Portland Magazine Summer 2013

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THE UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND MAGAZINE

University of Portland Portland Magazine 5000 N. Willamette Blvd Portland, OR 97203-5798

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SUMMERFING

THE EDUCATION ISSUE

THE EDUCATION ISSUE THE LIIIIIIIIGHT! Aw, we never hardly run glorious summer paintings just because, so we do so here (“Little Boogie #2,” by the Oregon artist William Park), because all alumni and students and regents and faculty and staff know the deep mammalian joy of The Glorious Sun coming out finally in May or so. Summer on The Bluff is a lot busier than it used to be — for one thing we have not one but two summer school sessions, and scads of summer camps in sports, business, and spiritual matters. For sports camps, see portlandpilots.com; for summer session classes see up.edu; and for the annual Catholic conference (July 31-August 4), see summerconferenceportland.org. And to see more of Bill Park’s cool work, see williampark.net.

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S U M M E R 2 0 13

SUMMER 2013

There was a girl named Linda in my first-grade class, at Saint John Vianney School in New York. She was shy and tall. She sat in front of me in the first row. We sat in alphabetical order, so that Accopardo was first seat first row and Wyzkyski was fifth row last seat. It was easiest that way for Sister Marie. She was also shy and tall. She was calm and tender and firm and maybe twenty years old. Most of us were six years old but four of us were five. Linda and I were among the fives. The sixes looked down on us as soon as they discovered we were five. They discovered this within the first week of school, and after that there were the sixes and then there were the fives. Why that should matter is a puzzle, but it mattered.

One day, after a particularly turbulent recess in the playground during which all four of the fives had suffered some indignity from the sixes, we trooped back into our classroom. In Sister Marie’s class you were expected to carry the detritus of your lunch back to your desk, so that she could be sure that you had indeed taken sustenance; but this day Sister noticed that Linda’s lunchbox was empty. No sandwich wrapper, no cookie crumbs, no apple core. Sister inquired; Linda sat mute. Sister pressed, gently, leaning down to Linda at her tiny desk; Linda covered her face with her hands and wept.

Sister realized that Linda had been robbed of her lunch by the sixes, and had not eaten at all, and had been humiliated by the theft, and was more humiliated now by public revelation, and Sister straightened up and stared at each of the sixes, her face unreadable, but just as she began to speak, Linda sobbed even harder, and a rill of urine trickled from the back of her seat and pooled on the floor between the first and second rows.

For a moment there was a ruckus as some children shouted and leapt away from the pool but then Sister said Silence! Seats! very firmly indeed — not shouting, but so firmly that everyone sat down in silence — and then she appointed Meghan to lead Linda to the girls’ room and then to the school nurse. Meghan held out her arm just like a gentleman does in old movies and Linda took her arm and they stepped over the puddle and left the room. You could hear Linda sobbing all the way down the hall.

The best reason we have schools, I think, is to learn things for which we do not have words or equations. All teachers admit that their students will remember very little, if anything, of the curriculum they were taught; in the end what teachers really do is offer context, manners of approach, and the subtle suggestion that a cheerful humility before all problems of every sort is the only way toward useful grapple, let alone solution. What teachers really teach, it seems to me, is not a subject, but ways to be; a poor teacher teaches one way, and a fine teacher teaches many, some of which may be, to your amazement and relief, ways for you, the student, to open, to navigate, perhaps to soar.

Sister Marie was a fine teacher. We sat silently for a long moment, after Linda left, and then Sister sent a boy to the boy’s room and a girl to the girls’ room to get all the paper towels they could carry. They came back with one million paper towels. Sister gave each one of the sixes a handful of towel and they mopped up the puddle, one by one, in alphabetical order, by rows, silently. When they were finished Sister handed each of the remaining fives a handful of towel also, and we also knelt and scrubbed the brilliant floor. No one said a word. The sixes then collected our paper towels and put them in the trash. A little while later Linda and Meghan came back and sat down and we started into arithmetic. I never forgot this lesson, and I would bet that no one there that day ever did either. I would bet the house on that. n Brian Doyle is the editor of this magazine and the author most recently of the essay collection Grace Notes.

PHOTO BY JERRY HART

THE BRILLIANT FLOOR

Or here’s a Campaign story. On the left, Kayla Bauman ’13, and on the right, Marjorie Lyster ’42: Marjorie and her late husband Hal Lyster ’39 created the Father Michael Early, C.S.C., Scholarship in honor of their dear friend, the University’s ninth president, and the man who baptized their son. So because Hal and Marjorie adored Father Mike, and wanted to somehow capture their respect and affection for his grace and humor and ferocious tennis matches with Hal and gentle excellence as a priest, which is a hard and sometimes lonely job, they started a scholarship, which meant that Kayla and her family could (a) sigh with relief a little from scratching for cash for college, (b) not have to borrow money or sell the llama herd, and (c) let Kayla launch into her life and career with a little less brooding looming debt. Or, in other words, respect and affection for a great man was turned to direct help for a brilliant energetic creative young person. That’s what scholarships do here on The Bluff. Can you turn your respect and affection into direct help for a bright kid who wants to go change the world?

Heck yes. And you can tailor your scholarship any way you like – for left-handed students, students named for Saint Catherine of Siena, students from towns beginning with M, students who want to teach kindergarten, students who want to be balloonists, students who want to clean all the fouled waters of the world. Your choice. Really. Call Diane Dickey at 503.943.8130. Or email dickey@up.edu. And thanks for your generosity. What a gift that is to us all.

F E A T U R E S 18 / They Eat the Sun, by Jeremiah O’Hagan A visit with kids and zooplankton and eelgrass and wonder.

20 / The Chief, photographs by Steve Hambuchen A day with the irrepressible Joe Galati ’86, principal of Portland’s Chief Joseph Elementary School.

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24 / I Just Trusted, by Julie H. Case Notes on Cecelia Brennan ’84, who never even imagined attending college, and started a high school. Yes, you read that right.

26 / The Christie School, photographs by Father Henry Pelletan We do not pause enough to thank the graceful tough gentle brave unpaid women who held American Catholic life on their sinewy shoulders for two centuries. We do so here. page 20

30 / The Face of PACE, photographs by Steve Hambuchen Some of the small students of the tall students who teach in the University’s Pacific Alliance for Catholic Education; and some of the tall students, painted by the small students.

38 / Sister Mary Reynette, by Karen Eifler One great teacher, remembering another.

42 / The Cross, by Ed Langlois The University has been the Holy Cross grade school’s affectionate uncle for a century.

Some centennial stories and o my gawd the photographs!

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48 / Queen of the World, by Victoria McDonough What I learned when my parents divorced.

50 / Ed at Fifty The School of Education celebrates its golden anniversary this year; a look at the stunning impact of its thousands of teachers on their four million students (!!!!!!!!). page 26

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4 / RIP, gruff curt honest Father John Kurtzke, C.S.C. 5 / The University’s Islamic prayer room: a note by Khalid Khan 6 / The irrepressible chemistry professor Sister Angela Hoffman O.S.B. 7 / The 1970 North Dakota state wrestling champion! No kidding!

9 / Effervescent campus surfer Jhana Young ’13 12 / Bill Buckner and “one freaking ground ball...”

14 / Death and resurrection: Pilot pitcher J.R. Bunda ’13 17 / University news and notes and feats and fetes 64 / The late heroic Lieutenant John Mangas ’42

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page 42 THE UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND MAGAZINE

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Cover:Vera Paz, El Salvador, October 2007, by Kelly DuFort ’00.

Summer 2013: Vol. 32, No. 2 President: Rev. E. William Beauchamp, C.S.C. Founding Editor: John Soisson Editor: Brian Doyle Alpine Curt Amused 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 ©2013 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.

Summer 2013 1

L E T T E R S “GREED AND LIES?”

CATHOLIC WORKERS

First, my thanks for turning out such a high-quality magazine. It keeps many of us tied to the University of Portland community. But I was disappointed when I opened the Spring 2013 issue and read the editorial essay, “My Hero.” Is the Catholic Church really the seat of “greed and cruelty and lies”? Certainly Catholics have been guilty of all three, but I don’t hear the Church lying to me. Quite the opposite; when all else is lies, the Church proudly proclaims the truth.

Kass Larson ’01 Panama City, Florida

Jim Forest’s great article about Peter Maurin and the Catholic Worker movement (Spring 2013 issue) takes me back to my yearlong life-changing time with John the Baptist Catholic Worker in Las Vegas. It was a priceless experience for a Catholic architect, serving coffee to street guys in the glow of the flashing neon light environment of the Strip. It is the relief that Jesus extends to the suffering of the poor and oppressed.

The prime task of the Catholic Worker project in Las Vegas was serving coffee and rolls every morning to as many as 150 street people. On Thursdays, a dinner was served in a local church kitchen, and the CW house itself not only served as the office, but as a place to house sick men for a day or two.

I had no idea what to expect on my first day on the coffee line; I’d heard of knifings and mentally disturbed guys and desperate situations. But when I got there the men on line were calm and grateful for what seemed to me our meager offerings. And there were all sorts of people in line; there was no common profile at all. There were men and women who had gambled and lost it all; there were families; there were white and black and brown people; there were young people and older people, modestly dressed casino workers, well-dressed businessmen, Muslims dressed in black headdress. Later, as I became acquainted with many of them, I met construction workers, a lawyer with brief case in hand, a young man who had whistle-blown a corporate secret, and a welldressed woman who had gambled and lost her plane ticket home. There were often traveling families

Editor’s note: Thanks for your note — we love any and all letters from readers.

I didn’t say the church was the “seat” of greed and cruelty and lies, though.

I would never say such a thing. I did say that greed and cruelty and lies are in the church, which of course they are — I mean, thousands of children were raped by members of our church, and many men in our church lied about those crimes, and this is not even to wince at the terribly bloody history of the church we love.

The church is us, which means it will always be liable to human failings; but curiously that is the very thing that I suspect is its deepest genius, that it insists on hope and love and light despite the obvious and evident darkness everywhere, including inside us. The church indeed does proclaim the stunning truth, and often sings and encapsulates and exhibits and represents it; but not always, sadly. Yet on we go, holding hands in the Love.

I think we are better off being honest about the flaws and stupidities of the church, which miraculously persists despite its failings, seems to me. Thank God for that.

who had run out of gas, many of which seemed to have dogs they had rescued from the street. No one was excluded from the line, not even the dogs.

But the men I saw most were Vietnam vets, many who were living in the desert. They said that the desert was preferable to living in homeless shelters because of theft and safety.

One man had served with U.S. Marine Special Forces in Hanoi, behind enemy lines, living in the sewers to spy on troop movements. To survive, he had killed people, including children. When he returned home to his family in California, he suffered terribly, waking up screaming every night, and eventually had to leave his family. When I met him he was drinking his life away in the desert. I delivered him to rehab several times, but eventually he found jobs trimming palm trees, and last I saw him he was sober.

To my surprise there were situations of great friendship among the men; I remember one crippled young man who had a small job and took care of another poor man, an elderly gentleman, feeding him and finding him an apartment. There was a great sense of caring and compassion among the regulars on the coffee line; they shared bus fare and job notices, and their conversations were warm and friendly. I would call it love, and there was so much of it there, in those poor conditions, that I can never forget.

I was there at John the Baptist for about a year, before my architectural practice — designing churches — carried me away, but I will always remember and admire the energy and compassion of the Workers there, who fought for decent housing for the poor,

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LETTERS POLICY We are delighted by testy or tender letters.

Send them to bdoyle@ up.edu. who worked with Shoshone people to protest a nuclear test site on their nearby land, who devoted untold hours to celebrating the lives and messages of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. I will never forget them.

Dennis McLaughlin CP ’52 Jacksonville, Florida

THE FOUL HABIT I was really stunned when I read the article on the essential death of smoking on campus (Spring 2012).

I was on campus from 1968 to 1972, and smoking was everywhere. The Pilot House was a smokers’ haven, and everyone smoked in The Commons.

Students and professors smoked in most classes: Dean Collins and Mr. Braden, in business, were two professors who banned smoking in their classes.

Most of my teachers smoked, and the few times when someone asked if there had to be smoking we were frowned upon.

I would try to get close to a window, but nine out of ten days it would be raining and the windows were closed, and by the end of class there would be so much smoke in the room it was hard to see the blackboard. I had a philosophy class in Buckley Center my senior year and the professor would come in with one cigar and before the end of class would light up a second. Sometimes I would come out of class reeking of smoke and feeling ill; today I think I might have had an allergy to all the smoke…

Tom Konecny ’72 Arcadia, California

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ARTS & LETTERS On this campus Thursday, October 24: the hilarious and piercing essayist and novelist David James Duncan, on whom the University draped an honorary doctoral hood in 2004 for the “poetry and prayer and passion and power” of his work. His 7 p.m. talk in Buckley Auditorium is free and open to all. Call Brian Doyle at 503.943.8225 for details. ¶ Poet Alan Shapiro visits Tuesday, November 12, reading from his work in BC 163 at 7.30 p.m. ¶ And for those of you making winter plans, the former Poet Laureate of the United States will be reading from her work on campus February 13, free as can be: the estimable Louise Glück, whose father invented the Xacto knife! Wow! ¶ The annual hilarious summer light opera in Hunt Theater this year: Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus, June 7 through 30.

Tickets are $30 and they are worth every penny, trust us.

Call 503.943.7287 for tickets.

And pray for the soul of founder Roger O. Doyle, who loved his summer light opera, yes he did.

sary celebration is Thursday evening, June 27, in Bauccio Commons; tickets are $50 ($35 for young alumni); come one come all. Call Amy Kwong-Kwapisz for details, 503.943.7752. For more on S of E at age fifty, see page 50. ¶ Reunion is June 27-30, with more events than we can actually count: call 503.943.7328, or email alumni@up.edu to register, figure out housing, etc. ¶ On campus September 19 for the University’s annual Red Mass, celebrating lawyers and judges and those who work for justice: Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court, who will give a speech that day. Thomas is one of six Catholic justices on the Court. “Talk about a minority within a minority within a minority,” he has said of being raised “a black Catholic in Savannah, Georgia…I grew up in a religious environment, and I’m proud of it. I was going to be a priest; I’m proud of it…” ¶ The Graduate School, we note with interest, is up to 17 programs: master’s degrees in fine arts, business, communication, education, engineering, nursing, and theology, and doctorates in nursing and education.

THE FACULTY

THE UNIVERSITY Hosted by the University’s Garaventa Center for Ameri can Catholic Life from June 20 through 22: “The Impact of Catholic Education in America,” cosponsored with the School of Education and its vibrant Pacific Alliance for Catholic Education program.

Teachers, administrators, pastors, scholars, students welcome. Costs, times, details: Jamie Powell, 503.943.7702, powell@up.edu. ¶ The School of Education’s golden anniver-

Celebrated at the end of May in Shiley Engineering Hall: the 100th birthday of Tek tronix Founder Howard Vollum ’36, who left the University $11 million for engineering support when he died in 1986. Among the speakers: Ed Sinclair (cofounder of VintageTEK) and Russell Fillinger of Tektronix; and a vintage Tektronix 511 oscilloscope was handed to the University with great fanfare. ¶ The University’s Outstand ing Teacher this year: the witty and curious Lars Larson (English). Scholar(s) of the Years: Russ Butkus (theology) and Steve Kolmes (environ-

mental studies), who have worked together for many years to prove that science is creative spiritual pursuit, of course. Deans’ Award for glorious irrepressible service: Kate Regan (Spanish).

Culligan Medal — the highest faculty award — for energy, commitment, etc., over a career on The Bluff: the lanky Texan John Orr (English).

mink, eagle, osprey, falcon, heron, hawk, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in May. ¶ The University offers the Chiles Center to local high schools every summer for their graduations: this year we will welcome Oregon City, Milwaukie, Clackamas, Beaverton, Westview, Southridge, Sunset, and Aloha high schools.

THE SEASON

FROM THE PAST

Being planted down on the new riverfront campus this spring and summer: alder, ash, cottonwood, hawthorn, dogwood, serviceberry, snowberry, elderberry, plum, Pacific ninebark, salmonberry, Douglas firs, and two clans of willow. ¶ Opening with fanfare and laughter and relief and trumpet blasts and something like awe in August (you have to see the changes to believe them): the University’s Clark Library, after more than a year of total renovation. It even faces a different direction (west, to the chapel quad) now and has a cool fireplace, and a real elevator. Whew.

Come see for yourself. ¶ Celebrating ordination anniversaries this summer as stalwart Men of the Con gregation of Holy Cross: the exuberant author and psychology professor emeritus Father Dick Berg (50 years!), art professor and Salzburg Program director Father Mark Ghyselinck, former University jack-of-all-trades Father Jim King, and former University regent Father Bill Miscamble (all 25 years). Celebrating his whopping 70th ordination anniversary: the legendary Father Ted Hesburgh, many times a visitor on The Bluff as the terrific president of the University of Notre Dame from 1952 to 1987. ¶ Seen on and over campus over the last year, by University folks on land and water: deer, coyote, bobcat, raccoon, nutria, otter,

August 15 last year: Neil Armstrong return to the Idea from whom came the moon he so famously walked on in 1969. Today’s historical detail: the 47 pounds of moon rocks and dust he and (University honorary doctorate recipient) Buzz Aldrin collected had to go through customs in Hawaii before being admitted to American laboratories (“Origin of flight? “Moon.” No kidding.) ¶ June 1933: the great poet W.H. Auden, sitting on a school lawn one evening, experiences a mystical vision: he felt “invaded by a power… irresistible” and later called it agape, a vision of selfless Love. ¶ July in University history, drawn from the invaluable www.up.edu/almanac run by Father David Sherrer, C.S.C.: July 7, 1965, the death of economics professor Father Jim Fogarty, who saved and wheedled enough money for the University to build the Chapel of Christ the Teacher (which reopens this summer after a major overhaul); July 15, 1820, the birthday of the Brothers of Saint Joseph in France, who would later become part of the new Congregation of Holy Cross in 1835; July 28, 1844, the birthday of the glorious Catholic poet Father Gerard Manley Hopkins, who has been taught on The Bluff for nearly a century and God willing always will be. ¶ Born on August 20, 1929, in Kansas City: the genius Charles Parker, Junior.

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ART BY MARY MILLER DOYLE

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The seemingly gruff and stern and curt and demanding but actually pleasant-behind-the-mask mathematics professor Father John Kurtzke, C.S.C., died in February, at age 61. John taught here from 1984 to 2004, when his health crumbled.

“He loved his students, yet could be a bear if he perceived any slacking off, especially by his math majors,” said former University president Father Dave Tyson, C.S.C., at his funeral. “But I remember him best not for his crusty persona but as a compassionate, effective priest. He was all about the community. He could not help in his last years sharing his pain also; he bore the Cross of Christ, as we all must do, but his was exceedingly heavy, and very much about loss: of cognitive skills, of his ability to teach, of the capacity to speak, of independence. Yet he bore it well, and he never lost faith in God’s call. That is the man we remember...” Amen to that. Well said.

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The estimable engineering professor Khalid Khan, the gentlest and most urbane of men, tells us what happens in the University’s Islamic prayer room, in Christie Hall. “Fajr, first prayer, dawn prayer. You open yourself to the day, to what will be given to you. Second prayer: zuhr, just after noon. The prayer by which you steer the day. Third: asr, anywhere between three and five or so, to remember what is important. Then maghrib, just after sunset. We are grateful for the gift of the day. Finally isha, just before bedtime. For all prayers you take your shoes off, for cleanliness outside and in; think where your shoes have been! All told the five prayers add up to less than an hour a day; certainly you can spare an hour every day for reverence and contemplation, yes? Just as in Catholicism, ritual prayer is not a prison, but a focus, a concentration, a discipline…”

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A QUIVER OF WONDER From a conversation between University education professor Karen Eifler and chemistry professor Sister Angela Hoffman, in the book Becoming Beholders, from Liturgical Press, which will be published this fall. Sister Angela holds four patents for her work on recovering paclitaxel from soils and plants to use in cancerfighting drugs like taxol.

Being a Benedictine nun — does that make a difference in how you teach chemistry? Are you conscious of that ancient spirituality having an impact on work with students?

Sr. Angela: Well, there was never a time in my life when I didn’t think that everything is a sign of the presence of God, which is of course a big part of Benedictine spirituality.

Everything has a chance to reveal something about God. I think the sense of mystery can’t be helped when we simply start trying to explain what it is we are seeing.

The word mystery often pops up in the same conversations as grace and sacrament. That’s how you mean it?

It just makes sense to talk about wonder and mystery when we try to explain why things work so well.

What physical evidence demonstrates over and over is that things work.

Everything is connected to everything else in some way, and our job as biochemists is to figure out those relationships. I tell my students that we come at this work from a point of wonder, not a point of mechanism.

This is something I have to communicate to my students who think they are going to get all the answers out of their textbooks: science is about the unknown, whereas textbooks are about the known. A chemist’s entire life’s quest might end up being two sentences in a textbook, because real chemistry is not about books. It’s about the next set of questions.

Sounds like you are teaching patience, along with facts and questions.

Teaching students how to fail well is an important aspect of my teaching.

They make a lot of mistakes. Their experiments and models don’t explain how life works they way they

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planned them to. I am always telling them that failing is the surest chance of learning, and not to waste a chance to learn by failing to learn from your mistakes.

Describe a specific example of a classroom practice that helps you foster the kind of patience and resilience you are describing.

Let’s say we are poking around the world of potassium-sodium ion channels. This is not a static thing. It is an elaborate set of interacting processes.

I assign them the task of drawing a model of what they think that situation looks like, and then they have to explain why their model makes sense, given all the facts we have acquired from lectures and lab and reading. And they have to link that model and their own argument to another chemical reality. They have to

make their thoughts and reasoning very visible and they have to defend those to others who did the same task. Students are always saying that this makes them think of stuff they never dreamt of on their own, and it almost always leads them to more questions and see more possibilities of “correct” answers in the most unexpected places. Or right in front of their noses: literally, like the student who found herself wondering how many moles of air there are in a typical human breath. Someone else was reading a 1994 Saturn Owner’s Manual and got to wondering how much sodium azide it would take to fill up the car’s four-liter airbag. It’s those kinds of questions that make me know I am teaching real scientists, not parrots.

Do your students get to see your own thinking made visible?

Sure. I show them that all the time.

Take my paclitaxel research, which my upper division students are involved with. I was looking at this one compound in yew trees and wondering why it might be that a plant Portland 6

would produce something that could possibly cure human cancers. Could that same chemical be in the plant as a kind of self-protection? What does a plant need to protect itself from?

Something in the environment? If this model of explanation works, can we use it, or adapt it to a human environment? These questions all have long, intertwined answers that can all be traced back to the premise that God puts things together for a good reason, and those knots can be loosened if we do our biochemistry really well. I’m not afraid to use that language, and my sense has been that students who enroll at a place like ours are not only receptive to that spiritual dimension, they come in expecting it…but they also want to learn excellent biochemistry which prepares them for graduate research and medical school. I never apologize for the wonder in my voice when I am explaining something like potassium-sodium ion channels; I really hope that quiver of wonder comes through. I’ve never had a student complain about it. I have had atheist students say that they sense something different — something special from the inside out was the way one person put it — in my courses and labs. It’s impossible for me to separate good teaching from spirituality.

One last question: how do you teach students the resilience necessary to keep moving beyond those failures, and keep seeing failures as opportunities to learn?

Kleenex and cookies. Your first reaction as a Benedictine has to be hospitality. Benedictine hospitality is my first rule of interacting with students, especially when they are falling apart. Building human relationships with students is number one, and every failure they experience in my class is an opportunity to build a stronger relationship. Moving beyond that initial disappointment is next. Often my students are receiving the first lower grades of their lives and they have no coping mechanism for dealing with that. But I don’t want to show them how to change a C into an A. I want them to wonder about the concept and figure it out, so that they understand, not so they get a better grade. Remember, in my scholarly discipline our business is to figure out how life is put together.

Mistakes are part of life, so my job is to help students figure out how mistakes fit in some bigger picture. n

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Today the University knows this sinewy soul as the gentle and witty education professor Rich Christen, scholar of handwriting and graffiti and the history of education, but forget ye not that he was once North Dakota state high school wrestling champion at 98 pounds (1970) and then all-conference at Minot State University, where he was so good (at a bulbous 126 pounds) that he won the national A.O. Duer Award as the best scholar-athlete in N.A.I.A colleges. He then coached high school grappling for ten years before becoming, well, the gentle and witty Professor Rich Christen, who has graced The Bluff for the last fifteen years.

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GLIMPSES & TRACES Plop! Plop! Plop! Frogs leapt — one for each step I took, as I wound my way around the abbey’s small pond in summer. I did not see any of the little buggers, only small radiating circles left on the water’s surface, and fading strings of tiny bubbles rising from the shallows. Shadows shaded the pond into a series of broken mirrors that reflected jet streams from airplanes that also had eluded my sight.

Other visitors preceded me: the black mud riming the pond recorded the comings and goings of raccoons and deer, the deer for a cool drink and the raccoons, perhaps, for a frog or two as well as a drink. A couple feet from the water’s edge there was a posted sign. In an archaic script, it warned: Caution: Walking on Water Prohibited. Monks Only.

Obviously a life of prayer and work and silence did not preclude a sense of humor. Did the monk who waded into the pond to stake his caution smile in anticipation of my smile?

And I was struck, as I often am while pond-side, by the thought that to retreat here, seemingly abandoning the world, is often not to affectionately embrace the world and its creatures.

In past years here I often saw an old monk whose body was bent earthward by the years, or, I imagined, the weight of what he prayed for. Atop his white and black habit he sported a day-glo orange watch cap, in every season. He carried a pail and from it scooped feed for visiting mallards who quacked their grace before gobbling up whatever he threw their way. Even if I did not see the monk on some visits, the scattered feed and the empty pail reminded me that he had been there. But now the ducks were no longer there, nor the old monk, who was finally taken into the earth that he prayed over and for.

A cedar fence screened the monks’ residence from view, but beyond its low gate one could see a row of white crosses, one of them the humble and enduring marker to the old man who fed the birds, who sang his God’s praises, and who prayed for a world that rarely saw him. Now he floats in my memory, like reflections on the abbey pond; one of the many

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glimpses and traces of both the immediate and the long-ago that catch and surprise me in every season, every day.

There are so very many. On a summer morning, the cedar fence in my back yard glistens with the trails charting the journeys of slugs through the darkness of the night before.

Turning the page of library books, I find traces of previous readers: a grocery list, a ticket stub, or library hold slip with the name of he or she who turned these pages before me.

The pages themselves are glimpses into the mind of the writer who left them for me a year ago, or two hundred years ago. In the mirror I see a hint of my dead father’s face, and my mother’s appears when my daughter holds her head a certain way. So many traces, and so many are lovely; but not all.

Early in winter on a gray rainy day, I walked the bark-mulch track circling a neighborhood park. I approached four figures behind the backstop of the baseball field near the edge of a bluff: a man and his dog, an older woman walker, and a man on the other side of the waist-high fence, under the long limbs of a huge beech tree. This last figure was facing away.

When I got near the woman, I saw she was in tears, and the man with the dog was making a frantic call on his cell phone. The man on the other side of the fence was not standing but hanging from the lowest branch,

suspended by a thick rope. The couple before me had just come upon him, hanging like my imagined image of Judas — his feet just above the ground, his arms dangling stiffly by his sides.

So sad, this lost soul, one of the homeless who live in a dark retreat from the world most of us inhabit.

They are almost out of sight under bridges or in the shrubs of parks. The police and an ambulance arrived, and they had to leave him hanging there as they went about their business. When they were through, all that would remain to mark the spot where he died would be moss scraped by a rope from a limb and gouges in the grass from the ambulance.

Come spring, moss would again cover the tree limb, and grass the tiregouged field. Yet I knew troubling and haunting traces of that grey day were etched in my memory. To avoid them seemed a betrayal of the lonely tragedy, so I guided my memory back to the old monk and his mallards.

I imagined following him this once from the pond to the altar where I listened while he prayed once again and accepted the weight of caring for all souls. n Louis Masson, professor emeritus of literature at the University, is the author of the essay collections Reflections and The Play of Light. His new collection Across the Quad will be published this fall by Corby Books.

We forget sometimes that the University is perched above one of the great seaports of the Pacific, and amazing epic vast incredible vessels slide past us all day and night. This one, caught by Portland painter Seth Tane, was in a show of his work recently on campus.

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Graduating in May: the effortless campus surfer Jhana Young, famous on The Bluff as the young lady who wove at high speed everywhere, always smiling, never crashing (“well, once, when I was a freshman, near Kenna�) on the same Sector 9 longboard she brought from her native Oahu as a freshman. Headed to a career in sustainable marketing, she guesses she put more than 200 miles on that board, zooming to and from class, rain or shine.

We will miss the whir of her grin. Our very best wishes on your (speedy) travels, Jhana Young.

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Tom Greene Provost, Professor, Dapper Gentleman First walked into a classroom as a teacher in 1970 — fourth grade, Ardenwald School in North Clackamas — and never really left, although he did have to leave school here and there for Army National Guard training as a combat engineer: “great training for being an elementary school teacher.” Taught eighteen years in that district in every grade, plus driver’s education. Then principal, superintendent and associate superintendent (Orient, GreshamBarlow, Beaverton), at the same time as he was a dad and arriving on The Bluff, in 1983, first as an adjunct professor of early childhood education, and then director of teacher education, associate dean, dean (graduate school), associate provost, and now, for the last year, provost — a startling thirty years of gracious labor on the Bluff. “Teaching’s hard, and I love it,” he says.

“Why? Because everyone deserves a chance to reach their best, and teachers are essentially coaches in that effort. Because it is both art and science. Because it’s sweet and rewarding and refreshing to see people flourish and grow, right before your eyes, day after day. And the education professor is an even deeper experience — you get to deal with every one of the fundamental questions of life with your students through the lens of preparing professional educators — creativity, tragedy, passion, failure, humility, humor, service, loss, disappointment, joy, reverence, respect, courage...”

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The estimable Jim Covert ’59 returned to The Bluff in 1961 to teach history, and never left again until he retired in glory in 1997. Since then he has written several books and become a deft painter of Oregon scenery, as you see. Our best wishes and regards, James. Hey to Sally.

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A FREAKING GROUND BALL The University’s guest this spring for the annual Diamond Dinner fundraiser event, kicking off the Pilot baseball season, was Bill Buckner, who played 21 years in the bigs, piling up 2,715 hits with five teams. Some of his remarks: To be honest, I was very disappointed when I was drafted by the Dodgers in 1968. I grew up in San Francisco, I was a big Giants fan and Willie Mays fan, and I didn’t think there was any way that I could play for the Dodgers.

I signed, though. After working a tough summer job for ten hours a day, I talked my mother into letting me sign with the Dodgers.

I started in the Pioneer League, in Ogden, Utah. My manager was Tommy Lasorda, who pitched for both teams my first game. Tommy had actually pitched for the Dodgers (losing his roster spot eventually to Sandy Koufax), and he threw me what he thought was his best curveball. I hit a triple off the fence, and Lasorda throws his glove down, kicks it, starts screaming, and yells at me, “if you ever hit another ball like that against me I’m going to cut my throat with a razor blade!” This was my first twenty minutes of professional baseball, you know, so I knew it was going to be an exciting summer.

I remember Bobby Valentine, our center fielder, wrestling with a pitcher for Idaho Falls on the mound after a game, and Lasorda punching their manager, which started a huge fight.

I remember we had Steve Garvey, Davy Lopez, and Billy Russell on that team. I also remember we were always hungry — we were mostly teenagers.

I got called up in 1969, for the last month of the season, but the Dodgers were in a pennant race and I wasn’t going to play, so I just watched happily.

But then, the next to last game of the season, we’re in Candlestick Park, and it’s freezing, and Gaylord Perry’s on the mound for the Giants throwing 90-mile-an-hour spitballs, and with bases loaded in the ninth, two outs, the manager, Walter Alston, sends me up to hit. My heart was pounding a hundred miles an hour. I walked up and got in the batter’s box. The great umpire Harry Wendlestedt was behind the plate, and I think he thought

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I was going to pass out. “Son, relax,” he said, which only made me more nervous. I fouled off about six pitches, and finally hit a little weak blooper over second base — my first hit.

I made the team the next year, but I never forget all the guys who didn’t get that lucky. All you hear about is all the big salaries nowadays, but for every one of those guys there are 25 guys scuffling in the minors who will never make the big leagues, who chase their dreams and don’t get there.

I saw a lot in baseball. I was the left fielder when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s record in 1974. Al Downing was pitching, and he laid it in there for Hank, first pitch of the game, a fastball right down the plate, and Hank hit it deep to left. I ran back and jumped, you know, like I was trying to catch it, but really I was trying to get over the fence to get the ball. I was only making $20,000 a year then, and that ball was worth $50,000 easy.

I got to play with and against a lot of the best players ever. I hit against Bob Gibson — I singled the first time up, and he hit me right in the ribs my next time up. He was fierce. Next week we faced him again, and I got a hit, and the next time up he threw at my head. The ball hit my bat and dribbled out to him, but I was so angry that I ran to first and threw the bag at him; and oddly, he never threw at me after that. Probably thought I was nuts.

I saw some crazy things. When I was with the Cubs I was in a 23-22 game, the most amazing sporting event I ever participated in. We were losing 19 to 3 at one point. The wind was really blowing. Their pitcher hit two homers, I hit two homers, and my teammate Dave Kingman hit three homers. That kind of day. Another game I remember we had Larry Biitner in right and he dove for a ball and lost it under his hat, and the batter got an inside-the-park homer.

My first game with the Red Sox was Roger Clemens’ first game in the big leagues, and I got to play with him and Wade Boggs, Jim Rice, and Dwight Evans — great players. Tom Seaver came over to us in 1986, and we knew we were in for good things.

We ended up playing the Angels for the pennant, and I’ll always remember the incredible pandemonium before Dave Henderson hit his homer to tie the fifth game — the loudest sports moment I ever experienced — and the incredible instant silence Portland 12

after he hit it: 65,000 people so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

So we get to the 1986 World Series, and the Mets. Anybody ever heard about the error I made? No? Well, listen, I was a pretty good ballplayer.

I got votes for the Hall of Fame.

I don’t think I was a Hall of Fame player, no, but I was pretty good, and know what I will always be remembered for — that one error. Do I remember it clearly? Sure. Kevin Mitchell’s on third, Ray Knight at second, Mookie Wilson’s at bat. Lefty.

Now, Mookie Wilson was very fast, so normally I’d be playing up. But, with the tying run on second base, I was back a little deeper cause you didn’t want the ball to get through the infield. My teammate Marty Barrett calls a pickoff play on second base, so I move over to cover the hole.

Mookie hits a slow roller down the first base line — a ball I probably fielded 500 times in my career. I move toward it, under control. Most of the

The Vulture’s Wings The vulture’s wings are black death color but the underwings as sunlight flushes into the feathers are bright are swamped with light.

Just something explainable by the sun’s angle yet I keep looking I keep wondering standing so far below these high floating birds could this as most things do be offering something for us to think about seriously?

Mary Oliver’s poems and essays about attentiveness have graced this magazine for ten years now, which we consider a sweet gift to the University’s dreaming.

time if you miss a ground ball as an infielder it’s because you lift your head up too quick. I got set, bent for it, and it was like it went right through my glove. It was weird. But the ball went through, Knight comes in to score the winning run, and we lost Game Six. Naturally I was upset that I missed it, but my next thought was “Wow, I get to play the seventh game of the World Series. How cool is that?” We had Bruce Hurst pitching, who had already won two games, and I was sure we’d win, just like I was sure we’d beat the Angels. But that’s not the way it was with everybody else.

It was crazy. And then we got rained out the next two days, so it got even crazier with media and fans. My family, my kids — it was a tough situation we went through, believe me.

It’s been almost 30 years since that happened, and it still comes up all the time. It’s just there. There’s no getting that skunk smell off of me. It was tough for a few years. The moment it started to change was 1990, I was finishing up with the Red Sox, I was forty years old but made the roster, and on Opening Day at Fenway I got a standing ovation. I cried. It was crazy, emotionally. And then a couple years ago I got invited to throw out the first pitch at Fenway, and the same thing happened, a standing ovation. This time everyone cried.

I could write a book about the error and the aftermath. I can’t say that I wish that it had happened, but it did happen. Things happen in sports. But it’s just a game. I missed a freaking ground ball — so what? There’s real life, where you lose your job, your kids get sick, somebody dies — that’s for real. Baseball is a game. So I deal with it. It made me a better human being. And to tell you the truth I think it helped a lot of other people.

I have received thousands of letters from people talking about enduring things with grace. I had some bad days, sure, especially when it hurt my family — my son is going to spring training with the Cubs this year, and you know he’ll hear some wisecracks — but that’s life. I wouldn’t quite say it’s been a blessing, but it’s had a good effect, somehow, on a lot of people. Who would have thought such a thing?

Can you make a Rise Campaign gift to help Pilot baseball? Suuuuuure. Call Colin McGinty at 503.943.8105, mcginty@up.edu.

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The Butterflies of Billy Meadows First, of course, the swallowtails catch the eye: Papilio zelicaon, rutulus, multicaudatus, and Parnassius smintheus, Apollo’s alter ego.

Then the whites flit by: Pieris occidentalis and Pieris rapae, cabbage butterflies even here.

Anthocharis sara with her orange-juice tips, and the butterpats of sulphurs: Colias interior, their bright pink edges, their lime-green eyes.

Of the blues, Euphilotes occupy the buckwheat mounds, Icaricia the lupine, named for Icarus, that wax-winged wannabe. Plebejus saepiolus, greenish blue; Plebejus lupini, spangled blue.

And Glaucopsyche — that means blue soul! — piasus and lygdamus, the arrowhead and silvery blues.

Pyrgus communis, skipping on checkered wings, just looks blue. Lycaena heteronea shines bluer than any blue, though it’s really a copper — like mariposa flashing purple in the sun, nivalis of the lilac edge, or Edith’s, named for her finder’s lover.

And the browns: Cercyonis pegala and oetus — O, ye Wood Nymphs of Summer! Plus their fair sister, Erebia epipsodea, flitting cinnamon and chocolate through alpine hellebores by Billy Creek. Boloria epithore, violet and rust, in bog with Ochre Ringlets.

Vanessa the Lady flies by, like a cinder on the wind; Erynnis the witch, black as a burned-out coal. The anglewing known here as Zephyr; the tortoiseshell of fiery rims; and blue-flecked Antiopa, the Mourning Cloak — all brilliant above, all hide behind dark rags.

Look, here come the checkerspots and crescents!

Phyciodes mylitta and pulchella “the beauty”; Euphydryas “(lovely dryad”) colon, and E. anicia veaziae, named for Portland dryad Agnes Veazie, who caught Oregon silverspots in Ocean Park in ’16.

Now, all these silverspots at their violets: Speyeria hydaspe, callippe, zerene, coronis, hesperis, leto, and mormonia: one pair of Mormon Fritillaries, in copula, of course. Lastly, at Buckhorn Lookout, Danaus plexippus — one lone Monarch, beating its way back north, high above Imnaha.

— Robert Michael Pyle

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PHOTOS BY LAWRENCE ROCKWOOD

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Save of the year: senior baseball pitcher J.R. Bunda, by teammates and University staff and local firefighters. On December 10, Bunda lifted weights with teammates and went for a jog on the track in the Chiles Center; midway through his run, his heart stopped. Teammates Ryan Barr and Travis Pederson sprinted for help, sports medicine and conditioning staff sprinted to help, and University public safety officers and Portland Fire Department Engine 26 men were at work on J.R. in minutes. He was whisked to Emanuel Legacy Hospital, amazingly recovered completely, and was back pitching for the Pilots in March. Everyone involved in saving J.R.’s life was honored at the team’s annual Diamond Dinner in February, and the men of Engine 26 (J.R.’s jersey number!) threw out the first pitch at an April game. Whew. Prayers.

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From “Seeds of Harmony,” an exhibition by University photographer Jeff Kennel on campus. Jeff’s portraits are of gardeners in the New Columbia public housing project in North Portland, three miles from campus. “There are more than 25 nationalities among the gardeners and you are as likely to hear Oromo or Chuj as you are to hear English,” he says. “I wanted to introduce people to these amazing people. Photography is a way to share, to learn, to be engaged, to pay attention to something outside ourselves in order to perhaps understand something inside ourselves.”

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O N S P O R T S Why Our Soccer Players Marry Our Baseball Players is a riveting mystery, but they do: Pilot soccerists Stephanie Lopez and Brian Cox, Wanda Rozwadowska and Andrew Wrisley, Lauren Orlandos and Travis Hansen, Colleen Salisbury and Gustaf Little, Angie Woznuk and Adam Kerr…and Sara Jackman and Danny Meier plan to marry this December…hmmm.

National All-Academic AllAmerican sophomore runners Scott Fauble and senior Lars Erik Malde both were named to the national AllAcademic Team; but even cooler the women’s and men’s cross country teams both earned national AllAcademic honors. The women (3.51 team grade average) and the men (3.29) were both the best in the West Coast Conference. Wow. Baseball The University decided to renovate Joe Etzel Field instead of moving the game down to the new riverfront campus, and will add seats, lights, and fake turf; we applaud a whopping $250,000 Campaign gift from regent Larree Renda for that purpose. Want to chip in? Call Diane Dickey, 503.943.8130. ¶ The Pilots finished 20-33, led by Jeff Melby

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(.339), Brian Fratalli (.992 fielding percentage in 388 chances), and Kurt Yinger (4.12 e.r.a over 87 innings).

Women’s Soccer The Pilot women, chasing a third national title, are at home against Big East champion Marquette and NCAA playoff teams Wake Forest, Missouri, WCC champ BYU, and Santa Clara, among others.

Among the road games: Oregon, Stanford, and new WCC member Pacific University. Tickets and schedules: portlandpilots.com. Among the new faces: the tiny relentless midfield energy called Parkes Kendrick from Portland’s Grant High, and the second-leading scorer (116 goals) in Oregon prep history, Ariel Viera from Scappoose. The all-time leader, with 131 goals for the Hillsboro Spartans?

Tiffeny Milbrett ’95.

Men’s Soccer The men also start in August, against UC Davis and NCAA playoff team Cleveland State. Other home matches: Air Force, Oregon State, Southern Methodist, WCC champ San Diego, and Santa Clara.

Among the new faces: all-Oregon Eddie Sanchez from Canby High.

Leading scorer Steven Evans left to play with the pro Timbers, but back for the men are all-WCC players Derek Boggs, Michael Escobar, Jaime Velasco, and Hugo Rhoads.

Men’s Lacrosse The Pilots’ club

Sports story of the year: Sam Bridgman walking across the stage to accept his degree in May. Sam was student manager of the baseball team. He was afflicted by ataxia, a disease for which there is not yet a cure. In his years here he raised some $100,000 to help find a cure. He swore he would walk across the stage to get his degree. With the help of the athletic office trainers who worked with him for years to help him maintain muscle, he did. There was a roar of applause you could hear on Mars. Did everyone weep? Sure they did. Prayers and best wishes, Sam.

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team was 12-2 at presstime, ranked 18th in America, and fresh off a firstround playoff 20-1 thumping of Puget Sound. Leading the Pilax: senior Ian McAnnis-Entenman (from Portland’s Grant High), with 55 goals. Wow. Basketball Center Thomas van der Mars posted the best stats of the season: 3.94 GPA (he’s a technology management major), and 10 points and 7 rebounds a game in league play. ¶ Leading scorer in the classroom this year for the women: guard Kari Luttinen (3.51 gpa in business). Amy Pupa and Jasmine Wooton also earned WCC all-academic honors.

Rowing Busy and glittering spring for the women, who won the Husky Open in Seattle, had two boats win at the Covered Bridge Regatta on Oregon’s Dexter Lake, won all three races to sweep a meet against Seattle U, and raced against Cornell and Dartmouth.

Track & Field A record day at the West Coast Invitational in Salem, where six Pilot athletes turned in performances among the ten best in University history. Among them: Jared Bassett’s 3:43 in the men’s 1,500 meters (fourth best ever), Tansey Lystad’s 10:38 in the women’s 3,000 steeplechase (second ever), Jordan LeBrec’s 150' in the men’s hammer throw (second ever), and Katie Lord’s winning 5' 4'' in the high jump (third best ever). Wow. ¶ Setting the University’s hammer record for women in April: freshman Maddy Duretete, 40 meters. ¶ Bassett then won the men’s 3,000-meter steeplechase in 8:57.64 at…the coolest track ever, Hayward Field in Eugene. ¶ Among the new faces for the men in the fall: Jordan Cardenas, the Nevada state cross country champ.

Tennis Joining the men this fall: Reid deLaubenfels, after two years at Fresno State. Joining the women: the fourth-ranked player in Serbia, Jelena Lazarevic, the Pilots’ first WTA-ranked recruit ever. ¶ Earning all-WCC honors: junior Ratan Gill for the men and freshman Maja Mladenovic for the women. ¶ Seniors and communications majors Sabine Fuchs (3.79) and Valeska Hoath (3.86) were named to the league’s AllAcademic team, as was junior Michel Hu Kwo (3.74 in accounting).

Summer Sports Camps on The Bluff for all ages (in basketball, soccer, baseball, and volleyball, as well as rec camps) fill up fast: see portlandpilots.com, or call the athletics office at 503.943.7117.

O N B R I E F LY The University’s Rise Campaign was up to $150 million raised and pledged, so far, with a year and $25 million to go (if you have that $25 million, call Diane Dickey right now at 503.943.8130). Among the highlights: the utterly renovated Clark Library, reopening this summer; the new Recreation Center, soon to begin north of the Chiles Center; the new Character Project, an umbrella for all sorts of deep explorations of spirit and integrity; the new Humor Project, which started with new scholarships for students doing comic projects to share with the public; an utterly renovated Bauccio Commons and Shiley Engineering Hall; new professorships in Hellenic studies and business; and did we mention all the new scholarships? Could we use a thousand more scholarships? Yes. Email Diane Dickey, dickey@up.edu.

Oregon’s Eleventh Archbishop was formally installed in the University’s Chiles Center in April: Most Reverend Alexander Sample, age 52, succeeded the wonderful John Vlazny, who becomes emeritized at age 76. Archbishop Sample, we note with interest, is a Montana native who earned two degrees in metallurgical engineering from Michigan Tech. We also note that Oregon’s third archbishop, Alexander Christie, was the University’s bold and penniless founder.

Student Feats Eight Fulbright grants (for postgrad study in Spain and Germany); the University leads the nation in Fulbrights per capita. ¶ Four grants from the government of France for University students to teach there next year. ¶ The best student newspaper editorial writer in America, according to the national Society of Professional Journalists?

Caitlin Yilek ’12, for her tart essays on the lack of women in power in University administration and hapless student government. Yilek is now an editor for the Saint Cloud Times in Minnesota. ¶ Two Goldwater grants, for biology and chemistry research; a Whitaker international fellowship for mechanical engineer Melissa Ishii ’13; a National Science Foundation postgrad fellowship for Diane Le ’12, and a Boren scholarship ($20,000!) for global business student Emily Groh ’15. Wow. ¶ One of the best ten college debaters in America: Katie Wilson ’15. ¶ Senior Sam Bridgman’s second Sam Jam basketball game

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added to the whopping $100,000 he has raised to solve the disease that afflicts him: Friedreich’s Ataxia, a neuromuscular ill with no cure, as yet.

Great young man who will be much missed on campus (see page 16). ¶ The best student history journal in America, for the fourth time: the University’s Northwest Passages. ¶ Winner of the University’s annual $100K Challenge for business start-ups: Alex Calvert ’14, for his Zoom Dog training facility and store for dogs and owners. Calvert and his dad will open the store in the Pearl District this summer (as Zoom Room Portland).Calvert won $50,000 in start-up funds and $50,000 in support from the University’s Launch Pad donors. Among other recent $100K entries: Phantom Orthopedics (knee replacements) and Project Agriculture (farming in Kenya).

Vaunted Visitors Among recent campus guests: His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who shared a panel with University president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., and then spoke to a packed Chiles Center; renowned pianist John Wustman, who played with Luciano Pavarotti for 25 years, playing here with music professor Nicole Leupp Hanig; Oregon congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici, on campus for the University’s wild iUrban Teen Tech Summit for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics students; Miriam Kominkowska

Greenstein, author of In the Shadow of Death, who escaped the Nazis as a child in Poland, lost her entire family, and ended up in Oregon because her parents had made her memorize her aunt and uncle’s address in Portland; and Julius Achon (forced into child solider slavery as a child, and later twice an Olympian for Uganda) and the great Congolese musician Melodie d’Amour, both on campus for an evening devoted to Africa.

Faculty Feats Featured in Nature, the world’s premier science magazine: physics professor Max Schlosshauer’s explorations of what the world’s physicists actually think of quantum theory and its implications. ¶ Among recent glories: environmental studies professor Bob Butler (the 2013 Oregon Academy of Science Professor of the Year) sharing a $625,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for his work on Northwest earthquakes and tsunamis. ¶ The new president of the national Council on Undergraduate Research: biology professor Ami Ahern-Rindell. ¶ Winner of a 2013 Oregon Book Award for her play Antarktikos: theater instructor Andrea Stolowitz. ¶ Sharing another National Science Foundation grant ($499,000) to five Oregon professors for science education projects: biology professor Jeff Brown. ¶ Teacher of the Year at the University this year: the wry smiling literature professor Lars Larson.

How could we not print a photograph of the dean of education in the Education Issue? And here is John Watzke as a freshman for the Regina High Regals, of Iowa City, for whom he would hit .330, make all-state as pitcher and outfielder, and once hit homers back to back with his twin brother Bill, who is also a teacher today, in San Diego. Whew.

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THEY EAT THE SUN A visit with kids and zooplankton and eelgrass and wonder.

By Jeremiah O’Hagan

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ton are little tiny plants,” Sky explains, “and zooplankton are little tiny animals, and they eat them.”

Sure enough, the drawings of plankton, which the students examined under microscopes, look passive, and the zooplankton, also examined and carefully rendered, look vicious, with not-ever-to-be-seen-by-unaided-humaneyes mouths and teeth and claws.

So, I ask, the little tiny plants are eaten by the little tiny animals, which are eaten by tiny animals, which are eaten by little animals, which are eaten by less-little animals and so on until the big fish like salmon and we eat the salmon because we are at the top of the food chain, except we don’t eat the eagles that also eat the salmon because they are not only protected but also part of our presidential seal?

But I am wrong. Human beings are not one of the fifty or so pieces of art-connected-by-yarn that make up the food web on the classroom wall.

Instead, up top is a watercolor of the sun, pasted to a sheet of blue construction paper and stapled to the wall.

What’s with the sun? I ask.

Grace points to the plankton, to a long strand of red yarn connecting them to the sun.

“They eat the sun,” she said.

They eat the sun.

We could have oxygen and hydrogen and they could combine just perfectly to make water but without the sun we wouldn’t exist. The sun is one of The Very Sources of Life Itself, and plankton, some of the tiniest creatures on God’s green and blue and brown and gorgeous and fated planet — they who are only one-fourth the diameter of a human hair — they fearlessly and ferociously swallow sunlight whole as it falls into the ocean, into the sounds and bays and inlets and estuaries, falls through eel grass and seaweed, falls through glasscalm water as well as wind-whipped chop, falls through bluebird skies as well as those swollen with steel-wool clouds and those shedding rain and sleet and six-sided snow flakes, and the kids never question this miracle.

It’s so obvious to them: year-round, through better or worse, until our fiery star collapses and our solar system flies apart, they, the smallest and most courageous of us all, they eat the sun! n Jeremiah O’Hagan is a writer for The Stanwood/Camano News in Washington state, on what used to be called Puget Sound and now blessedly is renamed the Salish Sea.

SCHOOL ROOM, 1927, AGNES MILLER PARKER / PRIVATE COLLECTION / PHOTO: ©PETER NAHUM AT THE LEICESTER GALLERIES, LONDON / THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY.

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’m afraid to interview these thirdthrough fifth-graders. I’m a reporter, not a parent. I’m here to find out about their field trip, but I don’t know what to ask boys and girls in blue jeans and sweatpants and beanies and ketchup-and-chocolate-milk-stained shirts. It turns out I don’t have to say much at all because they don’t want to listen to me. They just want to tell me about estuary soup.

They tell me how they put salt water and fresh water in a bowl — not a jar, because a jar is closed and estuaries are open — and they dumped in wrack (bits of eel grass and seaweed) and detritus (decomposing stuff) and then they stirred it with a big spoon the way tides stir the shorelines, to mix it all together.

If it doesn’t mix, things die. No oxygen.

Even the plankton would die, they tell me, regular plankton and zooplankton, which are so tiny that when they took plankton samples on their field trip they had to use special nets with holes even smaller than onefourth the diameter of a hair, which is very very small and which is how big plankton are.

“Not hair the long way, either,” John says. “Like, how big around the hair is, and then divide that into four and that’s how big plankton are.”

The holes in the nets are so small you have to just trust they’re there, catching microscopic plankton, which the students put under microscopes and then drew and painted with watercolors. They painted other marine life, too, and they assembled on the wall a giant 6-foot by 10-foot collage of their artworks, a food web crisscrossed by red yarn.

That shows what eats what, the kids say.

A clam eats plankton and a crab eats plankton and an otter finds a crab and cracks it open on an especially large rock and eats it and then maybe a hawk, spiraling on warm-air currents, sees the otter and tucks its wings and zips to earth and at the last possible half-second it unfurls its wings and outstretches its talons and bam! pins the otter to the mud and feasts like a king and when it’s done the new-high-tide crabs pinch and pick what’s left of the carcass.

But I’m hung up on the plankton.

The kids keep referring to plankton and zooplankton and somehow their third- through fifth-grade syntax is pretty clear about the fact that the two are not the same, even though I can’t tell you what the difference is. “Plank-

the

CHIEF A few hours with Joe Galati ’86,’93 M.Ed., principal of Chief Joseph Elementary School in north Portland.

Notes and photographs

by Steve Hambuchen

Y

ou know how we say someone has energy to burn? Joe Galati has energy to burn: Goodmorninggoodmorningg oodmorninggoodmorninggoodmorning he says to virtually every student, every teacher, every visitor to his school, all morning long. He shakes hands and gives hugs and high-fives students and parents at the front door, and thank you for being here! he says to parents, and he says it vigorously, and he means it.

At the end of the day he gives hundreds more hugs and handshakes and thankyous and high-fives on the playground as students leave for home with their parents.

You know how we say that a good principal knows every single student? Joe Galati knows every single student and the vast majority of their parents as well.

I spent parts of four days with the man and he never stopped moving once that I noticed. Here one second and gone the next, down the hall,

into a classroom, talking to students, checking in with a teacher, headed back to the office to make or take a phone call. Nor did he ever stop talking except when a student was talking in which case he listened hard. He asks questions of students constantly: how are you doing? what are you reading? how’s your project going? How’d you do on the test? how come you were absent Tuesday? you feeling better now? You ready to write for the school bulletin? The bulletin is the weekly Friday Flyer and Joe will print pretty much anything and everything they write: stories, poems, articles, reviews, anything.

At recess, he walks lots and lots of laps in the playground with the kindergarten kids, rain or shine. They hang on his arm and they all want to tell him something. OH MY GOODNESS!” Joe replies over and over and over.

Lunch: ten minutes. Apple while returning emails and phone calls. His secretary, Patsy Burke, sits just outside his office and through the open door he asks questions and comments on emails or district news. And then he’s gone again, walking the halls.

This past year Portland Public Schools decided to merge Chief Joseph and Ockley Green schools and assign a new principal to what will be treated as a two-campus school. Joe Galati takes over as principal at Llewellyn Elementary in southeast Portland on July 1. I heard a lot of passionate talk about this change; at one meeting with district officials, a meeting packed beyond standing-roomonly, one mother said her family would go wherever Joe Galati went. It seems to me that you cannot possibly get a higher compliment as a principal than that. A little later there was a classic Joe Galati moment; as the room heated up with anger and the press of bodies, Joe went around and opened the windows with a long pole. n

I Just Trusted The girl who never even imagined attending college who started a high school.

Yes, you read that right.

By Julie H. Case

H

ere’s how Cecelia Brennan started Pope John Paul II High School in Lacey, Washington: in 2004, she mailed out a flyer to everyone she could think of who might be interested in a new Catholic school in the South Sound region. Some 35 people showed up for a meeting. The Archbishop of Seattle, intrigued, commissioned a pew survey to see if there was support for the school. Indeed there was. The school was legally incorporated in 2005. Plans were drawn for a campus.

The Archdiocese of Seattle and Allied Irish Bank lent money. Property was purchased. Brennan and her companions hired a firm to identify potential donors, and started a fundraising campaign. Ron Edwards was hired as principal in 2007. A contest yielded the school’s new name. Edwards designed a rigorous and ambitious college-prep curriculum; students would receive four years of math, not three; they’d study a language for three years, not two. Opening day was set for September of 2009.

Then the bank, hammered by the recession, pulled its money.

But nothing stops Cecelia Brennan. It would take a force of nature and three freight trains to stop Cecelia Brennan.

In September of 2010, a year after JP2 was supposed to open, it opened.

True, it opened with only twenty students, and it opened at Saint Michael’s Parish in Olympia, and it opened too late for Brennan’s two daughters to attend, as she had so fervently hoped, but it opened.

I know what a difference Catholic school makes, says Cecelia Brennan.

I went to La Salle High in Milwaukie.

At a small Catholic school you are a person. You have dignity. I don’t think public schools can offer the same things in the same way. A small Catholic school is about the mind and the heart and the dialogue between faith and reason where truth resides. Ideally a small Catholic school calls young people to be lights in the world.

And I want my kids surrounded by other kids with similar beliefs. Is that insulated? I’m fine with that. During their formative years, I want them formed in our values and our faith before they go out into the world. Is that overprotective? I’m okay with that.

I want my kids and the other kids at Pope John Paul II High School to be served, to be reached in their hearts.

There are so many kids who are not being served, who didn’t have a chance in another environment. Pope John

Paul II High School reaches them.

The school that opened with twenty students in 2010 had forty in 2012 and expects more than sixty in 2014. Most of the students are Catholic but there are Buddhist, Muslim, and Mormon students, too. In 2011 the school moved out of the Saint Michael’s space and into a renovated Lacey firehouse. It also got seriously technological; all classes are recorded so students who are sick can attend class from their bed at home, for example, and students can submit their assignments online.

I was never challenged to be anything other than mediocre when I was a kid, says Brennan. I was a girl. College was for boys. Girls got married to boys with degrees and he took care of her.

After high school at La Salle she was volunteering at a parish in Sherwood, Oregon, when the high-school kids she worked with began urging her to become a youth minister. I can do that, she thought. She went through lay training and began serving as a youth pastor, but soon realized she needed more education. She heard about a certificate in religious education program at the University of Portland. She contacted theology professor Russ Butkus about it, but he had bigger ideas for her. Get your undergraduate degree, he said — something she had never considered, and no one had ever suggested she was capable of accomplishing.

So she enrolled on The Bluff, at age 27. She had a car; she had an office, as youth pastor in Sherwood; and she tried her hardest to make college work on an annual salary of $8,000, with no benefits.

She ended up homeless. She couchsurfed, sleeping and studying in the living rooms of her friends, in her car, or under the glow of her parish office lights.

People thought I was so dedicated because they’d drive by the parish at midnight and I’d be there in the office with the lights on — asleep, she says.

She lost weight. She struggled to keep up with the academic load. Time and again she tried to drop out of the University. Time and again Butkus and others told her they were going to keep her there. Somehow they did.

Somehow the University found scholarship money for her — a detail she never forgot, and which eventually provoked her to start a scholarship herself on The Bluff — and the woman who had never even dreamed of going Summer 2013 25

to college graduated from the University, in 1984.

“I don’t know if I was stupid or naive or what but I was so focused I didn’t care, I just trusted,” she says.

“I trusted I was on the path that God had chosen for me. There were too many things that fell into place. I never really worried. I wondered, but I didn’t worry.”

She’s still like that. When the bank pulled all its loans, she told her teammates, alright, fine, we’ll grieve for 12 hours, and then we move on.

Move on they did. The money came back. Pope John Paul II High School exists. It boasts a National Merit Scholar among its six-member junior class.

It has a volleyball team and a basketball team and a jazz band. It sends its students to the National History Bowl and Bee in Washington, D.C. None of which would have been possible, says Brennan, without a Catholic school education — hers.

Since her years on The Bluff she has earned a master’s degree, from Notre Dame. She serves on JP2’s board of directors, after two years as president. Her daughters are in college.

Her son will soon enroll at the high school started by his mother. What she wants most of all for her son and the other students at JP2, she says, are the things the University of Portland gave her: the conviction that she had unfilled potential, the ability to believe in herself, the tools for success, the ferocious desire to give to others what you were given.

That is why she and her husband started their scholarship on The Bluff, for theology students; it’s not a huge amount of money, yet, but Brennan, better than anyone, knows that it matters: “I remember when $300 was the difference between whether I stayed or didn’t stay,” she says. “I don’t think people realize how even a small gift changes a life.

Money changes lives. And sometimes it’s just the angle you look at things with — you can buy a pair of diamond earrings, or you can put a bright kid through school for a year, and that year for her might mean her whole life. If I could speak directly to the readers I would say you can do anything with your gift, with your talents, with your generosity.

Anything.”

You could, for example, start a high school. It happens. n Julie H. Case is a writer in Seattle; for more of her work see juliehcase.com.

The Christie School We do not pause enough to thank the graceful tough gentle brave unpaid women who held American Catholic life on their sinewy shoulders for two centuries.

We do so here. Thank you, ladies.

No nuns, no American Catholic Church.

The St. Mary’s Home for Girls opened in 1908 to house orphaned and abandoned girls: while the care of orphans and lost children was not part of the plan for the Sisters of the Holy Names when they arrived in Oregon in 1859, they discovered they had no choice – people kept abandoning children at their doors at night.

March 15, 1865: “This morning Sister Mary Justina perceived a basket covered with a white cloth inside the fence…She took a pupil and went to examine the basket. They were yet some distance when piercing cries warned them that the basket contained living merchandise. Removing the covering they found a little infant…”

What is today Youth Villages of Oregon’s Christie campus for children with difficulties (youthvillages.org) then housed more than 100 girls from ages 3 to 14; among the girls who later enrolled at the University of Portland was the late Sister Francella Mary Griggs, who earned her teaching degree in 1959 on The Bluff and devoted her life to the restoration of her Siletz people, and Sister Wanda Marie Jordan, who taught on The Bluff from 1999 to 2006.

All the photographs here were taken by Father Henry Pelletan, a priest who served the school and the Marylhurst College campus from the 1930s until his death in 1947. “If it wasn’t for his hobby, there would be no images of the girls at all from those years,� says Sarah Cantor, archivist for the Sisters of the Holy Names at the Holy Names Heritage Center in Lake Oswego.

Our particular thanks to Sarah for finding and preserving this photos; and again we bow to the Sisters of all orders. Bless you, cool small ladies.

Can you aim a Rise Campaign gift toward helping children, or singing nuns, or elevating teachers, or aiding and abetting photographers? Heavens, yes. Call Diane Dickey, 503.943.8130, dickey@up.edu. And thanks. It matters hugely.

THE FACE OF

PACE Some of the small students of the tall students who teach in the University’s Pacific Alliance for Catholic Education; and some of our tall students, painted by the small students.

On this page: third-grade teacher Victoria Flores ’14, Saint Andrew School, Riverton, Utah. Next spread: some of the children at Saint Therese in Portland, where Adam Skarr ’13 and Brian Walsh ’14 are PACE teachers.

Above, Ann Marie Ulring ’14, who teaches kindergarten at Holy Cross grade school in Sacramento; at right, Best Teacher Ever Kayla Witt ’13 (third grade, Saint John the Baptist, Draper, Utah), Mandy Membrey ’14 (first grade, Saint Joseph, Ogden, Utah), Alli Mouton ’13 (first grade, Immaculate Conception, Fairbanks, Alaska), and Victoria Flores (Saint Andrew, Utah) again.

Laura Burchett ‘13, second grade, Immaculate Conception, Fairbanks Alaska. Isn’t one of the sweetest greatest things in the world the way kids love their teachers? Want to help make more cool teachers? Call Diane Dickey at 503.943.8130.

when multi-variate statistics threatened to derail me once upon a time.

Yes, I’ve had my fair share of clever, patient, adroit teachers and I pray each day to pay their holy work forward in my classroom. But who I took fountain pen to paper for, and determined to track down that day, was Sister Mary Reynette, my first grade teacher.

She’s the one who taught forty-eight of us (twice the recommended class size, by today’s enlightened standards) how to make squiggles turn into letters and letters into words and words are what brought the universe into being, after all. The person who taught me how to read? Ah, there’s a hero, someone who deserves a thank-you note.

So, alongside my students, I wrote a heartfelt thank-you card to Sister Mary Reynette, in complete sentences, in my own hand.

But how to address it? She taught me back when the earth was cooling.

She might have been among the hundreds of sisters who left her convent after new convictions and opportunities percolated in the roil of Vatican II. She might have stayed in religious life but changed her name, as did an old friend of mine, Sister Mary Mount Carmel, who reclaimed her less poetic but more accessible baptismal name, Sister Ann, when she traded her street-length black serge habit for jeans and a sweatshirt to carry on her order’s ministry to the starving outcasts of South Central Los Angeles. If Sister Mary Reynette had left her order, she could be living anywhere; she might not only have resumed using her baptismal name; a lot of life could have happened in the last forty-five years. But I had to thank her for the life-changing gift of cracking the code of the printed word. I knew she’d been a Sister of Notre Dame, and I checked the website of my alma mater, St. Joan of Arc Parish School. Skunked: the sisters had withdrawn from there many years ago, as their own numbers shrank. I tried a naïve Google search; turns out there are nearly a hundred women’s religious communities that have some version of Notre Dame in their name.

I guess it’s understandable that Our Lady is quite the inspiration for women seeking to commit their lives to the feeding and teaching and healing of others. Plumbing their websites, I found something beautiful and poignant: nearly all of them have links labeled something like “Find Your Favorite Sister.” I should have known I am not the only person who has felt an inner exhortation years after leaving their tutelage to trace one of the quiet tenacious women who Portland 38

Sister

MARY One great teacher remembers another.

By Karen Eifler

NIÑAS EN LA ESCUELA, ALVAREZ DE SOTOMAYOR FERNANDO / ARTRESOURCE.

E

very now and again I take the advice that I dole out to young teachers, and good things happen. This is the story of one such time.

One of my favorite exercises when I have to teach in “the death slot” on the afternoon before Thanksgiving is to provide a humongous basket of blank notecards and sheaves of postage stamps to the class and ask them to write a sincere note of thanks to someone who has sustained them on the occasionally tortuous path toward becoming a teacher. No tweeting, no emoticons, no crazy hip modern codes.

Complete sentences, all true, in their own hand. We can talk about how completely anachronistic sending treemail is another time, but one of the things that has astonished me, even though it shouldn’t, is how many of these cards wind up addressed to teachers. And how many of my students ask if they can please, please, please write more than one (eight is the current record). Heaping gratitude does everybody good. Writers of these cards glow afterwards — the silence as my students put pen to paper is simultaneously charged and gooey — and teachers who receive these cards treat them with something like reverence. But my point here is that when they’re asked to consider who bears the most responsibility for seeing them through to teacherhood, the majority of my students’ hearts leap directly to their own teachers.

I took a break from illustrating how to address an envelope in one of these sessions to think about my own teachers and how I channel the best of them every day. My students think I am teaching them my “Teacher Look,” but really it is Mrs. MacDonald’s perfectly arched right eyebrow that stops a room cold and gets them back to the business of learning. I’ve been known to use a high-powered SuperSoaker and packing peanuts to illustrate statistical validity and reliability, a can of cream cheese frosting to underscore the tenets of instructional planning; I’m one of those teachers who needs a cart to carry everything to class.

That’s because my own Mrs. Peterson needed one to teach a sophomore English class that I still think about every week, decades later. And I know to provide kleenex, candy, and a sympathetic mien as the young teacher in my office bawls in frustration at how her brilliant lessons are bombing and the students are being so very mean to her and why oh why did she ever think she could teach and is it too late to change her major, because the brilliant Dr. Weissinger showed me how that’s done and would not let me cave

formed me long before I knew that’s what they were doing. But the orders, understandably, protect the privacy of their sisters past, present and former.

Each order’s website invited me to leave a message, the year and location of service and name by which I had known Sister; the liaison would search their archives and get back to me if there was a match. In the meantime, they would be praying for me and would share my anonymous gratitude with their sisters even if they were from a rival Notre Dame outfit.

After fifty-three rejections, I got an email with the curt Subject line “Karen!” My search had finally yielded the correct Notre Dame order, and Sister Mary Reynette, now Sister Florette Marie, was ecstatic to hear from a former student. Months after the search began, I had an address for the envelope, which was only slightly smudged after being carried around for so long. I sent the card. I visited her too, for it turns out that she lives about three hundred and twelve yards from one of my oldest friends. At that first visit, I signed in at the reception desk of her convent, and the sister on duty beckoned her by phone.

I heard an exuberant “Kaaaaaaren” from some hidden room and this vision in pastel pantsuit and short-cropped salt and pepper hair burst through the double doors into the parlor. Now when last we had met, the day that Sister Mary Reynette and my mother had to unclench my fingers from my desk on the final day of first grade (I believe the principal was also called in for this operation — I really did not want school to end), I’d been about four foot nothing and Sister towered over me in full habit and black velvet wimple. I had no reason to believe this Sister Florette Marie was an imposter, but I asked her to frame just her face with her hands, so we could summon that old memory, and sure enough, those big blue eyes with their shy twinkle sealed the deal: I’d found her.

I’d already thanked her via my card, but she wanted to catch up on the last forty-some years. For me the big mystery, seeing this graceful woman just months away from celebrating her golden jubilee — fifty years as a School Sister of Notre Dame — was how old she had been way back then.

She hadn’t seemed old, it was more like she was ageless. Maybe that’s one of the things the old black serge habits were supposed to do: render the sisters timeless, part of eternity. And I know that every adult appears ancient to first graders.

She had been twenty-one. She was

a dewy twenty-one years old when she corralled forty-eight of us and unveiled the world of words and taught us how to do school. She loved to sing and play the piano and thought little boys and girls who had a hard time sitting still in a crowded classroom might enjoy wiggling and chanting diphthongs and arithmetic families to tunes she thought up on the spot. Long before any of the official educational theories I now teach my own students were dreamt up and published in peer-reviewed journals, Sister Mary Reynette, nee Florette Marie, had this idea that music could be a great way to lead children to words, and she just did it. She still does it. After fifty years, it’s no exaggeration to say she’s led over a thousand children to words, lots of them children who these days would be termed “reluctant readers.”

And I can’t be the only teacher whose formal learning started with her. I’ve got a long way to go before I catch up, but I have to give her credit for any successes I have had in forming new teachers. As I was telling her this over our tea, two things stopped me in my tracks.

First jolt: when she was working those miracles with me and my cohort, she was the same age as the students who need my kleenex and candy and shoulder to cry on, which I am still gobsmacked to ponder. There has to be a lesson there for me to work with; maybe there were days when Sister needed kleenex and candy...what did she do then? I know how burnished, perhaps a bit romanticized my memories are, but it would never have occurred to my first-grade self that Sister would find any challenge insurmountable. Why would it, for Heaven’s sake — she could see Michael taunting Summer 2013 41

Mary Helen even when her back was to the class as she wrote on the board. She could play four-square and double-dutch jump-rope in a floorlength black gown. She could answer every question in the Baltimore Catechism by heart. She knew the capital of Nebraska. She had a holy card for every student whose desk was clean on Friday afternoons. Together with the other sisters, she glided across busy Ocean Park Boulevard after early Mass each morning; it was a long time before I realized that nuns had actual feet, and I admit that in all reverence for their gracefulness and calm. But in our three-hour tea, I learned that she only appeared invincible. Daily Eucharist and a houseful of elders who had her back got her through days that were every bit as tough as those described by my young teachers. I savor that insight and pray that its wisdom can work its way into my own conversations with weary teachers as I wend my way to a golden jubilee of service.

Second jolt: in fifty years, said Sister Florette Marie, I was the first former student who had contacted her to offer thanks.

Well, that just made me weep. And ponder so many other teaching sisters with poetic names who wrested learning and imagination and manners and occasional reverence from rooms full of roistering souls: Sister Immaculata, Sister Mary Madonna Therese, Sister John of the Cross. Not only can we read and write and calculate standard deviations because of their heroic efforts, but thanks to them, I know what to say when I don’t know what to say. They marinated me in the Memorare that appears on my lips without even thinking about it every time I hear an ambulance. I know the bumper sticker “If you can read this, thank a teacher,” and I usually smile and wave to drivers of cars who bear it, or at least spare them my Teacher Look if they are taking too long to turn left. All good teachers deserve way more thanks than we will ever give them, more than we could ever give them. But I offer this as a heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving for the miracles of those good sisters who allowed their very names to be absorbed into something Really Truly Awesome. All true, mostly in complete sentences, in my own hand. n University education professor Karen Eifler, the 2006 Oregon Professor of the Year according to the Carnegie Foundation, is the author of A Month of Mondays, a collection of her wry essays about teaching.

The

CROSS

By Ed Langlois

The University has been the Holy Cross grade school’s affectionate uncle for a century. Some stories as the school celebrates its centennial this year.

F

rom Holy Cross School to Charlie’s Candy Shop was one block. You could say goodbye to Sister Alodia McHale in her black robe and seagull headdress and then run to Charlie’s in two minutes. Licorice was a penny. In 1933 many kids didn’t run to Charlie’s because they didn’t have a penny.

Mary Sullivan did, though. Her father worked at the Union Pacific railyards down by the river and her mom worked at a fruit cannery and then the University of Portland dining hall in the evenings. Her parents earned enough to pay tuition at Holy Cross for their six children every month: one dollar.

The Sullivan children walked seven blocks to school each morning from their house at Fiske and Amherst.

School was ruled by the Sisters of Saint Mary of Oregon, the oldest of whom was Sister Clementine Gescher, who taught second grade and was impossibly old. The sisters lived on the top floor of the brick schoolhouse until Father Thomas Jackson became pastor in 1936 and had pity on the women and swapped quarters with them, letting them live in the ample priest’s house and then building them a convent adjacent to Charlie’s Candy Shop.

Father Jackson, a converted Jew, a burly balding angel, had been sent to the parish after the previous pastor’s car plunged off Willamette Boulevard down the bluff and he died.

Girls wore blue dresses with white collars. Boys did not have to wear uniforms. Mary considered this unfair and took it out on the boys on the baseball field. Father Jackson told Mary that the first time he ever saw her she was sliding ferociously into home plate in a muddy spray.

On weekends, the Sullivans walked to the movie house near Portsmouth and Lombard, called the Crest, or took the longer trek, crossing the manmade railroad route known locally as the Cut, to the Saint Johns Theater, where Errol Flynn and Gary Cooper movies cost a nickel. At Fiske and Lombard was the grocery run by a Japanese man who sent the Sullivan kids a sack of candy each time their father paid off his grocery bill. On some Saturdays, the Sullivans would wander down the bluff from the university to the harbor, where they would greet sailors from Europe and the Orient. One had to be careful on the way home across campus, because the Holy Cross brothers tended cattle, including a surly bull who once took offense and chased Mary and her party of explorers across a grassy field.

At school, Mary mostly stayed clear of trouble, except for the afternoon

she socked Eddie Armstrong with a sharp left cross. For this crime she was sentenced to the nuns’ parlor. She escaped, at the urging of her brother.

Charlie’s Candy Shop, it may be, salved her spirits. (It would later serve spirits; it became the famous Twilight Room tavern in 1946.) Mary went on to attend Roosevelt High, where she met Richard Schiffbauer. They married in 1943. They had eight children; all eight of whom went to Holy Cross School.

The University’s Holy Cross priests and brothers arrived on The Bluff in 1902. In 1904 the priests founded Holy Cross parish, less than a mile from campus. In parish school, called the Institute, opened in September of 1912.

All male at first, Holy Cross boarded boys from miles around. Older boys tended the boiler in the basement and helped keep the place clean. Girls were allowed to enroll in 1916. The

sturdy three-story building was a house of learning for children of shipwrights, riverboat pilots, railworkers, longshoremen, University staff and faculty. The blue-collar neighborhood was home to immigrants from Ireland, Croatia, Poland, Japan, and the Middle East.

In September of 1912, just as Holy Cross school was born, a Syrian Catholic family near the Cut welcomed a baby daughter. They named her Victoria after the Queen of the British Empire. John Tabshy, Victoria’s father, worked in the Willamette River shipyards and raised vegetables and silkworms on the side. He would later become a gardener at the National Sanctuary of Our Sorrowful Mother, a splendid Catholic shrine bettter known as The Grotto. The four Tabshy children played under the railroad bridge across the river, sometimest times swinging blissfully from a rope Summer 2013 43

tied to a bridge girder.

The Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon who taught Victoria — Sister Eulalia Benedict, Sister Miriam of Jesus Smith, Sister Zita Gilsdorf — were kind to her, but some children were subject to the Sisters’ wrath; Victoria sometimes saw the Sisters walk solemnly to a nearby thicket to cut sticks to use as switches.

Victoria went on to Roosevelt High, graduating as the Depression struck.

A visiting Lebanese woman was impressed with Victoria’s grace and made a match between the young woman and her brother, Stephen George; they married when Victoria was twenty. All their children went to Holy Cross. Victoria tells me all this in her room in Maryville Nursing Home, in Beaverton. She shows me a doll she won in a Holy Cross school fundraiser, nine decades ago. She will soon be a hundred years old, the

oldest Holy Cross graduate.

In the early 1930s, when she regularly walked through the North Portland woods to Holy Cross School with her sisters, Millie Erceg kept an eye out for snakes. It didn’t help that her brave younger sibling Rose would pick up the slithering reptiles and dangle them in the face of anyone who showed fear.

Born Milica Erceg in Croatia, she was a year old when her parents brought her to the United States. The Ercegs lived in a two-bedroom house near what is now the Columbia Villa housing project. Five girls slept in one bed; their parents in the other.

They milked cows, tended chickens, harvested vegetables, and polished the floors. To get extra money for the family, they picked berries. They wore flour sacks for petticoats. They paid their tuition with fresh milk from the cows. Millie wanted to be

an actress: she played the lead, Boots Woodruff, in the school play High Pressure Homer. She remembers being sent to the cloak room as punishment for giggling, which only led to more giggling. Eventually she had eight siblings, all of whom attended Holy Cross for 23 consecutive years from 1931 to 1953. Her younger brother Joe, a 1947 graduate of this school, is the designer of this magazine. She married, was widowed, and now Millie Simkins shows me her Holy Cross diploma which hangs in her sewing room, just above a row of scissors. Her report card shows top marks in spelling and geography and so-so grades in math.

She tells me that she received most of the sacraments at Holy Cross Parish, and she expects to have her funeral there, and then be buried along with her mother Rose and her father, Matt, in the family plot at Mt. Calvary Cemetery.

Betty’s father, a Swedish ship’s carpenter, had escaped harsh ship that landed in Linnton on the Willamette River. Carl Swiberg found work in the woods and then helped build the Saint Johns Bridge. Betty’s mother was a of Czech ancestry, born in Wisconsin, arrived in Oregon on a lark.

She found work cleaning rooms and serving meals at a downtown Portland hotel favored by lumbermen and sailors. Carl saw Anna come down the hotel stairs one day and told his buddies, She’s the one for me. He became Catholic to marry her.

The nuns at Holy Cross, says Betty, wore big clattering wooden rosaries.

When they wanted silence or stillness or the cessation of minor crime they banged their rings on a pew or a desk.

When Sister rang the recess bell, you sprinted back into school on the

One dreary afternoon in 1936, when Sister Lucille Vandehey had stepped out of the classroom for a moment, Leo Maguigan and his pals began tossing a baseball. One errant throw smashed a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Sister Lucille returned and, arms akimbo, ordered Leo and the others to go outside and bury the pieces reverently. It cost the boys’ fathers three dollars each to replace the Madonna. Sister Lucille forgave Leo and his friends finally, a year later, when Leo led the north side Catholic Youth Organization eighth grade basketball champions from Holy Cross against the south side champs from Saint Philip Neri. The game was in the University’s Howard Hall. Milan Erceg of Holy Cross missed two free throws with seconds left and the Cross lost by a point in overtime. Leo remembered everything — the smell of the wooden gym, the roar of the crowd, the tang of disappointment. He and some of his Holy Cross buddies would make up for the loss, though; they led Roosevelt High to the city title in 1941. Leo later became a parole officer, and he and his wife Helen had eight children, all of whom went to Holy Cross School.

Betty Swiberg and her family lived on a dirt street in Kenton, two miles from Holy Cross. Kenton’s Saint Cecilia Church had no school at the time, so Father William Hampson, a Scotsman, bought a small school bus and drove it to and from Holy Cross himself. When he stopped for gasoline, the students would take the gas cap and pass it around, taking in the enchanting fumes.

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double. The school auditorium was half a flight of stairs down and the four classrooms with their buffed wood floors and rows of wooden desks were upstairs. The rosary was chanted in the hallway between classrooms. On the mysterious top floor lived boarders and nuns and later the pastor. When Betty’s brother Jack reached eighth grade, his marks began to slip; to inspire the lad, his father built a magnificent model sailing ship and offered it to the Holy Cross eighth grader who finished first of the class. Another boy claimed the prize, but Jack’s grades did rise — enough that he went on to Columbia Prep and the University of Portland.

Betty went on to Immaculata, a girls’ high school in the Albina neighborhood, working in a Swan Island shipyard office to pay tuition. She mar-

ried Chet Lageson in 1948. They had six children, all of whom went to Holy Cross. “What I learned most and best at Holy Cross,” says Betty, “was right from wrong. And to be tolerant of other people and other races. The nuns were teaching that even then, bless them.”

Sister Theresa Margaret Yettick, in first grade, and Sister Frances Zenner, in third grade, treated students to cinnamon toast and hot chocolate after Mass on the first Friday of each month. Sister Baptista Bernards, in sixth grade, was so charismatic that every girl spent recess time visiting the Blessed Sacrament in church and all girls who had Sister Baptista wanted to enter the convent; Jane George, who graduated in 1951, became Sister Marie Bernadette of the Sisters of Saint Mary of Oregon. Sister Andre Campau, in eighth grade, was fair but had high expectations. For speaking out of turn in class, or slumping or turning around to look at the class clown in the back row, she inflicted long division as penalty. Sister Beatrice Rigert was mountainous strong and taught science with dash and would whirl a full bucket of water on one arm to demonstrate centrifugal force, remembers Ann George, who also remembers playing softball for Holy Cross, coached by fishmonger George Nashif, whose market was on Lombard Street; the players would ride to games in the fish-market truck, sitting on massive coolers filled with salmon and snapper.

Earl and Velma Waldram fit nine children into a tiny house at Portsmouth Avenue and Houghton Street. Earl built the cottage himself from scrap lumber from from the 1948 Vanport flood. Every Waldram child attended Holy Cross. Steve, the third, began in 1952. On walks to and from school, he and his siblings and friends waved to the friendly butcher in the meat market and gazed longingly at model planes in the hobby shop. Steve eventually became a dentist serving the old neighborhood. His own children live nearby. They live where their ancestors lived. Their maternal side traces back to the Gatton family, pioneers who arrived in Saint Johns in the 1800s; their paternal side was from Mormon stock in Utah, but Earl gladly became Catholic for love and then ushered at Mass at Holy Cross for five decades. It was Earl who wired the new school building in 1964. He was also the man who convinced builders to lower the auditorium a few feet, for better stage dynamics. The

downward slope from the south half of the basement to the north is still called the Waldram Ramp.

Kathy Lageson remembers stopping at the Big Nickel store on Lombard for ice cream sandwiches, and the old church that still stood across Stanford Street when she was a child, and the 1962 Columbus Day storm that blew the roof off the old school, and the birth announcement for the 1963 grand opening of the new school, listing building dimensions like an infant’s weight and length. A procession of students hefted books and desks from the old Holy Cross to the new.

Kathy and her classmates loved the spacious modern digs. The nuns did, too, and wanted to keep it spiffy.

Sister Carmel Crop, the principal, told students to walk only on the darkcolored floor tiles to keep things looking clean.

The years sped along. In the spring of 1969, a group of eighth-graders from Portsmouth School came to Holy Cross to pick a fight, apparently over romantic entanglements. The mob banged on the outside doors, which the Sisters locked immediately. Sister Eusebia ordered the Holy Cross eighthgrade boys to rush to the sports supply room and grab the baseball bats.

She explained that they were to hit no one, but were to stand clearly visible as the marauders looked in the windows. The plan intimidation worked and the Portsmouth mob wandered away after throwing rocks through the church windows.

By 1971, half of the teachers at Holy Cross were lay people. Alice Bechtold, all of 21 that year and a new wife and mother, remembers the indefatigable principal Sister Eusebia, and groovy Sister Rebecca Mary Bonnell, the third grade teacher, who played guitar, and daily Mass with the whole school, and the quiet rise in students from the housing projects at Columbia Villa.

Jim and Kathy Kuffner sent their five children through Holy Cross, over twenty years, from 1976 to 1996.

Kathy taught at the school for years.

Two grandchildren have now graduated and four are enrolled. They remember Sister Eusebia’s iron fist and soft heart, and Sister Juanita Villarreal, charming but tough as nails, and the way Holy Cross’s greatest lessons were respect and dignity, grace and reverence. The best lessons, says Jim Kuffner.

By 1983 Holy Cross faced doom. The number of nuns, and the wealth of their free labor, was vanishing. FamilySummer 2013 47

wage jobs in North Portland were slipping. Tuition rose to meet greater expenses. Enrollment at Holy Cross fell below 90, a third of what it was in the school’s heyday.

In 1984, the four North Portland Catholic schools merged into the Holy Cross buildings, and Sister Mary Ryan, of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, the principal at nearby Assumption School, was named principal — the first time the post was not held by a Sister of St. Mary of Oregon. Sister Mary held staff meetings in the Twilight Room. She purchased a bus once owned by the Rajneeshi cult to transport students to sports venues and gym classes at the University of Portland.

She went to big-rig driver school herself. She earned her asbestos handler’s license and oversaw an $80,000 removal of the hazardous material at the school. She established a new school sweatshirt, emblazoned with every student’s name in small print.

She began an annual fund drive, which became the most successful Catholic grade school moneymaker in Oregon.

Sister Mary knew Holy Cross needed a gym to survive. She rounded up donors for a new gym; it was dedicated in 1998 as Ryan Arena. She ran fundraising efforts and before-school care, and reffed volleyball and dodge ball games, and she never stopped; after 43 years in North Portland, she is still development director for Holy Cross Church and school, and she remains blunt: “Holy Cross School has been a leaven for this neighborhood.”

Today the principal at Holy Cross is a cheerful attorney and University of Portland alumna named Julie Johnson.

The school has 200 students, many of them Latino. “At a school like this, you never know what will happen,” says Johnson (whose brother is University theology professor Father Patrick Hannon, C.S.C.). “That’s been the fun and the lesson of each day here for a hundred years. The Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon were able to find that nice balance between keeping order and being open to the surprises of life in our neighborhood, and we try as best we can to carry that on. Since day one, it’s always been about children, those wise, candid, insightful small people who really do shock us adults sometimes so that we see what Jesus was really trying to teach us — take the time to pray and love and, go ahead, have some candy once in a while...” n Ed Langlois is a writer and editor for The Catholic Sentinel.

Queen of the World Notes on what no one says about divorce.

By Victoria Tilney McDonough

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children. I hear their histories, their sad and most times bitter stories of cheating, unloving husbands, and how they caught them by using tape recorders and stolen email passwords.

I feel for them, but more than anything I imagine the faces of their children and know that they, too, have had that moment of looking back, then forward, hesitating, holding onto the warm air in their chests for one more second, then knowing that the familiar expanse of their childhood is one upon which they will never again walk.

The feeling of being safe in the world has been snapped.

Listening, I silently focus on my own marriage and two small boys — and the things I have done or not done already that I regret. I also think often of my childhood: the two homes, the guilt, the fights, the quiet, the shame, and the confidence that I’d once had — so full of color and texture and flexibility — that strangely peeled away like sunburned skin. I also remember being set aside for a new family on this side, a new lover on that; a token paid in both camps for a shinier, neater life. I know I was loved, but in many ways I fell through the cracks. Now, as a wife and mother, I feel the draft.

I do what I can to stuff those cracks with rags and newspapers but the chill is there.

There is no point in dwelling on the past or wondering who I’d be had all those messy years after my parents’ divorce never happened.

There is also no point in my warning my coworkers that calling their exhusband “idiot” in front of their children, for example, or shrugging off their children’s violent outbursts as pre-pubescent angst will later have their consequences. I know they love their children; what I don’t understand is how little parents — even the most loving and well-intentioned — fathom the effects of divorce and how it colors the way their children grow and come to see themselves in the world.

For me, I can only move forward on the bumpy but mostly lovely terrain of who I am and what I will do with that.

And now if my throat tightens, I know that, sometimes, it’s just simple fear that can take your breath away. n Victoria McDonough is editor of BrainLine, a web site about traumatic brain injuries, hosted by WETA public radio in Washington, D.C.

PHOTO: RACHEL FRANK / CORBIS.

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hen I was ten, I was Queen of the World. I was one of the fastest runners in the whole school, I was good in class, and my friends and I moved through life like an impenetrable pack.

My hormones hadn’t kicked in yet, so there was really nothing to muddle my confidence.

Then one night I couldn’t breathe.

It only lasted a few moments, but in my memory it stretched like an eternity — my feet bare and small on each carpeted stair, my hand gripping the banister as I descended one flight to my parents’ bedroom.

The next day, my mother took me to the doctor. I was instructed to write down everything I’d eaten in the last 72 hours. Maybe I had developed an allergy to spaghetti sauce or brussels sprouts. Back at home, my older sisters teased me that it wasn’t an allergy but a psychological response. My mother told me to ignore them, to forget what they said, they were just being mean.

I loved her with an unmatched ferocity, so I forgot what my sisters said.

More than twenty-five years later, in my office writing stories about brave little bald children who have cancer and the research being done to help cure them, I lose my breath again. This time it isn’t that I really can’t breathe, it’s that all the air simply evaporates from my body. I sit in my ergonomic desk chair, weightless, flushed, frozen in time and space. In the medical journal I am reading, I see, “Stress can over-stimulate nerves in the esophagus, causing a feeling of choking.”

The night my mother told my sisters and me that she and my father were going to separate, my status as Queen of the World fell around my feet, a lovely soft coat now bunched up on the floor, dirty and ugly. All of the little bits of loneliness I’d ever felt collected into one space deep inside of me. A hollow place I couldn’t even think to name. Certainly, the Queen of the World had no such place in her body.

At the time, during that winter of my tenth year, had I known, I could have paused to turn my head just so, back, revealing the idyllic landscape of a childhood lost with the utterance of one sentence; and forward, facing a new, strange landscape stretching ahead, colorful and colorless all at once, muted like something trapped under a covering of ice.

In my office, I find myself surrounded by divorced women. Some remarried, some not, almost all with

Ed at Fifty The University’s School of Education opens a yearlong celebration of its golden anniversary in June.

A quick glance at its stunning range and influence.

4,500,000 42,000 5,000 80 140,000

number of K-12 students educated by SoE alumni in the last fifty years

number of K-12 students taught annually by current SoE students

number of SoE graduate who became professional teachers over the last fifty years

percentage of SoE graduates who go on to teach in classrooms immediately after graduation

hours current SoE students annually serve as teachers and volunteers in schools and community

100 number of schools in the West that SoE sends students to annually for field experience placements

500 number of free books distributed annually at the School of Education Reading Fair for local children

1 number of colleges and universities in Oregon offering “career-span” professional programs in education, from undergraduate to master’s to certification to doctoral programs

16 nations and territories where alumni are currently teachers: America, Canada, Guam, Turkey, Qatar, Australia, Uganda, India, South Africa, Japan, England, Scotland, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, and Costa Rica.

INFINITY number of other possible careers for education graduates: among other jobs held by education alumni are music school owner, child care center director, university admissions director, university student athlete service director, educational testing company CEO, university professor, lawyer, school district curriculum director, college financial aid advisors, foundation and non-profit education consultants, The School of Education’s golden anniversary celebration is Thursday evening, June 27, in Bauccio Commons; tickets are $50; come one come all. Call Amy Kwong-Kwapisz for details, 503.943.7752.

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Among the many University scholarships aimed right at helping students become superb teachers and thus jazz and elevate kids all over the world:

Guam Scholarship for students from that fascinating island; can go to either undergraduate or graduate students

Mary Margaret Kirchner Scholarship for undergrad or grad students interested in teaching younger children

Lynn Marks Scholarship for male students interested in teaching kindergarten through sixth grade

Gene Lytle Scholarship for any student interested in teaching, period

Military Order of Purple Heart Scholarship for grad students interested in teaching kids with disabilities

John Sonnhalter Scholarship for students who want to be principals and superintendents and such (really)

Kenneth and Helen Waldroff Scholarship for grad students who want to be teachers

Ernest Hayes Scholarship named for a late great tough sweet scary compassionate SoE professor and dean, for any poor student who wants to teach

Marie Costello & Cora Delamater Scholarship for students who are single parents and want to teach, started by Greg Hewitson ’84, who went on from his grad education degree to start Current Electronics with his brothers, also education majors. Whoa.

Maxine L. Graefe Scholarship created by the estate of Ms. Graefe ’77, long a teacher in Los Angeles. Note – sure you can create a scholarship in your will.

Can you throw cash or mink coats or boats or beach houses or bonds or stock dividends at any of these scholarships, and swell them remarkably? Sure. Can you make like Greg Hewitson ’84 and dream up a scholarship for exactly one kind of creative but scratching-for-cash soul?

Sure. Could you invent a scholarship for left-handed kids who want to teach red-headed kids how to play the cello with their toes? Sure. Call Amy Kwong-Kwapisz at 503.943.7135 or email at kwongkwa@up.edu.

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REUNION 2013: JUNE 27-30 Join us at Reunion 2013 for the biggest fiesta of the summer. We’ll celebrate anniversary year classes ending in 3s and 8s, as well as special honors for the 50th anniversary of the School of Education, cross country and track athletes who have graced The Bluff over the years, and the 30th anniversary of the 1983 USO tour of Asia. Highlights of the weekend will include a gala dinner for the School of Education, a 5K Fun Run, a USO-style revue on Friday night, and receptions for each of the honored classes.

Reunion 2013 kicks off on Thursday evening with a gala dinner for the School of Education as they celebrate their 50th anniversary on The Bluff.

On Friday, the National Alumni Board invites golfers to roam the course in quest of the lowest score at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club, or discover the breathtaking scenery of the Columbia River Gorge on a day trip to Hood River.

In the evening, we’ll welcome alumni and friends back to campus for the Purple Flamingo Happy Hour, a great way to reconnect and catch up with old friends. Enjoy delicious hors d’oeuvres and grab a quenching adult beverage from the Purple Flamingo Bar, and join us for a special performance by The Fantastiks,, including Julianne Johnson ’83, Tim Callicrate ’83, and a star-studded alumni cast.

They’ll reprise their favorite songs and antics from their 1983 USO tour (and a few new bits), including a special tribute to our military alumni.

The evening will conclude with the Late-Night Talent Pub, featuring an opportunity for dancing, foot-tapping, and boisterous sing-alongs.

On Saturday morning, attempt to set your new personal best in The Old Stomping Grounds, our inaugural 5K race, joining with former Pilot

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cross country and track superstars. The course will wind around campus and into the University Park neighborhood, beginning and finishing in front of the Chiles Center.

You can learn about the exciting changes coming to campus over the next few decades on the River Campus tour, as you hear what the University plans to do with reclaimed land along the Willamette River. The 50-Year Club Mass and luncheon will celebrate the Class of 1963 on their Golden Anniversary.

In the afternoon, Pilot basketball head coach Eric Reveno and his staff will welcome former men’s basketball team members back to the court for an alumni game in the Chiles Center. For your kids, Saturday Academy is offering interactive workshops taught by certified teachers to give your child hands-on fun with science and math. Three age-appropriate tracks are offered, for grades 2 through 8. Brian Doyle, award-winning editor of Portland Magazine, known the world over for his ability to “tell whopping lies and tall tales,” will read selections from his stories and poetry, sing (badly), shout (loudly), and entertain (highly).

The library hard hat tour will offer an exclusive behind-thescenes tour of the renovated Clark Library facility before it officially re-opens in July.

Pre-barbecue receptions for the honored year classes of 1958, 1963, 1968, 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, and 2008 will meet in Franz Hall before the Fiesta on the Bluff dinner and dance.

The Fiesta on the Bluff begins at 4:30 p.m. behind Bauccio Commons. A photographer will be taking official class photos beginning at 5 p.m. To find friends and classmates, check out the decade gathering spaces inside the dining room and outside on The Bluff. Kiddie Funland will again feature a bouncy castle and slide for our young guests, as well as kid-friendly art projects.

Reunion 2013 wraps up in prayer together on Sunday, June 30 with the All Alumni Mass celebrated by University president Fr. Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., and featuring music

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led by the Alumni Choir. The closing brunch provides a final opportunity for alumni and friends to reconnect.

Visit our webpage at http://alumni.up.edu/reunion for more information about these and other events.

You can also register online at the site to join us for the weekend. We hope to see you back on The Bluff this summer, June 27-30. There will be a little something for everyone at Reunion 2013!

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at Laschenskyhof. This 50th anniversary celebration will conclude on Monday with a tour of Berchtesgaden and Konigsee and an evening concert. Find out specific costs and other details by contacting alumni relations at 503943-7328 or 888-872-5867, or alumni@up.edu.

We’re planning a full year of events, starting with Salzburg in September, a sauerkraut making class in the fall, and a beer making class in the spring. And don’t forget Reunion in June 2014, we’re already making plans.

CULINARY & CULTURAL TOUR OF CHICAGO Join Kirk Mustain, general manager of Bon Appetit at the University of Portland, for a series of lunches, happy hours, and dinners at some of the most exciting restaurants in Chicago, like Avec, Purple Pig, Blackbird, Sepia, Bistro 110, Bartoma, and Lou Malnati's.

Optional day trip offerings will include a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago, the Shedd Aquarium, and an architectural cruise up the Chicago River. Packages are available for both out-of-towners and for local alumni and friends.

HIVE ENTREPRENEURS NETWORK The UP Hive is an open forum for University of Portland alumni of all ages, current UP 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 uphive.wordpress.com.

50 ANNIVERSARY OF SALZBURG PROGRAM TH

Join the University in celebrating the 50th anniversary of its most popular study abroad program with a visit to our Salzburg Center. The 50th anniversary trip begins on Friday, September 6 with a welcome reception and continues on Saturday with a guided tour of “die Altstadt,” lunch at St. Peter’s Stiftkeller, and Mass at the Franziskaner Church. The group will enjoy a guided tour of the Lake District and Hallstatt on Sunday, followed by a ceremony at the center, and dinner

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PILOT SEND-OFFS The alumni office will be hosting Pilot Send-Offs around the country in conjunction with alumni and friends, to welcome the incoming freshman class of 2017. Look for more information on our website at alumni.up.edu for information about these events in your area.

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Once in a while we receive a photograph so immediate, so bracingly direct and blunt and real and honest and exactly who the person is, that we are staggered. Here’s one. Anthony Seidl, who earned his undergraduate degree on The Bluff in 1947, after service as a Navy pilot in the war, and then a master’s in education in 1956, died in November last year. Author, teacher (he also earned a doctorate and taught at Notre Dame), father of four, husband to the former Navy WAVE Betty Spieth, Anthony spent many years at the University of San Francisco as an education professor, dean of the summer school, and provost of the university, and was a nationally renowned consultant on Catholic education. But, good heavens, doesn’t this photograph say something about his soul? And the little grin — he had just met Betty, says their daughter Deborah Sipe, dean of education at Chemeketa Community College, to whom we are grateful for the gift here. Prayers.

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Ray Foleen ’52 and his wife Harlene celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary on March 10, 2013, and we have Jim Flynn ’55 to thank for letting us know.

“They’re just a great UP couple and I’d sure love to see them in Class Notes,” says Jim, and we’re happy to oblige. According to an article which appeared in the April 7, 2013, Sunday Oregonian, both graduated from Washington High School and were married just as Ray was commissioned in the U.S. Navy. Ray went to serve in the Korean War ten days after their wedding. After his deployments were done they lived in San Francisco, Key West, Albuquerque, and Las Vegas, finally settling back in Portland. Ray worked for the Bonneville Power Administration for 25 years and then put in 12 years in his own electric utility consulting business. The Foleens have four children: Carla, Carol, Lori, and Linda; and four grandchildren. They look forward to many happy and healthy years together.

FIFTY YEAR CLUB John Tuhy ’35 passed away on May 1, 2011. Distinguished physician, author, teacher, world traveler, father of six, patron of the arts, singer, storyteller, prodigious reader and hopeless punster, he was 96. Survivors include his children, Katie (Jim Ruderman), Eileen (Jonathan Fussner), Michael, Mark (Noonie) and Alan; seven grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Anthony E. Seidl ’47, M.Ed.

’56, passed away on November 21, 2012 (See his photo on preceding page). Anthony was a prominent author on Catholic education finance in the 1960s and 70s. He was a Navy veteran of World War II and married Betty Jean Spieth, a Navy WAVE, in 1945. They had four children and lived for a number of years in Portland, where Anthony served as a teacher, assistant football coach, and business manager at Central Catholic High School. He earned a Ph.D.in education in 1964 at the Uni-

N O T E S versity of Notre Dame, where he remained for two years as a professor in the College of Education. He also served as a consultant on Catholic education for the Academy of Educational Development at school districts and colleges across the country until the early 1970s. In 1966, the family returned to the West Coast and Seidl served at University of San Francisco (USF) as a professor of education, summer school dean, and as university provost. Anthony and Betty Jean spent their retirement years in Northern California and the Portland metro area. Upon Betty Jean’s passing, Anthony moved to Idaho for several years, near two of his daughters. He spent his final years in the Portland area, near a third daughter.

Survivors include his sister Janet; daughters, Suzanne Griffin, Mary Lou Kinney, Deborah Sipe, and Elizabeth Lockwood; nine grandchildren; and sixteen great-grandchildren. He was proud of them all. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

James V. McCully ’48 passed away on February 10, 2013.

“Jim was a man of profound spirit who lived each day as an artist, thinker, seeker and teacher,” according to his obituary. “He deeply loved and was loved by his family and an abundance of friends throughout the world. His life was a journey with, away from, and finally, back to God.” Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Anyone who might like to know what Jack O’Neill ’49 has been up to lately can find out by visiting his website at http://oneillseaodyssey.org/.

Jack is, of course, the developer of the surfing wetsuit and founder and chairman of O’Neill Inc., located in Santa Cruz, California. “Jack O’Neill’s concern for the environment has led him to search for a way to give something back to the ocean which has given him and his family so much,” according to his biography. “The O’Neill Sea Odyssey, created in 1996, provides a hands-on educational experience to encourage the protection and preservation of our living seas and communities. Jack O’Neill, a resident of Santa Cruz resides just steps from the Monterey Bay.” We featured Jack in Portland Magazine in 1998 but we’re willing to bet he has been up to plenty of great things in the years since.

Kenneth L. Heuvel ’51 passed away on September 29, 2012.

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While being raised in Welches, Ore., Ken began his lifelong love of golf, which he passed on to his sons, by working as greenskeeper at the Mt. Hood Golf Course, which his father owned. Over the course of their 63-year marriage, Ken and his late wife Pat raised three children, Dan (Ann) Heuvel, Diane (Clint) Moshofsky and Paul (Kate) Heuvel.

They were proud grandparents to Douglas, Sarah, Alicia, Alex, Jacqueline, Chelsea and Jason, and great-grandparents of six. His kindness, outgoing personality, and love of life was shared with many during his lifetime. Survivors also include his sister, Delores Heuvel. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

James J. “Jim” Sweeney ’51 passed away on Friday, February 8, 2013, in Fresno, California. He started his long football coaching career as an assistant at Butte Central High School, and went on to coach at Kalispell; Montana State, Bozeman; Washington State, Pullman; California State University, Fresno; and a year each with the Oakland Raiders and St. Louis Cardinals. He achieved his greatest fame at Fresno State, where he was hired as head coach in 1976. He retired following the 1996 season, and the field at Bulldog Stadium was renamed in his honor. He finished with 200 wins in 32 seasons as head coach. Survivors include his wife, June; sisters, Mary, Jean, and Helen; brother, Bill; daughters, Peg Sweeney, Laura Kaluba, Sheila Cornell, Mary Lou Dion, and Carol Sweeney; and sons, Jim, Dan, and Kevin; and son-in-law Jeff and Lisa Negrete; June's three children, Kevin Morrow, Krista Starnes and Kim Klohs; 16 grandchildren; and four greatgrandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Read more about Jim here: http://tinyurl.com/befde4w.

Edith Campagna ’51 passed away on February 11, 2013, in Medford, Ore.She was born July 21, 1929, in Portland, Ore., to Felice and Asunta Cutone. She married Dr. Mario Campagna on June 6, 1952, and they had a wonderful 60 years together. She made many philanthropic donations within the community and was a supporter of the arts and music. She was a world traveler and had a great love

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Edith leaves behind her husband, Mario Campagna, M.D.; daughter, Marla Campagna; and sons, Paul (M.D.), Robert, and Patrick Campagna. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

We heard from Luther B. Ward ’51 recently, who shared the following sad news: “Alice Mary Ward, my beloved wife, passed away on the morning of February 22, 2013, at age 78.

Alice was a very talented artist and accomplished fisherman.

She is also survived by her three sons, a daughter, two stepsons, 11 grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and her three older sisters. She was predeceased by her daughter, Karen Fox.” Our prayers and condolences.

Gladys Pierce ’52 passed away on January 17, 2013, in Newport, Ore. After earning her nursing degree in 1952 she married Charles Richard Pierce, Sr. in Salem that same year. Together they raised a son and a daughter. The family moved often with Charles during his military career.

They lived in Asia, Europe, and the U.S. Gladys specialized in maternal and child care and as a nurse, she impacted many families around the world teaching childbirth and parenting classes. Survivors include her spouse and best friend of 60 years, Charles Pierce of Newport; daughter, Janine Drake of Henderson, Nev.; son Charles (Karen) Pierce, Jr. of Henderson; sister, Gertrude Zielinski Crary, of Salem; grandchildren, John Drake, Jessica Ann Pierce, Carlye Rose Pierce and Richard Dean Pierce; and one great-grandson. The family suggests memorial donations be made to the Pierce Nursing Scholarship through the University of Portland. Our prayers and condolences.

Harvey Lattie Clinton, Jr. ’52 passed away on January 31, 2013. He joined the Navy and served during World War II. He met Helen Matys in Chicago; they married in 1944 and raised seven children. Harvey was preceded in death by his wife, Helen; and

his brother, Stanley. Survivors include sons Michael and Steven of Tigard, and Peter, Brian and Paul of Portland; daughters, Laurie Mazuti of Port Orchard, Wash., and Susan Shaffer of Oregon City; five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Gilbert Allen Scherzinger ’54 passed away on February 12, 2013. He served in the U.S. Air Force, earned his MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and, in 1963, married Rose Kelly ’53.

Gil is survived by Rose and their five children, Richard (Jamie), Mary O’Callaghan (John), John (Jennifer), Martha ’92 and Paul ’97; and 11 grandchildren: William, Kathryn, Caroline, Daniel, Thomas, Hannah, Matthew, Luke, Olivia, Annie and Jill.

Our prayers and condolences to the family.

We recently received a copy of the latest book by Rev. Richard Berg, C.S.C., onetime dean of the University’s College of Arts and Sciences and longtime fixture of the Portland area Catholic community in his roles as priest, professor,

psychologist, pastor, and chaplain. Scars: The Effects of Post Traumatic Stress on Family, Relationships and Work is his second, joining Fragments of Hope from Corby Press. “This small book contains a large story about the repercussions of combat,” he writes, “not only in the lives of our military men and women, but also in the lives of their loved ones, families, and friends. It is a story about PTSD and mild concussions and how these combat scars affect relationships and spirituality.” Find out more about Fr. Berg’s books at www.corbypublishing.com.

We heard recently from Gerry Newby, wife of Glenwood Newby ’56. Gerry wrote to us last year with news of she and Glen celebrating their 62nd wedding anniversary on August 6, 2012. She writes: “You were so kind to print the story of Glen Newby and me.

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Join us at Reunion 2013 on June 27-30 for the biggest fiesta of the summer! We’ll honor anniversary year classes ending in 3s and 8s, and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the School of Education, the 30th anniversary of the 1983 USO tour of Asia, and memories of UP personalities like Fr. John VanWolvlear, C.S.C. (“Fr. Van”), pictured here. Highlights include a gala dinner for the School of Education, a USO-style revue, and more. Questions? Contact alumni relations at 503-9437328, or 888-872-5867, or by e-mail at alumni@up.edu.

A lot has happened in our household since I last wrote to you. Glen passed away on February 18, 2013. He had Alzheimers and dementia. I took care of him as long as I could and had to put him in a care center.

He was there only 24 days before he passed away. We were married 62-and-a-half years, and those 24 days were the first time he was away from me in all those years. Being a Rosarian for 33 years, he got the full Honor Guard service with 44 ‘Capes’ attending along with other Rosarians, and with our church members there were over 300 people present to honor Glen and our entire family. He also had a military memorial at Willamette National Cemetery, and a friend of ours flew Glen’s Navion airplane over the area during the ceremony. It was the climax to Glen’s era of loving to fly. He was a happy man, always smiling, and I bet he was smiling down on us still with his ever present love for family, friends, and flying.

He will truly be missed. He was born on April 18, 1926, served in WWII in the Army, went to the University of Portland in 1950 and graduated in 1955. He was a determined

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person and worked hard.”

Thank you for the wonderful stories about Glen, and we offer our heartfelt prayers and condolences on your loss.

Henri Bernard Joyaux ’58 passed away on January 4, 2013, at his home in Verboort, Ore. Survivors include his loving wife, Patricia; his two children, Chantelle Polito and H. Bernard Joyaux ’83; five stepchildren, Gayle Verboort, Diane VanDomelen, Linda Christensen, Jeffrey Christensen, Carol Howarth; 15 grandchildren; and nine greatgrandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

We heard recently from Frank Mikesh ’59, who writes: “It took a while but my daughter Erica finally delivered me a grandson, Dillon AsherNeufer Mikesh, born on December 30, 2012. Cheers!”

Please remember Dennis O’Leary ’61 in your prayers on the loss of his mother, Margaret Orlys O’Leary, on February 7, 2013. She was preceded

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We realize with dismay that it has been too long since we ran a faculty or staff mystery photo in these pages, and here is our remedy: while not an alumnus of UP, this person, pictured as North Catholic High School’s Rose Festival princess in the 1970s, has been an employee here since 1993, starting out working summers in the mathematics office. Her daughter Annie is a 1998 graduate of UP. If there is even one single member of the North Portland Catholic community she does not know on a first-name basis, it comes as news to us. Do not turn down an invitation to one of her famous spaghetti dinners. A more heartfelt, honest, straightforward, hardworking, dedicated, upbeat, loyal, devout, wickedly funny woman you will never meet, and her husband Gary is no slouch either. Oh, she’s going to kill us for this. Best guesses to mcovert@up.edu. in death by her husband, O’Donovan Michael O’Leary.

She worked for Providence Hospital as an admitting clerk for 35 years. Survivors beside Dennis include her daughter, Mary K. O’Leary; three grandchildren (including Daniel O’Leary ’88 and Michael O’Leary ’92) and seven greatgrandchildren. Our prayers and condolences.

Recent cheerful note (with a whopping RISE Campaign gift check too) from Joe Trapp: “Martha and I continue to marvel at the academic, societal, cultural and athletic success of the University. Purple Pride continues to grow. We still spend our winters in Naples, Florida, and recently met this grinning young man at the golf club where he works: Andy Hazlett ’97, baseball star for the Pilots, Boston Red Sox draft pick, and distinguished pro career, including a year pitching for the AAA Portland

Beavers. Always a pleasure to see Andy and discuss our alma mater, some 3,211 miles away.”

’65 PRAYERS, PLEASE Mayanna E. Manion passed away on March 10, 2013, in Portland, Ore., where she lived with her daughter, Mary O’Connor. Born to parents Ella Perrin and John B. Edgar in Portland, Maryanna is survived by her daughters, Faith Ackerman of Hood River and Mary O’Connor of Portland; sons, Michael of Portland, Dennis and Leonard of Salem, Mark of Mt. Angel, and Donald of Glendale, Ariz.; 41 grandchildren; 52 great-grandchildren; and 13 great-great-grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her husband, Arthur; sons, Peter, Brian, John, and Bernard; and her dear sister, Virginia. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

N O T E S and two nieces. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

’76 WELCOME, ISABELLA! University regent Annie Buell and her husband Harold welcomed a new baby grand-

’83 PRAYERS, PLEASE

daughter, Isabella Andrea Lora Buell, to their family in December 2012. Here she is in all her six-day-old glory!

The late Jim Kopp and his wife Sue were honored for their donation of Jim’s extensive collection of books on Oregon intentional communities to the special collections and archives at the University of Oregon. “Intentional Communities in Oregon and the Legacy of Jim Kopp” took place on February 22, 2013 in the Knight Library Browsing Room on the UO campus in Eugene. Timothy Miller from the University of Kansas lectured on intentional communities in Oregon and Kopp’s research efforts to uncover and preserve their history.

Kopp was an expert on the history of intentional and utopian communities, and served as director of the University of Portland’s Clark Library from 1994 to 1997. He passed away from cancer on August 5, 2010.

Prayers, please, for UP regent Annie Buell and her husband Harold on the death of Harold’s mother, Jean Louise Buell, on March 6, 2013. Survivors include Annie and Harold; son Clint and his wife Kim; son Michael and his wife Nettie; nine grandchildren; 14 great-grandchildren; and three great-great-grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

’77 SAD NEWS

’68 PRAYERS FOR SUSAN Prayers, please, for Susan J. Powers, who lost her husband, Roy Dee Powers, on January 3, 2013. He passed away at home under Kaiser Hospice care. He graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1957 and retired from Kaiser Permanente security after 24 years in 2011. Survivors include his wife of 42 years, Susan; sons, Steve and Michael; sister, Kay Brodie; four grandchildren;

years. In 1978, they built a home in Estacada, where Carole continued teaching for the Estacada Grade School until she retired in 1997. She was a firm believer in education.

Her greatest joy was watching her grandson, Austin grow up.

Survivors include her daughter, Samantha Beaton, and her husband, Doug of Estacada; grandson, Austin Richard Beaton of Estacada; and brother, Nathan Liggett of Chillicothe, Ohio. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Carole Liggett Booton passed away on January 15, 2013, at her home in Estacada, Ore. She was 80 years old. She was raised in St. Albans, West Virginia, and her first husband, Wilbert Grammer, died within the year in the Korean War. She married Richard Booton in St. Albans in 1955. In 1964, they had a daughter, Samantha. The family moved to Oregon in 1967, where she taught at Three Lynx School for 11

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Please remember H. Bernard “Bernie” Joyaux and his family in your prayers on the death of his father, Henri Bernard Joyaux ’58, who passed away on January 4, 2013, at his home in Verboort, Ore. Survivors include his loving wife, Patricia; his two children, Chantelle Polito and H. Bernard; five stepchildren, Gayle Verboort, Diane VanDomelen, Linda Christensen, Jeffrey Christensen, Carol Howarth; 15 grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Our prayers and condolences to the family.

’85 MARTHA’S FINAL CURTAIN Martha L. Wehmeier passed away on January 8, 2013. Survivors include her leading man, Barry A. Rodgers; supporting actors and actresses are her mother, Dorothy Wehmeier; sister, Kathy Bradford; and brother, Steve Wehmeier. “There are, of course, a long list of character actors that made her life so special,” according to her obituary. “All of us shall remember Martha's wonderful smile and child-like laughter. Her life well deserved a standing ovation from all who loved her.”

Our prayers and condolences to the family.

’91 REMEMBERING KAREN Karen A. Frette died on January 6, 2013, at Memorial Hospital, Belleville, Ill. She was an elementary school teacher in Kansas and Indiana and a substitute teacher in Illinois. She was also a teacher in GED and English as a second language.

Survivors include her husband, Richard D. Frette; three sons, Ryan (Rainey) Frette of Bow, Wash., Michael Frette of Burlington, Ky., and Erik Frette of O’Fallon, Ill.; four grandchildren, Riley, Regan, Rory and Reece Frette, all of Bow; three brothers, Robert (Arlene) Johnson of Huntingdon, Pa., Donald (Olga) Johnson of Kenmore, N.Y., and Albert Johnson of Duncansville,

C L A S S Pa.; father and mother-in-law, Ronald and Ann Frette of Washington; and four brothers-in-law, Gerald (Ruth) Frette, David (Deborah) Frette, Steven (Jane) Frette, and Mark (Annette) Frette, all of Washington. She was preceded in death by her parents; three sons, Daryl, Daryn, and Andrew Frette; and a brother, Elwood Dean Rahn. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Online condolences may be sent to the family at www.rennerfh.com.

’92 A LONG LIST OF GOOD DEEDS We heard recently from Kim (Stiles) Calkins ’99, who writes: “I hope all is well at UP. I always enjoy reading your work. I finished graduate school at Gonzaga back in 2011 and am currently working in the administrative offices at Washington Youth Soccer (www.washingtonyouthsoccer.org) for the state’s Recreational & Select Soccer programs. I met a great Portland alumnus while working here, Wayne Jensen. I believe UP should know something about the incredible things this man has accomplished through his involvement as a volunteer with Washington Youth Soccer.

The speech below about Wayne was shared by another volunteer as a surprise last weekend at our annual Washington Youth Soccer state-wide meeting: ‘In a short 5 years, Wayne killed a rogue club, merged a soccer club into a neighboring soccer club, built two 80-by-120 turf fields at Petrovitsky park, is in the first year of a two-year renovation of Pea Patch, converted grass to turf at one high school and worked with two high schools to replace their fields, worked with a neighboring city to build a park with a grass soccer field, worked with his school district to repair and improve local grass field options, supported healthy lifestyles programs in support of school programs, created a college tuition assistance program that to date has provided over $10,000 to deserving high school soccer players...all this while raising three children and teaching elementary school.’” Thanks for tipping us off, Kim, it sounds like our Wayne Jensen is a man on a mission.

and project manager in information technology services at Marylhurst University. Starting in January, I also enrolled in the applied information management (AIM) program with the University of Oregon, with a goal of attaining my master’s degree by 2015.”

’96 A SERVANT HEART Our very own Andy Kuffner was featured in the April 20, 2013, edition of the Catholic Sentinel in an article titled “Kuffner chosen as La Salle Prep principal.” Yes, he is the new principal of La Salle, after serving there for 12 years as

vice principal of academics, and coming out on top in a national search. “He has demonstrated his personal understanding and commitment to our students,” according to La Salle Prep president Denise Jones. “Ever present to our students, Andy may be found across the table playing chess with a member of the chess club, on the sidelines cheering for our student athletes, applauding a performance on the stage or leading a Journey retreat. It is evident Andy leads with a servant heart.” We couldn’t agree more. Congratulations, Andy!

’99 ONE OF A KIND Brett Oppegaard was selected from a quarter-million National Park Service volunteers to receive the 2012 George and Helen Hartzog Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service.

The award recognizes the time, talent, innovation and

’95 TAMMI’S UPDATE Tammi Burkhardt writes: “After thirteen and a half years at Reed College in advancement services, I recently started a new job as the business analyst

work contributed to national parks through the VolunteersIn-Parks program. Oppegaard,

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N O T E S The World Economic Forum announced its Young Global Leaders (YGL) Class of 2013 on March 12, an exemplary group who are being recognized for their professional achievements and commitment to society— among them are Chelsea Clinton, Randi Zuckerman, and our very own Vail Horton ’02.

Candidates are selected based on their proven track record of professional accomplishments, breadth of their expertise, commitment to society and their ability to overcome adversity, among other criteria.Vail has long been an entrepreneur and advocate for disabled, elderly, and injured populations and is founder, chairman, and CEO of Keen Mobility Company and founder and chairman of the Incight Foundation. The YGL’s annual Summit will be held this year in Yangon, Myanmar, June 2-5, 2013, which Vail will most certainly be attending. Find out more about Vail’s calling at www.keenhealthcare.com/ and http://www.incight.org. who is an assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at Washington State University Vancouver, heads a mobile storytelling project for the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. He has provided more than 5,000 hours of community service developing and producing mobile applications for iPhone, iPad and Android for the site, the first interactive applications of their kind in the park service. Congratulations, Brett!

’01 ALWAYS READY TO HELP Daoud Chaaya, B.S.M.E ’01 and M.B.A. ’03, has been instrumental in supporting UP students and alumni with internship, job search, and graduate school advice. Daoud came to the University of Portland as an international student originally from Lebanon, via the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

While studying at UP he served the community as a resident assistant in Villa Maria and later in Christie Hall. Since he graduated he has stayed connected with the international student services and career services offices

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and generously given his time to advise students and alumni.

He currently manages the chief financial officer’s operations at Daimler Trucks North America. Daoud has fond memories of both of his graduation ceremonies, and he was the first member of his family to earn a college degree. He appreciates the fact that he met many people from all corners of the world at UP, which has helped him to navigate the journey of life. He also experienced the rewards of community service and is a firm believer that it is better to give than to receive. He is always more than willing to help current students and alumni and feels fortunate that he now gets paid to do something he enjoys. He likes to quote Confucius: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

We heard the following from the ever-vigilant Rev. Art Wheeler, C.S.C., who makes it his business to know these things: “Elbert Evangelista married Angela Stein ’04. His sister Claire married Nathan Patla. Nathan’s brother Seth

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N O T E S of the WWF Switzerland Tropical Forest Challenge, an initiative that aims to identify the best for-profit company and startup addressing the conservation of tropical forest biodiversity. Planting Empowerment is a Panama-based company providing alternative income streams for rural and native communities to prevent slash-and-burn agriculture through agroforestry projects. This recognition doesn't come with a pot of money, but it will give us some publicity and send us to the Skoll World Forum. We now have a handful of employees working for us and our first revenues (trees take a while to grow).

We are always open to chat with any current students interested in social entrepreneurship in Latin America, agroforestry, Peace Corps, conservation, or any number of topics. Of course, the Entrepreneur Scholars program and UP provided key experiences and a moral framework for Planting Empowerment.”

Thanks Chris, and congratulations on being recognized as an innovator in socially responsible forestry.

’03 CASEY LOVES CASEY!

Kate (Mullin) Bennett ’02 has wonderful news to share: “Nick Bennett and I are thrilled about the recent addition to our family. Nicholas Ryan Bennett was born on December 31, 2012, at 8:25 a.m., at 7 lbs. and 19.5 inches. Ryan is little brother to sisters Olivia and Avary. We are definitely busy with three little ones under age five but we’re soaking up every minute!” ’00 married Angela Stein’s sister Maria ’00. Plenty of UP connections, as all the above are grads.”

’02 A JOB WELL DONE Chris Meyer participated in Peace Corps and is now working for the Environmental Defense Fund. He also serves as general manager of Planting Empowerment, a socially responsible forestry company growing tropical hardwoods in

partnership with rural communities in Panama. He writes: “I just wanted to forward some news of recognition one of your alumni received. Our company, Planting Empowerment, entered many competitions four or five years ago when we were first getting started, but we’ve focused on slowly building the business in recent years. We were thrilled to find out that we won the Startup category

Hey, remember Casey White?

We heard from her recently: “I got married on October 6, 2012, to Casey Zollman (yes, we have the exact same first name!) in Pendleton, Ore. We finally made it official after nine years of dating! Since we have the same first name, I had to hyphenate my last name, so I’m now Casey White-Zollman. We had a large wedding party, which included maid of honor Theresa (Welch) Painter, Class of ’02.

We had the most incredible three-week honeymoon in both the U.S. and British Virgin Islands. We continue to live in Pendleton, where I’m the director of communications and print solutions for the InterMountain Education Service District, and my husband is the owner and general contractor of Zollman Construction.” Thanks Casey, and congratulations!

Kathryn Hickok has been at Cascade Policy Institute in Portland for eight years, serving concurrently as publications director and director of Cascade’s Children’s Scholarship Fund-Portland program, which helps low-income children attend private parochial grade schools. She enjoys helping kids get a good education, writing, and editing. In March, George Fox University invited Kathryn to participate

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in their Liberal Arts and Critical Issues guest lecture series.

She spoke about the public policy process and the roles of conscience and moral judgment in the art of persuasion.

’06 WELCOME, OLIVIA! Megan (Murphy) Grover has wonderful news to share: “Olivia Grace Grover blessed us with her beautiful presence on February 11, 2013, at 2:22 p.m. Olivia weighed 7 pounds, 9 ounces and was 19 inches long. We love her so much!

My husband Jeff and I feel truly blessed. Life with a newborn definitely keeps us busy and we couldn’t be happier!”

Congratulations Megan and Jeff, maybe you have a future Pilot on your hands?

We heard wonderful news from Amanda Mareina, who writes: “On October 6, 2012, I married Portland native Shane Malsom on Balboa Island in Newport Beach, California. We were joined by more than 100 family and friends from across the United States, including six former Pilots: Dawn Lloyd ’08, Dude of Honor Kyle Burch, Darren Lloyd, Dude of Honor Stephen Rousseau ’05, Brie Bowman ’12, and Maid of Honor Kacy Owens Rodgers. It was a wonderful day and I am

honored to have such amazing friends in my life. And no, my new husband is not in the picture, he’s not a Pilot.” Thanks for sharing, Amanda, congratulations on your nuptials, and remember it’s never too late for a UP education. We’ll make a Pilot of your new hubby yet.

’07 A GREAT OPPORTUNITY Abraham Olson had the opportunity to participate in the 62nd Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting in physics in Germany over the summer of 2012. He was one of 592

C L A S S young scientists selected from around the world to spend a week in Lindau, Germany, to meet with 27 physics Nobel Laureates. Abe is currently a Ph.D. student in the physics department at Purdue University. He is also the recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2009) and a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (2007).

We heard from Allison McGillivray recently, who writes: “I heard from my good friend Kacy Keippela that Jeff Dietrich will be speaking at UP this month (January 2013).

I am writing to express my great excitement at his visit.

I was sent to intern with the Los Angeles Catholic Worker during the summer of 2006 through the University of Portland. After spending six weeks with this community, I felt I had for the first time in my life experienced what it meant to be an active Catholic. Upon graduating from UP, I soon decided to move in as a full-time volunteer and lived with Jeff and the LA Catholic Worker for two extremely formative years. I am now living in Champaign, Illinois, with my husband, Sam Yergler, who was also a live-in volunteer with the Los Angeles Catholic Worker. Our friendship, mar-

riage, goals, and world views would be woefully underdeveloped if not for our time in Los Angeles, where we served and grew in relationship with the poor, practiced self-sacrifice, spoke openly about our values and beliefs, challenged ourselves to forgive others and ask for forgiveness ourselves, and to bring our hopes for peace to the forefront of our daily lives. We are deeply dedicated to a life of simplicity, and are preparing to move into a 28-foot RV this spring in which we hope to travel the country in search of good work and community. I hope to spend the rest of my life practicing the simple truths of love, forgiveness, and peace that I learned in Los Angeles, and I am undoubtedly grateful to the Garaventa Center for bringing Jeff Dietrich to the University of Portland to speak about his life of service.” Thank you Allison, and our prayers to you for a safe and rewarding journey.

Andrew Elliott writes: “My wife, Elizabeth (née Watje, Class of 2008) and I closed on our first house recently. Please update our address, as we are moving out of our place on Waverleigh Blvd.” Thanks Andrew, and congratulations on your new home.

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Earning bachelor’s degrees from the University of Portland and honored at the December 14, 2012 ROTC commissioning and graduation ceremony, l-r: Trent Amerson, history; Kourtney Kugler-Major, chemistry; and Andrew Lynch, mechanical engineering. Thompson Faller presented their diplomas before a crowd of well-wishers in Mago Hunt Center Theater. We have Andrew’s mom, Ann Hemmen Lynch ’75, to thank for letting us know, and for providing us with a little background: “One, the officer who administered Andrew’s oath is his cousin; two, UP has been a family school for us, going back to somewhere in the 1940s. Andrew’s grandfather, parents, and three siblings have attended, with numerous aunts, uncles, and cousins as well.”

Thanks Ann, and our thanks also to Trent, Kourtney, and Andrew for their service to God and country. ’08 POSITIVE IMPACT

The Portland Pilots women’s rowing team christened their newest boat on Saturday, February 16, at the Portland Boathouse following practice on the Willamette River. The team’s newest four-oared shell was named the Rosa Civitatem, which is Latin for “Rose City.”

The boat was made possible though the cooperative effort of the University, the athletics department, and the amazingly supportive parents of our student-athletes. Rev. Gerard Olinger, C.S.C., vice president for student affairs at the University of Portland, presided over the ceremony. Rosa Civitatem joins the eightperson shell Fr. Bill and the four-person shell Al and Sue Corrado in the UP fleet.

Sarah Bortvedt has won a prestigious 2012 Impact Award from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is working on her doctorate in cell and molecular physiology. Her work focuses on the role of the small intestines in processing and absorbing and/or storing ingested fats. “The result of Sarah’s work demonstrate for the first time that intestinal insulin resistance and associated abnormal lipid absorption may represent new and early mechanisms that promote obesity and fatty liver,” said P. Kay Lund, Bortvedt’s advisor. Her work will help improve diagnosis, treatment, and prevention for obesity and diabetes.

’10 A SMART HIRE Intel Corporation hired Chelsea Hossaini as their northwest region communications manager in Hillsboro.

Hossaini’s background com-

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bines public relations, marketing, community relations and event management. She graduated maxima cum laude with a bachelor of arts in communication studies with an emphasis on media studies. In her new position, Chelsea serves as the primary point of contact for site media relations, external communications, and the promotion of national programs and events. “Intel’s largest and

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Now hanging in a conspicuous location at the new McMenamin’s Kennedy School “English Wing,” which features 22 guest rooms decorated in honor of books and authors who have impressed, inspired, confounded, and entertained cofounder Mike McMenamin: a painting by Kolieha Bush of Brian Doyle and David James Duncan ’04 Hon., (l-r) carrying on their legendarily spirited debate on the merits of Irish vs. Scotch whisky.

The poor chap left outside looking in is Colin Wilson, who authored The Philosopher's Stone. Doyle’s Mink River and Duncan’s The River Why are both represented by finely appointed guest rooms directly across the hall from each other, joining such notables as Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow, Gary Snyder’s Left Out In The Rain, Beverly Cleary’s Ramona series, and Ken Kesey’s Sometimes A Great Notion. More of a mural, really, the painting is best seen in person, so there’s your excuse to drop by Kennedy School to fill a glass and take a gander. Brian Doyle, of course, is the longtime editor of the magazine you hold presently.

Photo courtesy of Liz Devine/McMenamin’s

most comprehensive site in the world is in Hillsboro, and local media representatives are important partners as we provide up-to-date information on the construction of our new development fabrication facility called D1X,” says Jill Eiland, Intel’s northwest region corporate affairs manager. “We are pleased to add a young professional like Chelsea to our seasoned team, one who brings relevant experience and new energy to the work we do as the largest privateemployer in Oregon."

Former ASUP president Colton Coughlin has joined the

National Alumni Board (NAB) as a representative of Colorado from the Boulder and Denver area. He will be working with our other Colorado NAB representative, Al Weber ’54, in Colorado Springs.

Colton serves as operations manager for True Blue and just bought his first home in Boulder. And yes, he still has his convertible Mustang and even puts snow tires on it to drive up the mountains to ski, top down of course.

’11 PRAYERS, PLEASE Please remember Katie Scally and her family in your prayers

N O T E S on the death of Katie’s grandmother, Catherine Penelope Scally, on November 19, 2012.

Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Rachael Thorp writes: “I got married on June 14, 2012, and legally changed my name to Thorp from my maiden name of Williams. I had a son on August 9, 2012, and we named him Wyatt.”

Jennifer Pesut writes: “Sunday March 3 was the 5th annual Fort Vancouver Run in Vancouver, Wash., and UP alumni stood out! Two Pilots won awards in the 15K race: Daniel Prahl ’10 won First Place Overall, First Place Males 25-29 with a time of 00:51:46. Jennifer Pesut (Hey, that’s me!) won First Place Females 20-24 with a time of 01:31:50. To see all the results and recognize more Pilots, here is a link: http://energyevents.com/fvrresults.” Thanks Jenn, and congratulations.

’12 TOGETHER THROUGH THICK AND THIN We got the following e-mail from Terina Retzlaff, proud mother of Laryssa Retzlaff: “My daughter Laryssa attended UP and graduated in 2012 with a degree in secondary education. She met Michael Scheepers ’09 at UP, who also attended and graduated with a degree in finance. They met

them had ever been to the United States before. Laryssa was hired for a full-time teaching position last June, teaching 6-12 grade English in Glenwood, Washington, and Michael is training for the National Guard.”

We heard recently from Katy Portell, who writes: “I accepted my first full-time job back in October at Rice University in Houston, Texas. I work as the recruiting coordinator and alumni liaison in the Rice Center for Career Development and the alumni affairs department. Working with alumni affairs, I am developing a mentor program and other opportunitites for engaging Rice alumni.”

’13 USING HIS SKILLS We heard from a proud UP father recently, who writes: “Just a note to let you know that one of your school’s seniors, Sean M. Popravak, hasn’t waited to use his skills and knowledge. He is the co-author of a book published last year by Arcadia Publishing, titled The Oregon Air National Guard. See the press release for Sean at http://tinyurl. com/asxccaj, or go to the Arcadia website for samples at http://tinyurl.com /akztprq.”

Thanks for letting us know, Terrence, and congratulations to you and your son.

UP SPEECH & DEBATE UNION

while both working in the development office’s TOPS program. Michael is from South Africa, and the two were engaged while Laryssa was still attending UP. They were married on June 23, 2012, in Hood River, Ore., at St. Mary’s Catholic Church. They ended up traveling back and forth from the United States and South Africa while dating and during their engagement.

Since Michael graduated before Laryssa, he was limited to coming to the U.S. on visitation visas, since he no longer could come on educational visas. Laryssa’s bridesmaids all were from UP, and Michael’s groomsmen all came over from South Africa—none of

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The University of Portland Speech and Debate Union sent four qualifying representatives to the Pi Kappa Delta National Speech and Debate Tournament in St. Louis, Mo., over spring break, March 1417. Sophomore Katie Wilson, political science, who competed against debaters from 89 schools across the country, finished the tournament as a quarterfinalist, joining the top eight debaters in the nation, and was deemed to be among the top ten percent of all debate speakers in the nation.

Seniors Valerie Schiller, political science, and Beau Woodward, economics and philosophy; junior John Russell, civil engineering; and Wilson made up the University of Portland team. In six preliminary rounds for international public debate, Russell and Schiller finished with three wins and three losses, Woodward finished with four wins and two losses, and Wilson finished with five wins and one loss, the best results the University of Portland Speech and Debate Union has ever attained at the Pi Kappa

C L A S S Delta National Tournament. Pi Kappa Delta is the oldest intercollegiate forensics organization in the United States.

The national tournament was held at Webster University in St. Louis, Mo., with more than 400 competitors in over 20 events. For more information ontact Brian Simmons at 503943-8025 or simmonsb@up.edu, or Bohn Lattin at 503-943-7352 or lattin@up.edu.

FACULTY, STAFF, FRIENDS Timothy F. Maginnis passed away on February 8, 2013, at the age of 99, in Lake Oswego, Ore. He lived a full, happy and healthy life and was proud of the fact he did not need to take any medicine to maintain his health. He married Alice Kloster on August 10, 1937, in Coos Bay. He became a certified public accountant in 1943 and in 1945, he started his own accounting practice, together with Alice. In the early years he taught accounting at the University of Portland. In 1968, he formed a partnership with Joseph Carey ’58 (who passed away on April 3, 2012) which continues to this day as Maginnis & Carey LLP where his son, William, is now the senior partner. Tim’s wife of 70 years, Alice, died in 2008 and he lovingly cared for her in the last years of her life.

Survivors include four children, Susan, William (wife, Melinda), Robert and Mary; nine grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren, which total 21 direct descendants; and many nieces and nephews whom he enjoyed. He is survived by his devoted companion of the last four years, Dorothy Thomas and her family. Remembrances may be made to University of Portland scholarship program or the Oregon State University engineering school. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

A group of UP nursing students led by Joan Caley, nursing, were featured in a story, “Help and healing for home-

less at outreach event,” in the January 31 edition of The Columbian by Scott Hewitt (http://tinyurl.com/atusuft).

Homeless people from the Vancouver, Washington area

were provided medical, dental, and eye exams for free thanks to the sixth annual Project Homeless Connect, hosted by Living Water Church. UP nursing students provided foot care as part of the annual service event.

Rev. John Kurtzke, C.S.C. passed away on February 28, 2013, at Holy Cross House in Notre Dame, Ind. He was 61 years old. Fr. Kurtzke made his First Profession of Vows on August 9, 1980, earned his M.Div. in theology from Notre Dame in 1984, and was ordained on April 13, 1985.

Kurtzke was a member of the mathematics faculty on The Bluff from 1985 to 2004, serving as chair for six years. After treatment for a cerebral hemorrhage at Mayo Clinic in November of 2004, he moved to Holy Cross House and worked as a clerk in the Notre Dame Library. Survivors include his parents, John and Margaret Kurtzke; sisters, Catherine Brown, Joan Brennan, Elizabeth Siebert, and Christine Hughes; brothers, Robert and James; and several nieces and nephews. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Please keep longtime UP College of Arts and Sciences secretary Marilynn Lynn in your prayers after the death of her husband of 54 years, Theodore R. Lynn, Jr., on January 4, 2013. Their daughter, Colleen Guest ’86 attended the University as well. Ted passed away at home in Yuma, Arizona. He served in the U.S. Navy, U.S. Army, and Army Reserve, with active duty in Germany, Korea, and Vietnam. Survivors include Marilynn and their children, Dale, Russell, and Colleen; six grandchildren; three brothers; and two sisters. Marilynn worked at the University from 1967 until her retirement in December 2000, a span of 33 years. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

DEATHS John Tuhy ’35, May 1, 2011.

Anthony E. Seidl ’47, ’56, No-

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N O T E S We were saddened to learn of the death of Evangeline “Van” Schopf on January 9, 2013, at the age of 89 years young. She passed away at home. Van served in the U.S. Navy in 1945-46 during World War II and married Edward T. Schopf on April 25, 1948. She married Bill McLean on November 16, 1993. “Van could light up a room with her smile and laugh,” according to her obituary. “She warned us never to get old and she remained young at heart to the end. She will be missed by all.” Van worked here at the University from September 9, 1968 to May 30, 1990, serving in a number of positions. She won the Miltner Award, the highest honor the University bestows upon its employees, in 1989 while she was working in the president’s office. Survivors include her husband, Bill McLean; children, Gregory Schopf ’71, Stephanie Sipe, Mary Sandstrom, Susan Schorn, Ted Schopf ’90, and Terese Tyler ’86; 16 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made to the University of Portland in her honor.

Our prayers and condolences to the Schopf family and Van’s many friends here at UP. vember 21, 2012, Portland, Ore. James V. McCully ’48, February 10, 2013.

Kenneth L. Heuvel ’51, September 29, 2012.

James J. “Jim” Sweeney ’51, February 8, 2013, Fresno, Calif.

Edith Campagna ’51, February 11, 2013, Medford, Ore. Alice Mary Ward, wife of Luther B. Ward ’51, February 22, 2013.

Gladys Pierce ’52, January 17, 2013, Newport, Ore. Harvey Lattie Clinton, Jr. ’52, January 31, 2013.

Gilbert Allen Scherzinger ’54, February 12, 2013 Glenwood Newby ’56, February 18, 2013.

Henri Bernard Joyaux ’58, January 4, 2013, Verboort, Ore. Margaret Orlys O’Leary, mother of Dennis O’Leary ’61, February 7, 2013.

Mayanna E. Manion ’65, March 10, 2013, Portland, Ore.

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Roy Dee Powers, husband of Susan J. Powers ’68, January 3, 2013.

Jean Louise Buell, mother-inlaw of UP regent Annie Buell ’76, March 6, 2013.

Carole Liggett Booton ’77, January 15, 2013, Estacada, Ore. Martha L. Wehmeier 85, January 8, 2013.

Karen A. Frette ’91, January 6, 2013, Belleville, Ill. Catherine Penelope Scally, grandmother of Katie Scally ’11, November 19, 2012.

Evangeline “Van” Schopf, January 9, 2013.

Timothy F. Maginnis, February 8, 2013, Lake Oswego, Ore. Rev. John Kurtzke, C.S.C., February 28, 2013, Notre Dame.

Theodore R. Lynn, husband of Marilynn Lynn, father of Colleen Guest 86, January 4, 2013, Yuma, Ariz.

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Lieutenant John Mangas ’41 in the summer of 1942, after a hot afternoon training flight in California. Six months later his Lockheed P38 Lighting was shot down by enemy fire as he protected a B17 crew on the third day of the Battle of Lae Harbor, in New Guinea. John, “a carefree, smiling, jolly, brave boy,” said his sister, enlisted as an air cadet just before Pearl Harbor. He was one of 50 handpicked P38 fighter pilots selected to strengthen the Fifth Air Force in the defense of Australia against Japanese attack, and led the squadron as a pursuit-interceptor, just north of Port Moresby, New Guinea.

He was one of the four pilots who attacked an armada of 35 enemy planes in the Lightnings’ first battle of the South Pacific, on Dec. 27, 1942. Two weeks later, the Americans went up again against the Japanese; the last his comrades saw of Mangas was him attacking at full throttle, protecting a damaged American B17 bomber. The bomber crew testified that they saw Mangas shoot down two enemy fighters before he was shot down himself, and he was awarded a posthumous Silver Star. “There was greatness there,” says his nephew, Gary Smith. “Here was a University of Portland man whose flame burned brightly.”

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There was a girl named Linda in my first-grade class, at Saint John Vianney School in New York. She was shy and tall. She sat in front of me in the first row. We sat in alphabetical order, so that Accopardo was first seat first row and Wyzkyski was fifth row last seat. It was easiest that way for Sister Marie. She was also shy and tall. She was calm and tender and firm and maybe twenty years old. Most of us were six years old but four of us were five. Linda and I were among the fives. The sixes looked down on us as soon as they discovered we were five. They discovered this within the first week of school, and after that there were the sixes and then there were the fives. Why that should matter is a puzzle, but it mattered.

One day, after a particularly turbulent recess in the playground during which all four of the fives had suffered some indignity from the sixes, we trooped back into our classroom. In Sister Marie’s class you were expected to carry the detritus of your lunch back to your desk, so that she could be sure that you had indeed taken sustenance; but this day Sister noticed that Linda’s lunchbox was empty. No sandwich wrapper, no cookie crumbs, no apple core. Sister inquired; Linda sat mute. Sister pressed, gently, leaning down to Linda at her tiny desk; Linda covered her face with her hands and wept.

Sister realized that Linda had been robbed of her lunch by the sixes, and had not eaten at all, and had been humiliated by the theft, and was more humiliated now by public revelation, and Sister straightened up and stared at each of the sixes, her face unreadable, but just as she began to speak, Linda sobbed even harder, and a rill of urine trickled from the back of her seat and pooled on the floor between the first and second rows.

For a moment there was a ruckus as some children shouted and leapt away from the pool but then Sister said Silence! Seats! very firmly indeed — not shouting, but so firmly that everyone sat down in silence — and then she appointed Meghan to lead Linda to the girls’ room and then to the school nurse. Meghan held out her arm just like a gentleman does in old movies and Linda took her arm and they stepped over the puddle and left the room. You could hear Linda sobbing all the way down the hall.

The best reason we have schools, I think, is to learn things for which we do not have words or equations. All teachers admit that their students will remember very little, if anything, of the curriculum they were taught; in the end what teachers really do is offer context, manners of approach, and the subtle suggestion that a cheerful humility before all problems of every sort is the only way toward useful grapple, let alone solution. What teachers really teach, it seems to me, is not a subject, but ways to be; a poor teacher teaches one way, and a fine teacher teaches many, some of which may be, to your amazement and relief, ways for you, the student, to open, to navigate, perhaps to soar.

Sister Marie was a fine teacher. We sat silently for a long moment, after Linda left, and then Sister sent a boy to the boy’s room and a girl to the girls’ room to get all the paper towels they could carry. They came back with one million paper towels. Sister gave each one of the sixes a handful of towel and they mopped up the puddle, one by one, in alphabetical order, by rows, silently. When they were finished Sister handed each of the remaining fives a handful of towel also, and we also knelt and scrubbed the brilliant floor. No one said a word. The sixes then collected our paper towels and put them in the trash. A little while later Linda and Meghan came back and sat down and we started into arithmetic. I never forgot this lesson, and I would bet that no one there that day ever did either. I would bet the house on that. n Brian Doyle is the editor of this magazine and the author most recently of the essay collection Grace Notes.

PHOTO BY JERRY HART

THE BRILLIANT FLOOR

Or here’s a Campaign story. On the left, Kayla Bauman ’13, and on the right, Marjorie Lyster ’42: Marjorie and her late husband Hal Lyster ’39 created the Father Michael Early, C.S.C., Scholarship in honor of their dear friend, the University’s ninth president, and the man who baptized their son. So because Hal and Marjorie adored Father Mike, and wanted to somehow capture their respect and affection for his grace and humor and ferocious tennis matches with Hal and gentle excellence as a priest, which is a hard and sometimes lonely job, they started a scholarship, which meant that Kayla and her family could (a) sigh with relief a little from scratching for cash for college, (b) not have to borrow money or sell the llama herd, and (c) let Kayla launch into her life and career with a little less brooding looming debt. Or, in other words, respect and affection for a great man was turned to direct help for a brilliant energetic creative young person. That’s what scholarships do here on The Bluff. Can you turn your respect and affection into direct help for a bright kid who wants to go change the world?

Heck yes. And you can tailor your scholarship any way you like – for left-handed students, students named for Saint Catherine of Siena, students from towns beginning with M, students who want to teach kindergarten, students who want to be balloonists, students who want to clean all the fouled waters of the world. Your choice. Really. Call Diane Dickey at 503.943.8130. Or email dickey@up.edu. And thanks for your generosity. What a gift that is to us all.

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SUMMERFING

THE EDUCATION ISSUE

THE EDUCATION ISSUE THE LIIIIIIIIGHT! Aw, we never hardly run glorious summer paintings just because, so we do so here (“Little Boogie #2,” by the Oregon artist William Park), because all alumni and students and regents and faculty and staff know the deep mammalian joy of The Glorious Sun coming out finally in May or so. Summer on The Bluff is a lot busier than it used to be — for one thing we have not one but two summer school sessions, and scads of summer camps in sports, business, and spiritual matters. For sports camps, see portlandpilots.com; for summer session classes see up.edu; and for the annual Catholic conference (July 31-August 4), see summerconferenceportland.org. And to see more of Bill Park’s cool work, see williampark.net.

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SUMMER 2013