought we could do. We rocketed ahead.

Dave White — He turned me from a jogger in Portland to a runner in Europe.

Paul Kirkland — We ran ten, twelve miles a workout. Eighty miles a week.

Bill Fairwell woke us up early and led five charges up from the bottom of the bluff. To skip a workout, you’d sleep in somebody else’s bed, and Bill would still find you. Bill was a Marine. Bill was a Marine long before he enlisted in the Marine Corps and got blown up in Viet Nam. Dave White — At the Lloyd Center you could run for miles without getting wet. The escalators started up before the shops opened. Jim took off running and we’d try to follow. Up the down escalators. Down the up. You couldn’t catch him. He’d get out of sight, and then it was hide-and-go-seek, looking for Jim. Christmas season, this was. We lost him. I passed a lifesized nativity scene and heard, Psssssst.

I stopped. I looked around. Jim was nowhere in sight. White, he said. Back here. He stood frozen next to Joseph, wearing Joseph’s hat. He motioned me in, and I posed as the fourth wise man. Nuccio, he said, as Jim Nuccio passed. Come in here. Nuccio got down on his knees looking at baby Jesus.

Mike McCabe — Sundays, Jim and his wife Jean let us knuckleheads raid their house. He had huge trophies and the keys to three or four cities, but it wasn’t like a shrine. He just had his trophies in the kids’ room and around. Jean was just gorgeous, like a movie star. They totally adopted us.

I reveled in those little kids. I’d never been around children, but on the drive to a meet at Oregon State I had little Jimmy crawling all over me. No car seats. No seat belts in those days.

Dave White — They took people in.

I practically lived over there summers.

Our girlfriends babysat their kids.

One morning I headed for the bathroom and Jim said, No, use the upstairs bathroom. Weird. But he’s the coach.

Upstairs, the bathroom adjoined a bedroom, and there was Jim Ryun and his wife in bed. Jim Ryun!

Mike McCabe — Jim took us to Eugene the year Oregon milers finished 1-2-3 in the Pac-8, and we worked out with the Ducks. Bowerman gave him grief. Jim dished it right back, and those Oregon runners came up to Jim

like he was the running guru.

Dave White — At the house before running you’d stand in line to drink this horrible mix of cod liver oil and wheat germ and stuff. Jim said it was healthy. I never saw him drink it himself. Bazooka Juice, we called it, for the way it came up if you couldn’t keep it down.

Mike McCabe — If their lawn needed cut, a relay of us mowed it while Jim held the stop watch.

Grelle’s father was a doctor, his mother a homemaker. He grew up without want in Portland’s West Hills, but school was not easy for him. Not until much later in his life — when son Jimmy was diagnosed with dyslexia — did Jim have a clinical tag for his own boyhood frustrations. “I probably had ADS as well,” he says. “I’d get up to sharpen my pencil again and again, or pop out of class. At first I got by by memorizing the books. See Dick, run.

Run, Dick run. Spot’s our dog. Spot runs fast. I never missed a day of school, but I barely passed my classes. I can’t spell. Those emails to you now? That’s Jean spelling what I said.”

But see Jim run. Jim runs far. Jim runs fast. In his junior and senior years at Lincoln High, nobody beat Grelle at the half mile. No Oregon high school kid in 35 years had run a two-minute half mile. Some doubted that anyone ever had. But a couple of weeks before escorting Lincoln’s Princess in the Rose Festival ceremonies, Grelle set the state record at 1:58. Alongside him on the half-mile victory platform in 1955 stood a pale kid from Cleveland High, Phil Knight.

Coach Bill Bowerman recruited Grelle and Knight to the University of Oregon. Freshmen were not eligible for NCAA varsity competition, but on the freshman team Grelle remained undefeated in the half mile and had a 4:19 mile. He ran on the mile relay team with Knight, though neither of them were true quarter-milers. “Phil got famous for business,” Grelle says, “so people don’t realize how good an athlete he was. He played varsity basketball at Cleveland the year Cleveland won the state title.”

Because Grelle had gone undefeated for three years in the half mile, nobody was going to tell him he wasn’t a half-miler. Nobody but Bowerman, that is. The coach liked Grelle’s stamina more than his leg speed. The kid could be — should be — a miler.

Jim Ryun, running for Kansas, beating Jim Grelle by a hair, and setting an American record, 8:25 in the two-mile run, in the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Autumn 2012 39

“I resisted,” says Grelle. “We argued.

Bowerman said he could beat me at the half mile. Let’s race, he said, but he was full of tricks. He would cheat some way. At season’s end, Track and Field News came out with the nation’s best freshman stats. Bowerman asked me where I thought I ranked at the half mile. I hadn’t seen the magazine.

Twenty-second, he told me. He kind of spit it out. And your 4:19 mile? I had no idea. Fourth, he said, just one second out of second place.

“Sophomore year, he kept harping on it. But why would I want to suffer twice as long? Then a guy at Idaho sprinted past me at the 880 tape. Bowerman just looked at me, like Told ya! and I became a miler.”

Grelle placed third in the conference that year with a 4:09 mile, qualifying for the NCAA finals in Austin, Texas. Also in the finals was Ron Delany, of Ireland and Villanova University. Delany was the 1956 Olympic 1500 (metric mile) champion. “I had no plan,” Grelle says. “No strategy.

Bowerman told me to imagine there’s a bungee cord between Delany’s shorts and my shorts. Pay no attention to anything else, he said. And that’s exactly what I did. I came in second at the nationals!”

Kenny Moore, in Bowerman and the Men of Oregon, quotes the coach recalling his advice to Grelle as “a tragic mistake. I forgot to tell him to win.”

In the summer of 1958, after his junior year, Grelle ran in Europe on a tour series of dual meets against some of the world’s best. “Big rowdy crowd in Moscow,” he says. “Communists love their runners. But midway through the 1500, Lenin Stadium went deathly quiet. No clapping. No yelling. I was ahead, and I could hear my own footsteps.” Grelle won. “This was behind the Iron Curtain, you know. Budapest. Warsaw. In Poland the stadium held 110,000 thousand, roaring. I made my move and two guys hammered me in the chest. I lost, but I learned. Toughen up. There are other ways, harder to detect, to throw the guy off his pace,” he says, and rises from his chair. “Stand up. I’ll show you.”

Grelle graduated from Oregon in 1959 as a three-time all-American, wise to international competition. To prepare for the 1960 Summer Olympics, he stayed in Eugene to work out under Bowerman. He ran the Eugene hills and golf courses with Bill Dellinger, the long-longer distance Olympian who had graduated two years earlier, and Dyrol Burleson, a Duck sophomore who held the national high school record for the mile.

Next up, the 1960 Summer Olympic Games.

“In Rome, on the bus from the Village to the stadium, Wilma Rudolph would sign her name over and over again on single pages of a tiny spiral notebook. Keeps me from standing around too long at the track, she said. Boy, was she cute. Tall and thin. Wilma Rudolph ran like a cross between a human and a deer. She already had a bronze from the 1956 Olympics. In Rome she won gold in the 100 and 200 meter dashes. Then she made up for a fumbled baton pass — remember that? — on the last leg of the women’s (4x100) relay. Three gold medals. Wilma had polio when she was a girl and died in her fifties. Anyway, I flirted with Wilma on the bus until a guy named Cassius Clay started in on her.” Cassius Clay, as Muhammad Ali, would later be Sports Illustrated’s Man of the Century, but “on that plane home from Rome,” says Grelle, “he sat by himself.

He talked to his gold medal. I’m not sure what all he said to his gold medal.

Cassius just knew he was great. He was born to win. It’s like Steve Prefontaine. Like, who’s coming in second?

But that’s another story…” In Rome, Grelle finished eighth in the 1500 final. Australia’s Herb Elliott took the gold in a world-record 3:35.6. Eighth in the world. The top seven metric milers were older. Grelle did the numbers. He had four years to prepare for the next Olympic Games, 1964, in Tokyo. He moved to L.A. and joined the L.A. Track Club, where the Hungarian guru, Mihali Igloi, ratcheted up his training regimen from crazy to insane. He ran 100 miles a week, most of it with sub-four-minute milers, including Igloi’s protégé, Laslo Tabori.

At Mount San Antonio College, in the spring of 1962, Grelle ran his first sub-four-minute mile. This was the beginning of a six-year stretch when Grelle ran more sub-four miles than any other American. He didn’t win them all. Often he came in second while pushing yet another guy to his personal best. But deep into the 1970s, long after Grelle quit competing, he held the record for most American sub-fours.

In the summer of 1962 he married Jean Keenan of Ashland, the beauty he’d pursued since they were at Oregon. Jean, who later taught in the Beaverton School District, began her Summer 1962: for the first time in history, four American runners break four minutes in the same race: Jim Beatty (3:57.9), Jim Grelle (3:58.1), Cary Weisiger (3:58.1) and Bill Dotson (3:59).

teaching career at Horace Mann Junior High in L.A. Picture Mrs. Grelle as Grace Kelly arriving in a baby blue MGB to teach at the toughest grade level in one of the most gang-infested neighborhoods of America.

“Good kids,” she says. “It was like I had 28 bodyguards. They told me how to dress. Oh, yes, they knew who Mr. Grelle was. One day when he picked me up at school, they circled our little car and lifted it up and shook it. Don’t talk to them! Jim said.

But the kids just wanted to race him.”

After the 1962 World Games, Grelle stayed in Europe with fellow Olympians Bob Schul and Billy Mills to compete in smaller meets. Jean went along. “In Grimstad, Norway,” Jean says, “we stayed at a charming little hotel, a bed and breakfast. A beach festival was on at the same time. We shared the dining room and one floor and the bathroom with some British boys.”

“Long-haired. Weird-looking,” says Jim. “Nice boys. Fun to hear them talk,” Jean says. “At breakfast they discovered our guys were runners, from the United States. Turns out they knew all of our men by name. Track groupies, they were. They rushed our table all excited and got signatures in their autograph books.”

“When they walked out,” says Jim, “I asked the waiter, who are those boys? A new band at the beach festival.

They’re good. Go see them. What’s the name of the group? The Rolling Stones.

It was their first trip out of England.

The singer said he ran all the time.

He was a distance runner. Mick Jagger.”

Leading up to the 1964 Summer Olympics, in Tokyo, Grelle was in top form. So were several others. Oregon’s Dyrol Burleson pushed him. Tommy O’Hara, of Chicago’s Loyola University, beat him twice. And new on the scene was Jim Ryun, a 17-year-old junior at Wichita (Kansas) East High School, a 6-foot-3 splinter of a kid, two-thirds of him legs.

At an AAU meet at Rutgers, all four of those runners broke Jim Beatty’s 1500 meter record of 3:39. Grelle, Burleson, O’Hara, and Ryun were now the four fastest metric milers in American history. But wait. An Olympic track team includes no more than three contestants in each event. One of these guys would not make the team. Judgment day — the final Olympic trials — would be in September at the Los Angeles Coliseum. In preliminary trials, and Grelle placed in the top three every time.

“I was doing well in 1964,” says Jim

Ryun today. “But all that spring and summer, Jim beat me.”

In L.A., at the final trials, the pace was slow. The pack included the usual four, plus Archie San Romani, a gifted but wild talent. “With 250 to go,” Grelle says, “Archie blasted off and tried to steal the race. He flew into the last turn, and I decided I better get up there. It’ll be a dogfight at the finish.” On the turn, Grelle closed the gap. “Archie was in trouble. Right over my shoulder was Burleson, and O’Hara was right over his. Burley had been sick. O’Hara hadn’t raced in a month. I got past Archie and thought, I can win this.”

Grelle, on the rail, led his two rivals by a single stride as the late-afternoon sun cast three long shadows ahead of them. And for a distance runner, it’s about saving enough gas to finish strong. Bowerman preached that the perfectly run mile is a 62-second quarter followed by a 61, a 60, and a 58.

Oxygen debt takes over if you run faster than you can hold. You can fall apart in the last 100 yards.

“I poured it on. Pedal to the metal.

They inched past me. Forty yards to go. I’m burning everything I’ve got,” Grelle says, “and I see another shadow on the right side. Ryun’s out there four lanes wide. I lean and fall across the finish line, but he beat me by an inch. An inch!”

Grelle and Ryun had clocked the same time, but Grelle failed to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics.

“He should have gone to Japan,” says Ryun, “not me.” Ryun is a man of Christian charity who might say such a thing even if it were not true.

But here he’s talking simple justice.

Ryun nipped Grelle by an inch in their only race that week. In the Olympics, metric milers run two heats before the finals. Jim Ryun would later become America’s best miler ever, winning an Olympic medal in 1968. But in Tokyo he was not old enough and strong enough to run three metric miles in four days. In his first heat, Ryun came in second, in 3:44. In his semifinal race he placed ninth, in 3:55, and did not make the finals.

“In Tokyo,” said Bill Bowerman to Kenny Moore, for the book, “Grelle would have made the finals.”

Of the Americans, only Dyrol Burleson did. He finished fifth. Peter Snell, the Kiwi, won the 1500 gold, and Joseph Odlosil of Czechoslovakia and John Davies of New Zealand came in second and third.

“What a remarkable man,” says Jim Ryun, of Jim Grelle. “That race in L.A. had to be so hard for Jim, but he always supported me.”

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“They already had Jean’s ticket!” says Anne Ryun. Anne was a schoolgirl in 1960, unknown to Jim Ryun, but she knows this story by heart.

“This young whippersnapper beat Jim Grelle by an inch and they had to cancel Jean’s ticket to Tokyo! How would you like that? Your hopes. Your Olympic dream, down the drain.”

“We became friends,” Ryun says warmly and carefully, like the threeterm U.S. Representative from Kansas that he became. “Jim is the epitome of sportsmanship. A standard bearer.

I respected how he conducted his life, how he carried himself, and what he cared about. One time after a race in Germany — West Germany, then — Jim brought Jürgen May to my room.

A terrific miler. Jürgen told how he escaped East Germany under a car.

Yes. He came across the border in a cavity underneath a little car. Jim and I sat there and listened to Jürgen May… “It’s easy to forget that we live in a free country.”

In the spring of 1965, Grelle was back in Portland selling high school graduation accessories for Jostens. That was the year he ran the American record 3:55.4 mile, and held that record for two whole months before Ryun broke it. While training on his own, Grelle got a call from Al Negratti. The University of Portland’s athletic director offered him $7,000 a year and offcampus housing to be the track coach.

“At the time I was earning $15,000 and buying a house in Beaverton. What did I know about sprints? Hurdles?

Weights? No clue. I told Al I would coach for nothing, but only the distance runners,” Grelle says. “Well, not quite for nothing. They gave me the equivalent of a tuition scholarship and promised tuition for our children.

We didn’t have children, but Jean was pregnant.”

For the next Olympic Games, 1968 in Mexico City, Grelle would be still in his running prime. But Mexico City, a mile and a half above sea level, takes your breath away. At a trial run there in October, 1966, Grelle dropped out of the 1500 final on the third lap, unable to coordinate his breathing.

The clear lesson: to win at 7,000 feet, train at 8,000 feet. Kenyans could do that. Grelle couldn’t. Eight thousand feet is half way up from Timberline to the summit of Mt. Hood, and Grelle had a family in Portland. “I had to earn a living,” he says. “I wasn’t interested in making the Olympic team just to get another sweat suit.”

When Jim and Anne Ryun came through Portland, a year or two later, the two Jims took a Sunday run with

Pilot runners. The Ryuns stayed with Jim and Jean. “They had two little kids and a busy household,” Anne says, “but they welcomed us with open arms! Jean gave us the family room upstairs, and I thought, how wonderful is this!?”

The Ryuns saw the Grelles again in Bermuda, where famous old-timers gathered for the Dream Mile at the 1996 International Senior Games. It was a handicap race. Runners left the starting blocks serially, by age, and it still mattered who won. The 60-yearold Grelle got a 33-minute head start over the 49-year-old Ryun. Wes Santee, age 64, won. “Isn’t it just amazing,” Anne says, “how guys — after all these years — remember their exact times?”

No. Track guys are like that.

Today Jean and Jim Grelle live on the Oregon coast near Gearhart, in a home that Jean designed. The house has bench-to-ceiling windows facing a quarter mile of dune grass and a cluster of wind-sculpted pines between the house and the surf. Jim answers the door grinning and standing straight as a pencil in polo shirt and jeans, all of ten pounds heavier than his Olympic running weight of 155. At 76, he looks fit enough to run to Astoria for coffee and back, but Jean is taking orders at the latte machine and anyway his feet are shot. Jim still has his original issue knees and hips, but 28 years ago he went to the doctor suspecting stress fractures in his feet; xrays were negative, but the doctor said he had the feet of a 96-year-old man. It’s no mystery why. Since age 15 he had put 68,000 miles on each of those dogs, almost all of it before he was in his low thirties. He’s had repairs on an enlarged heart, too, but he’s good to golf and bike.

But if talk were a competitive sport, Grelle wins the distance event. At a table close to the ocean-facing windows, he talks one whole day and half of the next. Not much of it is about him.

Nor is there any indication an Olympic runner lives in this home. No trophies. The photos accompanying this story came from a pile of loose shots in a box above the garage. On the coffee table here is a jumbo picture book on Navy fighter pilots, and the first topic of conversation is his former student Mike McCabe, recently retired admiral of the U.S. Sixth Fleet and now President of Ryan International Airlines.

“Write about him,” Grelle says.

“There’s your hero. They brought in Mike to coach Tom Cruise in Top Gun. McCabe was Top Gun. He was the ace fighter pilot over Viet Nam one

year, by vote of his peers. Mike took Jimmy and me out from San Diego for five days of Pacific Ocean war games, and we watched…

About McCabe, he talks, and about Dave White, a corporate lawyer in Hillsboro who played rock music with Johnny Limbo and the Lug Nuts.

About Don Bowler, a vice president at U.S. Bank. About Paul Kirkland, who owned and operated Olallie Lake Resort. About Kent Nedderman ’71

and Jim Nuccio ’72 and others. You’d think these guys were his sons, he’s so proud of what they’ve done. Jean stays out of sight but maybe not out of earshot. She comes down from the loft to make sandwiches. She leaves them on the kitchen counter for us and drives away, while Jim talks. This is epic and animated discourse, including the natural history of a harrier hawk cruising low over the grassy dunes outside, and the domestic habits of a doe and her fawn that lope past the picture window. When Jean reAutumn 2012 43

turns, in late afternoon, the sandwiches are still on the kitchen counter, undisturbed.

When pressed, Jim will talk about himself. With sandwiches now and a glass of red wine, he winds it up and the stories roll. The man is a wicked mimic of voices and dialect. He has a Scandinavian accent when he needs it. He does Cassius Clay to perfection.

You can actually see Jim McKay saying Hi Jimmy, and hear the growly Bill Bowerman.

Story is the staff of life. And story was the currency of exchange on Jim’s 70th birthday as a dozen of his Pilot runners gathered at the Grelle home to celebrate. Jean still calls them the boys, those fat-free long-legged specimens who used to show up at her home on Sunday mornings. After their run, she’d serve cookies and punch while “the boys went around holding babies.”

It’s family, is what it is. The family dynamic sets this apart from what you’d expect from even the best of coach-to-athlete or guru-to-student relationships. This is family-like fun and friendship where Dad is professor emeritus. McCabe claims to have used Grelle’s motivational tricks on his Navy fighter pilots. The Ryuns called to sing “Happy Birthday.” When Dave White said Jim was his hero, his mentor, Grelle backed away in horror and said White could not kiss him.

“He was a strategist, a great tactician,” says Mike McCabe. “But looking back on it, I think his genius was for human psychology. He knew when to push. You’re not really focused, he’d say. You can do better. He was a fantastic coach and a great human being. We’ve had a lifelong friendship — my most cherished friendship, bar none.”

“Jim couldn’t care less about his own fame,” says Dave White. “After I ran in the 1971 nationals at Hayward Field, I sat with him at a table in the infield. This was the summer before the Berlin Olympics, and the place was packed. The guy on the loudspeaker said, TODAY WE HAVE IN ATTENDANCE THE MOST PROLIFIC SUB-FOUR-MINUTE MILER IN AMERICA, THE OLYMPIAN AND FORMER U OF O TRACK STAR, JIM GRELLE!!!

“Fans went berserk. Jim nudged my elbow and said, Stand up, White…” n Robin Cody is the author of the novel Ricochet River and the nonfiction Voyage of a Summer Sun, about canoeing the Columbia from source to mouth.

His most recent book is a collection of essays, Another Way the River Has.

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ALUMNI AWARD WINNERS FOR 2012 The 2012 Alumni Service Award went to Matt Powell ’84.

Powell helped found De La Salle North Catholic High School in 2000 and serves as the school’s president. He has been involved with the Catholic education community in Portland by teaching, being an administrator, and a member of the board of trustees of La Salle Catholic College Preparatory school in Milwaukie. Powell is also involved as a Catholic Youth Organization coach, teacher, and athletic director for Holy Family Parish and School. He is a founding member of the Cristo Rey Network and served on its national board of trustees from 2001 to 2008. Powell is married to UP staff member Jamie Powell ’85, director of the University’s Garaventa Center.

Two of their children are currently attending the University, and their third is in high school.

The Contemporary Alumni Award went to Chris Burley ’02.

Chris is an officer with the Portland Police Department, working with the gang enforcement unit. In June 2010, he was shot in the line of duty by a mentally ill person during a routine traffic stop. After his recovery, Burley began working on a pilot program that would allow a mobile crisis unit to identify people who suffer from mental illness and connect them with mental health services before a crisis can develop. Through his work after the shooting, Burley believes in the importance of building relationships with those he meets during the job.

He has gotten to know the mother of the man who shot him, which has given him additional compassion and insight.

The Student Leadership Award was won by Kailey Sparks ’12, a nursing and Spanish double major who has encompassed student leader-

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ship both on and off campus.

She served as a residential assistant in Mehling Hall and graduated in May. During her four years at the University, Sparks was a service learning immersion coordinator for the Moreau Center for Service and Leadership and a retreat leader for campus ministry’s Encounter with Christ retreat.

Sparks plans to partner with an organization to provide nursing care in a developing country and then become a critical care nurse, eventually pursuing a doctorate of nursing practice. Sparks hopes to combine her nursing and Spanish skills and move to South America.

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that they received in the mail.

October 1, 2012 is the deadline to submit updated contact information to Harris Connect.

The directory will be available for purchase through Harris Connect, although alumni who participate are under no obligation to purchase a directory. For more information contact the Office of Alumni Relations at (503) 943-7328 or e-mail us at alumni@up.edu.

Each year, three outstanding alumni are honored with the annual Alumni Awards: the Rev. Thomas C. Oddo, C.S.C. Outstanding Service Award, the Distinguished Alumni Award, and the Contemporary Alumni Award. Visit the alumni website at alumni.up.edu, look under “Events and News” and then “Alumni Awards” to see a list of past award winners, to view nomination criteria, or to fill out a nomination form. You can also contact the office of alumni relations at 888-UP-ALUMS (888) 872-5867 or alumni@up.edu.

Nominations for the 2013 Alumni Awards are due by Friday, November 9, 2012.

The UP Hive is an open forum for University alumni of all ages, current M.B.A. students, and University of Portland supporters interested in business and entrepreneurial activity within the community.

The Hive organizes events focused on connecting and assisting UP alumni and supporters in finding new business partners, clients, and investors through networking and interactive and fun educational presentations. If you have a speaker in mind or would like to host a Hive event, please contact the Hive committee directly at hive@pilotwm.com. To learn more about upcoming Hive events please visit its website at uphive.wordpress.com.

NOTRE DAME PREGAME ALUMNI EVENT

NEW UNIVERSITY ALUMNI DIRECTORY The Office of Alumni Relations is partnering with Harris Connect in an effort to help our alumni connect with one another, so we encourage alumni to participate by contacting Harris Connect at the number listed on the postcard

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seating is $12 for adults, $8 for youth. Tickets may be purchased through Ticketmaster at (503) 224-4400 or www.ticketmaster.com or at in person at the Pilots box office.

PILOT BASKETBALL IN LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY

HIVE ENTREPRENEURS NETWORK

SEEKING AWARD NOMINATIONS FOR 2013

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On Friday, September 7, return to The Bluff to watch the Pilot women’s soccer team take on the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame at 7 p.m. Come early at 5:30 p.m. and enjoy an old fashioned tailgater party in the backyard of the alumni relations house located at 6625 N. Portsmouth.

Cost is $5 per person. We’ll provide the barbecue fare and beer and wine will be available for purchase. Bleacher

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The Pilot men head to Lexington on Saturday, December 8 to take on the defending national champion Kentucky Wildcats. The alumni office will be leading a trip to support the team in their effort to upend the Wildcats at the legendary Rupp Arena. Tickets for the game are available through alumni relations.

A Friday afternoon excursion to a local distillery will also be offered. Contact alumni relations for more information.

CELEBRATE THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SALZBURG PROGRAM In the fall of 1963 the University of Portland sent its first group of students to study abroad in Salzburg, Austria.

Join us in celebrating the 50th anniversary of this momentous occasion with a visit to the Salzburg Center and a cruise down the Danube River. The trip begins on Saturday, September 7, 2013, and continues with three days in Salzburg, where guests will be able to enjoy a tour of the city and two group dinners.

On September 11, 2013, guests will have the option of embarking upon a week-long cruise of the Danube River beginning in Vienna and ending in Nuremberg. The ship will cruise through the vineyardrich Wachau Valley and the Bavarian forest before finally moving through Main-Danube Canal. Contact the alumni relations office for more information.

C L A S S FIFTY YEAR CLUB Robert E. Dernbach ’41 passed away on March 11, 2012, in Puyallup, Wash. He served as a paratrooper in World War II and started the D&D Plastics Company in Tacoma, Wash.

His wife of nearly 60 years, Dolores, passed away in 2007.

Survivors include his six children: David, Arthur, Mary Louise Amundson, Barbara Jean Rodgers, Patricia Knoben, and Deb Carter Chambers; sisters, Bernice and Mary; brother, Monsignor Arthur Dernbach; nine grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Robert Raymond “Bob Sr.” Reischman ’43 CP passed away on April 22, 2012, at the home of his daughter Nancy in Scappoose, Ore. A lifelong North Portland resident, Bob attended Assumption grade school and Columbia Prep before serving in the Navy in World War II. He was a Portland firefighter for 25 years, and retired in 1980. He loved golf, salmon fishing on the Willamette River, duck hunting just about anywhere (especially with his late son, Bob Jr.), and may well have been the world’s most ardent football fan, especially when it came to Notre Dame. He and his wife Bonnie looked forward to their annual trips to Kauai until her death in 1984; he continued the trips until this year. Bob was known to enjoy the occasional libation at the Twilight Room or Portsmouth Club, both within walking distance of his home, and a more personable man you will never meet. He was a member of Holy Cross parish for over 60 years. Survivors include his son, Randy; daughters, Nancy Tousignant, Susan Rodich, and Melissa Reischman; seven grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

His sons Bob Jr. and Ric preceded him in death. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Dorthea Drake Pennington ’44 passed away on March 3, 2012, in Tualatin, Ore. After earning her nursing degree on The Bluff she met and married Merle Pennington, a medical student, and helped him establish his medical practice in Sherwood, Ore., in 1947.

Survivors include her three children, Gay Paschoal, Paul Pennington, and Jan Peterson; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Joseph Martin Bernard, Jr. ’49 CP passed away on June 18, 2012, in Wilsonville, Ore. Joe was truly a larger-than-life figure in Milwaukie, Ore., by all

accounts an extraordinary man who never put half his heart in anything he did. He took over Bernard’s Garage from his father in 1962 and soon made it clear his business was about more than just fixing cars. Over the years he mentored countless young men at the garage and through his involvement with the Boy Scouts. He served as mayor of Milwaukie from 1962 to 1964 and also served with the Providence Milwaukie Hospital Foundation, LaSalle Catholic College Preparatory School Foundation, Benedictine Sisters of Mount Angel, and many others. At the time of his death he was serving as a trustee for the Oregon Catholic Historical Society. He married Dolores Bernard in 1949 and they raised six children during their 28-year marriage. During his final week Joe celebrated his 84th birthday, father’s day, and his 20th wedding anniversary with Shirley Benson, who brought him many years of happiness. Survivors include Shirley; sons, Joseph, Edward, James, and John; daughters, Joan and Kathleen; 11 grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Prayers, please, for Allen J. Wirfs ’49 and his family on the death of his wife of 61 years, Geraldine Robb Wirfs, on June 27, 2012, in Portland, Ore. She was an elementary school teacher and was teaching in Vanport when a flood destroyed the city in 1948. She married Allen in 1951 and they raised two sons; she also worked as a librarian. Geraldine was a marvelously patient woman when it came to the endless stream of her boys’ friends as they trooped through the family home on North Wygant Street. Survivors include Allen; sons and daughters-in-law Allen and Rebecca Wirfs-Brock and John and Cindy Wirfs; and grandchildren, Erik and Jordan Wirfs-Brock and Kristin Wirfs. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

William Joseph Mineau ’49 passed away on July 7, 2012, in Beaverton, Ore. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Kasper E. Weigant ’49 passed away on May 11, 2012, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was a decorated World War II veteran of the Pacific Theater. He was ordained in 1977 as the first Permanent Deacon for the Tulsa Diocese. Survivors include children Kas, Jim, and Hugh; 12 grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences.

Please remember Kenneth

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One of our favorite campus couples celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary on June 14, 2012. Louis “Lou” Fortino ’47 and Theresa “Terry” Adelaide Valentini ’44 were married in 1947 at St. Agatha Church in Portland’s Sellwood neighborhood. They met at a church picnic after they both returned from serving in World War II—Lou saw action with the U.S. Navy on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and Terry was an Army nurse at a post-MASH hospital in the Philippines.

In civilian life, Terry worked for over 30 years at St. Vincent Hospital and Lou was with Allstate Insurance for 32 years. A fun-loving, service-minded couple, the Fortinos are loved and celebrated by their children, Frank, Margaret, Carol, Jeanine, and Mary; eight grandchildren; and more friends and admirers than they will ever know. Congratulations, Lou and Terry!

Wortman ’50 and his family in your prayers on the loss of his wife, Helen Shaw Wortman, on May 9, 2012.

Dolores Friedt ’50 passed away on June 3, 2012, in Eugene, Ore. A graduate of the University’s nursing program, she married Gregory “George” Friedt in 1950 and worked as an office nurse for Winston Maxwell for most of her career. She also taught nursing at Yakima Valley Junior College. Survivors include her husband; son, Gregory; daughter, Yvonne Miller; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Our prayers and

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condolences to the family.

John Joseph Henick ’51 passed away on April 15, 2012, at his home in Portland, Ore., at the age of 83. John was a lifelong educator, teaching in the Beaverton area for 30 years, finishing his career as coordinator for classified personnel in the Beaverton School District. Survivors include Pat; five of six children (James, Daniel, Martin, Lisa, and Jan; Christine predeceased him); and ten grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences.

Phillip James Zeller, Jr. ’51 passed away on July 4, 2012, in Portland, Ore. He served in

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Receiving an honorary doctorate of public service in May, for the graceful manner in which he not only saved his company and its community of workers and families, but for his wild generosity to all sorts of education causes: (Doctor) John Heily ’67, CEO of Continental Mills. the Navy and in the Coast Guard and then returned to Portland to work at the family business, Zeller Chapel of the Roses in Northeast Portland.

He retired as president of the corporation in 1992. He married Jeannie Rey Routtu in 1992. Survivors include his wife; two daughters, Julia and Rosario; and siblings, Ralph Zeller and Phyllis Inkley. Our prayers and condolences.

Prayers, please, for Patricia (Pendergast) Blossom ’54 and her family on the death of her husband, Edwin L. Blossom, on June 10, 2012. Survivors also include son, Thomas; grandson, Jackson; and his sister, Carolyn.

Joe Erceg ’55, known hereabouts as the “glorious grumpy tall designer” behind the very same Portland Magazine you hold now in your hands, was featured in the May 24 edition of Umagazinology: News and Observations on University Magazines in “Eight Questions for Joseph Erceg.” A snippet: “Q: What has proven to be your biggest frustration?

A: Biggest frustration?

Fighting with the editor on some of his cover choices. It’s the endless editor vs. designer battle wherein the designer usually loses if it comes to a battle. I’ve got a lot of scars on my tongue from having to bite it once or so a year.” Those who want the scoop on battles with recalcitrant editors can read more at tinyurl.com/cz5h3ax.

Joe’s really not that grumpy, mostly.

We heard recently from Gerry Newby, wife of Glenwood

Newby ’56, who writes: “Shortly before we were married on August 6, 1950, the young man pictured here

N O T E S ing our 62nd anniversary on August 6, 2012. We are still happily married, and have three grown children and four grandchildren—all college graduates. Glenn has been a Royal Rosarian since 1980, and our granddaughter was Rose Festival Queen Katelyn Callaghan in 2005, from Central Catholic High School. She is now at Columbia University in New York City for her master’s degree.” Thanks for writing, Gerry, we hope you display that P.H.T. proudly.

Richard Berger ’57 passed away on July 14, 2012. He enjoyed and coached high school sports, and was an avid cyclist, riding in Europe, Cycle Oregon, and the annual RAGBRAI ride in Iowa. Survivors include his wife of 50 years, Ilo Kangur Berger; sons, Christopher and Andrew; brothers, Paul and Harold; and sister, Catherine Zumwalde.

Our prayers and condolences.

Retired history professor Jim Covert ’59 and his wife Sally ’86 celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary with a gathering of family and friends on

spent time on the islands of Kauaii and Oahu, with lots of celebrating and great family time had by all!” Thanks for writing, Susan, and congratulations on your anniversary.

Sharon McCullough Woods writes: “My husband, William C. Woods, died on January 3, 2012.” We are so sorry to hear that, Sharon. Our prayers and condolences to you and yours.

’63 SAD NEWS Sr. Mary Joanne Sullivan passed away on May 26, 2012, in Spokane, Wash., at the age of 94. She was a vowed member of the Sisters of Holy Names for 74 years. Survivors include her sister, Loretta; nieces and nephews; and her religious community. Our prayers and condolences.

Please remember Allan Emrick and his family in your prayers on the death of his stepmother, Nancy A. Emrick, on May 15, 2012 at Mary’s Woods in Lake Oswego, Ore. Nancy was also the stepmother of University of Portland regent John Emrick. Survivors include Allan and John and Jim Emrick; nine grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren; numerous nieces and nephews, and former daughter-in-law, Maureen Olbrich. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

’64 WELL DESERVED HONOR

signed up under his G.I. Bill to get an engineering degree. He had been out of high school for seven years, partly because of being drafted into World War II. When the G.I. Bill was about to be discontinued he signed up for college. He was going to postpone our wedding but I convinced him I could be more help to him as his wife than if we were single. Engineering dean Wilbur Williams talked to us and mentioned a program for wives that helped put their husbands through college.

None had yet received the P.H.T. (Putting Husband Through).

Glenn worked in construction and went to school full time, and I worked at U.S. Bank. We would study all night. On June 5, 1956, during the graduation ceremony, Dean Williams explained the honorary degree for wives and said I was the first to receive this declaration. Recently I heard that I was the only wife to receive it.

“Glenn and I will be celebrat-

August 11, 2012, a few days before their actual anniversary date of August 16. Little did they know they had six children and 13 grandchildren (so far) in their future as they posed on their wedding day in the photo above, standing on the front steps of Portland’s St. Mary’s Cathedral, in 1952.

Jennie Ciccarello ’62 passed away on May 26, 2011, in Tampa, Florida. She was a practicing psychologist at Mental Health Care/MHC and in private practice for many years. Survivors include her brother, Rosario; and many other relatives and friends.

Our prayers and condolences.

We heard recently from Susan Sheveland, who writes: “In 2011, Bob and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary in Hawaii with our four children and their spouses and our eight grandchildren. We

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Silverton Health has named its award-winning Family Birth Center in Silverton, Ore., in honor of its long-time president, William E. Winter. The ceremony took place on Wednesday, May 30 at Silverton Hospital. Winter retired last year after more than 20 years at the helm of Silverton Health, and more than 45 years as a healthcare leader in Oregon.

Under his direction, the once struggling community hospital grew into a successful independent health system with nine clinics in Silverton, Mt. Angel, and Woodburn, anchored by an up-to-date, hightech community hospital.

’65 PRAYERS, PLEASE Richard Eugene “Gene” Lienert, M.D., passed away on May 27, 2012, at his home in Tigard, Ore. He was a radiation oncologist. Survivors include his wife, Maureen; son, Joe; daughters, Amy, Sarah, and Nora; brother, Chuck; sister, Mary; and many nieces and nephews. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

’66 MAN OF COMMITMENT Thomas DeJardin passed away on July 4, 2012, in Portland,

C L A S S Ore. He worked as a nursing home administrator and by all accounts excelled at his work; he also served on the Metro Council and West Linn City Council. “Tom had a more than 20-year commitment to the Macdonald Center,” according to his obituary, “bringing his knowledge, skills, and compassion to help create a new model of community-based care. He served as director during its beginnings in a church basement, and later was a founding member and chairperson of the center’s board of directors.” Survivors include his wife of 24 years, Elena; two sisters and a brother; and a blended family that includes five children and six grandchildren. Remembrances in Tom’s honor to the Macdonald center at macdcenter.org. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Sad news to report from Linda Angle McKenna: “Sadly, my husband Rick McKenna died unexpectedly in his sleep on August 31, 2011. Rick received a master's degree from WOSC and retired in 2003 from the Marion County Sheriff's Department as commander of field services (Probation and Parole Division). Even in retirement he continued his work of helping others make positive changes in their lives, serving on the boards of several non-profits, including Drug Court and Bridgeway Recovery Services. Rick lived a life filled with love, compassion, integrity and humor. He never lost his passion for sports. Rick is also survived by his two sons, and a granddaughter, the light of his life.”

Our prayers and condolences on your loss, Linda, and for your family and friends as well.

’70 REMEMBERING MARY Dr. Mary Elinor Boyle passed away on May 4, 2012, in New Paltz, New York, after a long battle with breast cancer. A faculty member at the State University of New York at New Paltz from 1981 to 2010, she was a professor and director of the graduate music therapy program. She received the American Music Therapy Association Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. She is survived by her brother, John Boyle of Vancouver, Washington; and many close friends. Our prayers and condolences.

Thomas William Bischoff passed away on July 7, 2012, at his home in Mt. Angel, Ore. He met his wife of 43 years, Betty, while attending UP and they were married in 1969.

Survivors include Betty; six

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children, David, Sarah Lentz, Bill, Karl, Chris, and Cora; and nineteen beautiful grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

’73 PRAYERS, PLEASE Dr. Daniel Beavers lost his battle with cancer at his home surrounded by family on April 13, 2012. He was a psychiatrist in the Portland-Vancouver area and had a private practice for 26 years, and worked at Lifeline Connections for four years. To say that Dan Beavers was a unique, delightful individual, not to mention a caring, supremely gifted doctor and healer, would be the most egregious of understatements.

Survivors include his wife of 35 years, Tilda; son, Kevin ’07; and daughter, Erin ’08.

’74 KATHY’S UPDATE Kathleen Theriault Rivera writes: “I was wondering if anyone has heard from Angela Mack Mohr ’73? Hi to anyone who remembers me. The only thing that’s different in Camarillo is my husband and I are both retired and became grandparents recently. Payback time! It’s great!” Kathleen can be reached at samrivera13@yahoo.com.

’76 REMEMBERING ROBERT Robert “Paul” Sheets passed away on June 2, 2012, in Portland, Ore. Survivors include his wife, Karen; daughter, Lavinia; and mother, Zelda.

Our prayers and condolences to the family.

’79 NANCY WITH THE SMILING FACE, REST IN PEACE Nancy A. Smith passed away on July 16, 2012, after a brief illness, surrounded by her family and friends. “She was her family's treasure,” according to her obituary, “loved and admired by all who had the good fortune to know her...in the family, she was affectionately known as ‘Nancy with the Smiling Face’ because of her always happy, smiling, sunny disposition.” In her time on The Bluff she often shared her singing talents and was a very popular artist there. She performed in many musical theatre productions such as Sondheim's “Lover, Liars and Clowns,” “Fiorello,” and “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

Following graduation she was a brilliant lawyer, single handedly building a specialty law firm focused on consumer debt, long before any woman had achieved such an accomplishment. Survivors include her parents, Don and Dorine Smith; brothers, Craig Smith, Thad Smith (Lynn); sisters,

We thought it might be fun to drop a photo of Jim Nuccio ’72, nurseryman extraordinaire and fleet-offoot former Pilots track whiz, in Class Notes. So there you have it. Any guesses as to the identity of Jim’s running mate? Contact us at mcovert@up.edu.

—Editors Debbie Smith Mosley, Lori Smith Oliver (John); nieces, Brittany Mosley, Lindsey Mosley Palmer (Daniel), Tricia Autele (Tasi); nephews, Travis Oliver (Becky Flynn), Dane Oliver (Kim), Brandon Smith (Nalani Newberry); great-nephew, Tristan Palmer; great-nieces, CC and Maizee Oliver and Finnley Autele; as well as numerous relatives and close friends. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to a favorite animal charity in Nancy’s honor. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

’81 FOCUS ON DR. DOUG Doug Hensler was featured in an article by Bill Wilson titled “A Conversation with Doug Hensler” in the April 28, 2012 edition of The Wichita Eagle.

Hensler serves as the dean of Wichita State University’s Barton business school. “He holds a doctorate in finance from the University of Washington, an M.B.A. from the University of Portland, and an engineering degree from Princeton University,” Wilson writes. “Prior to becoming dean at Cal State Fresno, he was the W. Edwards Deming Distinguished Professor of Management at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Hensler also has been on the faculty at the University of Texas at Arlington and the University of Portland, along with visiting positions at the Vienna University of Technology, the University of

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Versailles and Arizona State University.” Read more here: tinyurl.com/c7kdstk.

’83 HISTORY OF BOSKY DELL Alison Miller Wallis has written and published Bosky Dell, a history of the Bosky Dell neighborhood in West Linn, Ore. The book relates the history of the Native American and Donation Land Claim settlers, the Willamette Meteorite, the naming of the area by Alec Pattullo, superintendent of Oregon Iron and Steel Company in Oswego, and memories of the original Jack Dempsey, the Nonpareil.

Patrick Michael McCole died on April 5, 2012, in Portland, Ore. By all accounts a beloved husband, stepfather, son, and brother, not to mention life of the party and a fiercely loyal, positive man to the very end, Patrick is survived by his mother, Fran; sister and brother-in-law, Maureen and Rick; niece and her husband, Heather and Brian; and his nephew, Richard. His is also survived by his four stepdaughters; Anna, Bethany, Francesca and Sara; a granddaughter, Brooklyn; and his wife, Patti. He had a special bond with his mother-in-law, Shirley. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Prayers, please, for Mike Buth and his family on the death of his mother, Joan Buth, on June 13, 2012, in Lincoln City, Ore. Survivors include her husband of 59 years, Kenneth; and their children, Tom, Laurel, Stephanie,

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In both his professional and personal life, the word to describe Greg was ‘generous.’ He would give his time, his ear, or his advice to anyone who asked of it, even if you didn’t know you needed his help. He’d quietly take the time to see how you were doing, and genuinely cared about the answers he got. It was that attribute that made him volunteer with inner-city kids.

It led him to be a part of the Family Readiness Group when he joined the Army. And it’s what led him to apply, just this last January, to Seattle University’s therapeutic psychology program, a step on the path to licensing as a mental health counselor in Washington.

Most of us from UP didn’t know him in those capacities. We knew him as the Patriarch, first of Salzburg 9899, then of the Harvard House. But whether it was a kind word, a shoulder to cry on, or a wall to bang our heads against, Greg was there. He talked us through countless situations—marriage, school, work, and life in general. Greg’s steadfast support during these chaotic moments have left lasting memories. He was a cherished friend to many at the University of Portland and will be missed terribly. Contributions in honor of Greg may be made to the Salzburg Endowed Scholarship.”

Thanks for letting us know, Dawn, and our prayers and condolences to Greg’s family and friends.

Michael, and Scott; sister, Susan; brother, Charles; and many nieces, nephews, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Please keep Angela Gray Roarty and her family in your prayers after the death of her husband, Robert Sean Roarty, on June 30, 2012, in Tacoma, Wash. Survivors include Angie; their daughter, Gabrielle; parents, Michael and Judy Roarty; brothers, Kevin and Mark; sister, Susan; and many extended family members and friends. Our prayers and con-

dolences at this sad time.

Please remember Lisa Staley in your prayers on the death of her mother, Caroline J. Staley, on July 9, 2012.

Caroline is remembered as a warm and gentle soul, and was preceded in death by her husband Lloyd. Caroline’s survivors include daughter Lisa; son, Kent; daughter-in-law Dianne; and granddaughter, Nora. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

’85 A CAREER EDUCATOR We heard the following from Heidi Much McGrew, who writes:

N O T E S “I married Michael McGrew in 1999, and we now have two children: Grace, 11, and Hope, 9. I am pursuing a doctorate in higher educational leadership at the University of Dayton, Ohio, and am currently the chair of the Department of Communication at Sinclair Community College.”

’90 REMEMBERING ROMAN Roman Rillera passed away unexpectedly on May 19, 2012, in Battle Ground, Wash. Survivors include his partner of 19 years, Rob Randel; aunt Frances Shoaf; sisters Lyric and Heather; and nephews. He was known for his unique spirit and humor and his great love of animals, especially his Doberman show dogs. Our prayers and condolences.

’93 SHE IS DELIGHTFUL! D. Holly Buck (Miller) writes: “My husband Bruce and I, and our son Daniel, welcomed

sound so easy, but we know better. Thanks for writing Katrina, we appreciate all you and other UP military families do in serving our country.

’97 FLICKERS = UP SPIRIT! We heard recently from Kacey Flicker, who writes: “My wife Jami and I are alumni of the classes of ’96 and ’97. The UP campus spirit runs deep through our veins. Jami graduated from the nursing school and I graduated with a B.S. in organizational communications. I was a member on the men’s baseball and basketball teams, lots of great memories there. We have a four-year-old daughter who was born with a genetic disorder called Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (TSC). This disease causes tumor growth in the brain, eyes, kidneys, and heart. From the age of four months to two years she suffered from daily seizures. Her health has improved greatly after having two brain surgeries at UCLA Medical Center. She is still very delayed and has special needs but the seizures have stopped for the most part. I’m now serving as president of the Oregon TSC Walk for a Cure and hope to bring awareness to TSC and help fund research.

Our latest walk was in Portland on June 10.” Thanks for writing, Kacey, we wish you and your family the best and are proud of all you do to help those who suffer from TSC.

’98 ONCE A PILOT...

Geneva Catherine into the world on October 18, 2011. She is delightful!!” We can see from the photo above that you are not exaggerating, Holly, thanks for sharing.

Wonderful news from Donna R. Johnson-Maxwell: “I have had a few life changes since graduation from U. of P. I worked at the Portland, Oregon and Long Beach, California VA for a total of 12 years. I am now working at NW Vascular Consultants in Portland, Oregon and love my work. I got married on September 24, 2011 on a bright sunny 80 degree day at McMenamin’s Edgefield, one of the happiest days of my life.” Congratulations, Donna!

’94 A FULL-TIME JOB Katrina Kloewer writes: “I’m living in Naples, Italy at present, a full-time Navy wife and mom to two teenage sons and a 7-year-old daughter, enjoying playing tourist while my husband, Mitch, completes his overseas tour.” She makes it

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We heard recently from Craig Swinyard, who writes: “Once a Pilot, always a Pilot! In August I started my fifth year teaching full-time on The Bluff in

the math department. My wife Shoshawna and I bought a house in the neighborhood, and love being within walking distance of campus. In fact, my daughter Mia and I commute to campus together these days—I head to my office in Buckley Center, while she goes to the UP daycare house. Only 17 more years until her freshman year!”

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Allentown, Pennsylvania called Congregations United for Neighborhood Action (CUNA).

This past Christmas we welcomed our son James into our family. He joined us on Christ-

Craig was kind enough to include a family photo as well as a solo shot of his stunning little Mia. Thanks Craig!

Scott Reis ’98 writes: “The reception for the OnPoint Educator of the Year Award for Oregon and Washington took place on Tuesday May 22, and despite the fact that I didn't win the grand prize, I am very excited and honored to let you know that I was selected as the Community Choice Winner for Educator of the Year. This would not have been possible without the support I continue to receive from the University of Portland community. I am so proud to be an alumnus of UP and hope that I have represented the University well. Here’s the link to OnPoint's website: onpointprize.com/Home.aspx.”

Thanks Scott, you’ve done a fine job, and save space on your mantel for that Educator of the Year award, you’ll nail it before long.

’00 ISAAC, KELLY, AND MARGO MAKES THREE Born June 27, at 4:55 p.m., in Anchorage, Alaska, the young lady pictured here, Miss Margo Jane DuFort Vanderburg, for

whom the couple also pictured are responsible: Isaac Vanderburg and Kelly DuFort. Prayers.

We heard recently from Laura Chisholm, wife of Joshua Chisholm: “I would love to submit an update and photo for the Class Notes section of Portland Magazine. My husband, Joshua, graduated from UP in 2000. He is currently the executive director of a faith-based community organizing non-profit in

mas morning, which made for an exciting Christmas present for his older sister Alma (now 2.5 years old). We live in the town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, so James’ birthday is especially remarkable. I’ve included a photo in case you want to use it in your publication.

Thank you so much for producing Portland Magazine. Even though I completed by undergraduate degree at Loyola in Maryland and rarely know many of the individuals mentioned, I read your magazine cover to cover. It is beautiful and you should be very proud of your work.” Thanks so much Laura, and we gladly return the compliment when we see such a lovely family photo.

’01 A NEW JOURNEY BEGINS Chris Costello was featured in a story in the May 26, 2012 edition of The Oregonian in an article titled “Travel Caffe’s Journey Ends” by Laura Gunderson. During his junior year at UP, Chris dreamed of opening a travel-themed coffee shop, a dream he made reality with the help of his parents and younger sister. Travel Caffee opened on January 14, 2004, and has been a labor of love ever since, and successful, and stressful (one sick day for Chris in nine years), and Chris and his family decided it was time for a change. The business closed on Sunday, May 27, opening a number of vistas for the Costellos. Plan on hearing more from this dynamic family.

We heard recently from Phil Dejworek, who writes: “I just wanted to give you guys a follow up on some former U. of P. Pilots basketball players and coaches. I used to be a basketball player for the Pilots under coach Rob Chavez between the years 1997-2001. After my wonderful time at the University of Portland, my professional basketball career took me to some of the top European teams in Germany, Norway, Sweden and Finland. Unfortunately a

In Ecuador this past winter: Bethany Foran ’08, who writes: “Heather Rectenwald ’02 and I traveled with Engineers without Borders to Bocana de Ostiones to help assess water needs. I gathered topographical data of the community’s main road, with the help of several small children; Heather led the community health survey, which involved going door-to-door to gauge current water use and needs. In addition, we played soccer with the children and bingo with adults.” career-ending injury finished my playing days and I started a coaching career here in Europe’s professional leagues.

I have worked now for five years as a head coach in Finland and most recently in Denmark.

The last two years I was fortunate enough to be the head coach of Bakken Bears (bakkenbears.com) in Denmark and we are proud of winning the pro basketball national championship for 2011 and 2012. Former Pilots Ross Jorgusen ’02 and Chuks Neboh ’00 have also found their way to Europe. Ross is a youth head coach in Ludwigsburg, Germany and Chuks is working on an American Army base in Germany coaching youth teams as well. I wish all the best to the Pilots basketball team and I am proud to be called a Pilot alumnus.”

’02 WEDDING BELLS Hillary Scott DeGraffenreid writes: “I married Mathew DeGraffenreid in May 2008.”

We also heard from Timothy D. Brock, who wrote the following in May 2012: “I am married; I am having my first child this summer; I am now an emergency room physician in the Portland area.” How about an update on that first child, Tim? Let us know the latest at mcovert@up.edu.

A recently retired UP employee, Linda Healy, ran into

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Marta Hantke, according to the grapevine (okay, we heard it from alumni director Carmen Gaston ’96). Marta was a biology major here and just finished medical school. She is now headed to study tropical medicine in Niger.

’03 A BUSY SEASON Tom Gannon had this to say recently: “On the 9th of May Nicolette Gaylan and Ben McCarty ’06 (former Beacon sports writer) got married on Rottenest Island off the coast of Fremantle, Western Australia.

They were part of my first group of students here in 2004.

They had just started dating when they came out and they decided on an elopement strategy, so they flew out and got hitched. They camped at my house while I was in America for my brother (and 1997 alum) Jim Gannon’s wedding on the 27th of April.

It has been quite the season getting ready for everything.

He got back from Afghanistan on March 29 and immediately got busy planning weddings and things. I never worked up the courage to ask him which was more stressful: the war effort or wedding planning.”

Thanks Tom, and we think we know the answer to that question, asked or not asked.

Casey Freeman writes: “I’m still in the Air Force, stationed in Colorado Springs, Colorado.”

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his older sister, Gwyneth, and his big brother Charlie’s birthday is 10 days later! The end of May is pretty much just an on-going party in our house!”

’05 WELCOME, LAUREN! Josh and Kathryn (Foster) Henle welcomed a baby girl, Lauren Nadine Henle, on May 3, 2012.

We heard the following from recently retired theology professor Rev. Richard Rutherford, C.S.C., who writes: “Over Easter 2012 I sailed off (in the footsteps of our late Fr. Pru, by the way) on a ‘mission at sea’ (a.k.a. cruise) in the Mediterranean, to Athens and Barcelona. There on day one, during introductions of staff and entertainers, our cruise’s onboard priest-chaplain (yours truly) met UP alumnus Peter Kriss ’04, who was working as one of the onboard entertainers. Of course we had to have a photo op, which I send now. Following this cruise experiment—a good experience for him but not a career, as he told me—Peter will be back in New York beginning at the end of May. By the way, the cruise was grand, including three whole off-ship baptisteries research days with contacts in Sardinia, Mallorca, and Barcelona.” ’04 THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME We got this scoop thanks to the vigilance of Joe Kuffner ’05, rising media superstar of the University’s marketing and communications office: “I saw this story trickle through on our Allen’s clippings the other day. Ola Yost, a nurse in Salem and a UP alumna, had just arrived for her morning shift at the hospital when a man in the parking lot suffered a heart attack. She ran to grab a stretcher, then literally jumped onto it and gave the man CPR as they rushed him into the hospital. They got it all on video, which is pretty amazing: youtube.com/ watch?v=fIWX1GxEZfk. You can see a print article in the Albany Democrat-Herald for April 19, 2012 at this link: tinyurl.com/c56hfaw.” Thanks Joe, what a great story on one of our amazing UP nursing graduates! By the way, the story has a happy ending: “When Yost came to work for her next shift two days later, she was

told, ‘He’s awake, he has no deficits. He’s going to make it.’”

The patient was discharged April 15. “He told one of the charge nurses, ‘Thank you for not giving up on me,’” Yost said. “To see him leaving the hospital, knowing he’s going to live a normal life, is an amazing feeling.”

We heard recently from Sean Garcia, who writes: “I wanted to update folks since I’ve been out here in Washington, D.C. for about six years now (time flies). I recently finished my master’s in legislative affairs at The George Washington University, and started a new position with McBee Strategic Consulting, working on transportation issues for various Pacific Northwest clients.”

Wonderful news from Alexandra Westover, who writes: “I wanted to send an update on our beautiful, growing family! Tony ’03 and I welcomed our third child on May 21, 2012.

Robert Henry Westover was 8 lbs., 3 oz. and 19 3/4 inches long. He shares a birthday with

She was 7 lbs., 14 oz. and 19 1/2 inches long. “We are all doing great at home in Lake Oswego!” Thanks Josh and Kathryn, she is a living doll.

We heard recently from Eric and Rhonda Moon (formerly Schurter): “My maiden name is Rhonda Schurter, I got married to Eric in July 2011. As a side note, my new husband is a teacher and he graduated with his master’s of education last weekend. Yay!”

’06 SAD NEWS Prayers, please, for Lindsay Alaine Baker and her family on the loss of her father, Daniel L. Baker, on April 13, 2012. Survivors include Lindsay and her mother, Cathy; son, Chris; stepson, Richard; two grandsons; brother, Jess; sisters, Marge and Diane; and many nieces and nephews. Our prayers and condolences.

’07 A BLESSING AND A JOY Rebecca (Risinger) Musgrove writes: “JP and Rebecca

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(Risinger) Musgrove welcomed a baby girl, Julia Grace, on April 23, 2012. She was 6 lbs., 6 oz. and 19 1/2 inches long. She is already such a joy and blessing to our family!”

Once again our UP media man, Joe Kuffner ’05, is on top of the story: “UP alumna (and my good friend) Monica Choy has started a nationwide art tour called the Trading Tortoise with her husband. In a nutshell, they built a big giant tortoise out of a variety of objects that have some sort of meaning to them, and they are going from city to city asking people to trade their own items for items of theirs. Eventually, people all over the country will end up with objects from other people from all over the country. They are also asking people to write down what the object is and why it has significance.

If you come to the show and donate an item, you can track it online to see who eventually ends up with it. Pretty darn cool! You can read all about it (and see photos of items and all that) at tradingtortoise.com.

It’s been a hit so far. Apparently they had a line out the door in Sioux Falls, and were interviewed by the local paper and NPR radio station. Big time!

UP takes Sioux Falls! They’ve hit Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Sioux Falls so far and stopped in Portland on July 28.”

Editor’s note: we have granted Joe an exemption from our normal limit of one exclamation point per class note, but we will not budge on our ban of double exclamation points.

You have to draw the line somewhere.

’09 MATTHEW’S UPDATE Matthew Hilton writes: “I have recently accepted a full-time position as an executive recruiter with Parker & Lynch (formerly Ajilon) in downtown Portland.”

Emily Deyna Sobel died on March 7, 2012, after a long struggle with severe mental illness. “Emily was a brave, loving and kind person who did her best to see the bright side in spite of overwhelming health challenges,” according to her obituary. Survivors include her father, Ron Sobel; uncle, Larry Sobel; and godparents, Dr. Allan and Cathy Blum. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

We heard recently from Carly Koebel, who now works for the University of Washington: “After our most recent women’s basketball season I was fortunate to be able to take some time off and go on an amazing trip to

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Ghana, Africa. I added a visit to Spain onto the end of the trip to see my friends from when I lived there. Life is good!

You can see photos from the trip at tinyurl.com/d8kzk2x.”

’10 SISTER ACT Allison Shepherd graduated on June 2, 2012 from Portland’s Lewis and Clark College with a master of education, according to the ever-watchful Fr. Art Wheeler, C.S.C. “At UP she had been a captain of the dance team, and graduated from our School of Education,” he writes.

“Allison’s sister Kendall graduated in history here in 2007 and then earned a master of arts in teaching here in 2010.

She was also a captain of the dance team. You ran a picture of Kendall jumping in the air in Portland Magazine a number of years ago.” Thanks Fr. Art, we do remember the highflying Kendall Shepherd.

We heard the following wonderful news from Jennifer Lofft (Goolkasian), who writes: “I recently married my college boyfriend Joseph Lofft. We are both alumni of UP (class of 2010). We got married at our alma mater on July 14. It was our first time back to the campus after graduating, and it was amazing to celebrate our marriage at the place that held so much special significance to us. Father Gary Chamberland, C.S.C., was our celebrant. We would love to be featured in the Portland Magazine class notes for 2010! Currently we are both living in San Jose, California. I work as an RN at Good Samaritan Hospital, and Joseph works as a mechanical engineer at Air Systems Inc.” Thanks for writing, Jennifer, congratulations on your marriage and we’re happy to include you in class notes. Keep us in mind if or when the day comes that you’re hearing the pitterpatter of little feet, hint-hint.

Brandy Conyers writes: “I married Trenton Conyers in May of 2010, hence the name change. I was Brandy Carney before. We just welcomed our first son.” Hey, congratulations Brandy and Trenton! Feel free to share photos with us at mcovert@up.edu.

At the wedding of former Pilot soccer star Wanda Rozwadowska ’04 and Pilot baseballer Andrew Wrisley ’04 in the Bahamas in May were a roaring number of alumni: Andrew’s teammates Joe Watson ’04, Pat Geraghty ’07, Gustaf Little ’06, and Travis Vetters ’06, and Wanda’s teammates Imani Dorsey ’04 and Cori Alexander ’07, who was kind enough to share this photo and the sweet one on page 7. Thanks Cori. the internship is completed.”

Jennifer Pesut writes: “I’m no longer living at home. Luckily, I made it out just under the oneyear mark, but I am now officially moved into my new apartment with my new roommate, who also went to UP. I’m very excited to be living in Portland (as opposed to the ’Couv) and looking forward to being closer for another great season of University of Portland Pilots soccer!”

’12 A DAD AND GRAD We heard recently from Gwynn Klobes, who works as director of professional development in the Pamplin School of Business “I thought this would be a great picture for the magazine.

Delores Smith, made the cap and gown for his son Cameron.

She is also the same person who made the bridesmaid dresses for my wedding 31 years ago. We have been friends for years so it is fun to see him as a U.P. alumnus now!” Thanks Gwynn, small world, huh?

’16 WELCOME TO UP, JEAN FRANCOIS! The first recipient of the Molly Hightower Haiti Memorial Scholarship at the University of Portland is Jean François Seide.

Jean François is 24 years old and has been a member of the Friends of the Orphans family since age seven, when he joined the Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos/Nos Petits Frères et Soeurs (NPH/NPFS, Spanish and French for “Our Little Brothers and Sisters”) home in Haiti. He will be attending the University of Portland starting

’11 NICE WORK, DENISE! We heard recently from Denise Shigeta, who writes: “I will complete my M.S. in mathematics and finance at the University of Hawaii at the end of summer 2012, and have accepted an internship for mid-June to midAugust at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena to do work in software assurance. I hope to visit Portland when

Jeff Rask graduated with an M.B.A. in the spring 2012 commencement exercises here on The Bluff. His grandmother,

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in the fall of 2012 to study economics and social justice. Due to his exceptional motivation, resilience, and academic achievements, he has received a full scholarship to the University. However, Jean François needs help to fund his college expenses, such as health insurance, books, and a plane ticket home so he can visit his NPFS family in Haiti during his summer vacation. More information is available at friendsoftheorphans. org/jeanfrancois. Questions about Jean François, his story, or the Molly Hightower scholarship can be directed to scholarship sponsor Rachel Prusynski ’09 at raprusy@ gmail.com.

Here’s a fun fact that came to us through the watchful eyes of Joe Kuffner ’05: “A future UP nursing student, Amelia Hiller of San Diego, didn’t miss a day of school from kindergarten through her senior year of high school! You can see a story about her on YouTube at youtube. com/watch?v=6PZT cRYmOwg&feature=youtu.be.

Best of all, she just happened to be wearing a UP sweatshirt at school that day!” That Joe K., he never misses a thing.

FACULTY, STAFF, FRIENDS We heard recently from Kathy Freitas, who we remember fondly from her days on the

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C L A S S The University commuity is saddened to learn of the passing of Margaret Henzi on the morning of Wednesday, July 25, 2012. Margaret Widmer Henzi (yes, the Widmer Brewing family, which she loved to acknowledge) was born in Scappoose, Ore., and died at home with her loving family. Survivors include children, Linda, Steven, and David; seven grandchildren; five great-grandchildren; and brother, Walt.

Margaret started her 42-year career on The Bluff on January 4, 1961, and she retired on December 31, 2003. She started out in the registrar’s office, and by 1968 she became a key punch operator for the computer center. In September 1969 she was promoted to key punch supervisor and in 1973 the title of secretary was added. Margaret was again promoted, this time to administrative assistant for the computer center, in June of 1979, the position where she remained until her retirement. In 2004 the University named its annual Outstanding Office and Clerical Employee Award after her, and it is now the Margaret W. Henzi Award, awarded to those with “exemplary job performance and a positive and cheerful manner.” That’s her all over the place.

Seeing Margaret’s smiling face and being greeted by her on her many campus rounds was one of the perks of campus life for students, faculty, staff, and alumni alike, one that many miss to this day, and now especially.

Margaret retired officially in 2003, but she continued to visit campus almost daily until her move to Assumption Village in September 2010. Margaret would have turned 90 on her birthday, September 1. Our prayers and condolences to her family and many, many friends and colleagues.

N O T E S staff of the University’s School of Nursing. For the past 11 years she has served as administrative assistant at the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust in Vancouver, Wash. She writes: “Hope all is going well there. The Murdock Trust is humming along, but will be doing so without me after July 2012, as I am retiring at the end of that month. My husband and I are pulling up stakes and moving to the Washington coast (Ocean Park) to shake up our lives even more. My thirteen years at UP and now eleven at the Trust have been so rewarding— it will be hard to leave, but exciting at the same time.” Thanks Kathy, we all wish you the best.

Corey Hojnicki, assistant athletic trainer, and Caryn Hojnicki, course schedule and room coordinator in the registrar’s office, celebrated their son Brennan’s half birthday on June 12, six months to the day after his birth on December

12, 2011. He clocked in at 8:09 p.m. at 6 lbs., 13 oz., 19.75 inches long. Here he is, pictured below. Oh my, what a charmer!

Patricia (Pendergast) Blossom ’54, June 10, 2012, Lake Oswego, Ore. Richard Berger ’57, July 14, 2012.

Jennie Ciccarello ’62, May 26, 2012, Tampa, Florida.

William C. Woods, husband of Sharon McCullough Woods ’62, January 3, 2012.

Sr. Mary Joanne Sullivan ’63, May 26, 2012, Spokane, Wash.

Nancy A. Emrick, stepmother of Allan Emrick ’63 and regent John Emrick, May 15, 2012, Lake Oswego, Ore. Richard Eugene “Gene” Lienert ’65, May 27, 2012, Tigard, Ore. Dr. Mary Elinor Boyle ’70, May 4, 2012, New Paltz, New York.

Thomas William Bischoff ’70, July 7, 2012, Mt. Angel, Ore. Dr. Daniel Beavers ’73, father of Kevin ’07 and Erin ’08.

Robert “Paul” Sheets ’76, June 2, 2012, Portland, Ore. Nancy A. Smith ’79, July 16, 2012.

Patrick Michael McCole ’83, April 5, 2012, Portland, Ore. Joan Buth, mother of Mike Buth ’83, June 13, 2012, Lincoln City, Ore. Robert Sean Roarty, husband of Angela Gray Roarty ’83, June 30, 2012, Tacoma, Wash.

Caroline J. Staley, mother of Lisa Staley ’83, July 9, 2012.

Roman Rillera ’90, May 19, 2012, Battle Ground, Wash.

Greg Pedersen ’00, March 6, 2012, Kirkland, Wash.

Daniel L. Baker, father of Lindsay Alaine Baker ’06, April 13, 2012.

Emily Denya Sobel ’09, March 7, 2012.

Margaret Henzi, July 25, 2012, Scappoose, Ore.

DEATHS Robert E. Dernbach ’41, March 11, 2012, Puyallup, Wash.

Robert Raymond “Bob Sr.” Reischman ’43 CP, April 22, 2012, Scappoose, Ore. Dorthea Drake Pennington ’44, March 3, 2012, Tualatin, Ore. Joseph Martin Bernard, Jr., ’49 CP, June 18, 2012, Wilsonville, Ore. Geraldine Robb Wirfs, wife of Allen J. Wirfs ’49, June 27, 2012, Portland, Ore. William Joseph Mineau ’49, July 7, 2012, Beaverton, Ore. Kasper E. Weigant ’49, May 11, 2012, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Helen Shaw Wortman, wife of Kenneth Wortman ’50, May 9, 2012.

Dolores Freidt ’50, June 3, 2012, Eugene, Ore. John Joseph Henick ’51, April 15, 2012, Portland, Ore. Phillip James Zeller, Jr., ’51, Portland, Ore. Edwin L. Blossom, husband of

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From the University’s first-ever summer study program in Chile, in which students plunged into social work, made videos, and more. Details: Anissa Rogers, rogers@up.edu.

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Among the most interesting of guests on The Bluff over the years: Air Force Colonel Buzz Aldrin, who received an honorary doctorate in science in 1970. The Colonel (whose mother’s name was Moon), flew 66 fighter missions in Korea, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross; has received three patents for his spacecraft innovations; devised a way to set up permanent transportation to and from Mars; earned a doctorate in science from MIT; was the first human being to walk in space, in 1966; has an asteroid named for him; has written many books, among them two space novels; and, oh yes, was the second human being to stroll on the moon, in 1969, with his colleague Neil Armstrong.

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PHOTO BY MURRAY WHITE

C L A S S

rise for scholarships gala you make dreams come true

THANK YOU You Made Dreams Come True

We thank our sponsors and attendees at the Rise for Scholarships Gala held on May 10, 2012. With their generosity, $1.3 million was raised to provide new scholarship funds for deserving students with financial need.

PRESENTING SPONSORS Fedele Bauccio ’64, ’66 MBA • Allen and Kathleen Lund • Steve ’58 and Donna Shepard • Darlene Marcos Shiley • Bill Tagmyer and Lucy Martin (in memory of Fred and Suzanne Fields)

SILVER LEVEL Mark and Leslie Ganz

Ralph ’73 MBA and Sandi Miller Miller Nash LLP Soderstrom Architects Bill and Anne Swindells

BRONZE LEVEL Anonymous Becker Capital Management Earle M. Chiles Lou Holtz Nike O’Donnell Clark & Crew LLP Milann Siegfried Todd Construction

GRAND PATRON LEVEL AAA Oregon/Idaho and Tim Morgan ’86 Joe Allegretti Nancy and Andy Bryant Albert ’55 and Suzanne Corrado

PATRON LEVEL John and Katie Anthony Archdiocese of Portland Assessment Technologies Institute (ATI) Etzel Family/SportsOne, Inc. Rich Baek ’93 MSEE, ’02 MBA Matt ’71 and Lillian Chapman Kevin Cooper ’89 Carol Herman ’64 and Kay Toran ’64 Shawn Hoban & Members of Alumni Hall ’88 Thomas Hoban & Members of Alumni Hall ’84 Pat Johnson ’86

Pat ’99 and Mary Kessi Al O’Brien ’45 Providence Health & Services Larree Renda Rev. Stephen Rowan Seton Catholic High School The Standard UBS Financial Services Villa Maria Alumni Summer ’01 and D.J. ’02 Widmer Gene ’60 and Janet Wizer A special thank you to University of Portland Regent Mary Boyle and her husband, Tim, for providing a $100,000 matching opportunity.

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Here’s a story: Jordon Foster ’11 ran track for the Pilots, earned his engineering degree, and now teaches mathematics to high school kids in Tanzania for the Peace Corps — one of the 300 alumni who have added their capacious talents to that excellent American idea. Jordon also travels as much as he can, hiking and camping all through Africa, and he recently sent these photographs: Victoria Falls, the Livingstone Mountains by Lake Nyasa, and two Tanzanian fishermen on the beach of Unguja, the largest island of the Zanzibar Archipelago. Zanzibari fishermen, notes Jordon, generally fish at night, and spend the morning selling their catch at the soko, the local market. Our thanks to Mitchell Belcher for his help with these astounding photographs. Can you make a Campaign gift to help kids like Jordan teach abroad?

Suuuure you can. Call Diane Dickey at 503.943.8130.

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Or here’s a Campaign story. At left, the irrepressible cheerful Ruth Schulte, whose husband is the University’s legendary Doctor Art Schulte, long a vice president and dean and business professor on The Bluff. (O, the stories we could tell of Art’s laser glare, and when he had to cut the budget and everyone cursed and shrieked, and how he was a Wyoming basketball star, and how he basically devoted his whole life to the University, wow…) At right, the willowy vivacious Shannon Smith, Class of 2013. Shannon receives the Tessa Ruth Schulte Scholarship, named for Ruth and Art’s sweet late daughter. As a way of celebrating the brief lovely life of their darling girl, and insisting that her intelligence and creativity would persist forever at the University they loved, Ruth and Art, and people who loved them and Tessa, created the scholarship, which means Shannon and her family get a boost, and Shannon gets a little more room to hone and shape her intelligence and creativity. What a verb of a thing, a scholarship is. Scholarships, we have to say, with total respect for bricks and programs and institutes and professorships, are the coolest Campaign targets of all. You want to honor and celebrate and remember and insist on the verve and spirit of someone you love always being a song at the University of Portland?

You want to meet the kid who is thrilled by your scholarship every year at the campus Scholarship Lunch?

Call Diane Dickey, 503.943.8130. It’s easy. It’s a tax break. It lasts forever. It changes lives. Go for it.

Photo by Kim Oanh Nguyen

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CLIVE CHARLES, 1951-2003

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2002, AUSTIN, TEXAS Just before his sixteenth year as coach of the Pilot women’s soccer team, the wry, witty, demanding, hilarious Clive Charles called a meeting of his players and staff, and told them he was ill unto death with cancer. “From that moment on nothing was going to stop us,” says striker Christine Sinclair. “How could we not give him absolutely everything we had? Every time I felt tired I thought of Clive. Every time I was down, I thought of him.” Christine scored, in sudden death overtime, to win the University’s first NCAA title; but that wasn’t the most memorable moment of her career, she says — this was, after the game, when Clive was handed the trophy, and everyone wept.

That was his last game. He died two months later. “I will never forget that moment,” says Christine. “He completely changed my life and I am the person and player I am because of Clive. He touched so many lives. Clive, I miss you.”