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Among the many thousands of riveting stimuli in the University’s Clark Library is a complete set of the scores of every composition ever committed by the superb American composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990), who visited The Bluff in 1975 to receive an honorary doctorate of fine arts; when he died he specified that the University receive the gift in his estate. Fascinating man, Copland: born Jewish in Brooklyn, played piano in dance bands as a teenager, wrote scores for films (notably Of Mice and Men and Our Town) and ballets (notably Billy the Kid and Appalachian Spring), composed the haunting Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for the Common Man, and was by all accounts a gentle and witty soul who said that American character in his music meant “the optimistic tone, large canvases, a certain directness in expression of sentiment, and songfulness.” Hard to beat that for a fair estimate of who we are. Rest in peace, Aaron. To make a Campaign gift to the library or to the University’s many musical adventures, see rise.up.edu.
THE MUSIC ISSUE
We watched the towers fall on television. Perhaps a billion people watched. We all saw the same thing at the same time and have the same twin scars burnt into our brains. The burning and then another burning and then the incredible collapse and then another collapse and meanwhile people jumping out of windows and being crushed by concrete chunks the size of trucks and choked to death by ash so dense that you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, and firemen sprinting up the stairs as people sprinted down, and the picture on the television cutting back and forth from New York City to the burning Pentagon, and then there was the news of the plane that the passengers forced to crash in a field so it wouldn’t kill their countrymen, the plane in which the passengers, led by dads and college kids and a rugby player, stormed the pilots’ cabin where the murderers had slit the throat of a stewardess. Right about then we turned the television’s sound off and just sat there staring. All the rest of my life I will remember my children’s faces staring and outside the sound of blue jays as the bright morning began in the West. It was the most brilliant crisp clear morning ever; I remember that. For Americans there will always be the time before September 11 and the time after. The late assassin Osama bin Laden, son of Alia Ghanem and Muhammad bin Laden, got at least that, of all the things he wanted. He didn’t get his holy war between East and West, he didn’t get a world where women are enslaved and education is a crime, he didn’t get a world where his idea of God was forced upon everyone, but at least he delivered a blow that will never be forgotten, not in America. People from other countries have asked me quietly sometimes, in the ten years since that morning, if maybe Americans are a little...self-absorbed, so to speak, about September 11, I mean in the end only three thousand people were killed, tsunamis and your bombs have killed many more than that, and they say this gently, not accusingly, just a little puzzled that it’s such a ragged raw wound for Americans; but it is. We were attacked, literally out of the blue, by a brilliant thug with squirming dreams of blood, and he caused children to roast, and moms and dads, and a baby in her mom’s lap, and he cackled over their deaths, he laughed out loud, he chortled in his dank cave when he heard the news. I won’t forget that chortle, either, not as long as I live. To remember is to pray, says my dad, and who will gainsay my dad, age ninety, who served in two wars? Not I. The lieutenant knows whereof he speaks. He says that if we forget, that is a sin. He says that remembering the incredible grace and roaring courage that day is the way to remember. He says to remember the roaring courage of the people who rushed to help, and the people who helped others out of the fire and ash, and the people who used their last minutes on earth to call their families and say I love you I love you I will love you forever, is to pray for them and us and even for the poor silly murderers, themselves just lanky frightened children, in the end, bloody boys terrified of a free world. He says to remember the greatness that day, the raging love and unimaginable courage, the firemen who ran up knowing they would never come down, the passengers storming the cockpit, the sergeant who ran out of the Pentagon to catch women leaping from high windows, is the way to erase the name of the chief murderer. He says that if we remember right, if we pray with our hearts in our mouths, maybe someday no one will remember the architect of ruin, but everyone will remember a day that the courage and mercy and glory of human beings rose to such a tide that no one will ever forget. That could happen, says my dad, and who will gainsay my dad? Not I. The lieutenant knows whereof he speaks. g Brian Doyle
PHOTO BY RICK RAPPAPORT
TO REMEMBER IS TO PRAY
Or here’s a Campaign story. We had one of the most straitlaced dignified music professors ever here at the University from 1980 until he died of cancer in 2008 – Professor Philip Cansler, who taught trumpet, concert band, and other music classes, and played for his church on weekends. But Phil, who also wrote the University’s athletic fight song, was a whole different soul when he donned The Famous Purple Wig and went bonkers leading the Pilot pep band at basketball games. You never saw anything so hilarious as Doctor C dancing across the floor, shaking his groove thang, and the band roaring along at his signals – absolutely we won some games we might not have, from all that silly energy, and Phil created a hilarious and unforgettable corner of campus life. When he died, only 54 years old, the Phil Cansler Scholarship was born. Ever laugh at Phil until your belly hurt? Ever leapt up when the pep band tore into a pause in the action? Want to say thanks for Phil’s holy nuttiness? Call Diane Dickey, 503.943.8130, dickey@up.edu.
F E A T U R E S “LISTEN TO ME...” A P ortland Magazine Music Collection
. . . gathered from every corner of the University of Portland’s creative vibrant generous community just for sheer entertainment and elevation as a gift from the University to the magazine’s readers . . .
32 / “Listen to Me...” a Portland Magazine record! For sheer fun, for electric entertainment, in celebration of music as prayer, in thanks for the gift of music from students, alumni, faculty, staff, and friends around the world – here’s a free compact disc! Pop it out and play it right now! Really loud! It’ll be awesome! Trust us!
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12 / Perfect Time, by Connor Doe ’00 A note on the music of being a dad. 20 / The Most Eloquent Language We Have, by Todd Koesel, O.C.S.O. Notes on singing at dawn in a Trappist abbey in the woods. 24 / Rivermusic, by Robin Cody Singing the waters of the West: a note. page 20
28 / Get Your Brain Out of the Way, by Brian Doyle A chat with singer and songwriter Jennifer Crow ’03 38 / The Night Stevie Ray Vaughn Died, by Kirsten Rian “Music never ends; it’s off somewhere still, echoing...” 40 / A Concert in the Clark Library, 2014 What the renovated University library might host, early one evening... 42 / The Music of Cranes, by Hank Lentfer The loudest bird in the world makes “a music that thrums the heart...”
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50 / A Voice Lifted to the Heavens, by Pico Iyer “Music, like silence, is the language of dissolving...” 52 / Artie Shaw, Transfigured, by Joseph Erceg ’55 Can you put music in a box, without a sound? Yes.
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5 / Rise Campaign czar Jim Lyons 6 / The business school’s wild new Launch Pad project 7 / All-American speedster Trevor Dunbar ’13 8 / ‘And then my phone rang’: an essay by Laura Frazier ’12 9 / Remembering Oregon Governor Mark Hatfield 10 / Sports, starring the new Pilot women’s rowing team 11 / University news and feats and astounding guests and… 56 / Alumni events, news, class notes 64 / Roya Ghorbani-Elizeh ’11 in Tehran 65 / The late trumpet professor and hipster Phil Cansler
THE UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND MAGAZINE
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Cover: A ‘single-sound-hole’ mandolin made of spruce, walnut, and ebony by the remarkable Idaho artist and luthier Lawrence Smart, a legend among musicians for his handmade mandolins and guitars. For more of his work see www.smart-instruments.com.
Winter 2011: Vol. 30, No. 4 President: Rev. E. William Beauchamp, C.S.C. Founding Editor: John Soisson Editor: Brian Doyle Willowy Mustachioed Dude & Design Guy: Joseph Erceg ’55 Lanky Testy Design Mechanic: Matt Erceg Associate Editors: Marc Covert ’93 & Amy Shelly Harrington ’95 Contributing Editors: Louis Masson, Sue Säfve, Terry Favero, Mary Beebe Portland is published quarterly by the University of Portland. Copyright ©2011 by the University of Portland. All rights reserved. Editorial offices are located in Waldschmidt Hall, 5000 N. Willamette Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97203-5798. Telephone (503) 943-7202, fax (503) 943-7178, e-mail address: bdoyle@up.edu, Web site: http://www.up.edu/portland. Third-class postage paid at Portland, OR 97203. Canada Post International Publications Mail Product — Sales Agreement No. 40037899. Canadian Mail Distribution Information—Express Messenger International: PO Box 25058, London, Ontario, Canada N6C 6A8. Printed in the USA. Opinions expressed in Portland are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University administration. Postmaster: Send address changes to Portland, The University of Portland Magazine, 5000 N. Willamette Boulevard, Portland, OR 97203-5798.
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L E T T E R S Thank you for the essay by Fr. Charles Gordon, C.S.C., “Why I Am a Priest,” in the Autumn 2011 issue. I agree with, and live by, every sentence he wrote, except the section about the Congregation of the Holy Cross. I certainly agree that what is true for Fr. Gordon is true for every C.S.C. who has shared his heart with me. However...In the life of this priest of the Archdiocese of Portland I remember making the life-giving vows of celibacy (promising to be a servant to every family and person I meet), and obedience (promising to faithfully pass along the treasure of faith with which Jesus empowered the Apostles). But the easiest promise I ever made took place with my hand on a bible as I took the canonical vow of “Retention of Domicile,” which meant I will ever after be a priest of the Church west of the Cascades, south of Washington, and north of California, which means I get to live in Oregon for the rest of my life! Yahoo! Which means I get to live close to family, close to enduring friendships, to serve alongside generous priests and religious, to bloom where I was planted as a native, surrounded by the most obvious proofs of God’s creating hand (ocean, mountains, trees, rivers, and desert) and in the realm of the institutions who nurtured my life and faith: Marist Catholic High School in Eugene, Mount Angel Seminary and, of course, the University on the bluff, which has provided graduates who are doing
heroic things in every parish in which I have served. Father John Kerns ’83 Saint Juan Diego Church Portland, Oregon
LIFE & DEATH After reading “The Late Mister Bin Laden,” in the Autumn 2011 issue, I feel compelled to write. I am a Catholic blessed with a great wife and three sons who are all reminders for me how much God loves me in the gifts they are to me. I am also in formation to become a permanent deacon in the Seattle Archdiocese. Also I am a Navy veteran, a hospital corpsman for seven years. Each of our sons has also chosen to serve in the military after high school. Our oldest son is a staff sergeant in the Marines serving with HMX-1, the presidential support helicopter squadron. He has served three tours in Iraq prior to being assigned to his present command. Our second son went to West Point and is now flying helicopters for the Army in South Korea. Our youngest son went to Notre Dame and is now in the Navy, completing flight school (also helicopters). I give all this information to give you an idea of my perspective as a Catholic man, husband, and dad. I must admit that I did not feel elation at the announcement of Bin Laden’s death. Was his death deserved? I am very conflicted with my answer. He needed to be brought to justice for the heinous crimes that he committed; there is no doubt about that. But did he need to be killed? The easy answer for me would be to say that I was not on that mission with those SEALs so I cannot answer to the sailor’s reasons for killing rather than capturing Bin Laden. I do know from my experi-
ence in the Navy that the SEALs I worked with were intelligent and professional, not the blood-thirsty “macho-men” or psychopathic loners often portrayed in movies. I am confident that all the personnel involved followed their training and orders when they carried out their mission… I do agree that the life that Bin Laden lived was a waste. The energy he expended for evil could have been directed in so many life-giving rather than life-taking ways. That is at the crux of the whole mess of Catholicism. We are supposed to be lifeaffirming as a people; to be “pro-life” is much more than being against abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment. As Catholics, we need to believe that every life is sacred and that there is hope for all people to be saved by the love of God rather than consumed by the evil of humans, including those we see as terrorists. But part of the problem when we are devastated by an event such as September 11 is that we are shocked, and we experience anger and a desire for revenge and justice. Revenge and justice are cousins, but they are not the same. It is not a sin to experience anger and even feelings of revenge; but it is what we do with those emotions that leads to either evil or healing. The Scripture readings for Sunday, September 11, were steeped in the need to forgive and not seek vengeance. The Old Testament reading from Sirach: “Grudge and wrath, these also are abominations in which sinful people excel. He who demands revenge will suffer the vengeance of the Lord who keeps a strict account of his sins. Forgive the mistakes of your neighbor and you may ask that your sins be forgiven. If a man bears re-
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LETTERS POLICY We are delighted by testy or tender letters. Send them to bdoyle@ up.edu. sentment against another, how can he ask God for healing? If he has no compassion on others, how can he pray for forgiveness for his sins?” The Gospel reading from Matthew is the parable of the servant who was forgiven an enormous debt by his master but was unforgiving of his fellow servant who owed a much smaller debt. I do not believe in coincidences; it is interesting that the Scripture readings correlate so well with this anniversary of such tragic loss and hate. And our parish priest offered a great homily on these readings, emphasizing that forgiveness does not mean forgetting what happened. We can forgive but not forget. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us….” And there is freedom and healing in the gift of forgiveness. I pray for my sons’ safety. I pray that they remain honorable and humble men. I pray that they never have to experience the killing of another human being, but as my oldest son has been to Iraq multiple times he may have been placed in those situations. I hope and pray that he is able to reconcile with God and also with himself. We all know that people in our Church have not been perfect and we must seek forgiveness and reconciliation for our mistakes, but Jesus did give the Church to His fallible humans whom He loves enough to be the source of our reconciliation with Him. For that we must be humbly thankful. Tim Shamrell Seattle, Washington
JOHN MASLEN
WHY BE A PRIEST?
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Blow, blow, thou winter wind / Thou art not so unkind / As man’s ingratitude; / Thy tooth is not so keen, / Because thou art not seen, / Although thy breath be rude,” says the everquotable Billy Shakespeare, whose great midsummer’s night play troddeth the boards in Mago Hunt Theater in April. “Freeze, freeze thou bitter sky, / That does not bite so nigh / As benefits forgot…” Amen, brother. ¶ One cool winter project: the Urban Policy Plunge, during which students ostensibly on their winter break spend their days in Portland’s Skid Road, helping out and exploring the economics and cold reality of urban poverty. The University’s Moreau Center sponsors a dozen such plunges for students, in Nicaragua, Arizona, Alaska, Georgia, and the Yakima Valley of Washington state. ¶ Celebrated January 20 all over the world: the feast day of Blessed Basil Moreau, C.S.C., founder of the Congregation of Holy Cross. Three days later is the feast day of Blessed Marianne of Molokai, a German nun who said yes when asked to spend her life with the lepers of Hawaii.
THE UNIVERSITY Among the startling number of events hosted by the alumni office (and open to everyone): the popular Supper Club series, in which University Gourmand-in-Chief Kirk Mustain leads groups to the finest restaurants in Portland for great meals and inside looks (January 10, February 7, March 13); Adina Flynn ’93 on basic financial planning, January 25 at the Alumni
THE FACULTY Recent faculty honors: nursing professor Lorretta Krautscheid won a national teaching award from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, and communication studies’ Renee Heath won the state service award from Oregon Women in Higher Education, partly for a project by which community leaders learn civil discourse, how refreshing is that? ¶ Theology professor Father Charlie Gordon’s annual public litry musing is April 9, this year in conversation with fellow theology professor Rebecca Guadino on the great Catholic Japanse novelist Shusaku Endo. ¶ Among recent faculty publications are the books How the Images in Plato's Dialogues Develop a Life of Their Own, The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann, and Germany in the Loud Twentieth Century; also just out is Speak Low, Swing Hard, a jazz record by the Art Abrams Swing Machine on which music professor Dave Parker plays trombone (see the CD in this issue). ¶ Among new faculty members this year are three
theologians: Rene Sanchez and Fathers Jeff Cooper and Mark Poorman, C.S.C.
FROM THE PAST ARTS & LETTERS On campus February 27 as the spring Schoenfeldt Series guest: Pulitzer Prize winner Jeff Eugenides, author of the terrific novel Middlesex. The Series’ guests visit classes, lunch with students, do a reading, and generally enjoy themselves more than they ever expected. Great idea. Excellent target for Campaign gifts in memory of its late founders, brother and sister Father Art Schoenfeldt and Sue Fields. Info: bdoyle@up.edu, 503.943.8225. ¶ On stage in Hunt Theater this new year: Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour (February), Will Shakespeare’s Midsummer’s Night’s Dream (April), and Gilbert & Sullivan’s hilarious light opera The Gondoliers, as the annual Mock’s Crest operetta in June. Info on any: 503.943.7228. We note with prayers in our mouths that Mock’s Crest founder Roger Doyle is ill unto death, and what a cool way to sing him by contributing to the Roger and Kay Doyle Scholarship, which jazzes kids here. See rise.up.edu. ¶ Winter and spring musics on campus: February 19, the Women’s Chorale, University Singers, and Jazz Band; March 4, the Choral Concert; February 26, the Wind Symphony and Orchestra; April 18-19, the 47th (!!!) Annual University of Portland Festival of Jazz; April 24, the Jazz Band and Chamber Ensembles; April 25, the Wind Symphony; and May 10-11, the 37th (!!!) Annual Best in the Northwest Choir Festival, a total kick. ¶ Guests of the English department’s reading series in 2012: shortstoryist Mary Rechner (January 31), and Oregon’s Poet Laureate, the elegant Paulann Petersen (March 21). Info: Herman Asarnow, asarnow@up.edu.
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Among winter anniversaries on The Bluff: January 6, the day the Magi showed up with gifts for the Lord but someone forgot the wine; January 1, 1919, the day J. D. Salinger was born in his beloved New York City; January 12, 2010, the day of the awful Haiti earthquake in which sweet funny silly holy Molly Hightower ’09 was killed (we celebrate her with a remarkable scholarship, see rise.up.edu); January 15, 1929, the day little Martin King was born in Atlanta. ¶ Returning to his no-doubt-proud Maker on February 23, 1995, at age 79: Alf Wight of Glasgow, better known as the absolutely terrific writer James Herriot of Yorkshire. ¶ Sunday, February 9, 1964: The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. ¶ February 10, 1952: Portland’s Blanchet House of Hospitality opens, founded by young University alumni. ¶ February 11, 1858: The Madonna appears to Bernadette Soubirous near Lourdes. “As devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes grew,” notes University literature professor Father David Sherrer, C,S.C., “the custom of building replicas of the grotto at Massabielle also spread; a large grotto was carved out of a hillside at the University of Notre Dame, and the garden shrine to the Blessed Virgin next to our Chapel of Christ the Teacher, a gift of the Galati family, owes some of its inspiration and form to this movement.” ¶ On the other hand, Pilot baseball, which began in February (of 1902, with a 3-1 win against Bishop Scott Academy), still flourishes, and opens its centennial season in…February. See portlandpilots.com for schedule and details. For more lovely arcana from the University’s past, see www.up.edu/ almanac.
MARY MILLER DOYLE
THE SEASON
House, also webcast live); the popular Broadway musicals series, in which the University sponsors evenings at the Keller Auditorium downtown (January 7, West Side Story; March 31, Wicked; May 26, Million Dollar Quartet; and August 4, Jersey Boys); and the hilarious annual Poker Tournament, in which the $50 stakes fee feeds the Alumni Board’s scholarship, cool idea. ¶ Also on tap in 2012, to be plotted now: trips to Brazil (May), Austria and Germany (September), and Ireland (September) — that last one including golf with University president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., and the Notre Dame/Navy football game in Dublin. Whoa. Info for all: 503.943.7328.
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Or here’s a very University of Portland story. Veteran’s Day ceremony on The Bluff, always brave and haunted; we pay special tribute to the University students and alumni who fought and died in all this nation’s wars since the University was born in 1901. Young burly guy steps out of the crowd, shyly accepts a Bronze Star for valor in Afghanistan, steps back into crowd, vanishes. His name is Billy Ray Reeves, and during a nine-hour firefight he drove his armored truck into the line of fire, protecting his fellow American and Afghan soldiers; he then jumped out of his truck with a grenade launcher and attacked the Taliban. His action, noted the official Army report, saved his companions’ lives. We don’t have very good words for such courage. Someday, if we grow up, there won’t be wars and grenades and medals, but we will always, always, sing and celebrate and be awed by courage, by ferocious love.
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PHOTOGRAPH BY STEVE HAMBUCHEN
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Started on The Bluff as dean of admissions in 1998. Some 1,800 kids applied for admission that year. Eight years later there were 8,000 applications for admission. Jim gets promoted to vice president and hires his successor Jason McDonald, a bright young man who keeps sprinting in the direction Jim set. Applications for admission in 2011: 12,200. Whoa. In December of 2010 the University launches its wildly ambitious Rise Campaign, hatched and plotted and dreamed by...Jim Lyons. Goals: to raise a Pacific Northwest private university record $175 million, secure healthy annual donation levels forever, and draw thousands of new donors to Oregon’s Catholic university (among many other targets like a new rec center, and a rebuilt library, and 100 new scholarships, and...). A year later: “Wildly successful,” says Jim. “We are at $121 million to date. I know we will make our goal. I know we will shoot right past it. We might hit $200 million, which is a startling thing to say. Best part? Thousands of donors — fifteen thousand so far, and I am sure when we finish in 2014 we will have twenty-five thousand. I am knocked out by how many people all over the country are aware of the Campaign, want to invest in it, make really heartfelt gifts. I think a lot of this is that people trust us to be good stewards, they trust that their money will have a big impact on kids, they trust that their gift is creating the remarkable University of the year 2040, you know? Sure, the Campaign has some immediate goals — the new rec center, the library, scholarships — but really it’s about twenty and forty years from now, about dreaming the University that will be one of the best Catholic universities in America. Hey, why not us? That’s the energy of the Campaign. It’s about telling stories that matter, imagining the future, making soaring aspirations possible. ‘Rise’ was absolutely the right word for this Campaign. Everybody’s jazzed — faculty, alumni, friends, students. You know the students have contributed $100,000 to the Campaign, for the Molly Hightower Scholarship? And they have made gifts to the new rec center they’ll never use. Now that’s a sign of commitment, when your penniless students dig deep like that, invest in the future. I suppose what I like best about the Campaign, finally, is that it’s us, it reflects the University itself — creative and innovative, and everyone plays, everyone’s in. Isn’t that great?”
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PHOTO BY STEVE HAMBUCHEN
Jim Lyons Campaign Point Guard
THE IDEA HARVEST The first countdown has begun on the University’s Launch Pad project: among the business ventures being planned by students and young alumni are hydroponic fruit and vegetables grown in Dubai, an orthopedically correct flip-flop, a web portal for vocational training, a virtual Hong Kong tailor producing high-end custom clothes at sales-rack prices, a Ph.D. candidate at Oregon Health and Sciences University licensing biomedical technology… All these are the result of what you might call the University’s expanded product list these days. Knowledge, discovery, and the shaping of character are still best-sellers, but there is a new item in demand: tangible, measurable results for both the learners and the wider community that surrounds and supports them. “Leveraging intellectual capital” is the phrase heard at the Launch Pad, a Center for Entrepreneurship program designed to teach students what it takes not just to come up with an idea for a business, but to get it funded and get it going. Choose your metaphor: the Launch Pad is an idea farm where the seeds of new business ideas are grown and harvested. Or the Launch Pad is the kiln where creativity is fired from malleable clay to useable pottery. Or the Launch Pad is, in fact, an enterprise itself—part competition, part incubator, part venture capital fund. “What I hope the Launch Pad will do is close the gap between dreams and applicable, bottom-line wisdom,” says entrepreneur Rich Baek ’93, who earned grad degrees in engineering and business on The Bluff, and targeted his Campaign gifts to creating something more than just entrepreneurship education. “I can say from experience that you can’t learn true entrepreneurship in the classroom. What is missing in these programs is experience and training in actually launching the business. Our purpose here is to encourage and reward people who continue going forward, who do the work, make the connections, put the rubber on the road, make something substantive happen.” “We wondered what we could do to bring more resources and support to students who wanted to really build companies,” says Jon Down, director of the entrepreneurship center, “and
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to build the ecosystem of idea generation and creativity. What could we do that would be new, different and meaningful?” So began the Launch Pad, a year ago. The first effect: a reinvention of the University’s established business plan competition, the $10K Challenge — now the $100K Challenge. “We looked back to see how many winners and finalists in the business plan competition had actually turned their ideas into real businesses over the past 12 years,” says Down, “and the answer was very few. We decided to create something that would work a lot more like the process of an entrepreneur approaching a venture capital fund, with the ‘judges’ being an investment committee looking for positive liquidity as the desired outcome.”
Like a venture capital fund, the Launch Pad will take an equity position in the ideas in which they decide to invest. (You don’t get more realworld than that.) It doesn’t take a huge leap to see how a few wellconsidered investments could eventually lead to a healthy bank account to be reinvested into new idea generation by the UP community. Also real-world is the fact that the winner of the 100K Challenge gets all $100,000, half in cash and half in inkind support. And the rules have changed; a current student must be an integral part of each team, but the other members can be anyone from other students to faculty to alumni to friends. In the inaugural 100K Challenge this year, 32 teams and individuals presented their ideas for a business or a non-profit organization, in any field and any scope, to judges who were looking for the ventures with the strongest idea, the most Portland 6
profit potential, and the shortest timeline to positive revenue. Six finalists were chosen, and those finalists have nine months to get to what Baek calls an “investor-ready position.” The Launch Pad investment committee can then award the entire amount to one individual or team, or choose to support more than one idea. The current top three finalists: two students who spent time in Dubai and saw an opportunity to produce fresh fruit and vegetables, which are now shipped in from other countries, locally and hydroponically. A college student who understands that everyone doesn’t need or want to go to college, and hopes to serve that market with a web clearinghouse for the nation’s vocational training programs. An M.B.A. student who went to Hong Kong and China through a UP class and stitched together the idea for a company that would create high-end custom clothing with webera convenience and low prices. For Rich Baek, it’s the kind of school-of-not-quite-so-hard-knocks education that could have benefited him as he built his start-up, VTM Group, into various companies in industries ranging from technology to public relations to restaurants — in the process creating probably the most influential high-tech marketing organization you’ve never heard of, representing some 45 technologies which in one combination or another are part of every computer made and sold. “I was 27 years old in 1995, when I left Intel to start VTM,” Baek says, “and the only thing I knew for certain was that my competitors were all more experienced and more established than I was. But in the real world there is no level playing field; as an entrepreneur you have to compete against all comers. I believe the Launch Pad will help students and faculty learn the truths and skills of real-world business creation. An idea isn’t true innovation until it is executed, and that takes more than a good business plan. The University of Portland has an untapped resource of successful people who love UP and are ready to support motivated students who want to start and run companies. Together we can make good things happen — really happen.” n For more information and to make a Campaign gift to the Launch Pad, see rise.up.edu.
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Trevor Dunbar ’13 All-American LongDistance Sprinter
“Guys are tired after that, you bet. The most I have run in a week this year is 97 miles, and I have had days where I did two runs, five miles to warm up and then maybe twelve miles...my favorite events are the 1500 meters and the 5000 — I had the University’s 5000 record for about five minutes, after a heat at Stanford, until my teammate Alfred Kipchumba broke it in his heat. I’ll break the Alaska state mile record this winter, though, I think. My dad Marcus owns the record, 4:00.58, and I’ve run a 4:01.31, so I’d love to break his record, go under four minutes, and call him right away — that would be fun. “In the back of my mind I think about the Olympics, sure, and a pro contract, and running around the world, and maybe coaching some day, but I keep it all back there. Right now I just want to get better every time out. I have a number in mind every time I step to the line, a specific goal depending on various factors, and if I can keep getting better, things will go well. I want to enjoy this time, not miss a moment of the experience. I made the right decision, coming to the University of Portland, and I want to savor every bit of it. Speaking of which, I have to get to practice...”
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PHOTO BY STEVE HAMBUCHEN
And accounting major and mad basketball fan and quiet grinning polite young man who we predict will run in the Olympic Games soon enough. Alaska lad (note his Alaska tattoo — you can just see the southern archipelago), son of two University running alumni. “I guess I started running as soon as I could, but I remember really liking it in middle school, when I realized I was good at it,” he says. “I got recruited fairly heavily, and I thought long and hard about Oregon, but I made the right decision. Coach Conner is open, honest, colorful, and he’s brilliant at wanting the world for us but letting us rise to it ourselves, you know? We can see how much he wants success for us but somehow he makes that your goal. Running is the best of all worlds, sports-wise — it’s your own drive and motivation and goals, but you have 25 guys for banter and camaraderie and running through Forest Park chatting the whole time. Yes, there are guys who can talk for ten miles straight; you have to be real fit for that, though. It’s a lot of hours, sure — we usually do three long runs a week in Forest Park, and then two days of ‘workouts’ at other parks in Portland — today we are doing ‘cruise miles’ where you run a mile and rest a minute, ten times.
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THEN THE PHONE RANG By Laura Frazier, an editor of The Beacon this year. Whew. At ten in the morning on Valentine's Day, just back from breakfast in The Commons, I sat at my desk in Mehling Hall, distracted by thoughts of my latest love interest. After a few dates, it was reaching the stage where the pieces I knew of him were coming together, his personality and our newly formed memories creating a haze over my head. I was thinking about how solid and confident his hand felt in mine, how his scent clung to the sleeve of my sweater. Then my cell phone rang, and what I knew of love was completely and irrevocably altered. Jeff Grahn was a sergeant at the Clackamas County Sheriff's office, a fifteen-year veteran of the police force, but I never saw him in uniform. Jeff was amiable and funny, never afraid to share his opinion on anything. His wife, Charlotte, worked at
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a Gresham bank. She was bleachblond and always perfectly pedicured, with an effortless smile beautifully handed out to those who may not have deserved it. And her laugh made you feel like when the sun hits your face. We met the Grahn family about six years ago at Lake Mayfield in Lewis County, Washington. My family was camping there for the weekend with friends from my hometown of Albany, Oregon. We talked about dogs and boats, and by nightfall, it was only natural they bring their chairs over to join us by the fire. By the end of the weekend, our families were comfortable friends. Jeff and Charlotte had four kids; Jeremy, the oldest, was already away to adulthood and his own life, but Ashley, Cody, and Kyle still came camping with the family. Ashley was beautiful, with an infectious kindness; Cody had an unstoppable sense of adventure; and Kyle was spunky and hilarious. I ended up spending roughly ten days every summer with the Grahn family, and it was unmistakable that Jeff and Charlotte adored each other, loved their kids, and loved the life
Poem for Dorothy Stafford Tending the soup while she talks— a little garlic, bacon, zucchini, chicken broth, as many of her garden herbs as the pot will hold — she adds enough milk to make it turn creamy, pale. Have you been to visit Mt. St. Helens since it blew? Neither have I. You and I should do that some day. Bread into a foil packet she crimps shut, slips into her oven’s pocketed heat. A woman I knew had eighty acres there. She built the cabin herself and set it back in the forest so she and her husband would have to walk a good ways to see mountains. She claimed they’d never take them for granted that way. Ripe bell pepper into a salad. Its hollow globe red as molten glass. I never dreamed that I would be the one left alone. Me with my funny heart, I always thought I’d be the first to go. Cherry tomatoes from her deck’s container plants, the ones outdoing themselves again this year. Did I ever show you the note he left that day he died? His handwriting so big, unsteady—
he must have known. It said “And all my love.” Store-bought cookies on the counter in their white paper package. Easier since she cooks alone. You know you were very much a part of that day. Bill and I were making a lemon pie to bring to your house for dinner. I’m so glad I found that note. In a vase at her bare table’s shining center, a many-sectioned, leafless branch no bigger than her hand, a lone ceramic wren she’s tucked near its base. On each of our placemats, a rice paper napkin printed with blood-bright leaves. Bill and I kept a souvenir from when we camped at Mt. St. Helens years ago. I wonder if there’s another place in the world where mountains are so separate, so much their own selves. Paulann Petersen, Oregon’s Poet Laureate, will read from her work on The Bluff on March 21 at 7.30 p.m. in BC 163, free as air. A graceful gentle elegance, is Paulann.
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they had built together. So when my phone rang that Valentine's Day morning, and my father told me that Jeff had shot Charlotte and two of her friends before shooting himself, all at a restaurant in Gresham, I was sick. Before the grief came a numbing anger and confusion. Those kids... how could they live with that bloody legacy? And what had happened to Jeff and Charlotte...? Jeff was so steady and confident, so calm and attentive to his family, so affectionate, so proud of his kids. Charlotte was so happy, so funny, so energetic. But what I thought I knew of them seems a façade. He took the life of his wife and two innocent people before killing himself, abandoning his children, leaving nothing but shadows and holes. Charlotte and Jeff had separate funerals. My parents went to Jeff's funeral by themselves, but picked me up from the University to attend Charlotte’s. Just inside the church was a huge array of photographs. Right in the middle was a photograph of Charlotte on a jet boat. Our boat. A picture I had taken. I followed my family into the church and we sat in the back. As I looked at my parents and sisters, I was immensely thankful for what I had, and painfully aware of what the Grahn children had lost. I cannot understand how a man whom I know had so much love for his family could commit an act that would leave them shattered. It seems only logical to say that Jeff’s love must have been shallow and false; it’s the only thing that makes sense. But I know it isn’t true. He loved his family purely and honestly. He loved them with the devotion all children and wives deserve from their father and husband. I could see it in how his children clung together at the funeral. I had seen it for myself. If I fail to draw a line in my memory, dividing what I knew from everything that changed once he pulled the trigger, then I will lose hope in love. I can’t afford to let that happen. If I don’t believe in the strength and durability of love, then I'll believe in nothing at all. I find it impossible to forgive Jeff. But I have to go forward, just as everyone faced with grief and loss must continue. I know it will be easier for me than for others. But all I can do for Charlotte, for the children, and even for Jeff, is to hold onto my belief in love. No bullet can kill that.
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HIS HANDS Eric Chambers ’03 remembers the late Oregon governor and U.S. Senator Mark Hatfield, who died in August at age 89. Hatfield was the first recipient of the University’s highest honor, the Christus Magister medal, in 1995. Much has been said of Mark Hatfield since his recent passing, but nothing regarding his peculiar fascination with hands. Allow me… After graduating from the University in 2003, I received a scholarship to attend the Hatfield School of Government at Portland State, where I served as the Senator’s assistant for all of his dealings with the university. That fall I was invited to meet him for the first time. I was terrified to meet a living icon, but excited about the prospect of discussing his faith — though I could not imagine how the topic would naturally emerge in conversation. However I remembered that in his memoir he mentioned that he noticed and remembered details about people’s hands; I had a ring with a cross on it, so I figured I’d wear it, he’d notice my hands, and we could address spiritual matters. After discussing our hometowns, Oregon, our Republican mothers, and national politics, the Senator paused, looked down at my hands, and said, “Now, tell me about that ring of yours.” I admitted my ploy. He laughed, and to my surprise, reached into his shirt and retrieved a crucifix, given to him by a woman he called “a friend of mine whom I had the honor to know and work with” — Mother Teresa of Calcutta. I had a sudden image of that tiny saintly soul, with her wrinkled hands, chatting to the Senator of hunger and disease, and I pictured Hatfield immediately indeed becoming her friend, as he did with apparently everybody, from the President to the cafeteria clerk. Near the end of our talk, I asked him a final question: In the middle of one of the least churched cities in the nation, and among a population that is at least suspicious of Christianity, what does evangelism look like? “It is what it has always been,” he said, tersely: “love, and forgiveness.” A remark I have never forgotten; the single greatest qualities of Christianity are embodied in those two simple and mysterious words. Our first lunch together is also vivid in my memory. Topics: the
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landing craft he captained at Iwo Jima, walking the streets of what had been Hiroshima shortly after the bomb was dropped while starving children reached for his sandwich, his stationing in what was then French Indochina, where he saw Ho Chi Minh greeted as a liberator fighting to overthrow the destitution of French colonialism, and the complicated simplicity of his anti-Vietnam War position: How could a country with no money, no air force, and no navy pose a tangible threat to a wealthy country on the other side of the world? Much later, realizing the Senator’s extraordinary place in history, it occurred to me that it would be neat to have him inscribe a copy of the United States Constitution. He signed it with pleasure, in his nearly illegible scrawl: “Eric my friend, this is the greatest document ever written for those who would be free and govern themselves in representative government. The greater the participation of the citizens, the better the government performs.” Then he showed me his own robust collection of rare and historic books. I asked him which was his favorite, to which he replied, “Well, Eric, that would be our Holy Bible.” Hatfield’s instinct for grace was remarkable. In 1995, Oregon’s other
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senator, Bob Packwood, was under attack for harassing and abusing women. Packwood chose to resign his seat and delivered his resignation on the Senate floor, in front of the national media. Personally, he was a broken man; politically, he was leprous. Packwood finished his speech in tears, as alone as a man could be among so many people. Hatfield rose from his seat, requested the floor, reminded his colleagues and the media horde that there was a human being in pain among them, and then embraced Packwood in a bear hug. A staffer told me later that the Senator’s phone rang constantly for two weeks with calls from people furious that he would be so graceful to his failed colleague; but that was signature Mark Hatfield. “Love, and forgiveness, Eric…” Every single time I saw the Senator during and after my service with him he would, at some point, ask what he could do for me. I’m humbled to this day by the servant heart of the most important elected official ever to represent Oregon. He was a special, historical, loving, forgiving, powerful man who knew that power for itself was weak but power applied to help others was, well, holy. “Love and forgiveness, Eric…” His hands are finally stilled. Rest in peace, Senator. n
S P O R T S NBA All-Stars Flying across the Chiles Center floor in November were some of the best players in the world, on campus for a sold-out game sponsored by Trailblazer LaMarcus Aldridge during the NBA lockout. Kevin Durant, Jamal Crawford, Nate Robinson, Josh Howard, T.J. Ford, Steve Blake, Wes Matthews, and more piled up 321 points, and all profits went to fight cancer, heart disease, and poverty. Way cool. Men’s Basketball The Pilots, after the best three-year run in University history (60 wins), return all-WCC guard Nemanja Mitrovic, sixth in the nation last year (.463) from threepoint range, and new center Riley Barker, who had 18 points and 12 boards to open to exhibition season. It’s a young team, though, with five freshmen (among them the muchtouted big guard Kevin Bailey, sharpshooter David Carr from Central Catholic High in Portland, and 6'11'' center Thomas van der Mars, who played with the Dutch national team), and the schedule is rigorous: Kentucky, Washington, Utah, Gonzaga, and WCC newcomer Brigham Young. Whew. Women’s Basketball The buzz game for the women is Louisville, with Oregon high school legend Shoni Schimmel at guard, in the Chiles Center on December 17, but the
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Pilots, with all-WCC seniors Natalie Day up front and ReZina TecleMariam at the point, look good, if young; eight players are freshmen or sophomores. The WCC slate opens at home with Gonzaga December 29, followed by BYU January 2. Women’s Soccer A wholly uncharacteristic season for the Pilots, who struggled to score in their usual bunches, averaged a lone goal per game, and were 8-9-1 at presstime. Highlights: Micaela Cappelle’s breakout season, with 17 points, and the team’s fundraising all season for Harper’s Playground at nearby Arbor Lodge Park — a project to build a playground for kids of every sort, named for a local girl. “This community has provided our team with endless support,” said senior Emma Nelson, “and we are honored to be able to return the favor. We wanted to be a part of Harper’s magic and to help make Harper’s Playground a reality...” Men’s Soccer The Pilots were 8-6-2 at presstime. Highlights: senior Michael Nielsen’s dream week, with four goals on seven shots to lead wins against Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s, and three game-winning goals in the last few minutes of games. Volleyball The Pilots were 8-14 as we went to press, but the season story was epic five-set wins over Gonzaga, San Francisco, and Nevada, and a thrilling five-set victory at Notre Dame, as senior Marissa Plummer
The Pilot women’s rowing team opened its first season ever this fall, with races on the Willamette and on Vancouver Lake; they’ll be in Seattle, Eugene, and at the WCC title regatta this spring, coached by the legendary Bill Zack, president of the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association.
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earned match point with an emphatic block at the net. The volleyballers also were in fundraising mode this fall, donning pink warmup jerseys for their annual Dig Pink game, this year against BYU. The annual event is sponsored by the national Side-Out Foundation. Cross Country A sentence not written in the last 33 years: the Pilot men, ranked eighth nationally, finished second in the West Coast Conference championship meet to newcomer BYU (ranked third nationally), breaking an incredible streak of league titles. Alfred Kipchumba was second for the Pilots and AllAmerican Trevor Dunbar third. (To meet Trevor, see page 7.) The Pilot women finished third in the WCC; San Francisco won the title. Rowing An auspicious start for the University’s newest varsity sport: a win in its first official race. The novice eight boat posted a 21:11.28 time over 5,000 meters on the Willamette, defeating seven other college novice boats. The first varsity eight finished fourth and the second varsity eight was seventh. Tennis New face for the women, featuring two Aussies: freshman engineering major Anastasia Polyakova, from Moscow, where her dad Sergey played hockey for Dinamo Moscow. The men’s team is also young (five sophomores, and only two seniors) and international: Brazil, Spain, Canada, and China join Beaverton’s Westview High (Aaron Horwath) and Portland’s Lincoln High (Peter Jones). Baseball Back for the Pilots is AllAmerican outfielder Turner Gill, the pride of Madras, Oregon (.332, 61 hits, 33 RBIs) and all-WCC pitcher Kyle Kraus, who is five wins from the University career record of 25 (Wes Smith ’81) and already owns the walks record, a mere 1.37 walks per nine innings. Among the new faces are pitcher Kody Watts, who was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates coming out of Vancouver’s Skyview High; infielder Caleb Whelan, from Union High in Camas, drafted by the Brewers; and all-California pitcher Travis Radke, drafted by the Cincinnati Reds after throwing two no-hitters in high school. Also new for the Pilots are all-Washington players Michael Lucarelli (infield) from Enumclaw and Kurt Yinger (pitcher) from Camas. Coach Chris Sperry opens his 13th season with 255 wins, just behind Terry Pollreisz’s 271 and way behind Joe Etzel’s 378.
PHOTO BY STEVE HAMBUCHEN
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O N B R I E F LY First in the Nation in Service The University was ranked first among its peers in America (553 master’sgranting universities) for community service, by Washington Monthly magazine. The magazine measures alumni in the Peace Corps; students in military reserve officer training corps; students annually participating in community service; service hours performed by students; and the school’s institutional support of service initiatives. The University was also ranked fifth in the nation for recruiting and graduating low-income students and producing scholarship and doctoral students. First in the Nation in Fulbrights The University was again named the top producer of Fulbright scholars in America among its peer schools, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The University had 10 alumni win the postgraduate grants to work and study abroad this year in England, Scotland, Germany, Spain, and Cambodia; since 2001, 34 students have earned the awards. The Fulbright program began in 1946 to “assist in the development of friendly, sympathetic and peaceful relations between the United States and other countries of the world” through the exchange of students, scholars and professionals; it sends young Americans to 140 countries. U.S. News Honors For the 17th consecutive year, the University received a top ten ranking from U.S. News & World Report — this year ninth out of 125 “regional” institutions in the West. U.S. News also ranked the University eleventh in the West in bang for the buck — fine education at reasonable cost — just as Kiplinger’s Personal Finance ranked the University first in Oregon for “outstanding education and economic value.” Gifts & Grants Among recent generosities to the Rise Campaign: $2 million from regent Earle M. Chiles, to update the University’s Chiles Center, named for his parents: among the tinkering will be a shining new student-athlete study area. ¶ $25 from Garth DeCew ’66 to the University’s speech and debate program, which annually competes for national honors; you did know you can aim your Campaign gifts anywhere, right? — $3,000 from Dr. David Chamberland ’94 and his lovely bride Shireen for the student Engineering
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World Health chapter; see, you can shoot gifts right toward students, isn’t that neat? ¶ $100 from Eric Carter of Hawaii for the business dean’s discretionary fund; did you know each dean has a fund for student financial emergencies? Isn’t that cool? ¶ $25,000 for the School of Nursing from the Susan Komen Foundation; refreshing to have a national partner like that as we figure ways to heal and deal with cancer… Glittering Guests Among recent riveting souls on The Bluff: Randy Howell ’05, China and Asia specialist for the United States Department of Energy, talking about the threat of unsecure nuclear materials; pianist Adam Aleksander, playing Twelve Transcendental Etudes by Liszt and Schubert’s Impromptu in G-Flat Minor, among other adventures; former Vatican astronomer Gorge Coyne, S.J., who was terrific on science and holiness, wow; the glorious Oregon artist Lillian Pitt ’10 hon., opening a show of her unreal work… September 11 Among the ways that the University mourned that murderous day: an all-night vigil by its Air Force Cadets; prayer services all over campus; and the bell tower tolling hauntingly at 8:46 a.m., 9:03 a.m., 9:37 a.m., and 10:03 a.m.; the moments when the four planes crashed. Painted by eighty University junior business students on October 1, laughing all morning: the Holy Cross School gym on North Bowdoin Street. Principal Julie Johnson ’86 was
happy. The same 80 students, we observe with a smile, painted the outside of the whole school last year. Holy Cross is celebrating its centennial this year and only the Lord can count the number of University folks who have been elevated there. Best in the Northwest among the 34 Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps at colleges in the Far Corner: the University of Portland’s Detachment 695, says the Air Force itself. “With great support from the University, we are producing some of the best officers in the nation,” said commander Colonel Paul Huffman. The Class of 2015 — 835 freshmen drawn from 12,204 applications (!), was the second-biggest ever; the most academically accomplished (average 1209 SAT score and 3.68 grade point), and remarkably geographically diverse (43 percent from outside Oregon and Washington). Interesting detail: twenty Portland-area valedictorians. Mailed This Autumn to 915 scholarship donors, from the 575 students who received named scholarships: personal notes of thanks, so often so eloquent and heartfelt that to read any three was to cry for sure at how cool these kids are, and how much that scholarship meant to them and their harried parents, and how roaring their ambition to go to law school, med school, teach abroad, become scientists to heal illnesses and pollution. Gifts change kids’ lives. We read some of the letters. We swear this is so. See rise.up.edu.
Cool story of the year: Kurt Berning ’12, working in west Kenya through the University’s Moreau Center East Africa program, raised $1,500 for the Friends Secondary School in Lusui, where he teaches; the school, with 220 students, got fifty new books and electricity so kids (many of them AIDS orphans) can study in the early morning and late evening. For music from Kenya courtesy of Adrienne Shelnutt ’12, another program alumna, see the CD in this issue.
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A note on the music of being a dad. By Connor Doe ’00
irst I was a guitar player. I was in a band. We were semi-professionals, meaning that we made a couple of records, and we had publicity photographs, and a MySpace profile, and we got paid sometimes. Then I became a father. Sometimes now I am both a musician and a father but not as much musician as father. Sometimes now I am a father with a guitar and spilled casseroles and crayon scribbles. Being a guitar player is something like being a father. It works like this: I pick up my guitar or my son and play. If I tickle it just so, it smiles and laughs. I can play the same riff over and over again and it never gets old. If I play something new the guitar doesn’t seem to mind but sometimes my son minds. He likes the same thing to be played over and over and over again. In both cases when I play with them they are to a degree extensions of myself. In both cases I remember how to play with them even if I have not played with them for a while. My son likes music. Maybe all kids do. When he is wild or pouty or whiny I can pick up my guitar and catch his ear. He starts dancing without moving his feet. His face lights up with the purest smile anyone ever saw and he lets whatever it is he is hearing move through him. I think maybe all music is spiritual for kids. Maybe it reminds them of what they are closer to than we are. Maybe it’s just sound waves triggering their neurons like tiny pleasant electric shocks. Or maybe it’s the presence of something structured and harmonious emanating from outside of themselves that piques their interest and excites them. Whatever the case, my guitar playing makes him happy for as long as just about anything else, except his mom. Being a father sometimes makes being a guitar player hard, though. Sometimes I am sitting comfortably and minding my own business and strumming my guitar when my son perks up and dances a little and marches over and starts to slap the fretboard with complete joy. Sometimes he palms the strings, muting them. Sometimes he plucks at an open string, creating chordal dissonance. It amuses him to make music in his own way, just like his daddy does. Winter 2011 13
Another thing I have noticed about playing the guitar while being a dad is that before I was a dad I could pick up my guitar on a whim, dozens of times a day if I wanted to, casually, with plenty of time to play poorly, but now that I am a dad I can only pick it up once or twice a day, and I play it as well as I can. So as a dad I play less and it means more. Also being a father and a guitar player means that I don’t have time any more to fret over incomplete songs, or writer’s block, or my missing band. I don’t have as much time to spend on me. Maybe that’s a great thing. Maybe I had to quit being only a musician in order to truly be the musician I hope to be. Sometimes I dream about forming a family band with me on guitar, my son on drums, and my wife on bass. She says she would only play the tambourine, which is her way of saying no to being in the band. But still I dream about the family band. I imagine that we begin to practice regularly, and eventually we hit our stride, but then our son hits his teens, and there’s that day when playing in a band with his mom and dad is suddenly the most uncool thing ever, and he and his friends form their own band, and things are bittersweet for a while, until his mom and I start a duo with guitar and tambourine. Once, back when I was just beginning to be a musician and a dad instead of just a musician, my friend Ben and I were playing through some songs a few days before a performance. At one point during our rehearsal, my son, who was pretty new to being a son then, kept perfect time while banging the stick on the floor and grinning jubilantly. I’m not kidding. It didn’t last for more than a few beats, and probably it was a complete accident, but it was absolutely perfect. Maybe the best thing about being a dad is that perfect time is always possible. n Connor Doe was a member of Swingin’ Amiss, whose song ‘Passed,’ from the band’s 2005 record Speakeasy, is on the compact disc included in this issue — see page 32. Our most sincere thanks to Connor for the chance to include that jazzy adventure.
PHOTO BY JAKE CURTIS, GETTY IMAGES
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The University Orchestra in 1904, three years after the University was born, “at about ten in the morning, when the president rang a bell to begin classes.� See, music was in the air right from the first moment...
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University music professor, composer, and cheerful energy Peg Vance at the piano, 1970; Peg, among many other songs, wrote the University’s “Alma Mater” song (Up on the bluff / high over the Willamette / the spires of learning / reach up to the sky...), and there is of course a Peg Vance Scholarship for music students. See rise.up.edu.
Music professor Clayton Hare, probably about 1961. Clayton, dean of music on The Bluff from 1955-1965, was a fascinating guy: born in Ontario, studied in Toronto and London, taught all over, was a Canadian radio regular, and founded the Victoria Summer School of Music. Do we have gobs of gift opportunities for music and musicians and bow-tied dapper professors? Why, yes. See rise.up.edu.
The University’s Choir and Chorale, 1938, in Howard Hall; note Fathers John Hooyboer and George Dum near the piano.
The Most Eloquent Language We Have Notes on music in a Trappist abbey. By Todd Koesel, O.C.S.O.
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uestion: is music mostly made of silence? Do monks think about this more than other people?
Thought: maybe music is the most eloquent language we have for expressing joy and the way it hurts, the sadness and brightness of our lives. The human race has been calling out songs and prayers since the beginning of the human race. After the Last Supper, when Jesus and the disciples are on the way to the Mountain of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane, one of the evangelists reports that they sang songs along the way. First office of the day here is at four in the morning. Usually showing up ten minutes before that is plenty for me to settle into the stall and try to get the little kid inside of me to sit still and remember that God is at the wheel so I can just sit comfortably in the back seat and enjoy the ride. There’s music playing in my head at that hour, and there’s Father Howard shuffling into chapel with his sandpaper-on-tile gait, and a brother dropping his stall chair with a crash, and the subtle hum of the lightbulbs, and a trickling holy water font running with living water. At five minutes to four, the lights begin to flick on and the dawn noseblowers get their business out of the way. It is all music to me. I think of Saint Therese, sitting in meditation every day with the sister behind her clicking her teeth. Therese thought to turn and ask her to hush, but a deeper thought came to her rescue: let that clicking noise be your concert, a tune given especially to you by the Merciful One. Choir practice tonight. We warm up by stretching, bending at the waist, swinging our hips from side to side, extending our arms to the sky, rubbing our necks. It always astounds me to look across the chapel and to see men past their eightieth birthday limbering up to sing psalms and hymns that they have been singing for more than fifty years. We start with vocal calisthenics, some yawning, some mouthstretchings: nu wah nu wah nu, 878, 87678, 8765678... Tonight it’s a smattering of Ascension and Pentecost hymns led by Ron, the choir director.
Ron is a snappy-dressing High Church Anglican whose sense of humor gets us rolling after a long day and we are off and running into melismatic chants and some lovely tunes. I don’t think that choir practice was the lynchpin in anybody’s vocation here, the thing that sealed the deal, but it is an essential part of our life. That’s a funny thing about monks; music is our life, but most of us aren’t musicians. By the last week in May the abbey grounds are a jungle, lush and green and many birds singing. Today I heard eight different birdsongs all being sung at once. It is something like this when we get together in the choir. We all arrive from our various duties around the house for the divine office five times a day, some from the bindery, some from the kitchen, a gardener, a laundryman, a couple of fruitcake bakers, and some administrative folks who keep the ship sailing, and we sing. We are in step, but our voices and tones are as variant as the birds. A man to my left has the softest nasalest gentlest voice you ever heard, and the man to my right is on perfect pitch having studied performance voice in college. From across the way floats a Brooklyn voice, and a gentle tenor comes from right behind me. Coming to the monastery for the first time as a retreatant, my first powerful impression was the beautiful music of the choir; and now that I have spent seven years in the choir, I wonder if a choir is not unlike a marriage: You are entranced, you fall in love, you get engaged, you marry, and then, committed, you learn a much deeper sense of the difficulty and pain and joy of love; are music and marriage lovelier when you know the pains and joys of creating them better? Sometimes it’s just hard to get up so early in the morning, and go into the chapel to chant the same psalms with the same guys. It feels like a burden. Today is one of those days. But a line from The Diary of a Country Priest comes to mind. “Keep silent. What a strange expression. Silence keeps us.” The bell here rings five times a day, calling us to gather and sing praise, and praise will be sung whether one is happy, sad, annoyed, or weary. When you come in on a day like today, burdened, the music keeps you. It is enough. Portland 20
Another music: our oldest members petitioning the Merciful One for peace in the world. We have many men who served in the Second World War, and two who were in Korea, and it just means more when those guys petition for peace. The symphony of construction in the back yard every morning: the thwap of a hammer on nail, the bang of a pneumatic nail gun, the buzz of a skilsaw tearing through a fir plank, the beep of a tractor in reverse, the voices of the workers talking about fishing trips and goats; and the occasional dude, hold your britches! Looking across the choir tonight I see Father Dismas, our prior. Dis has been in the monastery since joining when he was sixteen; this year he will be eighty-six. A year ago doctors found an aggressive cancer in Dis, and they have been plugging and drugging him ever since. He has accepted it gently and generously. He is limited now in what he can do with us, but as steady as ever he makes it to three of the five offices a day, and assumes authority when Abbot Peter is away. Shortly after joining the monastery he was made cantor in choir, a complete surprise to him. The story is that Dis was the first one to read in refectory at lunchtime and the Abbot liked his voice so much that he got the job for months, whereas normally the duty would change week to week. Now, Dis’s tune is often just his shoes sliding behind his walker, and his smile. At the south side of our chapel, there is a tapestry of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Every night at the end of compline, we leave the choir stalls to gather around the altar and sing the Salve to Our Lady and beseech her with a final prayer. If you take a look at a picture of the image from Juan Diego’s tilma, you will see that Our Lady’s hands, folded in prayer, have a space between them. That space is filled up with a whole lot of anguish and joy and love and fear and hope and sorrow. That space holds our hearts. n Brother Todd Koesel, of Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey in Lafayette, Oregon, contributed the essay ‘In the Abbey’ to our Autumn 2010 issue.
The cheerful School of Nursing Handbell Choir is composed of deans, faculty, and staff who annually enliven the Nursing Pinning Ceremony at Commencement by donning their ‘ringing gloves’ to play for the new nurses. The pinning ceremony itself is an old nursing tradition that harks back nearly a thousand years; in America the first pins, marking the transition from student to the profession, were awarded in 1880. The University of Portland pin (celebrating the Madonna, the Congregation of Holy Cross, and the Pacific Northwest) has been presented to some 4,000 men and women since the School of Nursing opened in 1934. There are nearly forty scholarships specifically for nursing students on The Bluff; to chip in, see rise.up.edu.
RIVERMUSIC Singing the waters of the West; a note. By Robin Cody
ative Cascadians liked to drop everything in August and take their children for drifts down the river. We know this by the legacy of musical river-sounds they left us. Chinookans and Sahaptins rode their rivers. They played the rivers. They sang their rivers. Ka-la-POO-ya! Hal-le-LOO-ya! In late summer, the people had nothing more pressing to do. Roots had been dug and stored. Berries had not yet ripened. In that lull between salmon runs, they hit the river — in canoe or on cedar plank, anything that floats — just for the pure rippling joy of it. YAK-a-ma! HIT it, kids! Franz Boas, in a 1904 article called “Vocabulary of the Chinook Language,” notes how the natives’ words are so unusually onomatopoeic, imitating not just the cries of animals but also the sounds of actions, such as dancing. Boas wasn’t into river sounds, in particular. But even in English we have musical words — ripple and swirl and pool — to mimic their analogs, and the Indians took this to another level. Say DEE-bu-bu. Sing CLACK-a-mas, KLICK-i-tat, CLATS-ka-nie for rivers that tumble and hiss from severe canyons before spreading to where the people lived. SKOO-kum-chuck, KOOte-nay, TILL-a-mook, CHIL-o-quin, ISS-a-quah. By my count, some 68% of our native rivernames are three-syllable words. Most of the others are four-beat words. Walla Walla, Tualatin, Skomakawa, and Metolius survived the pioneers’ naming of things. The newcomers selected, from the home folks, the most melodious phonemes they heard for this new-to-them place. They adopted rollicking names for lively rivers, so different from the flat Platte and the languid Snake along the Oregon Trail. Imagine their relief, their joy. Even Methodists could hear the three-note riff here that goes bu-DEE-bu. Sing sno-HO-mish. Play wa-SHOO-gal on the kazoo. String a bunch of wa-LOW-as togeth-
er and you have poetry. Or a jig. Not long ago an Irish troupe called Riverdance came to Portland and stomped Snohomish Snohomish Snohomish Sno-HO on the stage at Keller Auditorium, and people went nuts. Riverdance. I am not making this up. Here’s a limerick I did make up: Multnomah Willamette Kalama Nestucca Molalla Spokane Klamath Siletz Boise Netarts Wenatchee Nehalem Chelan Probably a lot of people sing rivers these days. We just don’t know about each other. Singing a river while you’re on one is good for mental health and best practiced in a canoe or an inner tube or the like. Motors interfere. You’re one of those first people out there, ever, feeling the descending notes and alternating rhythms of a clean cold river. It’s just a stroke of luck, by the way, that Robert Gray’s ship had a name with four syllables and broad shoulders and a lumbering voice. Co-LUM-bi-a. Logically, we’d have called our Big One the Trask or the Gray or the Lewis, for one of the first English speakers here. Musically, though, Columbia is the bassoon solo that fit, and stuck. Woody Guthrie, hired by the government to praise the rising Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams, applied cheerleading lyrics to the most dolorous tune in the world. He knew in his soul that “Good Night, Irene,” by bluesman Huddie (Leadbelly) Ledbetter had the appropriately haunting undertow. It’s the very same tune. Where Guthrie sang Your power is turning our darkness to dawn So roll on, Columbia, roll on, Leadbelly’s dirge goes... Sometimes I get a great notion To jump into the river an’ drown. Ken Kesey heard that and took Sometimes a Great Notion for the title of his big novel. Kesey’s masterpiece features an overture of rivulets and Portland 24
tributaries merging into the Wakonda Auga, a name so Cascadian we can’t possibly mispronounce it. The slow deep-green tidal-sounding Wakonda Auga is “hiding the cruel file-edge of its current beneath a smooth and calmseeming surface,” just like the story Kesey is about to spin. Rivers to music to literature. As words shape our hearing and our seeing, language shapes our sense of place and how we think about ourselves. A long time ago on a canoe trip — upstream from Hanford — I stopped and talked to a lady my age whose first words had been “Indian,” she said. Sahaptin was spoken, never written. Lamaia Wyena had lived in a tule mat house and had spoken no English until she got to school. I asked her about the native word for the Columbia, which I understood to be Che Wana, for “big river.” I’d seen it written like that or as Chiawana, one word with four syllables. That same day I’d seen a railroad siding called Shawana. Was that the same word? “See? That’s just it,” she said. “Somebody writes it and then people say it wrong. The word is,” she said, and it fell from her tongue like the first time you ever put your ear to a seashell. She gave it four beats, like Chiawana, but the word started with an n. ‘Nchia-wa-na, maybe. I said the word, but not quite the way she did. I asked her, “How do you spell that?” “We don’t.” She smiled. When she said the word again she might as well have sung it: ‘Nchi-a WAH-na. Hal-leLOO-ya. Praise-the-MA-ker... n Robin Cody, twice a grinning visiting writer on The Bluff in recent years, is the author most recently of the lean clean essay collection Another Way the River Has, some of which first appeared in these pages. He won the Oregon Book award for Voyage of a Summer Sun, about his canoe trip from source to mouth of the Nchiawana.
PHOTO BY GRANT FAINT, GETTY IMAGES
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At left, Anastasia Belonozhko of the School of Nursing, a remarkably talented singer and songwriter who sings in English and Russian, and wishes, as she says, to honor and celebrate the One with her music; at right, a stunning painting of Offenbach’s opera Tales of Hoffman, in the halls of Buckley Center. Arts and Sciences dean Father Steve Rowan donated six paintings by John August Swanson to the University’s permanent art collection. His gift counts as a Campaign contribution, of course – you can, you know, make gifts in any way, shape, and form. See rise.up.edu.
Get Your Brain Out of the Way A moment with singer and songwriter Jennifer Crow ’03, of the rock band Lloyd Mitchell Canyon.
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ords come first for me. That’s why I am a musician. I couldn’t be a musician without being a singer. Sometimes you sing sounds before words. The words are the story, and the lyrics and the melody inform and determine each other. Often the shape and pattern and rhythm of the words show me the melody...it’s hard to articulate but refreshing to try to articulate, because when it works, when the words fit, and the melody is right, and the musicians are talented and trust each other, something happens...there are electric moments. We did a show a while back in Portland where we felt the connection to the audience, they felt the band’s energy and excitement, and the band and the audience were... connected. The music built and built and built and we got to a point where I turned and saw our bass player jumping up and down — that was such a collective moment, such a connective moment. It’s not something you forget, that kind of give and take. That’s what you try for, but you can’t command it. You prepare, you practice, you get as ready as you can be, and then you...get your brain out of the way, is as close as I can come to explaining it. You’ve got to trust that you’ve steeped yourself enough in the song to get it across and that’s it. I write songs with our guitar player, Jeff. We try to fill in each other’s gaps. He’ll show me words and chords, generally, and I try to hear the melody, find the melody, connect the melody. And the words and melody don’t have to match, or fit smoothly, necessarily; sometimes a rough fit, or a contradiction, is great for a song, it adds a grit and depth to it...he writes on the guitar and I write on the piano — everyone who tries to write songs, to create songs, has their own style. There’s no right way and no orthodox way. You get there however you can get there. What we are after is the script of a song, in a sense; enough of a good song
that we can then present it to the band, and these guys are so talented that they take the script and add their own ideas and strengths to it, so the song changes and deepens; and then each time we play it there are more changes, depending on all sorts of things — did we play it fast or slow? Did someone riff in an interesting direction? Did we learn something about how the song should be from the space, from the place we played it? Songs change every time you play them, which keeps them fresh and alive; as an insightful University of Portland professor once told me, “music isn’t data entry.” The songs always keep their core, but the colors can vary. Plus, as the singer, I get absorbed in it, in the story, in the lyrics, in the world of the music. I am not completely absorbed, no — some part of me is aware that I am performing it, not being it — falling completely into the song scares me — that would be a wild psychological balancing act. But I am fully engaged by a song, I am not just singing the words, do you know what I mean? I mean the words, I tell the story with all my heart. Yes, I am utterly aware of the band all around me at the same time; I hear them all, I am gauging their pace and intent at the same time I am singing, and they are gauging me. We don’t signal each other much; it’s mostly a matter of trust, and practice, and care, and respect — we know each other, we trust each other. It really is like being on a team — you’ve trained together, you have gone through good times and bad together, you know each other’s quirks and dreams in the music, and, well, you just trust each other in the moment. We have each other’s backs; and we sure have saved each other’s butts sometimes, when someone falters, or loses their moment... really, we’re each other's wingmen. As both a singer and songwriter I draw on what I learned at the UniverPortland 28
sity, and on what I have learned singing classical and sacred music, although one thing that worried me when I started singing with the band was that I would sing too...proper, refined, you know? Singing in church, or singing classical pieces, you work for a clear, open tone, and I had to learn to change my voice; I really worked, for example, to find the grit and rasp and the darker edges in my voice, which works better in the band. But I don't want to give up the pure sounds. I want to be able to sing both Ave Maria and Whiskey Drinkin’ Woman, and do it well. I love being in the band: I find that I don’t even much like being out in front of them on stage, I like to be among them. I’d like to sing jazz in the future — I did train for a while with the great Portland jazz singers Nancy King and Mary Kadderly — what an experience, Nancy King is as great an American jazz singer as anyone ever — and I write things down all the time, which often feeds my songwriting. I’d love to write more, and funny — I’d like to be the female Catholic David Sedaris someday. I suppose it’s the same impulse as songwriting — to capture and flesh out ideas, in words or music. What is it like being in a working band? It’s like being in a romantic relationship with several people at once — the drama, the melodrama, the intensity, the chaos, the affection, the arguments. We really care for each other and we drive each other nuts. Come to think of it, it’s like a condensed version of my experience in the University’s Salzburg Program — the same deep affection and love mixed with the fact that the people you care so deeply about can drive you crazy...n To hear “Walk a Mile with Me” by Jennifer and Lloyd Mitchell Canyon, see the CD in the center of this issue; to hear more of their music, and see their show schedule, see lloydmitchellcanyon.com.
PHOTO BY STEVE HAMBUCHEN
By Brian Doyle
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One of Lloyd Mitchell Canyon’s two guitarists, Bill Thoma, is the entertaining soul who finds lovely old melodramatic Western paintings and turns them into dashing posters for the band’s shows – herewith a selection, and our thanks to the band for sharing.
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“Listen to Me” 1. ‘Listen to Me,’ by Steve Forbert
The terrific Mississippi songwriter Steve Forbert was a guest of the University’s Schoenfeldt Distinguished Writers Series in 2010, and riveted a crowded Chapel of Christ the Teacher with songs, stories, stories about writing and composing songs, and a cheerful dry wit that was a pleasure to be around. He lends us this lovely song for this issue, waving off recompense and wishing us well. This “slow version,” says Steve, was recorded in 1982 by Richard Dodd, and produced by Steve Burgh; other versions of ‘Listen to Me’ appear on his records The Best of Steve Forbert and More Young Guitar Days; for more information on his work and performances, see steveforbert.com.
3. A ‘ bigail, Don’t Be Long,’ by The Dimes,
musicians who played on campus and remember the experience with amusement. Thanks to the band’s Johnny Clay for his help, and to University education professor Eric Anctil for putting The Dimes and Portland Magazine together. ‘Abigail’ is from their 2009 record The King Can Drink the Harbour Dry, “a sonic postcard to historic Boston, a great pop album, sweetly catchy and appealing,” according to National Public Radio. 4. ‘Myall Creek,’ by Neil Murray,
the great Australian balladeer, from his lovely record Going the Distance. Some thirty Australian aboriginal people were murdered by settlers at Myall Creek in New South Wales, in June of 1838; in 2001 descendants of both the slain and the killers met at Myall Creek to begin a now-annual ceremony of reconciliation and remembrance. Murray, cofounder of the first popular Australian rock band with white and aboriginal musicians, the Warumpi Band, wrote his song to celebrate such grace as a way forward for his beloved country. Neil is also a fine writer; his essay “Eventually the Land Teaches You,” about his annual walk with Tjapwurrung people from the Hopkins River to Lake Bolac in Victoria, appeared in the Winter 2008 issue of this magazine. Many thanks to Neil and to Yvonne Koolis of Universal Music Publishing in New South Wales for their kindness here. For more of Neil’s work see neilmurray.com.au.
our guitarist, saw an episode of Morgan Spurlock’s documentary television program 30 Days, in which Morgan spends 30 days doing a job that he’s never done before, often a job that rarely gets the recognition it deserves. In this episode, Spurlock spent 30 days living as a coal miner with Dale Lusk, a West Virginia miner for more than 35 years, and his wife, Sandy. The documentary examines the great risks these men take in order to make electricity – risks that we often take for granted. What really struck Matt was a story about Dale’s daily routine. Dale goes to work every day not knowing if this is the day that an accident in the mines will injure him or take his life. So each morning before he goes to work he writes a letter to Sandy, telling her how much he loves her, in case he should not return. Matt immediately wrote out the lyrics to this song, and brought the idea to some music we had already been working on...it was perfect! It’s a simple, beautiful love story set to music. A week after we released the album on which this song appears (Winter Collection), 29 men died in an accident at the Massey Coal Mine in West Virginia. That really hit home for us. So when we play this song on the road we dedicate it to Dale and Sandy, and to the 29 men who gave their lives in the Massey accident.” To hear more of The Northstar Session, and to see their show schedule, see thenorthstarsession.com. Our thanks to Dave for quick, courteous, and generous help here.
5. ‘Slow Wave,’ by the Sea Caves 2. A ‘ Dream by Day,’ by Hal Brakebush ’50
Hal, who died in October at age 88, just after being delighted to hear that his song would appear on this record, was a riveting guy. His mom, his hero, left Sweden alone at age 14, ended up cooking on a ship to Rio, and finally ended up in New York at age 18. Hal grew up in Portland, was a football star at Benson High, endured the Depression selling flowers (as his widowed mom plucked chickens), worked as cooper (“worst job I ever had”) and a longshoreman, served in the Army Air Force as a gunner on a B-24 bomber on 21 missions over Germany, and finally entered the University in 1946. “I was married, with a child on the way, playing fullback on the freshman football team...” He started writing songs at sixteen years old, “getting ideas for melodies or lyrics in my head, then finding lyrics or melodies to fit, and then testing them with one finger on the piano. ‘A Dream by Day’ was a title from my friend, the lyricist Walt McKay, who was killed in the war, but I never could get a melody for it or words I liked. Then one day last year the opening of a melody popped into my head and I went to work and finished in two days; usually it takes weeks to complete a song.” The exquisite singer on this track is Portland’s Jennifer Niederloh, with the terrific local musicians Mark Simon on piano and Dan Balmer on guitar. A book of Hal’s songs was published just before he died; for information on it, and his foundation to help songwriters, contact his producer Michael Bard at 503273-2273, michael@studiobard.com. Readers interested in Hal’s songs can also buy them through Amazon, Rhapsody, and iTunes – all proceeds go to the foundation, run by his daughter Coral. Rest in peace, Hal.
Jessica Wright ’09 plays flute and sax for this Portland band, and sings. For more on their “austere, polished, precise, elaborate, grandiose, stately, emotional” music, “with fluttering, jazzy drumming, mathy [mathy??] guitar licks, off-kilter vocal harmonies, love of harmonics, and precise noodling,” see myspace.com/seacaves. 6. ‘Passed,’ by Swingin’ Amiss,
led by Connor Doe, Class of 2000, and son of the University’s gentle genius carpenter Dave Doe. This swinging jazzy song is from the band’s 2005 record Speakeasy, for which Connor wrote all lyrics, sang, played the guitar, and no kidding, banged a coconut. Our thanks to Connor for his help here. See his sweet essay in this issue about being a dad and musician, on page 12. 7. ‘Christmas in Cuzzert,’ by David James Duncan,
10. ‘Walk a Mile with Me,’ by Lloyd Mitchell Canyon,
the terrific novelist and essayist who received an honorary doctorate from the University in 2004, has been a Schoenfeldt Series visiting writer, and often contributes to Portland Magazine. David’s also a fine dulcimer player, which he plays here. For lots more about his work and music, see davidjamesduncan.com.
the Portland bluegrass/swing/country/jazz band that stars Jennifer Crow ’03 on vocals “and occasionally the piano,” she says. See page 28 for a chat with Jennifer about songs and songwriting and the odd sweet marriage of story and music. Jennifer writes most of the band’s songs with guitarist Jeff Church. The Canyon, we observe with pleasure, plays lots of shows in the Northwest – see lloydmitchellcanyon.com.
8. ‘Butterfly,’ by the Irish Breakfast Band,
featuring Chuck Moran ’60 on the bodhrán for this traditional slip jig; Chuck also sings for the Virginia-based band. For information on their records and performances, see irishbreakfastband.com. 9. A ‘ Letter Each Morning,’ by The Northstar Session
“Here’s a little insight on the song,” says the band’s Dave Basaraba ’03. “Matt Szlachetka,
Portland 32
11. ‘Green Beret,’ by Jim the Bad Goat,
a Portland bluegrassy band featuring University admissions data analyst Eric Herman on guitar, dobro, banjo, and “waarshtub,” as he says cheerfully. “This song was written by Dave Clarke, who along with me, Steve Dearborn, and Bill Bahrenberg, are the Goat. This version was recorded in Steve’s barn,
The Portland Magazine Album! A Celebration of the Roaring Joy & Prayer of Music! which we call Goat Crib Studios.” For more on the band and its shows, see jimthebadgoat.com. 12. ‘The Reel of Mullinavat/Paddy Taylor’s/A Pinch of Snuff,’ by the Hanz Araki Band
That’s Cary Novotny ’88 on the guitar on this medley of traditional Irish tunes, and his friend Hanz on the flute, from the record Wind and Rain. Cary has recorded with the band Cul an Ti (“the back room” in Gaelic, where all the good wild music was played as the formal music was primly in the house); he’s also a lawyer, often representing musicians. For more on the Hanz Araki Band, see hanzaraki.com; for more on Cary the attorney, see nwsportsandentertainmentlaw.com.
13. ‘Look at the Radio,’ by The Midget,
starring University literature professor John McDonald on the bass. John also played with the Low Bones, among many other bands, and has lived in Egypt and Jordan, and speaks Arabic, and is revealed in the shaggy glory of his misspent youth on pages 36. 14. ‘Planxty Dermot Grogan’ by Dan Possumato
on his 2010 album Pulling Out the Stops, on which Mick Mulcrone sings and plays the flute and bouzouki. Mick was a terrific journalism professor on The Bluff for eighteen years, from 1993 to 2010, and for many years coordinated a series of Irish Famine memorial concerts in Hunt Theater to raise money for the Oregon Food Bank; on his retirement last year he and his lovely bride Mary moved to County Mayo, to the small town from which Mick’s dad emigrated to America, long years ago. Great man, Micheál Pádraig, and much missed at the University. Our particular thanks to the generous Dan Possumato, and to the composer of the song, the County Mayo harpist Holly Geraghty. See danpossumato.com. 15. ‘Blues for Y vonne,’ by the Art Abrams Swing Machine Big Band
University music professor Dave Parker has played drums and trombone with the Swing Machine for years; this song, written by sax player Ray Rom for Art’s lovely bride, appeared on the record Children of the Night. Art is a Portland treasure and no mistake, as bandleader, radio jazz jockey, and erudite swingmaster. The Machine started as a fundraising vehicle for KMHD, Portland’s jazz
station, and it’s soared since; their fourth and newest record is Speak Low, Swing Hard. For more on Art and the Swing Machine, see artabrams.org. Our most sincere thanks to Art for giving us this song with a smile and without thought of cash or fine wines. 16. ‘Mbona Wanawake,’ by the Tipore Band
“This song,” says Adrienne Shelnutt ’12, “is about respecting your spouse and staying faithful, to control the spread of HIV; and the record itself was a wild project done this past summer as part of the University’s East Africa internship project, through our Moreau Center. I worked with the Kenyan theater group TIPORE (The Initiatives in Poverty Reduction), whose main work in the community is to disseminate information on sexual health through skit, song, and puppetry. I spent eight weeks working with the 15 members of the troupe. To help them financially, and to support them in creating alluring educational materials, we produced this disc of their original music for sale in America and Kenya. The members are between ages 19 and 25, and have so many stories... We started out to record 12 songs, and it’s a testament to the excitement of the project that all 18 vocalists and musicians were ready early in the morning; usually everything’s a couple hours late, thanks to African Time. We spent all day in the studio in Kakamega, two small rooms lined with egg cartons as acoustic control. The power went out at 4:30 p.m., as it does almost every afternoon, and we waited in the dark, singing, until the lights returned. The energy in the room was tangible: those who weren't singing were dancing...”
and remembered. The public performance in Bauccio Commons was unforgettable — Julianne, with the 12 students of the UP Jazz Band, and 4 alumni percussionists, and 35 exuberant University Singers in purple choir robes. A blessed night. Then we recorded it with amazing musicians — among them the bassist Phil Baker, who’s in Pink Martini, and the Grammy-nominated sax player Patrick Lamb, who never even glanced at the music, but just closed his eyes and played! Absolutely amazing, a true master...” Maureen, we note with pride, has produced three records for the University: Sacred Songs (2001), featuring the University Singers, Chapel Choir, and Alumni Singers; Ring Out Your Joy (2009), celebrating the new bell tower and starring the Nursing Faculty Handbell Choir; and this one, for which we are awfully grateful, thanks, Mo. Info on the other records: briare@up.edu, 503.943.7335. And yes, there is a Chapel Music Fund in case you want to point your Campaign gift thataway. Good way to sing Maureen’s verve. 19. ‘Cumberland,’ by Wild Hair,
starring University communication studies professor Jeff Kerssen-Griep on guitar and djembe. The song, from their record Buzz Cuts, was written by the great Massachusetts musician Larry Unger. Jeff, a really fine teacher, is in two bands at the moment, down from three, and often plays clubs and contra dances in Portland and Vancouver – for news of his shows and such, write kerssen@up.edu.
17. ‘The Road Home,’ by the Missoula Community Chorus of Montana
That’s Phil Stauffer ’70 singing tenor with the Chorus he has graced since 2002; Phil has been singing and playing the trombone since he was in fourth grade, and cheerfully tells the story of the night when the University’s music building burned down, melting his trumpet. The Chorus, now a beloved Missoula institution, formed in 2001 (its first rehearsal was on September 13 of that haunted year), and has ever after been intent on building and elevating community through music. Our thanks especially to Phil and Chorus manager Andrew Morris for their courtesy. For more on the Chorus and its schedule, see missoulachorus.org. 18. ‘Rise!’ starring Julianne Johnson ’83
The inimitable talent Julianne is a legendary blues and gospel and jazz singer in Portland, a noted actress, and the star here on the song written by Maureen Kuffner Briare ’92 for the opening of the University’s Rise Campaign last winter. “When I was asked to compose the theme song for the Campaign,” says Maureen, “I was thinking vibrant and vivacious, spirit and soul, soaring melodies, rising key changes...I kept leaning toward gospel, and I could just hear Julianne’s voice... suddenly I began to hear a melody, and I worked and reworked it in my mind until I could sing it myself without tripping up. I used my kids as a gauge, too – when I heard them singing what I’d sung to them, then I knew it could be sung from the heart,
Winter 2011 33
20. A ‘ mazing Grace,’ starring Phil Cansler
Usually a trumpeter, the late University music professor is playing an alpenhorn here, on his 1997 album Thine is the Glory. The alpenhorn is a fascinating thing altogether: usually carved of spruce or pine, it’s about eight feet long, has been used for music and signaling in the mountains of Europe for many centuries, and may trace back to Etruscan times. Brahms, Rossini, and Britten were all fascinated by its sound, and used it in their works. Philip, bless his complex heart, taught music on The Bluff from 1980 until his death in 2008, and was a legend as his alter ego, The Wild Man in the Purple Wig who led the University’s thunderous pep band at basketball games for many years (see inside back cover of this issue). You couldn’t believe the straitlaced music professor Doctor Cansler was the rubbery nut shaking his groove thang in that astounding wig, but it was. Rest in peace, Philip.
The Northstar Session, Kane McGee on drums, Matt Szlachetka on guitars, and Dave Basaraba of the Class of 2003 on keyboards and accordion. Everyone sings, too, says Dave, smiling. The band, based in Los Angeles, has appeared in the NBC television show Parenthood, just finished an east coast tour, and was back in the Northwest this fall for their second series of shows at McMenamins’ venues. See the disc bound into this issue for their lovely song “A Letter Each Morning,” which was inspired by an extraordinary coal miner in West Virginia. For information on the band and their music and shows, see thenorthstarsession.com. To foment and groom and help shape more startling musical talents like Dave, you might ponder a Campaign gift to the University’s many scholarships for music students; see rise.up.edu.
Ah, youth, which infused and confused even currently dignified and distinguished University professors of literature like John McDonald, here at about age twenty. Bands John has played in, over the years, in order: GI Patrol, First Trust, Second Trust, One Death Two, Mercy Killing, Hernando!, Good Wood Work, Clayfoot, Sadie Lou Heads, Las Mujeres, Homer Nods, Tired, Buffo, The Creckwa 3, 100% Neck, DJ Squeaky, Agamus, Louis Farrakan, The Midget, The Turn-Ups, and The Low Bones. Good Lord, what a resume. To help the Rise Campaign save young men like John from a lifetime of hammering bass lines in thrash bands, or to jazz his beloved English department, or to be of roaring help to our music students, or to buy lots more guitars with which to thrum the universe, see www.rise.up.
May 1969: Four University of Portland guys take the stage at Madeleine Parish in Portland to sing Kingston Trio songs. Far left, Jim O’Hanlon ’51, who would spend thousands of hours working with Blanchet House, the shelter that has provided millions of meals for the poor and broken in Portland. Far right, Dan Christianson ’50, terrific Pilot quarterback, also Blanchet House stalwart. On guitar, Jim Flynn ’55, who poured uncountable hours into teaching tennis to penniless kids. Sporting the hilarious cravat, Bob Cassidy ’58, Marine vet, teacher, coach, and counselor. All four men kept giving of themselves and their energies and talents all their lives; isn’t that what the University is about in its deepest bones? Boy, if you can make a hearty Campaign gift, it sure would matter. Call Diane Dickey at 503.943.8130, email her at dickey@up.edu, or see rise.up.edu. And thanks.
TheNight StevieRay Died Music never ends; it’s off somewhere still, echoing...
I
never never never in all my living days have understood how Stevie Ray Vaughn got that sound from a crummy old tinny old Stratocaster—tones that in anyone else’s hands would be wheedlethin, but that was Stevie Ray Vaughan. His signature was clear within a couple bars of one of his tunes spilling out of the radio, the density of those notes pure unequivocal evidence that sometimes a conversation about bigger things occurs between musician and instrument. I had a music gig at the Laurelhurst Pub the night Stevie died. It was a duo with my husband, and I remember we were both too upset at the news of the helicopter crash that killed Stevie Ray to play our own tunes, so we just filled the place with Stevie songs, many of which I only knew the lyrics part-way through, but I just let words find me and made up strings of things to sing about while Dave played the songs on his Gibson guitar, and so was born some weird hybrid hodgepodge of the memory of Stevie through his music and two young rockers at a bar in Oregon. We did not sound like the stuff of legend, but if someone had told me that far into the future, some 21 years later, that night would be one stuck in my mind, resonating as some sort of validation for why we do the things we do... It was a random night, the bar fairly empty, a gig amidst many gigs Dave and I played throughout those years. I had probably scrawled out the set list on the back of one of our posters while sitting in the passenger seat on the drive over. I can still see Dave plugging in the guitar, me plugging in the microphone, us about to begin, looking at each other and saying, “This isn’t going to work tonight.” Who knows what would have happened if the club had been jumping with fans, or if it had been a Saturday night instead of a Monday? But with the gratitude that only hindsight delivers, I believe all the circumstances aligned to promote an evening that started out as any other and ended as a map pin in the geography of memory. We didn’t sing one of our edgy folk tunes. Dave’s fingers decided on a blues progression and for the rest of the night we riffed and wove our way through one Stevie tune after another, improvising off choruses, Dave’s
solos, and my singing blurring recall with in-the-moment chord and word choices. Like Stevie Ray, Dave was largely self-taught and never learned to read music. He had struggled with severe dyslexia his whole life, and credited this brain glitch with forcing him to find his own sound in his own way. And he did. The tunes we wrote together won national songwriting awards, made radio charts across the country, and spilled out over five records, tours, and countless shows. And both Dave and Stevie died young. That’s where the comparisons rest. Stevie Ray Vaughan’s memorial statue is in Austin. There is no statue of Dave following his sudden death at age 44, but two decades following that night at the Laurelhurst, on the morning of the lowest tide of the year, our two kids dig a hole at the beach on the Oregon coast, and uncover the box we were given after Dave’s cremation. They each scoop up a handful of Dave’s ashes, their hands covered in ash like gloves, walk to the shoreline, bend down, and reach for the waves. Then we walk back to the rented beach house, all the cousins and aunts and uncles, Dave’s brother and mom. We make waffles, the kids run around the yard. I sit on the deck and listen. There is a particular resonance to children’s voices, their under-developed pitch. Gulls above squawk a peculiar fugue. The ocean fills every left-over soundspace. I remember Dave and I had to shout our vows on our wedding day, to be heard over the waves as we stood on that very beach, giggling, cupping hands to ears. But even the repetition of promises could not bind us forever, and after twelve years, the rings came off. I didn’t sing for seven years after that — not my songs, not improvised lyrics over the melodies of other songs. I could hardly even listen to the radio. And ten years after the rings came off, on the night Dave died, my children’s questions run through me not as words, not semantics, but as sounds, blurs of tones with a singular cadence, the language of hospital sounds, beeping machines, crying. The sound of Dave’s mom sucking in her breath as she gasps, over and over, in a pattern, a rhythm, sitting next to her son. Portland 38
I remember the music from a movie on television in the room. When we returned home from the hospital we crawled into my bed, my kids wanting to watch the movie they had started in the hospital. They had planned to watch it someday with their papa. So all night long we curled around each other in the bed and watched that movie. I gave them bowls of cereal. I propped myself in the middle, a child on either side. I remember many dusks back in our music days, tired after a day of work, loading up the car with amps and cords, heading to another nosedive bar with no guarantee of even fifty bucks, wondering why we kept lugging ourselves and our gear out to play our songs over the din of clinking beer bottles and loud conversation. It took many years of accumulated age and life to realize we make experiences to make memories to call upon when needed. I couldn’t have known then that sometimes, eventually, as elusive, unpredictable and abstract as memory can be, that sometimes these glimpses backward to the past are all that remain. Sound rings off forever. There is no reconciliation point, even when it moves past our ability to hear. It’s out there somewhere still, echoing. It’s something to believe in, to know, even though it can’t be touched or seen. Like faith. Music plays itself in how it’s felt, in how the notes reverberate through the tiny bones in our ears, yes, but also throughout all the rest of us, a secular love rooted in the infinity of belief. My son plays his father’s guitar now, dexterity in fingers that used to reach for me to pick him up. My daughter has a voice that is an anthology of divinity. I listen to them doodle around with notes while I’m making dinner or upstairs working. They make a kind of music that spills like light across a table. Sometimes I hear happiness. Sometimes I move through the song of our days like we moved through that night at the Laurelhurst, improvising, listening, being, remembering. n Kirsten Rian is a Portland writer, musician, teacher, and editor most recently of Kalashnikov in The Sun: An Anthology of Sierra Leonean Poets.
PHOTO BY MICHAEL LANDER, NORDIC PHOTOS, GETTY IMAGES
By Kirsten Rian
A Small Concert in the New Clark Library, 2014 Here’s a Campaign story: when we totally renovate and rebuild and reinvent Clark Library in the next couple of years — with unbelievably generous gifts from alumni who spent many hours there getting ready to launch into their brilliant lives, and from friends who love the jazz and epiphanies of libraries – it will have a large airy lobby in which we can savor music, speakers, playlets, and other stimulating fare. Imagine a spring evening, just after dinner, with few terrific musicians and a small crowd of students and neighbors in the new Clark Library...want to help invent that? Call Diane Dickey, 503.943.8130, dickey@up.edu, or see rise.up.edu.
PAINTING BY FATHER MARK GHYSELINCK, C.S.C.
The Music of Cranes The loudest bird in the world and your heart... By Hank Lentfer
Young sandhill cranes have no sense of direction. Migration routes are learned from their parents rather than gleaned from chromosomes. Orphaned
on the tundra, hatchlings would stay put even as flocks of ducks, geese, and shorebirds streamed south. They’d peck at the last of the insects in the growing cold before succumbing to the darkening days of the Arctic autumn. The absence of a genetic map, although lethal to the abandoned crane, may explain the longevity of the species. Since flight paths and stopovers are constantly taught, they can be quickly relearned. The collective knowledge of any flock is repeatedly fine-tuned by the changing world under its wings. Some cranes, through generations, have tightened migration routes, ultimately abandoning the annual movement altogether. Sandhills in Florida and Cuba, for example, stay put all year. Their young are taught the daily routes between riverside roost and grainrich fields but learn nothing of the thousand-mile flights carrying the sandhills over my home. Humans, like cranes, are both nomadic and sedentary, restless and rooted. Curled tightly in the womb, a fetus has no innate sense of when to travel or where to land. Each generation must learn anew how to move through the world. [Maybe this will save us.] The twenty thousand sandhills migrating through Gustavus and on up the Pacific Coast [over the University of Portland] is a sidestream compared to the great river of birds flowing through the continent’s interior. The first flocks drop into Nebraska’s Platte River in late February. Through March, thousands more drift in from wintering grounds along the western Gulf Coast through Texas, southern New Mexico, Arizona, and northern Mexico. A half-million cranes, the world’s largest concentration, gather along an eighty-mile stretch of river known as the Big Bend Reach: a braided, shallow slip of water surrounded by agricultural fields. They feast on waste corn, find new mates, or renew affinities with old ones. Mated pairs often separate in the winter, yet in their Portland 42
SEAN NEILSON
Ten million years ago, a roiling cloud of volcanic ash obliterated the sun. It fell fast, like an avalanche of black snow, suffocating the animals of the Great Plains beneath ten feet of abrasive powder. Today, at an excavation site in Nebraska, teams of graduate students slowly scrape and sweep through the black earth surrounding an ancient watering hole. The world emerging beneath their tools looks more like the African savanna than the farm country of the Midwest. The students have uncovered an entire herd of hippos gathered for a drink. Around the outskirts of the oasis are the remains of rhinos; three-toed horses; deer-like animals with twisting, forward-leaning horns; and long-necked camels larger than present-day giraffes. The fine ash yields the delicate details of bones and even the impressions of feathers. Of all the bizarre critters rising from that ash only the graceful skeleton of the sandhill crane looks familiar to our modern-day eyes. Since that blast, cranes have made millions of migrations over a changing continent. Most of the species that survived the volcano were later killed by a prolonged drought that shuffled the composition of North American fauna. The cranes watched the demise of rhinos, camels, and hippos. They watched trans-American forests and woodlands give way to grassland prairie. They saw glaciers stretch from coast to coast, retreat and return, again and again. They witnessed the arrival and extinction of wooly mammoths and short-faced bears, saber-toothed tigers and giant sloths. Crane calls greeted the first humans spreading south down the continent from Beringia. In recent decades, the oldest species of bird on the planet has watched the lights of cities scatter across the country like embers from a great fire.
Why is it that people deaf to the waterfall song of a winter wren or blind to the acrobatics of a raven can be struck dumb by the sound of cranes? The Greek word for a crane chorus is inangling. The Koyukun people of Alaska call sandhills Dildoola, in mimicry of their call. Aldo Leopold described the sounds of approaching sandhills as the “tinkling of little bells,” the “baying of some sweet-throated hound,” and a “pandemonium of trumpets, rattles, croaks, and cries.” The ornithologist Scott Weidensaul de-
scribes the sound of a far-off flock as “fingernails drawn along the teeth of several combs, but with a rich melodic sound, like delicate bamboo chimes struck with small mallets.” My friend Jen says it’s the ghost of an owl playing a wooden flute. Sandhills are the loudest birds in the world. Their resonance and volume comes through a trachea that doubles back on itself in a tightly curved S shape fused to the chest bone. Stretched out, the windpipe is longer than the bird itself. Bony rings in this elongated tube make the whole apparatus vibrate during vocalization, amplifying and adding complex harmonics. The sound carries for miles. On still days, I have heard the faint whisper of faroff cranes
winging through a blue sky beyond the edge of sight. At tree-top level, the sound of kettling cranes crescendos through my ears and reverberates against my chest. I can’t pin the effect of the cranes’ sound onto a flat page or a computer screen. Not until I heard the thrumming of my child’s heart did I feel a smile tugged into existence in quite the same way. Sandhill cranes did not outlive dinosaurs by being finicky. Drifting into the ice-gripped Arctic in early spring, they probe the edge of receding snow, gobbling whatever they can find: insects, grubs, spiders, arthropods, and the roots of grasses, sedges, and willows. To feed their ravenous chicks, the parents turn carnivorous. Like a robin searching for worms, they cock their heads to watch for the scurry of lemmings; they steal eggs from neighboring snow geese or peck apart baby ptarmigan to stuff down the gullets of the growing colts. While specialized species come and go, sandhills are the Portland 44
masters of making do. On their winter range they pick at worms, frogs, and mice slithering and crawling across the corn and rice fields. Like coyotes and deer slipping through city streets, these birds skirt the brink of extinction, always poking the world’s changing edges for someplace new to nest, something new to eat. We too are adapting. As a boy, my grandfather could not imagine the interstates and moon landings, the Holocaust and Hiroshima. Likewise, it is impossible to predict the events that will transform the century of my daughter’s life. It’s safe to assume the pace of change will accelerate, that the world outside Linnea’s crib will have little resemblance to the world beyond her death bed. In such a world we cannot afford to be finicky in feeding our appetite for beauty. Beneath moon or sun, storm or calm, in every moment of every day for over ten million years, the voice of a sandhill crane has called out somewhere on the planet in a seamless lineage of sound. There is cohesion in the chaotic calls of cranes, an invisible thread binding living beads, stitching the flocks, tying each generation to the next. Cranes talk to their egg-bound chicks with murmurs and clicks. The chicks imprint on the sound; they yearn to follow that voice even before breaking free of the shell. The birds grow, add their high peeps to the throaty calls of the larger flock and are soon clucking to their own offspring. Our lives too are embedded in a rich sea of sounds. While still in the womb, a fetus listens and responds to the muted tones of the world it will soon enter. The rich diversity of sound — music and wind, laughter and bird song, sobs and sea surf, poems and snowfall, stories and crane calls — guides us through our lives and hold us in place as surely as gravity keeps our feet pinned to the spinning earth. In the absence of sound and story, prisoners, locked in solitary confinement, lose all orientation and quickly tumble toward insanity. The lineage of voices that hold us in place come from near and far, the furred and feathered, the newly born and the long dead. n Hank Lentfer is a writer and musician in Alaska, where he manages the Gustavus Forelands Preserve, a four-thousand-acre refuge for migratory sandhill cranes. He is coeditor of Arctic Refuge: A Circle of Testimony. This essay is drawn from his new book Faith of Cranes: Finding Hope and Family in Alaska, from Mountaineers Books.
AT RIGHT, PHOTO BY ERICH AUERBACH, HULTON ARCHIVE, GETTY IMAGES
cacophony on the Platte they somehow find each other. When they do, they dance, flinging sticks and grass stems with their bills, bowing, leaping, legs akimbo, wing feathers spread wide. Then, standing side by side, bills tilted to the sky, they sing a duet, the unison call; two or three notes from the female answered quickly by the male — two birds, one sound echoing back through a million springs. At night the birds roost wing to wing, crowded into the shallow waters and gravel islands of the river. At daybreak they billow and resettle into the adjacent fields to feed on corn left behind by the combines. Never are they quiet. In the dark, the landscape purrs with their collective chatter, as if the quiet river suddenly found its voice. In the growing light the cranes ruffle their feathers, stretch a wing to the side, a leg straight back, restless to feed, to fly. The flock yearns north. The memory of migration ripples in growing murmurs as spring approaches. Birds can sense barometric pressure, a weather station tucked into the folds of each tiny brain. Sometime in early April, when the forecast is right, the carpet of birds lifts from the prairie and spills toward the Arctic. Cranes are visual migrants; they match rivers and ridges to unique mental maps. They cover up to five hundred miles a day, winging from wetland to wetland. At each stop, they dance, pairs rising and falling through dusk and dawn, creating waves in a sea of gray bodies. Farther north, the threads of birds scatter across the landscape, some drifting toward Quebec, others toward Alaska’s tundra, still others across the Bering Sea to Siberia. The strands break smaller and smaller as cranes fan across the Arctic until, finally, single pairs set their wings and drop through the chilly polar air to the same tundra pond or river delta they left eight months before. When they arrive, they once again dance. And they sing: three notes and the answering fourth, over and over, with no one to hear save maybe an Arctic fox or a loon.
PHOTO BY ERICH AUERBACH, HULTON ARCHIVE, GETTY IMAGES
Aaron Copland, one of the greatest of American composers, was on campus in 1975 to receive an honorary doctorate and mingle cheerfully with music students and faculty; when he died in 1990, he left a complete set of his scores to the University. They are housed in Clark Library, which is being completely rebuilt this year – to aim your Campaign gift at the library, or help out with music scholarships and such, see rise.up.edu.
UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND MOCK’S CREST PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS THE GILBERT & SULLIVAN CLASSIC
A Million Musicals The University has been putting on musical theater in every conceivable form since 1901; the best-known is probably the hilarious annual summer Gilbert & Sullivan light operas – this year The Yeomen of the Guard, in June – but here are a handful of the oftendashing posters from recent years of all sorts of lyrical adventures. To help the Campaign jazz theater on The Bluff, see rise.up.edu.
HMS
PINAFORE June 9 -11, 15 -18, 22 -25 Opening night Friday, June 9 (already sold out!) Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays at 7:30 p.m.; Sundays at 2:00 p.m. Mago Hunt Center Theater, 5000 N. Willamette Blvd. Adults: $25, Students and Seniors: $23, Group of ten or more: $21 Box Office opens on May 15th. Call (503) 943-7287 to order tickets
YEOM N GUARD OF THE
By Gilbert & Sullivan
University of Portland Mock’s Crest Productions June 3-26, 2011 Thurs - Sat at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at 2:00 p.m. Tickets: $30 for adults $25 for students or seniors Call 503.943.7287 Mago Hunt Center Theater 5000 N. Willamette Blvd.
MOZART IN THE CATHEDRAL W. A. Mozart’s Requiem Mass and Vaughan Williams Dona Nobis Pacem
By Gilbert & Sullivan Presented by University of Portland Mock’s Crest Productions June 4,5,6 11,12,13 18,19,20, 24,25, 26, 27 Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 24 at 7:30 p.m. Sundays at 2:00 p.m.
Performed by
The University of Portland
I O L A N T H E
Choral Arts Ensemble of Portland University of Portland Singers University Choral Union Professional orchestra and soloists Friday, April 11, 2003 7:30 p.m. Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception NW 18th and Couch St. Tickets: $25 General $22 Seniors $12.50 Students For Tickets and Information, Call 503.943.7287
University of Portland Mock’s Crest Productions presents The Gilbert & Sullivan classic
THE PIRATES OF By Gilbert & Sullivan Presented by University of Portland Mock’s Crest Productions
PENZANCE
Mago Hunt Center Theater 5000 N. Willamette Blvd. Ticket Prices: $24 for Adults $22 for Seniors/Students $20 for Groups of ten or more To Order Tickets: Call either the Hunt Center Box Office at 503.943.7287 Charge by phone at any Safeway TicketsWest Ticket Center 503.224.TIXX or 1.800.922.TIXX Order online www.ticketswest.com (TicketsWest tickets subject to convenience charge.)
The University of Portland Department of Performing and Fine Arts presents
The Mago Hunt Theatre The University of Portland Campus June 6-29, 2008
June 6,7, 8, 12,13,14,15 19, 20, 21, 22 Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. Sundays at 2:00 p.m. Mago Hunt Center Theater 5000 N. Willamette Blvd. Tickets: Adults $22 Seniors/ Students $20 Groups of ten or more $18 Phone: (503) 943 -7287 Tickets can also be ordered through (503) 224-TIXX 1-800-992-TIXX www.fastixx.com
Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m.; Sundays at 2:00 p.m. The Hunt Center Box Office Opens May 12; 503.943.7287. Tickets only $25 for adults, $23 for students and seniors.
The
A Celebration of Easter
MESSIAH George Frideric Handel
Mikado By Gilbert & Sullivan
with added orchestration by W.A. Mozart Performed by
Choral Arts Ensemble of Portland University of Portland Singers Professional orchestra and soloists Roger O. Doyle, Conductor Easter Sunday, April 23, 2000, 2:00 p.m. or Easter Tuesday, April 25, 2000, 7:30 p.m.
The University of Portland
PATIENCE
St. Mary’s Cathedral N.W. 18th and Couch St. Tickets: $20 General; $18 Seniors, Students For Tickets and Information, Call 503.943.7228
Presented by University of Portland Mock’s Crest Productions June 7, 8, 9 13,14,15,16 20,21,22,23, 2002 Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. Sundays at 2:00 p.m. Mago Hunt Center Theater 5000 N. Willamette Blvd. Tickets: Adults $22 Seniors/Students $20 Groups of ten or more $16 Phone: (503) 943-7287 Tickets can also be ordered through (503) 224-TIXX 1-800-992-TIXX www.fastixx.com
Mago Hunt Center Theater University of Portland 5000 North Willamette Blvd. Tickets: $8 general $4 students and seniors For tickets and information call (503) 943-7287 April 17,18,19,20 at 7:30 pm April 20, 21 at 2:00 pm
The University of Portland Department of Performing and Fine Arts presents
THE THREEPENNY OPERA Book and Lyrics by Bertolt Brecht Music by Kurt Weill English adaptation by Marc Blitzstein
April 9, 10, 11, 12 at 7:30 p.m. Matinee performances April 12 and 13 at 2:00 p.m. Mago Hunt Center Theater, 5000 North Willamette Boulevard Tickets: $10 general, $5 students and seniors Tickets available for $3 each for groups of 10 or more For tickets and information call 503-943-7287
Music heals, music is a prayer, music delights, music can slip hope into ears and hearts, music can salve – this is one of the core convictions of the Children’s Cancer Association, which has been lit up since its founding in Portland in 1995 by all sorts of University of Portland folks. Student volunteers, alumni like Kathy Perko and Kyle Bunch and Katherine Phillips Durham, whole families of alumni like the Katigbaks and McNassars, many dozens of cheerful nursing alumni...totally great idea. For more on CCA, especially their cool new MyMusicRx program, see www.joyrx.org. And to help the University turn music into prayers, see rise.up.edu.
A Voice Lifted to the Heavens “Music, like silence, is the language of dissolving...� By Pico Iyer
step into the great vaulted space, and very soon I am greeted by a voice, which lifts and penetrates me all at once. It issues from a tiny figure at the far end of the candled building — Vietnamese, I suspect, of indeterminate age, and singing in a language I can barely follow. She is dressed in a gown the color of dusk, and sometimes she slowly waves her arm above her head — a date-palm flapping in a lazy wind — to invite us all to join her. The sound is so pure that it might be coming down from the heavens as much as rising up to them. The stained-glass windows around Notre Dame convey light, the possibility of even the foggiest surface being illuminated; the candles convey mystery, all we cannot and will never see fully; the statues on every side place the human figure within the celestial drama. But it is the music that makes me feel there is a light and resonance within us all — a higher harmony — and not just outside. I’m often asked, as a writer, if the book is dead; what hopes does the novel have, people ask, in the face of the multi-media distractions of the moment? That is very much the wrong question: the real one should be, “How can contemporary fiction convey soul, struggle, the possibility of something more — submission — if it refuses to believe in something beyond us that might be within us? I turn on the radio and I hear Bono exhorting a crowd of 53,000 to “Turn this song into a prayer.” Then putting Psalm 40 to music. Bruce Springsteen is offering praise for the light that comes to us from something eternal, even as he chafes against the suffering and struggle that seem the human lot. Handel, Bach and Mozart are carrying us to a music of the spheres that declines to believe only in human limitation; gospel music, delivered by the likes of the Reverend Al Green, is not even shy about proclaiming its message in its Virgin Records category heading. But literature, more and more in the last 150 years, is afraid of wearing its soul on its sleeve, and so leaves us stuck inside the kitchen, the dirty dishes piling up, and no way out. We turn, occasionally, to Marilynne Robinson, to Annie Dillard, even to the ones who rage against religion — from Dostoevksy to James Wood — and are made aware of a grander dimension in life, forces we can’t anticipate or bribe; we listen to Leonard Cohen, singing about “The Nameless and the
Winter 2011 51
Name” and declaring, “If It Be Your Will,” and begin to understand why something in us is so parched that Rumi, the 13th century Islamic singer of divinity and the Beloved, has become the best-selling poet in America. But still writing comes up against an older and more stubborn truth: words are the stuff of men, and have to do with division, distinction, discrimination. Music, like silence, is the language of dissolving. I go even to the most secular concert because it offers the traditional consolations of church: a large crowd singing as one, a language that the mind can’t argue away; transmission, transport and transcendence; and a reminder that we and our small lives are not the be-all and the end-all, alpha and omega. Once, high up in the nosebleed seats of Osaka Castle Hall in Japan, I closed my eyes and heard Eric Clapton take off on long silvery riffs on his guitar. He stood alone, completely motionless at the back of the stage. His head lifted up, his eyes clearly shut. The music was playing him, more than the other way round. In fact it seemed to be streaming through him — he and his instrument just vessels — and enveloping us all in something beyond the reach of explanations. I didn’t have the words for it — I was embarrassed to hear myself saying it — but I didn’t care what his religion was or wasn’t (or mine, either): this was what the world sounded like when it was unbroken. So often, listening to music, we close our eyes and shake our heads. Our fingers, legs start to move in spite of us; we speak in the language that begins when words run out. It could be ghazal or raga or hymn; it’s only the sound of a soul giving itself up and over to something changeless and illuminated. The man at the front of Notre Dame offers a few words, his hands outstretched. Tourists cluck along the aisles, trying to capture mystery with their point-and-shoots. A tour-guide recites facts, figures and dates. Then the tiny woman at the front lifts her head and sings again, and we are in the company of angels once more. Turn the song into a prayer. Turn the prayer into a song. n Pico Iyer was the University’s Schoenfeldt Series visiting writer in 2010; his book The Man Within My Head, about Graham Greene, fathers, and the quest for faith, will be published in January of 2012.
PAINTING BY ROSSO FIORENTINO (1494-1540), SCALA / MINISTERO PER I BENI E LE ATTIVITA CULTURALI / ART RESOURCES, NY
I
Artie Shaw, Transfigured This ‘box sculpture’ by the noted Portland graphic designer Joe Erceg ’55, from a long series of such lovely wooden works, celebrates the great American clarinetist Artie Shaw, who quit music at the height of his career because he felt the swing music so prevalent at the time wasn’t progressing. Music lovers of the Big Band Era will remember his theme song “Begin the Beguine” with great fondness; Shaw himself told the story of playing its first two notes on an aircraft carrier while on a USO tour in the Pacific during the Second World War, and hearing the sailors go nuts cheering; the song meant home to them. The right side of the box here represents the massed clarinet section from the big bands of the Forties, says Erceg; the left side represents notes on a sheet of music. Why the box? “The assemblage is my art form and the box my canvas,” he says, smiling. “Perhaps the box sings music in the same way as the mandolin on the cover of this issue speaks of it. Static art only brings to the viewer that which he has already experienced in his life. Therefore, I like to make art in which the meaning of the piece changes according to the viewer; someone deep in the forests of the Amazon who knows nothing about Western music will have a very different take on this than someone walking the streets of Portland.”
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Ruth Benzar ’12 was “strolling through Caceres, in the Spanish province of Extremadura, with friends from the University’s study-abroad program in Granada, when I saw this beautiful old piano – to me it has the same medieval charm of Caceres itself, which is old and lovely and filled with stories. In the old days here, for example, prominent families of the city would launch catapults from their family’s towers in disputes with other families, a habit that became so violent that the Church ordered all families to destroy their towers...” Ruth, majoring in biology and Spanish, is applying to medical school to become a surgeon, “ideally in Latin America.” To help students like her play the songs of their dreams, see rise.up.edu.
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PILOT NAVIGATOR SERIES Pilot Supper Club: Don’t miss this incredible opportunity to discover the very best in dining that the city of Portland has to offer. The Pilot Supper club will visit and dine at three restaurants throughout the winter and spring. Under the tutelage of Bon Appétit general manager Kirk Mustain, you will have the opportunity to get an insider’s peek at the burgeoning culinary scene in the Pacific Northwest. Upcoming event dates: January 10, February 7, and March 13. All locations will be announced two weeks prior to the event at up.edu/ alumni. Cost is $50 per person, per meal. Price includes cost of meal and corkage fees. NAB Poker Tournament: Come to The Bluff on Friday, January 20 and call our bluff at the National Alumni Board Poker Tournament. Proceeds from your $50 entry fee will help support the National Alumni Board Scholarship Fund. A pre-tournament buffet meal will be served at 6:45 p.m. At 7:30 p.m., the chips hit the table in this no-limit Texas Hold-Em tournament. Financial Planning and Investing: The Office of Alumni Relations is pleased to welcome back Adina Flynn ’93, J.D., to discuss the basics of financial planning on Wednesday, January 25, 2012, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. This seminar assumes a long-term outlook for investing and will cover such topics as debt management, basic cash flow, cash reserves, and company sponsored health insurance and retirement plans. Flynn will also review the basics of merging finances for couples. This seminar will also be broadcast live on the web. Please contact the Office of Alumni Relations for more information about logging into the webinar. Compassion in Action: A Retreat for Caregivers This retreat is aimed at nonprofessionals who have become pri-
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mary caregivers for aging relatives and may be overwhelmed or feel unprepared to provide proper care not only for their loved ones, but also for themselves in their new role. This retreat will teach basic concepts of selfcare and connect caregivers with one another for mutual support. We will also explore how caregiving is a way to share in the mission and compassion of Christ. This overnight retreat (Friday evening through Saturday afternoon) is limited to 24 participants. Women’s Networking Lunch: Join us on Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at Elephant’s Deli (115 NW 22nd Ave, Portland, 97210) for the Women’s Networking Lunch. The overall number of women entering the U.S. work force continues to increase. In 2010, women accounted for 51 percent of all workers in highpaying management, professional, and related occupations. Take time to attend this luncheon and enjoy an opportunity to network with your peers. Cost is $20 per person. For more information, or to RSVP to any of these events, contact the alumni office at alumni@up.edu or 888.UP. ALUMS (888.872.5867).
WATCH THE PILOTS AT THE WCC BASKETBALL TOURNEY IN VEGAS The West Coast Conference basketball tournament returns to Las Vegas beginning Wednesday, February 29, 2012 and ending on Monday, March 4, 2012. There has never been a better excuse to get the band back to together and head to Las Vegas than the 2012 WCC basketball tournament. The Office of Alumni Relations has structured an exciting weekend around the Pilot men’s and women’s games. Sunday entertainment options include a golf excursion, an exclusive spa day, and an evening show. Join us for a pregame tailgate party outside the Orleans Arena two hours
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prior to the start of the first Pilot men’s basketball game of the tournament. Discounted rooms are available; contact alumni relations at alumni@ up.edu for details. If you are interested in purchasing tickets for the tourney, you’ll need to do so through the WCC or the Orleans arena. All-session tickets (which include all men’s and women’s games) are currently available to the general public. Please visit http://wccsports.cstv.com/ot/ west-baskbl-tournament.html or call the Orleans ticket office at 888-234-2334. It is strongly recommended to purchase tickets as soon as possible.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012 and plan to join us at noon at the Multnomah Athletic Club in downtown Portland. University president Rev. E. William Beauchamp, C.S.C., will deliver his annual State of the University address and take full measure of one of the finest Catholic universities in the West. We will also honor the three 2011 Alumni Award winners and recognize the student recipient of this year's Gerhardt Award. Watch for your invitation in the mail this spring and plan to attend to honor your fellow alumni and hear the latest news about the university’s continued growth and many accomplishments.
SAVE THE DATE FOR REUNION, JUNE 2012
CELEBRATE THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SALZBURG PROGRAM
Save the date to join us next summer (June 21-24, 2012) as we transport the idyllic Greek Isles to The Bluff at Reunion 2012. We’ll be bringing the best of the zesty Mediterranean to Portland as we welcome back social fraternities and sororities, meet the new dean of the Shiley School of Engineering, and celebrate the Golden Anniversary of the Class of 1962, the Silver Anniversary of the Class of 1987, and induct another legendary group of Pilot athletes into the Athletics Hall of Fame. We welcome all of our alumni and their families and hope that they’ll return to campus, catch up with classmates and faculty, and participate in a Reunion weekend full of exciting memories.
ALUMNI AWARDS PRESENTED AT STATE OF UNIVERSITY LUNCHEON Seating is limited at our annual State of the University and Alumni Awards luncheon so mark your calendars for
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In the fall of 1963 the University of Portland sent its first group of students to study abroad in Salzburg, Austria. Join the University in celebrating the 50th anniversary of this momentous occasion with a visit to UP’s Salzburg Center and a cruise down the Danube River. The 50th Anniversary trip begins with three days in Salzburg, where guests will be able to enjoy a tour of the city and two group dinners. On September 11, 2013, guests will have the option of embarking upon a week-long cruise of the Danube River, beginning in Vienna and ending in Nuremberg. Along the way, the ship will cruise through the vineyard-rich Wachau Valley and the Bavarian forest before finally moving through Main-Danube Canal en route to the historic city of Nuremberg. Please save the date! More information on Pilot Navigator Series travel opportunities can be found at www.up.edu/alumni/. Contact the alumni office at (503) 9437328 or alumni@up.edu to make reservations or get further details.
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The family of the late H.J. Belton Hamilton ’50, who passed away on April 15, 2011, has established and endowed an annual scholarship in his name at the University, according to Sharon Hogan of our development office. The Hon. H.J. Belton Hamilton Scholarship will be awarded biyearly to a full-time student (or students) who participates in the Moreau Center for Service and Leadership’s Civil Rights Immersion Program, and maintains a Bminus average or above grade point average. Our thanks to the family— Midori Minamoto Hamilton, his wife of 53 years; son, Konrad M. Hamilton; daughter, Camille Hamilton Pating and grandchildren David, Anna, and Grace Pating; and sisters, Marie Richardson and Merie Burr—for their generosity in helping future University of Portland students pursue lives and careers dedicated to service.
Carmine (Bubenik) Jensen ’42 passed away on September 26, 2009. Carmen earned a degree in nursing from the University of Portland and raised five children with her husband, Albert P. Jensen. Survivors include daughters, Sylvia Jensen Fewel and Melissa Livengood; sons, Kit, Peter, and Timothy; eight grandchildren; and her brother, Miles Bubenik. Her husband Albert died in 2002. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Malcolm Watson ’42 passed away on October 7, 2011, at his home in Spokane, Wash. He interrupted his education to serve in World War II and took part in the invasion of Normandy, landing on Omaha Beach on day 2 with “C” company. On his return to civilian life he married his sweetheart, Mary Alene “Peggy” Allen, and began his career in sales with G.E. Supply. Survivors include his wife Peggy and children, Thomas J. Watson, Christine L. Dixson, R.N., Ann F. (Fran) Watson, M.D., Leslie J. Johnston, William M. Watson, S.J., and James A. Watson. Our prayers and condolences to the family. John E. Richard ’43 passed away on October 7, 2011, in Portland, Ore. He served for three years in the U.S. Navy during World War II in the South Pacific, and entered the civilian workforce as a probation officer with the Jackson County Juvenile Department. He later worked for the National Conference of Christians and Jews and St. Joseph’s Nursing Home. Survivors include his wife of 66 years, Rosemary; sons, Peter and Michael; daughters, Roseanne, Frances, Elizabeth, and Barbara; 12 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Thomas A. O’Neill ’46 passed away on October 7, 2011. An ironworker for 65 years, Thomas took part in building many landmark structures around the world, including the Astoria-Megler Bridge at the mouth of the Columbia River and the suspension bridge over the Orinoca River in Venezuela. Survivors include children Molly Ann Pihl, Brian John O’Neill, Megan Kate O’Neill, Mark Miller, Marla Ann Toma, and Jada Marie Ishida; 22 grandchildren; eight great-grandchildren; sisters, Peggy Higgins, Marjorie Hicks, and Jean O’Neill-Albrich; and brother, Gerry O’Neill ’55. Our prayers and condolences to
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N O T E S We were saddened to learn of the passing of Arthur J. “Bud” Wiese ’41, on August 19, 2011, yet we take comfort in the fact that he went peacefully at his home in Portland’s Laurelhurst neighborhood with his beloved wife Vivienne at his side. Art served in World War II immediately on his graduation from The Bluff; his Army tour of duty included Tinian Island and reconstruction in Japan. He worked for 35 years at Dun & Bradstreet, retiring as District Manager in 1982, all the while doing everything in his power to support religious and charitable causes, especially in the Portland Catholic community. Scholarships in the Wiese family name will benefit generations of students at the University of Portland, Marylhurst University, and Central Catholic High School; he also threw his support behind Mt. Angel Seminary, Catholic Charities, the Portland Archdiocese, and De Paul Industries. He was at heart a man with little patience for ostentation, demonstrating through his quiet, determined manner the importance he placed on family, faith, and community. Survivors include Vivienne, his wife of 64 years; sons, Peter, Arthur M., Chuck, and Mark; daughter, Kathy; 11 grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; sister, Margaret Thompson; and several nieces and nephews. Our prayers and condolences to the family. the family. Howard E. O’Loughlin ’46 passed away on December 14, 2009, according to a letter we received from his wife, Zita Marie O’Loughlin. He earned his bachelor of business administration on The Bluff after his service in the U.S. Air Force Transport Command during World War II, and operated a gasoline bulk plant and service station business for 38 years. “He loved his time there and often spoke of it,” writes Zita Marie. “He was a wonderful human being and is much missed by his family.” Our prayers and condolences to Zita Marie and the family. James L. DeLong ’48 passed away on September 22, 2011, in Vancouver, Wash. He served with the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II and then worked for Kaiser Permanente for over 40 years. He is survived by one son,
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four daughters, 11 grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. His wife of 40 years, Betty Lou, died in 1991. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Carl O. Rubin ’50 passed away on October 7, 2011. He served in the European Theater during World War II. He began teaching in civilian life and became the head of the math department at Grant High School. Survivors include his sons, Robert and David; daughters, Ann White and Kathryn Rowe; sisters, Elsie Wessell and Ruth Nelson; nine grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family. William Y. Sakai ’50 passed away on September 27, 2011, in Portland, Ore. Born in Toppenish, Wash., to Bun and Kichiro Sakai, he was interned with his family after the out-
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University of Portland alumnus and Bon Appetit Management Company co-founder Fedele Bauccio ’64, ’66 has been honored with one of the inaugural James Beard Foundation Leadership Awards, established to recognize visionaries in business, government, and education who are responsible for creating a healthier, safer, and more sustainable food world. The honorees range from urban agriculture heroes to tireless school-food pioneers. Bauccio said he was “deeply humbled” to be recognized alongside nine other leaders: First Lady Michelle Obama, for her fight against childhood obesity; Edible Schoolyard revolutionary Alice Waters; sustainable agriculture pioneer Fred Kirschenmann; urban-farming superhero Will Allen; and distinguished luminaries Debra Eschmeyer, Sheri L. Flies, Jan Kees Vis, Janet Poppendieck, and Craig Watson. break of World War II, first at the North Portland Livestock Pavilion (now the Portland Expo Center), and later at a camp in Minidoka, Idaho. He later served in the U.S. Army in Germany. He began his career as an accountant in 1951, earning a position as partner at Alten Sakai & Company LLP. Survivors include his wife of 62 years, Mazie; son, Ken Sakai; three grandchildren; brother, Henry Sakai; and sister, Kim Kai. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Hector Maffei ’51 passed away on September 24, 2011. During his time on The Bluff he received the faculty award as the most outstanding senior in the School of Chemistry. He spent over 37 years on the work force at Hanford and General Electric. Survivors include his wife, Gloria; daughters, Phyllis Wilson and Barbara Walker; five grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Harold E. Brakebush ’51 passed away on October 7, 2011, in Portland, Ore. A lifelong Portland resident, Harold sold real estate for over 50
years, coached CYO, and loved to compose his own songs. He was married to Eleanor for 39 years before she passed away; his second wife, Patricia, died last year. Survivors include his son Paul and daughter Coral ’69; nine grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Louisa Schlotfeldt, wife of Fred Schlotfeldt ’53, passed away on October 12, 2011, in Vancouver, Wash. Survivors include her husband of 49 years, Fred; sons Jim and Albert; four grandchildren; brother, Jim Barei; and sister, Nancy Monahan. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Thomas S. Kang ’56 passed away on June 28, 2011, according to a call from his wife, Betty J. Kang. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Kathleen W. Altenhofen ’56 passed away on October 2, 2011, at her home after a 14year battle with breast cancer. She met her husband, Ed ’55 in her first year at the University of Portland and they enjoyed 55 years together. Survivors include Ed and their children: Kirk, Kelly,
N O T E S Vicki, Teri, Rich, and John; as well as 16 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. “Our dear sweet Kathie will be missed by all who knew her,” read her obituary, “and we all wish her the absence of pain, and the peace and enjoyment of God’s presence in her new Heavenly home.” Amen to that. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Robert C. “Bob” Ballard ’57 passed away on October 8, 2011, surrounded by those he loved, after a four-month battle with cancer. Bob was one of many who interrupted their education to serve in World War II, and earned his degree on his return to civilian life. Survivors include his son, Randy; daughter, Lesli Handley; and four grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences. We heard from Donald Haynes recently, who writes: “I don't know if it’s interesting enough to be mentioned in the magazine, but the earth shattering (for me at least) news is that the blog for my fantasy trilogy is now operational and getting visits. You can take a look to decide at www.swordthane.com.” We received a letter from Mary Elaine (Shaw) McEnery ’59, who writes: “Better late than never is my donation for the fabulous Portland Magazine. My only complaint about our magazine is that it takes me forever to read it as it is quality reading from beginning to end. Eventually, I finish up and pass them on to my lucky friends. I do want to recommend a future article for the magazine. I had the thrill of going to Brazil in June 2011, led by a Augusto Carneiro ’01, the owner of Nossa Familia Coffee in Portland. The trip was sponsored through the University and I and a fellow ’59 graduate, Dorothy Dinneen, experienced the trip of a lifetime. We lived on a coffee farm in the mountains of Brazil and saw firsthand the coffee process as it evolved from ‘the fruit on the tree to the bean in the bag.’ On second thought—maybe you might consider taking the trip yourself? I believe they are planning another one for next May. I am enclosing a picture of my then-two-year-old, now three-year-old grandson, Aiden, posing with his UP shirt in the back yard of his SE Portland home. Looks like a poster child to me! Keep up the good work, the University is very fortunate to have such a remarkable magazine.” Thanks so much, Mary, and
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we have to agree with your assessment of Aiden’s poster child potential.
’63 WEDDED BLISS Dave and Kate Joyce ’63 recently marked their 50th wedding anniversary with a renewal of vows delivered by Msgr. Greg Moys and Msgr. Tim Murphy ’73 on August 5, 2011, at St. Boniface Church in Sublimity, Ore. “A fun- and food-filled party afterwards hosted by our five kids, their spouses, and 15 grandkids followed at the K.C. hall in Sublimity,” writes Dave. “Our son Russ passed away in January of 2009. Kate and I married just before my junior year at UP and son Mike attended my graduation in 1963. We have wonderful memories of our time at UP and love to stay connected through your excellent magazine.” Thanks for the update Dave, we love to hear about the many couples who meet here on The Bluff.
’64 LAWYER OF THE YEAR Robert E. “Bob” Maloney, Jr. has been named Portland’s 2012 Lawyer of the Year in Eminent Domain and Condemnation Law by Best Lawyers. He received a particularly high rating in Best Lawyers’ peer-review survey, earning a high level of respect among his peers for his abilities, professionalism and integrity. The Lawyer of the Year award is presented to only one lawyer in each specified practice area, in each large legal community, using peer-review surveys in which thousands of leading lawyers confidentially evaluate their professional peers.
’65 PRAYERS, PLEASE Margaret “Marge” Channing passed away on July 16, 2011, in Snohomish, Wash., after a long illness. Survivors include her husband of 46 years, Dennis; daughter, Natalie; son, Kent; three grandchildren; and sisters, Toni Jacobsen and Arlene
C L A S S Richardson. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the National MS Society. Our prayers and condolences to the family. The University’s career services office is compiling a list to help students answer the question “What can I do with my major?” We want to hear from everyone; whether you majored in accounting and are working as an accountant or you majored in political science and are working as a marketing web developer. Email your name, major (undergraduate), job title, and employer to career@up.edu by December 23. All participants will be entered in a drawing for UP gear.
’66 INCREDIBLE NEWS We heard recently from Sandra Suran, who writes: “I just received incredible news and would like to give you a heads up. I was recently notified that I was selected to receive the annual public service award from the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy. It is their highest level award, for ‘excellence in leadership, accomplishments, and contributions to regulation of accountancy’. I was absolutely stunned! I certainly do credit the University for preparing me for my state and national leadership accomplishments.” Congratulations, Sandra, and thanks for letting us know.
’72 WELL DESERVED Bill Reed, longtime director of events at the University of Portland, has been named a recipient of a 2011 Spirit of Holy Cross award by the Congregation of Holy Cross, United States Province of Priests and Brothers. The award acknowledges the critical importance lay collaborators play in living out the vision and mission of Holy Cross founder Blessed Basil Moreau, C.S.C., to make God known, loved and served in education, parish and mission settings.
’74 FAST-PACED WORK We heard recently from Joe Fuhring, who writes: “I finally retired from motorcycle racing and am now racing formula cars. Looking forward to retirement in the next 3 to 5 years. Purchased my retirement home in Mariposa, Californian, and will move there once I retire for good. I also got a new Weimaraner dog. Life is real good.” Thanks, Joe, and good luck with the racing career.
Rashmi G. Pace has passed away, we are sad to report. She practiced naturopathic medicine at her clinic in Edmonds, Wash. Survivors include her husband, John; daughter, Shefali; mother, Savitri Garg; and sister, Ranjana. Our prayers and condolences. The University’s career services office is compiling a list to help students answer the question “What can I do with my major?” We want to hear from everyone; whether you majored in accounting and are working as an accountant or you majored in political science and are working as a marketing web developer. E-mail your name, major (undergraduate), job title, and employer to career@up.edu by December 23. All participants will be entered in a drawing for UP gear.
’77 PUTTING DREAMS INTO WORDS We heard recently from Colette Piceau (Nancy Pigott), who writes: “My company, It Ain't Shakespeare, Inc., is in its 11th year of putting dreams into words—developing and writing storylines and scripting for rides, attractions, and shows for theme parks all over the world. Clients include Walt Disney Imagineering, SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, and Universal Studios. I have collaborated on award-winning entertainment projects from China and Australia to Dubai and even the ships of Disney Cruise Lines. This past year, my services expanded to include directing and producing with shows, attractions, and media projects for the Georgia Aquarium, the Louisville Zoo, Walt Disney World, SeaWorld Orlando, and SeaWorld San Diego. Every day brings new challenges and adventures.” Lt. Gen. Dana T. Atkins will become president of The Augusta Chronicle on January 2, 2012. He is retiring as commander of Alaskan Command, Alaska NORAD Region, Joint Task Force Alaska, and 11th Air Force at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska.
’79 SAD NEWS Mary Elizabeth Thrasher passed away on September 24, 2011. Survivors include her husband Rod; daughter, Jennie; son, Steven; sister, Judy; brothers, Tom, Doug, Steve, John, and Patrick; and three grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences. The University’s career services office is compiling a list to
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N O T E S Joseph Dale Meyers ’78, (pictured on left having a laugh with Bob Ambruso ’72) perhaps better known as “Little Joe,” passed away in the early evening of Friday, September 16, 2011, at Ray Hickey Hospice House in Vancouver, Wash. He was one month shy of 56 years old. Where to begin, where to begin. To say Joey was one of a kind; the life of the party; an expert pusher of peoples’ buttons; a devoted friend, brother, son; an equally devoted Green Bay Packers fan; a lover of life; an ornery, stubborn, maddening, delightful, hilarious, beloved individual; a bottomless repository of offcolor jokes, limericks, Dr. Demento classics, and obscure trivia… any description of the many-faceted Little Joe tends toward understatement. For a man who barely cleared five feet Joe was in every sense larger than life, an unforgettable character whose sudden absence leaves a yawning hole in the hearts of his family and many, many friends. He was and shall remain unforgettable, and is missed terribly. Even though a litany of childhood medical conditions prevented Joe from attending grade or high school regularly, he graduated with Roosevelt High School’s class of 1974, and attended the University of Portland from fall 1974 through spring 1976. Many North Portland residents will remember Joe from his time behind the counter at the St. Johns Liquor Store, and later the Hayden Island and Menlo Park liquor stores, as well as Andy and Bax Sporting Goods. For the past several years he volunteered at Golden Harvesters, until his health failed. Survivors include his father, Homer; sister, Sanoma Jefferson of Olympia, Wash.; niece, Carrie Estok and her husband, Colonel Bruce Estok and twins Connor and Sophia of Seattle, Wash.; and nephew, Donn Minoggie, and Donn’s wife Dena, son David, and daughter Diana of Nashville, Tenn. Joe’s mother, Audrey, passed away in November 2010. Our prayers and condolences to Joe’s family and friends.
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is the son of retired physics professor Paul Wack and teaches math at Sunnyside Environmental School. Prayers, please, for the family of Jill Jarrett, on the loss of her father, Howard L. Laney on August 3, 2011. Survivors include his wife of 51 years, Donna; daughters, Jill Jarrett and Jennifer Laney; son, Scott; two grandchildren; sister, Marilyn Bomer; and numerous nieces and nephews. Our prayers and condolences.
Lending further credence to the belief that our mystery faculty/ staff/alumni photos are waaaay too easy, Class Notes readers had no trouble identifying our fall 2011 faculty member as engineering professor Ken Lulay ’84, who has labored quietly and mightily for the University since joining the faculty in 1998. He can tell you all there is to know about nondestructive testing and inspection, failure analysis, finite element analysis, material science, and a host of other fields that leave us writer types dumbstruck. Thanks to everyone for writing in. So that brings us to the winter 2011 mystery faculty member, pictured at right, who joined the faculty in 1977 and is rumored to be mulling over the possibility of retiring at the end of the 2011-2012 academic year. Her efforts and expertise have consistently garnered local, national, and international acclaim for her department, and she’s a fine and wildly popular teacher to boot. Best guesses to mcovert@up.edu.
’84 HEY! I KNOW HIM! James Williams writes: “I just read my magazine and the mystery faculty member is too easy. It’s Dr. Ken Lulay. Ken and I graduated together in 1984 with our BSMEs and he was also one of my groomsmen at my wedding. We studied together pretty often and thank God we did or I never would have made it. The funniest thing about his picture is that he still looks exactly the same.” Thanks Jim, you’re right, of course, that’s our Dr. Ken, and we did perhaps make this one just a tad bit too easy. James goes on to say: “A lot has transpired since I graduated. I guess the highlights are I'm still married to Meghan, the wonderful woman I met 28 years ago at UP, my daughter Ashley just graduated from UP with her BSN, I’m currently leading the Boeing Tanker Wing and Empennage engineering team, and I retired from the USAF Reserve after 22 years. I can definitely say that none of it would have been possible without the world-class education I received from UP.”
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help students answer the question “What can I do with my major?” E-mail your name, major (undergraduate), job title, and employer to career@up.edu by December 23. All participants will be entered in a drawing for UP gear.
Jacob; mother, Bernadine Stafford; stepson, Turner Angell and step-granddaughter, Claire; stepdaughter, Emily Angell; brother, Eric; sister, Laurie Beers; and niece, Camille Beers. Our prayers and condolences to the family.
’80 PRAYERS FOR HEIDI
’82 ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR WATSON, ELEMENTARY
Heidi Elizabeth Moore Angell passed away on August 11, 2011, after a courageous fight against ovarian cancer. She was an RN at Providence Hospital for over 30 years, but was most proud of her work as an instructor for the nursing program at Concordia College. Survivors include her husband, Townsend Angell; son,
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Ed Wack did some detective work and knows the identity of our fall 2011 mystery faculty photo: “Could Kenneth E. Lulay be the mystery faculty member? I searched engineering faculty, then looked to see who had attended UP. It wasn’t too hard to track him down.” Well done, that’s him, yes. Ed
Levin “Tom” Thomas Fox, Jr. passed away on August 29, 2011. Survivors include his children, David and Julie; brother, Kelly; sisters, Marilyn and Kathryn; and grandchildren, Annika and Sylvie. Our prayers and condolences. The University’s career services office is compiling a list to help students answer the question “What can I do with my major?” We want to hear from everyone; whether you majored in accounting and are working as an accountant or you majored in political science and are working as a marketing web developer. Email your name, major (undergraduate), job title, and employer to career@up.edu by December 23. All participants will be entered in a drawing for UP gear.
’89 A CHANGE OF PACE
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We heard from James Stephenson, who writes: “This past summer Ann, Katie, William, and I moved to Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, where I am teaching Leadership at the Air War College. It has not been too big of a transition after having just left Southern Georgia. Surprisingly, it actually feels a bit cooler; but nowhere as nice as in the Northwest! My new email address is james.ste phenson@maxwell.af.mil.”
’97 CONGRATS, LORISSA! Lorissa Hemmer has joined the Bend Memorial Clinic ophthalmology department after working several years as an optometrist in Bend, Ore. She currently serves as a captain in the U.S. Army Reserves Medical Corps. She is a member of the American Optometric Association, Oregon Optometric Physicians Association, and Central Oregon Optometric Physician Association, and volunteers with Volunteers in Medicine. Prayers, please, for N. Janine Lenartz and her family on the loss of her husband, James R. Lenartz. He passed away on September 28, 2011. Survivors also include his son, Deaclan; and daughters, Briana ’04 and Caitrin ’08. Our prayers and condolences to the family.
’98 NEW YORK FRAME OF MIND Amber Schley Iragui writes: “I've been living in New York for eleven years now, working as an art director and designer for a small book publisher. In 2007 I got married, and as of December 2010 my husband Charles and I have two kids: Isaiah Clement Thunder turned three in August and Genevieve Rowyn Blaise was born in December 2010. I think of Portland and U of P often, and am so thankful for the beautiful Portland Magazine. Keep up the good work!” Thanks Amber, you do the same.
’01 BABIES, BABIES, EVERYWHERE! Kirsten Ashmore writes: “I have some fun news to share: my UP roommates and I all had babies this year and all between the months of April and July. Megan Moore (then Petrie) had Cormac James Moore on April 15, 2011; I had River William Batcheller on May 12, 2011; Katie Sass (then Sorensen) had Geneva Rose Sass on June 27, 2011; and Michelle Paul (then Hughes)
C L A S S had Celesta Mae Paul on July 14, 2011. All babies are doing great and growing like weeds. We recently got together with the four bundles and enjoyed reminiscing about old times at UP and how times have changed. I’ve attached a picture of the babies. (starting from the top and then clockwise, River William Batcheller, Celesta Mae Paul, Cormac James Moore, and Geneva Rose Sass). I hope this can make its way into the alumni section of Portland Magazine.” Oh, you do know the way to make our hearts melt. Thanks Kirsten!
’03 THE ONE AND ONLY Patrick Barry writes: “That photo can ONLY be Dr. Ken Lulay....he was my engineering adviser from day one at UP and all of his interests [failure analysis, mechanics of materials, manufacturing processes, data acquisition and analysis, design of experiments] were classes I took from him.” Thanks Patrick, you’re absolutely correct, and it sounds like you were in good hands with Dr. Ken.
’04 WELCOME BACK! Hannah (Eldredge) O'Brien has come back to the University to serve as office manager for the international languages and cultures and environmental science departments. Matt Smeraglio writes: “I was reading the latest edition of Portland Magazine, and the mystery faculty photo is totally Dr. Lulay, I had him for failure analysis, mechanics of materials, and advanced machine design. Ah, those were the good old days.” Thanks Matt, that’s Dr. Lulay, apparently we aren’t fooling anyone. We heard recently from Lawrence and Shirley Grimes, who write: “Our daughter Jessica Grimes graduated from UP in 2004 and has gone on to get her doctorate of physical therapy and is working in Tualatin. We appreciate all that the University of Portland did and provided for Jessica.” The University’s career services office is compiling a list to help students answer the
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We had the pleasure recently of shaking hands with the courtly Ed Cameron ’55 in Newport, Oregon, and congratulating him on his new book, Gilmore by the Sea, a graphic novel from Dancing Moon Press about the seething and entertaining residents of the old Gilmore Hotel on Nye Beach in Newport. The Gilmore is today the famous Sylvia Beach Hotel, but in its day it was a salty flophouse for sailors and the poorer of the denizens of the 1960s. Ed has led a most interesting and varied life, as he says with a smile: “Editor of the 1955 Preface student literary magazine, and co-editor and cartoonist for the Beacon. My degree in literature, with a journalism minor, swooped me off to the St. Helens Sentinel-Mist as assistant editor for two years; I photographed Adlai Stevenson in a school hall, I remember. Then back to Portland for two years with the Oregon Education Association to help edit their magazine. Then amazingly back to the University for one year, 1958-1959, as director of public relations. University president Father Howard Kenna, C.S.C., was my boss, and a gentler man would be hard to find. Wrote stories about campus construction, visiting dignitaries, and the very fine late-1950s basketball team — in my office in the tower of Howard Hall, I could hear the thumping of balls on the basketball floor. But then came an offer from General Electric upriver at Hanford. It seemed safe then...” Ed went on to be a cartoonist for many papers, an art teacher in Lincoln County, and a radio and print journalist for The Oregonian and UPI. For more on his new book, see gilmorebythesea.com. —Editors question “What can I do with my major?” We want to hear from everyone; whether you majored in accounting and are working as an accountant or you majored in political science and are working as a marketing web developer. Email your name, major (undergraduate), job title, and employer to career@up.edu by December 23. All participants will be entered in a drawing for UP gear.
’06 STEPHANIE’S UPDATE
but he’s still helping out at LaSalle. We went to India with one of our colleagues and with teachers from Lasallian schools in California. While we were in India we stayed at St. Joseph Boys’ Village and got to know the Christian Brothers who live there as well as the delightful little boys, all 61 of them! We helped build a new latrine facility for the boys. The motto of LSCCP and many Lasallian schools and institutions is “Enter to Learn, Leave
We heard from Stephanie Blumenson recently, and she writes: “This summer, Bill George (class of 1970) and I spent three weeks volunteering at an orphanage in India. We both work for La Salle Catholic College Prep in Milwaukie; I just completed my third year there and Bill finished his 35th year; he actually just officially retired,
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to Serve;” I believe this directly relates to everything I learned about Teaching, Faith, and Service.” We understand that occasionally some Salzburg Program participants get totally into the spirit of the ancient Olympic Games, which of course took place before uniforms were invented by Nike, as you can see below. Photo by Julie Kunrath.
’07 PIONEER MED SCHOOL Ryan Massoud writes: “I'm currently going to medical school at Western University of Health Sciences in Lebanon, Oregon, with my fiancé Rachael Gray. This is the first medical school built here in Oregon in over 100 years. So it’s a pretty big deal for the community down south as well as the entire medical community in Oregon. We are very excited to be part of this
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“My new partner in crime,” writes recently retired English professor Lou Masson, alongside the photo you see above. A little sleuthing reveals that this is Harrison (“Harry to his buddies”), son of Lou’s daughter Larisa ’93. Maybe retirement isn’t so bad after all. inaugural class and are very excited that our dean, Paula Crone, is also a UP alumnus, just like us!” That she is, Ryan, Paula is a proud member of the Class of 1986.
’09 FOLLOWING THEIR PASSIONS For married couple Richard and Mary Faber, combating human trafficking has become a passion, one that led them to leave their life in Portland to embark on a year-long overseas mission to volunteer and map human trafficking. Richard and Mary were married during their senior year of college after three years of dating. During their year-long mission, Richard and Mary will be traveling and volunteering around the world to combat human trafficking. The pair first departed for the Fiji Islands on May 26 to volunteer with Homes of Hope Fiji, a shelter which offers residential care to survivors of human trafficking. In September, they resumed their volunteer mission by traveling to Nepal to volunteer with the organization Asha Nepal, a shelter which offers residential care for survivors
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of sex trafficking. In January, Richard and Mary will travel to South Sudan to volunteer with the Cornerstone Children’s Home. The final stop on their mission will be in Uganda to volunteer with Not for Sale, where they will map and document human trafficking in Uganda and East Africa while also recording cases on SlaveryMap.org. Follow Richard and Mary Faber’s mission on their blog at http://richardnmary.wordpress.com/. Matthew Bryant has been selected as a 2011 Spirit of Emilie Mission Inspiration Award (formerly the Providence Mission medal). This award honors ten outstanding PPMC employees, volunteers, and physicians who inspire others in demonstrating the Providence mission and core values in their work. Kelly Damewood writes: “I am going into my second year at Vermont Law School. I chose Vermont over Lewis & Clark because of its awesome environmental course offerings and certificate programs.” The University’s career services office is compiling a list to help students answer the question “What can I do with my major?” We want to hear from everyone; whether you majored in accounting and are working as an accountant or you majored in political science and are working as a marketing web developer. Email your name, major (undergraduate), job title, and employer to career@up.edu by December 23. All participants will be entered in a drawing for UP gear.
N O T E S wife team performs as Angels in Our Eyes, and has released a single, “Heartbeat,” which “they hope will send a message to young mothers who are considering abortion.” The song premiered at a fundraising banquet in Catherine’s home town of Menteca, with 120 copies of the song given to attendees to take home. More information at angelsinoureyes.com/music/html. Ellany Saxton writes: “I just wanted to send in the wedding announcement of Victoria Kitttler ’10 and Patrick Hunt ’10 on August 6, 2011. They wed in the Old Scotch Church with reception at her parents’ home in Cornelius, Ore. They have been enjoying married life in Niceville, Florida, where Patrick is stationed with the U.S. Air Force. They met on The Bluff in the AFROTC detachment, when Vicky was working as the uniform custodian.” Kristana Fruci has joined MyBinding.com, one of the nation's leading Internet retailers of document finishing equipment and supplies, as a member of their marketing
’10 THAT WAS EASY “Ken Lulay!!” writes Ben Smith, mechanical engineering alumnus, in reference to our fall 2011 mystery faculty photo. A man of few words, our Ben, and a man who is correct. Thanks for guessing! Paul Cramer was ordained as a permanent deacon by Portland Archbishop John Vlazny, on Saturday, Oct. 29 at St. Mary’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. He and his wife, Paula, have two children, and he works for the Department of Human Services/Child Welfare for the State of Oregon.
’11 ANGELS IN OUR EYES Ray and Catherine Silvia were featured in the October 21 issue of Portland’s Catholic Sentinel in a story titled “Spreading A Pro-Life Message With Song.” The husband-and-
Here’s a great Class Notes shot of development office staffer Leanne Goolsby ’07’s son Tabor, clearly enjoying his brief Mohawk haircut by which his mama won a ten-dollar bet from the staff of this magazine; the cash went to Tabor’s college savings. Don’t make idle bets around those two. —Editors
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team in the position of general services administration specialist. The University’s career services office is compiling a list to help students answer the question “What can I do with my major?” We want to hear from everyone; whether you majored in accounting and are working as an accountant or you majored in political science and are working as a marketing web developer. Email your name, major (undergraduate), job title, and employer to career@up.edu by December 23. All participants will be entered in a drawing for UP gear.
FACULTY, STAFF, FRIENDS Mary Healy Clark, widow of longtime University friend and benefactor Maurie Clark, passed away on June 24, 2011, in her Portland home, surrounded by family. A native of Mullingar, Ireland, Mary threw herself into the philanthropic mission of the Clark Foundation, particularly when it came to social services, education, and cultural arts projects. Survivors include her twin sister, Kitty Brady; several nieces and nephews, including Linda Brady and Catherine Brady; stepchildren, Candace Clark Holzgrafe and Mike Clark; and many friends and admirers. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Russ Jolley, who taught chemistry at UP from 1959 to 1963 after serving in World War II, passed away on August 24, 2011, in Portland, Ore. He was 88 years old. Jolley was a researcher and teacher at Oregon Health and Science University, but will be remembered chiefly for his role as a fierce protector of the Columbia Gorge. According to his obituary in The Oregonian, “Jolley was intent on wrestling public property from private interests. Testifying in scores of hearings and writing perhaps thousands of letters to editors and senators, he worked to hold government agencies accountable as stewards of land that belongs to everyone.” Our prayers and condolences to the family. We received sad news from former School of Engineering dean Tom Nelson, who writes: “Rosanne Kieselhorst, who had the job which Kitty Harmon has now, has passed away. She worked for us for 15 years. She was a very nice person and I am very sad. About half of the current faculty and staff knew her and loved her. (How is it that everybody in engineering
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Returning to the Light on May 2 of this year: benefactor and former University business professor Roger Crabbs, husband of Marilyn Crabbs ’79, father of Janet Turner ’79, and grandfather of freshman Kim Turner ’15. Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Roger served 22 years in the Air Force, played the cello, studied forestry, was a publisher, also taught at George Fox University, and was president of Judson Baptist College, among many other feats and adventures. A good man, a caring man, compassionate, humorous, faithful, and what a storyteller, as his eulogists noted, among them University regent Dr. Bob Pamplin, Jr. Roger was characteristically generous even in death; gifts in his memory go to the University’s scholarship funds. Our prayers.
is so nice?) I didn't know that Rosanne died until I saw it in the Oregonian obituaries. I last saw her about a year ago and she seemed fine then. I don't know any details except what is in the obituary.” Thanks for letting us know, Tom. Roseanne was the secretary for Multnomah College president John Griffith, and when Multnomah merged with the University of Portland engineering school in 1969, she worked as administrative assistant there until her retirement in 1992. Survivors include her niece, Susan Maas; nephews, Bill Maas, David Maas, and Don Maas; and two grandnephews. Our prayers and condolences. Heidi Keller, who oversees the University’s Office of Student Accounts, was the first to guess the identity of our fall 2011 mystery faculty photo: “Is the mystery faculty member Kenneth Lulay?,” she asks, as if she didn’t know for absolute sure. Thanks Heidi, you’re right of course, and if there were actual prizes for our strange little contest, you would have won. Thomas Byrne writes: “My guess for mystery faculty: Dr. Ken Lulay! I recognized him instantly. I'm not an alumnus, but I was the designer of Shiley Hall and got to work with the entire engineering faculty. What a great group of people.” Thanks Thomas, it’s Ken Lulay alright, and you’re right about our engineering faculty. Thomas works for Soderstrom Architects, Ltd. Persis (Rutledge) De La Mare died on March 16, 2011, at the age of 84. She worked as a nurse in Idaho and moved to Oregon, where she taught nursing arts at St. Vincent Hospital and at the University of Portland. She married longtime UP music professor Philippe De La Mare ’69 in 1957; he passed away in 2009. She is survived by her sisters, Ann Rutledge, Portland, and Kay Frankenstein, Seattle; children Monique De La Mare Krahn ’89, Melisse De La Mare Gibson ’85, and Philippe Jr. ’87; and nine grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences.
DEATHS Arthur J. “Bud” Wiese ’41, August 19, 2011, Portland, Ore. Carmine Bubenik Jensen ’42, September 26, 2009. Malcolm Watson ’42, October 7, 2011, Spokane, Wash. John E. Richard ’43, October 7, 2011, Portland, Ore. Thomas A. O’Neill ’46, October 7, 2011. Howard E. O’Loughlin ’46,
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N O T E S Nursing professor Nancy Banks shares news and photos of a service trip to India: “I received a grant from the Terry Misener Memorial fund in order to travel to India with a group of eight nursing students and three School of Nursing faculty members,” she says. “Nurses and nursing students provided vhealth clinics and education to orphans and rural people of Andhra Pradesh, India.” It’s this sort of thing we hope to continue through our RISE Campaign, see rise.up.edu.
December 14, 2009. James L. DeLong ’48, September 22, 2011, Vancouver, Wash. Carl O. Rubin ’50, Oct. 7, 2011. William Y. Sakai ’50, September 7, 2011. Hector Maffei ’51, September 24, 2011. Harold E. Brakebush ’51, October 7, 2011, Portland, Ore. Louisa Schlotfeldt, wife of Fred Schlotfeldt ’53, October 12, 2011, Vancouver, Wash. Thomas S. Kang ’56, June 28, 2011. Kathleen W. Altenhofen ’56, October 2, 2011. Robert C. “Bob” Ballard ’57, October 8, 2011. Margaret “Marge” Channing ’65, July 16, 2011, Snohomish, Wash. Rashmi G. Pace ’74, Edmonds,
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Wash. Joseph Dale Meyers ’78, September 16, 2011, Vancouver, Wash. Mary Elizabeth Thrasher ’79, September 24, 2011. Heidi Elizabeth Moore Angell ’80, August 11, 2011. Howard L. Laney, father of Jill Jarrett ’82, August 3, 2011. Ken Meyerson ’86, October 19, 2011. Levin “Tom” Thomas Fox, Jr. ’88, August 29, 2011. James R. Lenartz, husband of N. Janine Lenartz ’97, September 28, 2011. Mary Healy Clark, June 24, 2011, Portland, Ore. Russ Jolley, August 24, 2011, Portland, Ore. Roseanne Kieselhorst, August 16, 2011.
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PHOTOS BY ROYA GHORBANI-ELIZEH
Here’s a story. Young alumna Roya Ghorbani-Elizeh, Class of 2011, was in Iran late this summer, visiting family members who did not emigrate to America. Across the Tehran street from her grandparents’ house is a park. “Five years ago when I was there, the park was an empty lot filled with weeds,” says Roya. “The government wanted to build a mosque. My grandfather, my Baba, lobbied and single-handedly battled the local government to create a park for the neighborhood kids. He won, the park was built, and now he’s a local celebrity who walks in the park every day in his best suit watching the children play.” Hard to demonize a country with a guy like that in it, eh? And holy faces like these….
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We watched the towers fall on television. Perhaps a billion people watched. We all saw the same thing at the same time and have the same twin scars burnt into our brains. The burning and then another burning and then the incredible collapse and then another collapse and meanwhile people jumping out of windows and being crushed by concrete chunks the size of trucks and choked to death by ash so dense that you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, and firemen sprinting up the stairs as people sprinted down, and the picture on the television cutting back and forth from New York City to the burning Pentagon, and then there was the news of the plane that the passengers forced to crash in a field so it wouldn’t kill their countrymen, the plane in which the passengers, led by dads and college kids and a rugby player, stormed the pilots’ cabin where the murderers had slit the throat of a stewardess. Right about then we turned the television’s sound off and just sat there staring. All the rest of my life I will remember my children’s faces staring and outside the sound of blue jays as the bright morning began in the West. It was the most brilliant crisp clear morning ever; I remember that. For Americans there will always be the time before September 11 and the time after. The late assassin Osama bin Laden, son of Alia Ghanem and Muhammad bin Laden, got at least that, of all the things he wanted. He didn’t get his holy war between East and West, he didn’t get a world where women are enslaved and education is a crime, he didn’t get a world where his idea of God was forced upon everyone, but at least he delivered a blow that will never be forgotten, not in America. People from other countries have asked me quietly sometimes, in the ten years since that morning, if maybe Americans are a little...self-absorbed, so to speak, about September 11, I mean in the end only three thousand people were killed, tsunamis and your bombs have killed many more than that, and they say this gently, not accusingly, just a little puzzled that it’s such a ragged raw wound for Americans; but it is. We were attacked, literally out of the blue, by a brilliant thug with squirming dreams of blood, and he caused children to roast, and moms and dads, and a baby in her mom’s lap, and he cackled over their deaths, he laughed out loud, he chortled in his dank cave when he heard the news. I won’t forget that chortle, either, not as long as I live. To remember is to pray, says my dad, and who will gainsay my dad, age ninety, who served in two wars? Not I. The lieutenant knows whereof he speaks. He says that if we forget, that is a sin. He says that remembering the incredible grace and roaring courage that day is the way to remember. He says to remember the roaring courage of the people who rushed to help, and the people who helped others out of the fire and ash, and the people who used their last minutes on earth to call their families and say I love you I love you I will love you forever, is to pray for them and us and even for the poor silly murderers, themselves just lanky frightened children, in the end, bloody boys terrified of a free world. He says to remember the greatness that day, the raging love and unimaginable courage, the firemen who ran up knowing they would never come down, the passengers storming the cockpit, the sergeant who ran out of the Pentagon to catch women leaping from high windows, is the way to erase the name of the chief murderer. He says that if we remember right, if we pray with our hearts in our mouths, maybe someday no one will remember the architect of ruin, but everyone will remember a day that the courage and mercy and glory of human beings rose to such a tide that no one will ever forget. That could happen, says my dad, and who will gainsay my dad? Not I. The lieutenant knows whereof he speaks. g Brian Doyle
PHOTO BY RICK RAPPAPORT
TO REMEMBER IS TO PRAY
Or here’s a Campaign story. We had one of the most straitlaced dignified music professors ever here at the University from 1980 until he died of cancer in 2008 – Professor Philip Cansler, who taught trumpet, concert band, and other music classes, and played for his church on weekends. But Phil, who also wrote the University’s athletic fight song, was a whole different soul when he donned The Famous Purple Wig and went bonkers leading the Pilot pep band at basketball games. You never saw anything so hilarious as Doctor C dancing across the floor, shaking his groove thang, and the band roaring along at his signals – absolutely we won some games we might not have, from all that silly energy, and Phil created a hilarious and unforgettable corner of campus life. When he died, only 54 years old, the Phil Cansler Scholarship was born. Ever laugh at Phil until your belly hurt? Ever leapt up when the pep band tore into a pause in the action? Want to say thanks for Phil’s holy nuttiness? Call Diane Dickey, 503.943.8130, dickey@up.edu.
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SCORE!!!
Among the many thousands of riveting stimuli in the University’s Clark Library is a complete set of the scores of every composition ever committed by the superb American composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990), who visited The Bluff in 1975 to receive an honorary doctorate of fine arts; when he died he specified that the University receive the gift in his estate. Fascinating man, Copland: born Jewish in Brooklyn, played piano in dance bands as a teenager, wrote scores for films (notably Of Mice and Men and Our Town) and ballets (notably Billy the Kid and Appalachian Spring), composed the haunting Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for the Common Man, and was by all accounts a gentle and witty soul who said that American character in his music meant “the optimistic tone, large canvases, a certain directness in expression of sentiment, and songfulness.” Hard to beat that for a fair estimate of who we are. Rest in peace, Aaron. To make a Campaign gift to the library or to the University’s many musical adventures, see rise.up.edu.
THE MUSIC ISSUE