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When I was a child, many years ago, at a parish named for a saint famous for hearing confessions eighteen hours at a pop, my life was graced by Dominican nuns, some of whom had ropy forearms like stevedores, and by Franciscan monks, all of whom seemed to have knotted feet made from tree roots, and once by a Jesuit, who looked so forbiddingly intelligent that we schoolchildren scattered like sparrows when he passed silently through the schoolyard, because rumor had it that Jesuits had laser eyes and could kill sparrows by staring at them hard, but most of us thought this was silly, although all of us flittered away from the Jesuit right quick, I noticed. Thus I was introduced, when young, to the different flavors of Catholic charism — the Order of Preachers in their brilliant whites, the Order of Friars Minor in their quiet browns, and the brainy blackrobed intensity of the Society of Jesus, not to mention the steady priests of the Archdiocese of New York, who generally dressed like dentists on golf outings when they weren’t in uniform. The religious orders, it seemed to us boys, were not unlike the military, with Regular Army personnel carrying most of the daily duty and specialists coming in for specific tasks — the Franciscans to conduct retreats, the Jesuit for astrophysics seminars or other such incomprehensible rites, the burly Dominican sisters to haul our faltering mental machinery into the shop for heroic renovation and repair. Not until I got to college, where I encountered the cheerful men of the Congregation of Holy Cross and their nutty insistence that I could learn as much or more outside the classroom than in, and to middle age, when I became absorbed by the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary and their nutty insistence that missionary work was as crucial Here as There, did I begin to pay close attention to the infinitesimal but riveting distinctions among the Catholic orders. In a real sense the military model holds water still, for it seems to me that the Catholic orders, like the various services, are agents finally of peace; and the Catholic orders are all adamant ambassadors of the same brave hope and crazy conviction, that life defeats death, hope defeats despair, light defeats dark; they’re all on the same team, as it were. Yet each comes at the mountain of problems along a slightly different path.Work is prayer, say the Benedictines, insisting that actions are more eloquent than words. Epiphany is everywhere available, say the Holy Cross men and women, and an education of the heart is as crucial as that of the mind. In the beginning was the Word, say the Order of Preachers, and the Word is God, and we will speak the Word wide. We are all brothers and sisters in the Love, say the Franciscans, who insist on living the gospel, not just analyzing it — if necessary use words, as their entertaining founder noted. Go thou to the most difficult and extreme fields, said Pope Paul VI to the Jesuits, and away they still go, agents of love into the jungles of despair, examples to their students of quiet courage changing the world. And there are as many more examples as there are Catholic orders in higher education; but for all the thrashing about that we poor badgers in their sales offices must do, trying to shout the differences among them so as to secure market share, I confess here that in our hearts we are thrilled that the differences are so tiny — shimmers of sunlight, really. Every color in the rainbow wears a different jacket, but the colors together compose something stunning and lovely beyond words, yes? n Brian Doyle is the author most recently of Grace Notes, a collection of essays.
PHOTO: STEPHEN TRIMBLE
STUNNING & LOVELY
F E A T U R E S 16 / Prayers of the People, Fourth Sunday of Easter, by Gail Wells Why do we go to church? Really, why? 18 / At Sea, by Julie H. Case The long and astounding road of Peter Chu ’91. page 16
22 / A Home for Boys For more than a century University of Portland folks have quietly helped out at a most amazing brave hard prayer of an orphanage in Beaverton.
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24 / The Rec, a special section What might it really be like in the University’s long-dreamed-of new recreation center? What wild joys and sweet music? What is heaven’s name does wellness actually mean? Will anyone actually miss Howard Hall? And other notes on a crucial Campaign target. 26 / By Bread Alone, by Nina Ramsey Food and agony and love and food and despair and love: notes. 29 / Notre Dame de la Faim, by Ursula K. Le Guin An extraordinary sacred place, a stone’s throw from The Bluff. 32 / Year One, photographs by Steve Hambuchen The University’s women’s rowing team, 2011-
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4 / 3,600 miles from The Bluff: Air Force Captain Lindsey Kinnear ’06 5 / Student debt and the University’s Rise Campaign 6 / “Because I made her cry”: an essay by Fr. Pat Hannon, C.S.C., ’82 7 / The University’s two junkets to Ireland in 2012 8 / “Tough old birds”: Marla Salmon ’71 on thorny grace 10 / Do students still smoke cigarettes? 11 / Pilot sports fanaticism: a cheerful note 12 / On running through gardens: an essay by Louis Masson 13 / The lives behind the loans: Matt Elerding ’95 14 / Sports, starring the Pilot men’s crosscountryists 15 / University news and notes and fetes and feats 48 / Isaac Chol Achuil ’08 and the new nation of South Sudan
page 29 THE UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND MAGAZINE
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Cover: Ostrich fern unfolding, by the American photographer Tim Lyons. There are so many miracles. For more of Tim’s work see pbase.com.
Spring 2012: Vol. 31, No. 1 President: Rev. E. William Beauchamp, C.S.C. Founding Editor: John Soisson Editor: Brian Doyle Glorious Grumpy Tall Designers: Matt Erceg & Joseph Erceg ’55 Indentured Editors: Marc Covert ’93 & Amy Shelly Harrington ’95 Fitfully Contributing Editors: Louis Masson, Sue Säfve, Terry Favero, Mary Beebe Portland is published quarterly by the University of Portland. Copyright ©2012 by the University of Portland. All rights reserved. Editorial offices are located in Waldschmidt Hall, 5000 N. Willamette Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97203-5798. Telephone (503) 943-7202, fax (503) 943-7178, e-mail address: bdoyle@up.edu, Web site: http://www.up.edu/portland. Third-class postage paid at Portland, OR 97203. Canada Post International Publications Mail Product — Sales Agreement No. 40037899. Canadian Mail Distribution Information—Express Messenger International: PO Box 25058, London, Ontario, Canada N6C 6A8. Printed in the USA. Opinions expressed in Portland are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University administration. Postmaster: Send address changes to Portland, The University of Portland Magazine, 5000 N. Willamette Boulevard, Portland, OR 97203-5798.
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L E T T E R S
The greatest lesson I learned in my life came from a man at the lowest point of his life: University philosophy professor Father Jim Leahy, C.S.C. Here’s the story. My first three years of college at a state university were a bust. I was adrift with no sense of direction. I entered the military. In the Army I eventually began taking courses on base from a nearby college, and began rehabilitating my beleaguered grades. Gradually I became very goal-driven, especially as I was the lowest-ranking soldier amid officers and non-coms in my classes. When discharged in 1965, I was accepted at the University of Portland. This is when I met Father Leahy, an excellent teacher and a tough grader — it was said he thought a C was a perfectly acceptable grade, a B might come if you worked very hard, but as for an A, dream on. Somehow a connection between us developed. I thrived in his classes, took as many from him as I could, and earned As. Maybe, I thought, I wasn’t the dullard I thought I was. I even set up a golf outing for him one weekend, during which he scored a holein-one, at which he was ecstatic. But things slowly changed with him. We were told Father was ill and often a substitute covered his classes. Early one morning,
He finished speaking and there was a silence. Usually an outpouring of sympathy is the typical response at this juncture, but I let him wait a moment, and then said that I was deeply honored to be in his presence at a time when God was testing him. He was incredulous. “What?” “This is nothing new,” I said. “Name me one saint who didn’t go through a living hell on earth. They were being tested. And God is testing you.” He muttered that he didn’t believe in God anymore, as if this would get him off the hook, but I told him I had seen for myself how he affected his students, opening up their minds and souls to God, and that his gift for teaching had to come from somewhere. He concurred, reluctantly; and a moment later our meeting ended. Soon he was sent back to Notre Dame, and I never saw him again. But I discovered from his friends that somehow I had gotten to him, and that his percep-
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LETTERS POLICY We are delighted by testy or tender letters. Send them to bdoyle @up.edu. tion of himself had been changed that morning; he was no longer a drunkard beyond help, and there was a purpose to his life. He was desperately hungry for that affirmation, I think; starving for a self beyond his addiction. I graduated in 1966, earned a master’s in social work in 1968, and devoted my life to counseling because of that one special morning. My talk with Father Leahy pointed me to my own life’s calling. That morning, I think, he gave me his greatest pop quiz, his toughest final exam; he stretched me far beyond my own self-perception; and that is why he’s at the top of my list of people who changed my life. Thank you, Father. Tom DeJardin ’66 Portland, Oregon
PHOTOS COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
FR. JIM LEAHY, C.S.C.
after his class had been cancelled yet again, I was having coffee in the Pilot House. Father Leahy came in, unsteady on his feet, looking terrible. I got him coffee and breakfast and sat down to talk with him. He confessed he was alcoholic, had fallen off the wagon, and none of his AA buddies or friends had been able to get through to him. His spiritual advisor, however, had told him that the only group he had not reached out to for help was his students; and he was doing so now, reaching out to me. It was as if we had entered an altered state. The man I loved and respected dearly, the teacher who was my ideal, was baring his soul to me, right in the Pilot House. Our roles had completely changed. I listened intently, blocking out all distractions, noting that there had been no resignation in his voice; in fact, I detected some arrogance, a satisfaction that he was somehow beyond all our reach. The Army provides you with a crash course in human dynamics — the good, the bad, and everything in between. You are thrust into a matrix of leaders and wannabes, all trying to control you; learning how to sort wheat from chaff in conversation is essential. Occasionally you are confronted with working alcoholics with more stripes and bars than you have. Learning how to control conversations and change the dynamic was essential; listening to what is not said is critical. Father Leahy had, in essence, informed me that I would be no more successful at reaching him than anyone else. I kept listening, not saying a word, although he expected me to step in. Other students came by, but left quickly, sensing something intense in the air.
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The great Warwickshire poet Philip Larkin on spring: “The trees are coming into leaf/ Like something almost being said; / The recent buds relax and spread./ Their greenness is a kind of grief…” ¶ Elected in spring on The Bluff: the student body president (for a former one’s essay, see page 13). ¶ Named by the president, after interviews with faculty, staff, and students: the editors of the Beacon and Log, the newspaper and yearbook, and the rodeomaster of KDUP, the student radio station. ¶ Playing almost every day this spring in lovely little Joe Etzel Field: the Pilot baseballists. See portlandpilots.com. ¶ Never seen the glorious Pilot lacrosse team play on Pru Pitch, next to the soccer field? Their last two games this spring are April 14 and 21, both games at one p.m. ¶ Among the recognized saints of spring (so many are unknown, which is why we have All Saints Day): Hugh, Isidore, Notker, Julie, Waldetrudis, Lidwina, Stoer, Radbertus, Fidelis, and Zita. You have to love the sheer color of Catholic.
THE UNIVERSITY The University will sponsor not one but two August 31September 9 trips to Ireland this year, both including the Notre Dame/Navy football game in Dublin: a golf outing with University president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., and a cultural and religious tour around the island. For the golfing jaunt, contact Colin McGinty, 503.943.8005, mcginty@up.edu. For the bigger voyage, call Laurie Kelley,
donated by Fedele Bauccio’s Bon Appetit, and lovely wines, and students singing…it’ll be great. It’ll really help students. Why not come? Info: Laurie Kelley, 503.943.8332, kelleyl @up.edu. ¶ Annual amount of debt that our students graduate with: $22,000. See page 5. ¶ Among the housing changes taking effect this year: Kenna Hall goes all-female, “squatting” (keeping your current room), is no longer allowed, and on-campus housing will be capped at 985. More students every year want to live on campus, all freshmen are required to live in the halls, and the University is looking at building two new halls already, just two years after opening Fields and Schoenfeldt. Wow. Got ten million bucks lying around? Buy a hall?
THE FACULTY Retiring this spring, after 35 years: the effervescent theology professor Father Dick Rutherford, C.S.C.; after 28 years, the graceful music professor Judith Montgomery; business professor Jack Kondrasuk, and theater magicians Jill Hoddick and Ed Bowen. ¶ The National Champion Center for Entrepreneurship hosts the annual Bauccio Lecture April 12: this year’s guest is Starbucks global development president Arthur Rubinfield. Call 503.943.7769. ¶ Winner of a national Graves Award for excellent teaching by a young faculty member: University music professor and band director Patrick Murphy, who happens to be an international expert on… Soviet wind band music. Do we have the most oddly interesting faculty? Yes, we do. ¶
STUDENT LIFE Huuuuge scholarship-raising event this spring: May 10 in the Chiles Center, with the extraordinary Julianne Johnson ’83 singing, and glorious food
ARTS & LETTERS Theology professor Father Charlie Gordon’s annual public Terrific Christian Writers Talk is April 9, this year in conversation with fellow theology professor Rebecca Guadino on the great Catholic Japanese novelist Shusaku Endo. ¶ On stage in Hunt Theater this new year: Billy 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: 503.943.7228. Mock’s Crest founder Roger Doyle, by the way, is ill unto death, and a lovely way to celebrate him is to chip in to the Roger and Kay Doyle Scholarship for Music. See rise.up.edu. ¶ Spring music: April 18-19 is Annual University of Portland Festival of Jazz; April 24 is the Jazz Band and Chamber Ensembles; April 25 is the Wind Symphony; and May 10-11 is Annual Best in the Northwest Choir Festival. ¶ Guest of the English department this spring: the elegant
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and graceful Oregon Poet Laureate, Paulann Petersen (March 21). Info: Herman Asarnow, asarnow@up.edu. ¶ On campus October 22, for the University’s annual Red Mass celebrating lawyers and the law: Sister Helen Prejean, of the Congregation of Saint Joseph. “I stand morally opposed to killing: war, executions, killing of the old and demented, the killing of children, unborn and born…The practice of the death penalty is the practice of torture. The profound moral question is not, ‘Do they deserve to die?’ but ‘Do we deserve to kill them?’…
FROM THE PAST Born (May 9, 1877) and died (May, 1949) in spring: the cheerful Catholic genius Peter Maurin, who founded the Catholic Worker movement, which we sometimes think is the bluntest honestest form of Christ in action in the world. Born in the Languedoc in France, Peter was a Christian Brother, a soldier, a farmer in Canada, a logger, a miner, a jailbird (vagrancy, riding the rails), among many other labors. He met the journalist Dorothy Day in 1932, persuaded her to start The Catholic Worker newspaper, and spent the rest of his days imagining and working for a world in which everyone, rich and poor, was an “ambassador of God." Riveting man. ¶ From the rich jungle of University literature professor Fr. David Sherrer’s on-line historical calendar (www.up.edu/almanac): April 3, 1806: Captain William Clark investigated the lower Willamette River and probably stood on the University campus; April 8, 1300, Dante Alighieri has a vision that results in La Divina Comedia; April 12, 1935, the University’s sports teams are first called the Pilots, after being called the Irish and the Cliffdwellers; April 20, 1967, the Congregation of Holy Cross handsomely hands the University lock, stock, and barrel to a lay Board of Regents… we love stuff like this…
MARY MILLER DOYLE
THE SEASON
503.943.8332, kelleyl@up.edu. ¶ Hosted by the alumni office: evenings at Broadway musicals at Keller Auditorium downtown. May 26 is Million Dollar Quartet and August 4 is Jersey Boys. ¶ Chris Oslin ’81 will teach beer-making at the Alumni House on May 12 and June 2, University gourmandin-chief Kirk Mustain will conduct two of his astounding Chef’s Table dinners April 13 and May 18, and The Kirkness will offer a class on spices and Asian cooking June 2. Info on all: 503.943.7328.
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Captain Lindsey Kinnear ’06 of the United States Air Force, at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. The photo was one of a series of hilarious photos taken around the world for a University Facebook project — see facebook. com/universityofportland.
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PHOTO: BY STEVE HAMBUCHEN
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Average amount of debt this year for a graduating University of Portland senior: $20,310. Total debt incurred by their parents this year alone to help their beloved children savor this extraordinary educational possibility: $10,769,045. Every dollar you contribute to scholarships through the University’s Rise Campaign eases debt, worried parental minds, worried students’ futures. Scholarship gifts are crucial here. Whatever you can spare... thanks. Call Diane Dickey, 503.943. 8130, dickey@up.edu.
PHOTO: JACKIE JEFFERS
Save the date, by the way, for the University’s Scholarship Gala, on May 10, 2012, in the Chiles Center, which will be a big roaring sweet funny poignant evening designed to raise untold dollars to help kids here have a chance to find their own glory. Info: rise.up.edu.
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BECAUSE I MADE HER CRY As young Catholics around the world enter the confessional for their First Confession this spring, a note from University theology professor Father Patrick Hannon, C.S.C. Pat’s most recent collection of essays is The Long Yearning’s End: Stories of Sacrament and Incarnation. The confessional box I stepped into the first time at Our Lady of Grace Church in Castro Valley, California, was four feet wide, four feet long, and less than six feet high. If you were tall you had to duck. I recall seeing my father once — he stood around six feet two — slip into one of those confessional boxes in my church, his frame bent slightly from the weight of his sin, his head lowered out of humility and necessity. It got me imagining that behind that heavy purple curtain lurked a yawning cave that descended seemingly forever, one in which you could hear the drip of icy stalactites, the flutter of bats, and the scoot of a hundred species of spider. If you listened even closer, you could hear the murmur of conversation; in the deep end of the cave lived someone who spoke our language. * What is it about confession that moves us so? Daytime television with its steady diet of soap operas, real courtroom dramas, talk-show tearful unburdenings: we eat them up. Is it merely prurient interest that drives the ratings, or is it something in our DNA? Me, I think there’s something freeing and purgative about publicly admitting to shame or secret. I think we are not moral troglodytes: guilt itches, shame burns. And ultimately we cannot help ourselves; truth demands light. All confessions to some degree demand that you step out of the darkness, stand naked under the klieg lights of judgment, and speak the truth. Veritas vos liberabit, as the University’s motto has it; the truth will set you free — what a promise! But I think many of us — most of us, all of us? — have a voice inside that says in this world, pain is unavoidable. Choose your pain, says the voice. Let at least one person know who you really are. Let someone in to
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the darkest corner of your heart. It will be painful, sure. But it will also free you. The voice tells me there is a greater, more enduring pain — a hellish pain, you might say — and that this hellish pain comes from dying without having trusted at least one person with all of your secrets. * Upon entering the church that Friday morning, sweet pungent incense greeted my classmates and me. Nestled in the organ loft in the back, Mrs. Medioti muscled her way through a dark dirge. One by one, my classmates made their way to the confessional box and slipped behind the dark heavy curtain. While I wait-
ed, I closed my eyes and rehearsed. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession, and these are my sins. I reviewed my transgressions and listed them in order of severity, least grievous to most heinous. Then I reviewed again the act of contrition I would pray before I received absolution. O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee, and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because I have offended thee, My God, who are all good and deserving of all my love…Without warning, Sister nudged me to the vacant box. I stepped in. It was pitch-black. I knelt. Directly above the latticed opening through which the penitent confessed to the priest hung a crucifix. Talk about a journey into the dark! Stripped naked, whipped to a bloody pulp, crowned in thorns, nailed to a cross, and with Portland 6
no place to hide, is it any wonder that one of the prayers Jesus was purported to have said from that cross was, My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Father Stack slid the wooden slat open. I could not see him, nor he me, but he was listening. And so I began my first confession. I confessed to a litany of sins: of fighting with my brothers and cussing and disobeying my parents and not doing my homework. I saved the worst sin for last. I confessed to Father Stack that I had whispered into the ear of my classmate Mary Cabral, You’re a retard. And with that, I coughed up my deepest secret. “And these are all my sins,” I said, grateful to be done with the whole affair. “Which of these sins,” Father Stack asked me, “bothers you the most?” I couldn’t lie. “The last one, Father.” “Why is that?” “Because I made her cry.” And this was the truth. It ate me up inside to think that I could be so cruel, that I could reduce someone to tears. I was the good son, the good brother. The good friend. It was a painful truth to admit, a truth of monumental proportions for me, then and now. Admitting dark truth, allowing another human being to fumble around in my attic, in my basement, in all the secret hiding places of my heart, even to one who has only words of mercy and absolution to give, is humiliating. I don’t enjoy being whittled down; I don’t enjoy admitting to fraud. And I certainly do not enjoy others knowing me the way I know me. I never will. But maybe any real peace or joy in this life hinges on our willingness to be humbled, to be brought down a peg or two, to admit to at least someone that there are dark places within our hearts where angels fear to tread. I still recoil in whimpering protest at such a thought. I know I am still a coward. I know that the older I’ve gotten, the deeper and darker the cave has become. But now I’m beginning to see darkness differently. I enter into the darkness of my heart because I believe that for God, even darkness is not dark and night is bright as day. A church ought to have such a place where God and people meet in darkness, because that is where God does his best work. Maybe we do not need to be afraid of the dark after all. n
CHAPEL IN FIELDS HALL BY BRUCE FORSTER
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The University will sponsor not one but two August 31-September 9 trips to the Auld Sod this year, both including the Notre Dame/Navy football game in Dublin: a golf outing with University president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., and a cultural and religious tour around the island. For the golfing jaunt, contact Colin McGinty, 503.943.8005, mcginty@up.edu. For the bigger voyage, call Laurie Kelley, 503.943.8332, kelleyl@up.edu.
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BARRIE MCGUIRE
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TOUGH OLD BIRDS: A NOTE By Marla Salmon, ’71, ’72, now dean and professor of nursing at the University of Washington, after a remarkable career in which she was, among other creative labors, the nation’s chief nurse during the Clinton years. She also wrote Nurse: a World of Care, a stunning book which won the 2008 nursing book of the year award in America. She died, three years ago in May, and she got a few paragraphs in this magazine. The facts were all there, sure — Vernia Jane Huffman, Dean of the School of Nursing from 1961 until 1973, dead at age 92, U.S. Navy nurse during two wars, scholarship established in her name, blah, blah, blah. Life’s conveyor belt delivers another soul. All the facts were there. But nowhere did that article mention that Dean Huffman — VJ to the thousands of women and men who admired her — could see the future. Not like a fortune teller, no: VJ was far more practical. She could look at an 18-year-old kid and see the nurse that kid should become — and then make it happen. She did that for me. She did that to me. I guess you could say that she was my mentor, though I called her many other things during the time that I was her student. She made me and a lot of other people mad — but she made us. When I learned that VJ had died, my debt to her finally became very clear. She had given me the gift of believing in me when I didn’t. She gave me the gift of not allowing me to walk away from what I could become.
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I never adequately thanked her. I suspect I am not alone in that. Maybe that’s why the paucity, the mere news, of that article about VJ really bugged me. She deserved more and better, and I needed to make it right. “Great idea,” one friend said, when I told him that I wanted to write something that was a truly proper tribute. “But you know she really was a tough old bird.” True enough. She was tough, and old, and as quick and attentive as a hawk. But the phrase jarred me, and initially derailed my good intentions. Somehow, I thought, tough old birds don’t deserve the kind of tribute I had envisioned. But then I realized: why not? Why the hell not? Maybe it’s because tough old birds are often women who don’t rise — or fall — to that persistent, unspoken, ubiquitous standard of what women should be like: lovely, soft-spoken, agreeable, charming. Or, is it, ornithologically speaking, simply that once you stop being a chick, you automatically become a tough old bird? Neither explanation is an adequate case for not paying tribute, and both are finally not only silly but stupid and cruel. So, for VJ, for all of the tough old birds who came before VJ, for those who will follow, I pay tribute today, right now, in the pages of the very same magazine. The tough old birds I know are amazing. They are the mortar of life, holding people and things together when others turn away. They are the strong hands and spirits that face down lies and evils, and carry the scars of the loneliness and misunderstanding of others. They care way too much to be like the rest of us. And they irritate us with their impatience and outspoken insistence that we can do and be more and better than we are. As if we owe them our lives. Which, sometimes, a lot of times,
The inimitable VJ, second from right, with her students, 1968 Portland 8
maybe most times, we do. And sometimes we hate them for that. So we call them names and throw verbal stones to keep them away from us. Tough old bird, you’ll never catch me. But VJ caught me, and thank God she did. When I think of VJ now, and of all of those other tough old birds I’ve been blessed to know in the nursing profession and not, I finally understand that the label so casually pasted on them is actually a badge of honor. I also have come to realize that the profession that VJ loved and then gave to me is full of tough old birds. No surprise, really. What does it take to care and heal in circumstances designed to kill and maim? How did Florence Nightingale make it through the day? How do those who have battled society’s blindness to the needs of the poor and broken and ill and despairing, like Mother Teresa, get through the day? Can you get any tougher than Mother Teresa? I could go on and on identifying tough old birds. My own mother, also a nurse, would certainly be in there. She fought more than one battle for her patients, her family, and her community. And my daughter, the school nurse, who works with profoundly disabled kids; I suspect she’s already a fledgling tough old bird. And I’m sure every woman and man reading this essay could nominate many, many more tough old birds; in a minute, too. But I remain puzzled about one thing. Why don’t we call them something that really conveys the depth of their contributions, or the complexity of their lives? Why don’t we call them heroes or saints or giants? Why don’t we call them brave and great and holy? Because that is what they were and are. And not until we use the right words for them, I suspect, will we really see their greatness. Not until we acknowledge that they carried us, that they would not let us fail and quit and quail, that they suffered for and from us because they loved us and knew who and what we could be, will we say thanks properly, as I should have when VJ was alive and did not do. But I do it today. Thank you, Vernia Jane, for your strength, which carried me when my strength was not enough. And thank you, all you sweet, strong, capable, dear, tough old birds. Thank you forever. n Marla Salmon
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JERRY HART
Retiring this spring, after long sweet glorious creative remarkable teaching careers on The Bluff: theology professor Father Dick Rutherford, C.S.C., and music professor Judith Montgomery. Dick’s energy and archeological curiosity graced the campus for 35 years; Judith’s extraordinary singing and educative skill elevated the campus for 28 years. Wow. Our most sincere and heartfelt thanks. Gifts celebrating their dash and verve: rise.up.edu.
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UP IN SMOKE One day recently we asked justgraduated Roya Ghorbani-Elizeh ’11 if students still smoke on campus? She found out. University rule for smokers: there is no smoking in any of the 30 buildings on The Bluff, and smokers must stand at least fifty feet from building entrances. In the rain they huddle under trees big enough to keep off the rain: generally sequoias. University groundskeepers are sharp-eyed; conveniently placed by smoking hotspots are tall black ash receptacles, covered against the rain. * According to a recent University drug and alcohol survey of students, 5.2% of the University’s 3,600 students body (or some 185 students), smoke “regularly”; nationally that number is 14.8%. However, 35.8% of University
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students report smoking in the last year, and 42.6% have smoked at some point in their lives. * “There are barely any smokers on campus, which is kind of surprising for a college,” says a student. “I actually feel kind of bad for them, the way they are picked on, given the fact that there’s so few of them.” * Facts: Tobacco smoke causes 9 of every 10 cases of lung cancer. Tobacco use is responsible for nearly 1 in 5 deaths in the United States. Each year some 443,000 people in the United States die from illnesses related to tobacco use. Smoking cigarettes kills more Americans than alcohol, car accidents, suicide, AIDS, homicide, and illegal drugs combined. It is estimated that adult male smokers lost an average of 13.2 years of life and female smokers lost 14.5 years of life by smoking. * The University’s health center assistant director Tim Crump: “Short-term
Ah, yes, students on The Bluff have always been sort of silly. And brave and bright and creative and eager and exuberant and shy and glorious. The Rise Campaign turns its high beams on scholarships this year; there’s a huge scholarship fundraising event May 10 in the Chiles Center, and any and all gifts to help students are welcome more than we can say. See rise.up.edu.
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effects of smoking in students? Colds, bronchitis, and reduced aerobic capacity. Long-term use, we see a predisposition to lung cancer, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis. If students stop smoking now, they’ll most likely be able to reverse effects. Your risk for health problems and dependency with tobacco becomes greater with time.” * In the University’s archives, in Shipstad Hall, I find that in 1949, students and professors were banned from smoking inside classrooms. In 1951, librarian Brother David Martin, C.S.C., promised students that extra provisions would be made to accommodate smokers in the library. In a 1957 issue of The Log I find a Twilight Room ad, with a photo of a student, feet perched on his desk, cigarette dangling from his mouth. In 1964, the United States Surgeon General first reports the negative effects of smoking. In a 1966 profile of University president Father Paul Waldschmidt, C.S.C., there is a photograph of him smoking in his office. In 1970, smoking on campus is restricted to the “main lounge, faculty lounge, staff lounge, librarian’s office, graduate study room, and all restrooms.” In 1982 United States Surgeon General’s report stated that “cigarette smoking is the major single cause of cancer mortality in the United States.” In 1992 smoking in dorms is allowed only with doors shut and the consent of roommates. In 1995, the University bookstore stops selling cigarettes. A year later smoking was banned in all private rooms. Today smoking is banned “in all indoor public areas of the University. Smoking is permitted outdoors” except in the soccer and baseball stands. * As of this past July, 500 colleges across the country have banned tobacco and smoking completely from their campuses. In the past year alone, 120 colleges have banned tobacco use. The University of Oregon, Oregon State University, Western Oregon University, and Southern Oregon University plan to ban tobacco in 2012. Perhaps the most interesting and surprising detail here: In North Carolina, which grows the most tobacco in the United States, devotes some 170,000 acres to the crop, and earns a billion dollars a year from it, 40 colleges and universities have banned tobacco completely. n
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JERRY HART
One entertaining sidelight this past soccer season was a photo booth where fans could pause, don or brandish Pilot gear, and go all Mae West on the camera. Here are some of the hilariousest. Can you make a donation to encourage this sort of cheerful sportish nuttiness on The Bluff? Heck, sure. See rise.up.edu.
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O N R E F L E C T I O N S
IN THE GARDEN I sat recently between my wife and our youngest daughter in a front row seat at the Rose Garden, watching the Cirque Du Soleil. We had taken this daughter, as a small girl, to see the Ringling Brothers circus, in the War Memorial Coliseum next door, and all these years later she was taking us to the circus; we were her guests. We were so close to the performers that I could see the concentration and strain in the face of the wraiththin acrobat who contorted her finewire-muscled limbs above her onearmed handstand. The amazing strength of that lithe body, the sheer beauty as she balanced on a thin pedestal, dissolved everything else for me — the lights, the music, the other performers. It was as if she were dancing in mid-air, and I found myself instinctively clapping with joy and appreciation for the grace sculpted in the motion of the human body. And as I applauded and marveled at her grace, back into my mind flooded a memory from many years ago. Spotlights, thousands of cheering spectators, a band, tuxedoed officials, an announcer’s staccato interruptions, and young men running and leaping with speed and grace… these were scenes buried in me for
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almost fifty years, from winters when the venerable Boston Garden and Madison Square Garden in New York hosted not only the Celtics and Knicks but also premier international track meets. Once, just once, I ran in one of those meets. We were a medley relay team, four runners and coach, upstate New Yorkers from a small college only sixteen years in existence, and still without even a gym, not to mention indoor track facilities. So we ran outdoors, racing around the oval in front of the administration building, surrounded by snowdrifts, wary of the cars and buses that wove through our workouts. For this famous track meet in Madison Square Garden, we arrived from the hotel already in our warmups, and coach carried our watches and wallets in his go-to-meets satchel. He led us through a series of tunnels and corridors under the stands, which vibrated overhead, and the din of the crowd and band swallowed us even before we looked up and up to row upon row of faces all the way to the ceiling, where championship hockey and basketball banners hung and the spotlights blurred our first glimpse in color of what we had only seen before on our black and white televisions. The banked wooden track was even smaller than our snowy traffic circle, and as we did our warm-up stretches inside its perimeter, other racers pounded by, their strides thundering on the boards like swimmers
Speaking of gardens, University provost Brother Donald Stabrowski. C.S.C., has labored long in his garden on campus; and his confrere Father Dick Berg, C.S.C., has long chronicled the amazing results. Thank you, Richard.
running across an old dock before leaping into a lake. Our event was but an interlude between those of worldcaliber runners, and as they circled us we could see their relaxed hands, the synchronous back-and-forth of arms and legs, the gentle leaning into turns, the glint of their short spikes as they glided past, the leaders flashing in and out of the spotlight, everyone headed to the finish where tuxedoed officials held out their stopwatches to catch their times. The unforgettable sounds: Gentlemen, on your marks…set…the retort of the starter’s pistol…the uptempo beat of the band…the beat of spikes on the boards…the bell lap…the click of stopwatches…and throughout it all the polyphonous chorus of spectators far above and all around us. I looked up once, before I took the baton for my short leg of our relay, and saw so many faces that they blurred and merged, and the cacophony of their voices poured down so heavily that I heard only intermittent notes from the band. What I did hear as I ran, or perhaps more accurately felt, was my own breath and the rhythm of my spiked feet slapping the drumhead of the boards. In less than a minute I had handed off the baton and become a breathless spectator. I watched my teammates flying on, and wondered if they too rode the excited pulse of the crowd, and if they too forgot about the race and relished the running. Had they too momentarily become what they were doing? I had run since I was a child, running so often that I can hardly pull a single memory from those years; but I do remember a summer evening in the backyard, all lawn and garden, where a group of us children, quite small, somersaulted and cartwheeled and ran until we were dizzy and flopped to the grass while the world spun around us. Little runners and acrobats we were, savoring the beauty of what our bodies could do. As it ever was and is. Summers now, my grandson will sometimes say watch me! as he runs in small circles in my yard, and then he challenges me, catch me grandpa! and I try, both of us running, just running. n Louis Masson, who retired last year after forty years as a beloved professor of literature on The Bluff, is the author of two collections of essays, Reflections and The Play of Light.
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THE LIVES BEHIND THE LOANS By Matt Elerding ’94, a loan officer in Vancouver, Washington. The construction worker who ambled into my office wearing his hardhat and steel-toed boots, paying his mortgage in cash: 43 twenty-dollar bills, to be exact. Some of the twenties were as dirty as his shirt and boots. He counted out eight hundred and sixty dollars. Even with this payment he’s still four payments behind. “Work’s been tight and it’s the best I can do,” he says. Or the warm, smiling, animated Iranian man who told me his story with such zest and passion I just didn’t have the heart to tell him I did not speak a word of his language, not one. We smiled at each other when he paused for breath. Or the smell of food and wine and beer and smoke on tax returns, telling me the home habits of my would-be clients. Or the look of distrust smeared across the face of the client who had an unpleasant experience during his last mortgage mambo. “But that wasn’t me,” I said. “You’re all cut from the same cloth,” he said. Or the fiancé a week away from her wedding in Hawaii, who learned the truth about her almost-husband. Her heart broken and her earnest money gone. Or the recently widowed mother of four who called me to ask what needed to be done now that her husband had died of cancer because she doesn’t know what to do. “He handled all the bills,” she said, quietly. Or the young client who, despite having never bought a home in his twenty-seven years on this planet, explained to me, in painstaking detail, how, exactly, this process was going to go. Or the faithful husband and doting father of two who learned that his wife preferred other company. He called me to talk about financing but we talked about confusion and sadness more than we did about financing. Or the faithful wife and doting mother of three who learned that her husband needed to enter rehab, and
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that every last dime of their equity would need to be extracted from their family home so that he could get better. Or the second-worst call I’ve ever received in my career, a woman informing me that her husband, my client, a wonderful and humble man, couldn’t take the financial stress anymore. “Oh Matt, he did it. He really did it. He’s gone. Oh my god, he’s gone. What am I going to do?” I listened to her cry and plead for answers. I didn’t know what to say. There is no script for this call. She asked me to be a pallbearer at his service. I said yes. Or the way a client’s eyes light up when he realizes we both have Alaskan roots. “Oh, You’re from Alaska! Do you know so-and-so?” he asks. “Of course I do,” I say. “It’s Alaska.” Or the worst phone call I’ve ever received in my career, the worst call I ever will receive, I hope, from a shattered mother, client, and friend who lost five of her six children in a split second. It’s been almost a year since that call and I still think about that call nearly every day. Or the fledgling realtor whose license had been printed so recently you could smell the fresh ink, who called me three times a day, every day, to check the status of his first sale. Or the divorcing husband who sent a bouquet of flowers to his divorcing wife on the day that would have been their 29th wedding anniversary. She didn’t reply. Or the way my assistant and I have to call real estate agents and tell them that the appraisal has come in under value on their clients’ homes. Or the look of terror in the eyes of the young couple as my office printer whirls to life and spits out a twelvepage credit report revealing, in intimate detail, every financial foible and monetary misstep they have ever made in their imperfect journey along the road of life. Or the goosebump-inducing phone call that ends with the client telling you, unquestionably, unequivocally, undeniably, yes, I will work with you. Or the gut-wrenching phone call that ends with the client telling you unquestionably, unequivocally, undeniably, no, I choose not to work with you. Or the awkward intimacy of the client who fills my ear with far too many far too intimate far too revelatory personal details so clear I feel Spring 2012 13
the need to go to confession. Or the uncontainable excitement that a wife and mother shows on her face when the right home finally appears from the fog of listings, and she knows this is the house where her children will be raised. Last week was a bad week. Four appraisals came in low, three loans couldn’t make the credit-cut, two clients opted to “wait and see what prices do this winter,” and one wealthy hoarder had the audacity to pay cash for his home. But, but, but, I love my job. And I suspect many realtors and loan officers and escrow officers and appraisers and agents would say the same thing. These jobs, these careers, they are stuffed with stories, yes? It’s for these stories — some painful, some poignant, all of them in some way precious — that I love my job. I love how a seemingly singular function — loaning money — can bubble a brew of stories so vast, so different, so unique. And for all the bad days I have had in fourteen years of loaning money, and there have been some very bad days, I believe with all my heart that the good days, and there have been some very good days, will prevail. It’s not even that I believe this, I realize now, at the end of this essay; I know it. On campus in January: artist Makoto Fujimura, for the opening of a show of his “Four Holy Gospels” paintings, celebrating the 400th anniversary of that glorious work of genius, the King James Bible. One of the works, ‘Tears of Christ,’ was inspired, he noted, by the murders of September 11: Fujimura lives close to Ground Zero. His show and talk was sponsored by the University’s Garaventa Center for American Catholicism, long may it wave.
O N S P O R T S The Olympics Pilot alumnae Christine Sinclair and Sophie Schmidt (Canada) and Megan Rapinoe (USA) will lead their teams into the Olympics in London in July; Sinclair, now the best player in the world, according to American star Abby Wambach, has scored 129 international goals, third to only Wambach (131) and Mia Hamm (158). Cross Country The Pilot men finished eighth in the nation, senior Alfred Kipchumba and junior Trevor Dunbar earned All-American honors, and the Pilots were the best Catholic university team in America, as usual. The sheer consistency of the men’s cc team is remarkable: this is their ninth national top-15 finish, and they have never gone two years without an NCAA championship meet berth. Wow. ¶ The Pilot women, who finished tenth in the West, will have three new faces this fall, among them: German high-school 800-meter champion Laura Hottenrott-Freitag. Athletic Director Larry Williams, after seven stellar years on The Bluff,
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left to be AD at Marquette University. During his tenure the Pilot women’s soccer team led the nation in attendance and won the 2005 national title; men’s cross country advanced to seven consecutive NCAA championship meets; men's basketball rose into the national top 25 for the first time in fifty years; academics became even more of a priority; television coverage of Pilot sports doubled; and both the Chiles Center and the Clive Charles soccer complex were expanded. He did good work, and we wish him well. Track Jared Bassett (from Coos Bay, Oregon, where The Greatest American Runner Ever was born), earned All-America honors in the steeplechase with a personal-best 8:50.99 in the NCAA Championship meet; he also kept the Pilots’ championship meet streak alive: 20 consecutive title meets with at least one Pilot runner. ¶ One highlight of the winter season: Tuesday Night at the Races in the Chiles Center, a weekly all-comers meet sponsored by the University and USA Track & Field. Anyone 14 or over could run, for $5 a night, in as many races as they wanted.
THE BEST SPORTS STORY OF THE YEAR ON THE BLUFF was a thorough effort on the part of Pilot student-athletes all year long to raise money for others. It was totally cool. Men’s soccer players shaved their heads to raise cash for cancer research. Women’s soccer players helped build a park named for a sweet crippled kid. Volleyball players hosted a Dig Pink night to fight breast cancer. Men’s and women’s basketball players joined junior Sam Bridgman (below, center) for the Sam Jam, a wheelchair game that raised $7,000 to fight the Friedreich’s Ataxia that afflicts the much-liked Bridgeman, a manager for the baseball team. Volleyball player Kate Bostwick, track star Molly Billingham, and four other University students rode fifty miles each on bikes to raise $12,685 for Sam. And much more. That was the best victory of all, that our students wanted to do that, and do it with verve and laughter.
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Basketball Rebuilding year for the young Pilot men, who were 5-17 at presstime, after 60 wins in the last three seasons. Forward Ryan Nicholas led the club in scoring (12) and rebounds (8) per game, but the team was shooting 30% from long range. One highlight: freshman Kevin Bailey working himself into the starting five and having breakout games as the season wore on. ¶ The women were also having an off year; they were 8-15 at presstime, shooting only 39% from the floor. All-WCC Natalie Day was having another fine year, though, at 18 points and 8 boards a game, and All-WCC ReZina Teclemariam was averaging 11 points, 5 assists, and 5 rebounds a game. Both will finish among the top twenty scorers in Pilot history. Soccer The Philadelphia Independence of Women’s Pro Soccer drafted striker Danielle Foxhoven in the first round; Foxhoven finished her Pilot career with 57 goals, joining only legends Christine Sinclair, Tiffeny Milbrett, and Shannon MacMillan at the fifty mark. Even cooler, she was twice Academic All-American. ¶ Back for the Pilots when the season starts in August will be all-WCC forward Micaela Cappelle and All-WCC Freshman Team midfielder Rebekah Kurle. ¶ For the men, WCC Defender of the Year Ryan Kawulok ’11 was chosen by the MLS Portland Timbers, and goalkeeper Austin Guerrero ’10 signed with Mexico’s Monterrey Tigres. The men, led by top scorer Steven Evans in midfield, open play in August; see portlandpilots.com for schedule and ticket details. Baseball The Pilots start WCC play March 22 at home against BYU. Three new players who were drafted by pro teams decided to play on The Bluff instead: pitcher Kody Watts (Pirates), shortstop Caleb Whalen (Brewers), and pitcher Travis Radke (Reds). Among the other new faces is Portland Central Catholic High infielder Lucas Hunter, who hit .419 for the Rams, and whose dad is Brian Hunter, who played for six teams in The Show. Returning veterans include all-WCC pitcher Kyle Kraus (whose average 1.37 walks per nine innings is the best ever on The Bluff), and All-American outfielder Turner Gill, the Pride of Madras, who led the Pilots in everything else: .332, 61 hits, 18 doubles, 33 RBIs. Wow. Volleyball Kati Hronek and Ariel Usher earned all-WCC athletic honors, Rachel Femling and Kate Bostwick
O N earned all-WCC academic honors (Femling with a 3.76 in accounting, Bostwick with a 3.52 in biology), and Addie Webster joined as an assistant coach; Webster, a Portland native and Jesuit High grad, played pro in Austria. Tennis Sophomores Michael Hu Kwo and Alex Ferrero lead the young Pilot men, and rookies Milagros Cubelli, Katy Krauel, and Anastasia Polyakova lead the even younger women. Tennis continues its amazing world recruiting range: there are players from Brazil, Spain, Canada, China, Macedonia, Argentina, Australia, and Russia. Summer Sports Camps start June 18: see portlandpilots.com. Rise Campaign gifts to any and all athletic efforts: see rise.up.edu.
B R I E F LY Awardees Heck of a year for communication studies professor Renee Heath, who won the University’s 2011 Teacher of the Year Award and a 2012 award for excellence from Oregon Women in Higher Education. ¶ At the White House in January: Joe Womac ’00, honored as a “champion for change…doing extraordinary things in his community.” Womac runs the Fulcrum Foundation in Seattle, which has helped more than 10,000 low-income students attend Catholic schools in Washington state; 99 percent of those students went on to college. ¶ Awarded, or sentenced, to a vice-presidency of student affairs: attorney and political science professor Father Gerry Olinger, C.S.C., who has overseen legal affairs and strategic planning since his arrival on The Bluff in 2009. A brave man, Gerry; he lives in Kenna Hall. ¶ Earning a national Graves Award for teaching: music professor Patrick Murphy. Student Feats The University’s engineering students won the Oregon computer programming title, thumping, among others, students from some school in Eugene. ¶ The University’s student history journal, Northwest Passages, won its third national title from Phi Alpha Theta, the national history honor society; Passages has been first or second nationally five years in a row. Whew. ¶ Hatched by MBA students Joaquin Ortiz and Katie Smith: the Portland Burrito Project, by which 20 University students make and deliver 100 burritos on Skid Road every few months. See portland.burritopro-
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ject.org. ¶ University students mourn their late classmate Molly Hightower ’09 every semester with a work day in the community, honoring Molly’s work ethic; she was crushed in the Haiti quake while working at an orphanage. This semester’s project: total cleanup of streets around the campus; among the previous Molly Days was one of the most successful blood drives in campus history. A Second National Title for the University’s Center for Entrepreneurship, named the best in America again by the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, which lauded the program’s innovative energy. UP’s program, which was picked over Notre Dame and Maryland, brings students of all academic disciplines into new venture creation and technology management, among other areas; the program has also been adopted at the College of St. Benedict and St. Johns University in Minnesota and St. Mary’s University in Texas. Very cool. Gifts & Grants to the University’s roaring Rise Campaign recently: $300,000 from the Collins Foundation and $250,000 from the Meyer Memorial Trust, for the reinvention of Clark Library; the renovations are so extensive it’s essentially a total reboot of the lovely old barn. The library will be closed for the 2012-2013 academic year, and will reopen with new study labs, computer labs, a production studio, a space for music and readings, and much else; for information on the project see rise.up.edu. ¶ $10,000 from the Henry Hillman Foundation for the University’s ‘black box theater’ in Mehling Hall; see how you can make Campaign gifts to jazz whatever you want here? ¶ $100,364 from the University’s own faculty and staff toward the Campaign. More than half the faculty and staff made Campaign gifts (ranging from, entertainingly, $3 to $5000). Estimable Guests Frederik Willem de Klerk, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for his work with Nelson Mandela to kill apartheid, spoke to a packed Buckley Center in January. ¶ The 1961 Freedom Riders were here, sort of — the University (and Roosevelt High) hosted a threeday exhibit and program of photographs and stories of the men and women who attempted to integrate buses and trains in the South, starring Portland residents. ¶ Austrian graphic novelist and comic artist Anna-Maria Jung, author of the Spring 2012 15
graphic novel Xoth! Die unaussprechliche Stadt (you read that, didn’t you?) spoke on monsters and fantastic stories… ¶ Actor Kunal Nayyar ’03, of television’s The Big Bang Theory (in which he plays an astrophysicist), spoke to a packed crowd and then, hilariously, met with prospective students for hours. Now there’s an admission office coup. Faculty Grants Among the projects funded by University research stipends this year were studies of orphans in South Africa, sacred music, child welfare in Prussia, mosque controversies in America, sun exposure, medieval Spanish synagogues, the work of Jonathan Kozol, war trauma, flaviviruses, and (words we always love to type) algebraic topology. Now, Here, On Earth, Amen University provost Brother Donald Stabrowski, C.S.C., speaking on Veterans Day: “We gather to remember veterans of all our wars, and to pray for peace. We thank the millions of brave people who fought so that we could enjoy peace. We are reminded of the words of General Douglas MacArthur: “Our soldiers, above all other people, pray for peace, for he or she must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war…” So we pray for peace, and we pray for these brave men and women who in their most productive years served their country well, and especially those who did not return to their families and friends. We pray for the families they left behind: mothers and fathers who would never see their sons and daughters again; the young spouses and children who were left without sometimes even knowing these amazing souls. We ask that you never forget them, Lord, and we ask that you bestow on us the grace to build your kingdom of peace now, here, on earth. Amen.” Wow.
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Prayers of the People, Fourth Sunday of Easter Why do we go to church? Really, why? By Gail Wells
ow be sure to follow along on page five,” says Father B., “because the Prayers of the People are different this Sunday.” Father B. is a retired priest filling in for our rector, Father Q. Father B. doesn’t know that, in this Episcopal church, the Prayers of the People are different every Sunday. Father Q. likes to change things up, keep the congregation on its toes. People moan about this. They complain to me because I’m on the church council. We don’t like all these changes, they tell me fretfully. Why can’t we just stick with our familiar comfortable ways? God forbid you should be uncomfortable in church, I think. “Is this thing on?” booms Father B., fiddling with his lapel mike. But Father B. isn’t following the bulletin. His eyes are closed and his face is lifted to heaven, and he’s launched into the familiar words from the Book of Common Prayer that he’s been speaking ever since he was ordained. “It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth.” A distressed shuffling from below. I glance down from the choir loft at the puzzled heads. The congregation is lost. Today’s psalm is the familiar TwentyThird. The choir has just finished singing it, doing the best we can with our sparse voices. We’ve been a skeleton choir since our music director got into a fight with Father Q. and left. It’s a long story. About a third of the choir quit in protest, including all the altos. The rest of us soldier on. From below I detect a nervous pause. Father B. is looking expectantly at the congregation, which is supposed to be saying, “Thanks be to God,” only the words aren’t printed where they should be; the church secretary is doing a terrible job with the bulletin. Finally an old-timer belts out, “Thanks be to God!” “We pray for Christian churches throughout the world...” continues Father B. Behind me Abbott and Costello are whispering and laughing. They’re our only tenors this morning. I sit straight-backed in my chair, as if the sight of my rigid spine will shut them up. Fat chance. I try to pray, to block their voices out of my ears, but I can’t. I distract myself by thinking back to the sermon: How do you listen for your Shepherd’s voice? What is wrong with me today? I just crave a little order, a little decorum, a little dignity. Is that too much to ask? Portland 16
I want inner quiet and I can’t find it. I want those green pastures, I want those waters of comfort. If I can’t find them in church, where can I find them? Maybe I’m asking too much. Maybe I’m more like those fretful complainers than I want to admit. Maybe I’m expecting church to be a refuge from the mess and anxiety and befuddlement and occasional pure muck of ordinary life. Maybe I’m expecting self-centered, fearful, small-minded people — people like me, that is — to suddenly turn into saints when they pass through the church door. Abbott and Costello are conversing in stage whispers, passing a notebook between them. I knew Abbott when he was a lovable lunk of a high-school
out hindrance? Maybe it does. Maybe he’s doing the best he can. But why does he have to do it in church? Why is he even here? Why am I even here, come to think of it? Why am I here? The question seems to come from somewhere outside my brain, through my left ear, maybe, or up the back of my neck. Once I let it in, I feel my shoulders sag, feel the breath flow slackly from my nostrils, and suddenly it’s quiet inside my head, and suddenly — I can’t explain it — I know the answer. I look down at the heads below me. People are scrutinizing their pink bulletins, or using them as fans, or letting them lie abandoned in the pews. But everybody is keeping up just fine.
Father B. turns to the congregation and flings out his arms in a wide embrace, and the wings of his white vestments ripple like the wings of a swan alighting on the water. “The peace of the Lord be always with you!” His voice surges out of the mike like a tsunami. Let it go, for heaven’s sake. Everything you need is right here, right now. I turn around and wish Abbott and Costello the Lord’s peace. Miraculously, I really mean it. Thanks be to God. n Gail Wells is a writer in Corvallis, Oregon; her most recent book is The Little Lucky, a “family geography” starring her grandfather’s ramshackle house near the Little Luckiamute River.
PHOTO: STEPHEN TRIMBLE; SAINT FRANCIS CATHEDRAL, SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO
kid with a promising tenor voice. Now he’s a college graduate. His voice is glorious; his social graces, not so much. He’s become best buddies with Costello, who’s still in high school. They egg each other on. I turn around and lay a hand on Costello’s arm, and say, “Please.” He gives me a spooked look and falls silent. I can’t reach Abbott, which is lucky for him because I’d probably smack him. Abbott’s mother was a no-nonsense woman with a sweet husky contralto voice. She died of cancer three years ago. His father is absent from the bass section today because he’s sick with cancer. Does unspeakable sorrow give Abbott a license to run his mouth with-
Founded in 1889 as a Catholic orphanage for abandoned and wayward kids, the Saint Mary’s Home for Boys on Portland’s west side was an astounding jumble of hope and sadness and joy and pain right from the start; but it never quit, and for a hundred years University of Portland folks have helped out as counselors (former Pilot basketball star Sarah Green was a beloved counselor there), donors, board members, visiting musicians, and articulate ambassadors for the hope and healing that can happen there to boys who have been absolutely hammered in this life. Director Lynda Walker notes that eighty percent of the boys (ages 10 to 17) graduate to a less structured care facility or earn jobs. “Money spent helping them is better spent than money spent imprisoning them,” she says, with her usual blunt honesty. To which we say amen, with prayers in our mouths. Editor
For more information on Saint Mary’s Home for Boys, see stmaryshomeforboys.org; for information on the hundred ways the University’s faculty, staff, students, and alumni bend their creative labors to elevating kids, see www.up.edu. To throw mountains of cash at our remarkable and relentless labors, see rise.up.edu.
By Bread Alone Food and agony and love and food and despair and love: notes. By Nina Ramsey here you are, Ruby Bustamante, five years old, sitting in a wheelchair, your right leg casted from ankle to hip. Your newspaper photo is captioned girl in wreck survives ten days on noodles, Gatorade. Ruby, 5, thought dead mother was asleep... You raise your right hand to wave at the camera. You look confused. Are you awake? Are you dreaming? Ruby, arise! You survived ten days after Mommy crashed the car through a guardrail and into a ravine seventy miles east of Los Angeles. You survived rattlesnakes, hunger, heat, and thirst. How did you do it, Ruby? How did you survive? Uncle Juan said you were a brave girl. The highway worker who found you called it a miracle. Aunt Rose believes Mommy set out dry noodles and Gatorade for you before she died. Was it a miracle? Were the noodles your manna from heaven? Or had Mommy taught you to be quiet and leave Mommy alone when Mommy slept? Were you a good girl, Ruby? Did you open the Gatorade and break the noodles into tiny bites and wait for Mommy to wake up? My sister Claire was born in 1950, my mother’s first child. Mother scheduled Claire’s feedings: she set the timer and fed Claire formula every four hours. Six o’clock, ten o’clock, two o’clock, six o’clock, ten o’clock, two o’clock. It didn’t matter if Claire was crying, cooing, spitting up, or sleeping. Mother put the rubber nipple to Claire’s lips until she sucked the bottle dry. Last Mother’s Day, during a brunch of baguettes, scrambled eggs, and couscous-stuffed tomatoes, Mother told Claire, You’d lie in your crib and cry and cry and cry. Claire will tell you this remark tore her open. I finally took you to the pediatrician when you were nine months old, and he told me to increase your feedings. Why, he said you were just hungry! Mother sipped her mimosa and smiled. Today Claire is a brilliant linguist, a scholar, a specialist in symbols, syntax, and sign language. Yet Claire cannot decode the signals from her belly to her brain. Claire hates food. Food is her labor, her loathing, her life. Claire has starved herself until she is thin as a famine victim and she
has binged on cookies and cake until she is fat as the Michelin Man. The last time I saw Claire, her eyelids, fingers, ankles, and feet were puffed up like marshmallows. She refused to share my evening meal — baby bok choy, coconut shrimp, and steamed rice — and instead ate a bowl of cereal. After which, she announced, she would be giving up all white food. White cake, white rice, white bread, white potatoes, white pasta in white sauce with white parmesan cheese. It won’t matter, she said. No matter how much she eats, she is always empty. I ate alone for a long time after my miserable divorce. Then I met Bob. Bob was a lean health-food nut, with a pink and blue butterfly tattooed on his right bicep. One day he opened my refrigerator and stared at its contents: four sesame bagels, a half-empty container of cottage cheese, three red delicious apples, a two-liter plastic bottle of cola. He shook his head. Don’t you ever eat? The next day I joined the food cooperative. I bought a carton of eggs, a wedge of cheese, two bunches of locally grown carrots, and a bag of broccoli. Later, I married Bob. We eat to feel love and comfort. We eat so we don’t feel sadness, despair, anger. We eat to feel separate. We eat to belong. We eat foods that soothed us when we were children — scalloped potatoes, macaroni and cheese, warm sourdough bread, oatmeal cookies. We eat candle-lit cake on birthdays, stuffed turkey at Thanksgiving, chocolate bunnies at Easter, unleavened bread during Passover. We eat to become one with the corn and one with the wheat and one with the flesh of the animal we eat. And after we consume the flesh off the bones, we must not break the bones. The bones must be kept safe, the bones are necessary for the animal to resurrect itself and give itself to us again. We don’t eat blood because the Lord said unto Moses if any man of the house of Israel or of the strangers that sojourn among them eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood and I will cut him off from among his people. We do drink blood because Portland 26
Jesus sat with his disciples for their Last Supper and he struck a bargain with them — when they ate the bread, they would eat the body of Christ; when they drank the wine, they would drink the blood of Christ; and in doing so, they would be made one with Christ. Do this and I will set my face against you. Do this and I will always be with you. Pass me the green salad, Daddy says. He frowns into the bowl. Where’s the damned dressing!? We all cringe. No dressing, only lemon juice, Mother reminds him. Daddy got a promotion to Commercial Jet Sales Manager at Boeing, but Daddy is a metallurgical engineer. He hates sales and he hates management. He hates his new job so much he’s been binge eating — cookies, toffee, ice cream, candy. Now he weighs 230 pounds and his blood pressure is too high. He must lose 50 pounds. But he is not suffering alone: Mother has put us all on his diet. No salad dressing, no butter, no potatoes, no bread; no candy, no ice cream, no cake. We will all lose weight, like it or not. We sit quietly at the end of our dinner, Claire and Carol and Mother and Daddy and I, and nibble our dessert: sliced peaches and fat-free nondairy topping. Only our black cat Libby is satisfied: she licked up every bit of her kitty tuna and she is washing her face and purring. Daddy empties a teaspoon of artificial sweetener into his tea and takes a sip. I choose that moment to make my announcement, my voice robotic, as though I was reporting road conditions over Snoqualmie Pass. Limited visibility. Compact snow and ice. Approved traction devices required. I am dropping out of the ninth grade. I have attended classes only one day a week for the past two months. I am going to be expelled anyway. Daddy drops his teacup and it shatters on the table. When I was six years old, Uncle Howard gave me his leather-bound collection of Classics Illustrated: Ivanhoe, Othello, Hamlet, The Count of Monte Cristo, King Solomon’s Mines. But it was Puddin’ Head Wilson that stuck. I remember one horrible scene
PAINTING: WOMAN SELLING BREAD, 1911; NATALIA GONCHAROVA (1881-1962) / ART RESOURCE, NY
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— a slave named Roxy is forced to pick cotton in suffocating heat without food. No biscuits, no grits, no cornmeal mush. Roxy is being punished. I don’t remember why. The slaves are warned not to share food with her, but one brave soul disobeys. Here’s a tator, Roxy. I know they ain’t feedin’ you right. That slave is nearly beaten to death for his simple act of goodness, for his charity, for his humanity. I knew right then if what the Bible said was true, then Roxy was the Living Christ, and the slave who fed her was a Saint and was going to go straight to Heaven. In 1932 and 1933, Stalin’s Soviet Guard forced Ukraine peasants to turn over their entire food supply — every bit of wheat, barley, oats, and rye. It was an artificial famine. A genocide. Seven million Ukrainians starved to death: 25,000 people a day, dead; one thousand per hour, dead; seventeen every minute, dead. Corpses lined the cobbled streets. The Soviet Guard forced the starving peasants to load the bodies of their friends, their parents, their children into carts and haul them away to be hurled into pits like garbage. The people slowly, painfully, died of hunger. They ate every dog and every cat and every bird that could be found. As the famine raged, human beings ate other human beings. In the province of Poltava, in the spring of 1933, it was rumored that a starving woman ate her children. It is midnight. A young woman with stringy hair and dull eyes shuffles down the grocery aisle. She is a bag of bones. So thin she could swim right out of her blue overalls. She gazes at the bread sticks, bagels, muffins, and cakes. She admires the contents of her shopping cart: diet cola, celery, lettuce. She gazes again at the cakes. Strokes the baby hairs on her cheeks. Her arm drifts to an angel food cake. She stops. Squeezes her eyes shut. Bony fingers grip her cart. Knuckles whiten. How many meals have I shared with her in my dreams? In my dreams we sit at the table. I tempt her. I coax her. Please, oh please, take a bite. She pushes green peas around on her plate, then spears the tiniest pea with her fork and places it in her mouth. She chews for five minutes and she wipes her mouth with her napkin and she rolls it into a moist ball and she looks at me and she smiles. Listen, honey, I say, I know a little something about refusing to eat. Why, when I was a child, my father butchered my pet chicken. She was called Hazelnut and she was my beloved and on the
night that Hazelnut was killed, the sky turned black and a dark wind arose and claps of thunder roared down from the heavens and lightning split the skies and I refused to partake of her flesh and her blood. I stop my sermon and I look at her and I smile. But I see it is too late. She has fallen off her chair and she is crawling away and I hear her chanting you can’t make me, you can’t make me. In 1992 I took Mother with me to Washington, D.C., while I attended the scientific meetings of the Gerontological Society of America. I presented my doctoral research that year, an achievement I wanted Mother to share. It was Mother who made sure I finished high school, who made sure I went to university, who made sure I had this opportunity she was never granted. At the end of each day, Mother and I would meet at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. We’d drink tea and eat shortbread cookies and our dialogue would go like this: Where would you like to have dinner tonight? I ask. Oh, I don’t care, it doesn’t matter, she replies. What kind of food would you like? I persist. Oh, I don’t care, it doesn’t matter, she says. It doesn’t matter. I wonder if Mother has ever thought she matters. Eventually, I give up. I choose America Restaurant, in Union Station, my favorite D.C. eatery. I love their crab cakes, their macaroni and cheese, their gumbo, their baked potatoes, their sourdough bread, their navy bean soup. We eat at America every night. Two weeks after the trip, my sister Carol phones. It sounds like Mom had a really good time in D.C., she says. Except for the food. What? I ask. Yeah, she said you insisted on eating at the same restaurant every night. My dear friend Dave is dying. We were born the same year; we grew up within an hour’s drive of each other; we’ve been friends since we met at university the year we both turned thirty. Now cancer has consumed him. It started in his kidneys and it traveled to his brain and it attacked his spine. He has had sixteen surgeries. His legs are paralyzed and his bald head is covered with scars. Two rounds of chemicals have done nothing to stop it. None of us can stop it. Tonight, we have brought dinner to Dave at the hospice where he’s lived the last six months. A feast from his favorite restaurant, the New Delhi. Portland 28
Poori, paneer, saffron pilaf, lamb curry, tandoori chicken, gobhi matar. The staff leaves us alone to celebrate what we all know will be our last supper. One hour into our meal, Dave grows tired and he needs more drugs. It takes three of us to carry him from the recliner to his wheelchair and tuck him into bed. His eyelids droop and his speech slurs. God, you guys, that was the best dinner of my life. It’s 1975 and I’m in Kamloops, British Columbia, visiting my sister Carol. Carol has red hair, freckles, and our Grandma Sue’s brown eyes. She is kindhearted and humorous; a hard worker; a heart breaker. She broke Mother and Daddy’s hearts when she dropped out of college, married a cowboy, and moved to a cattle ranch in the British Columbian interior. Now she has given birth to her first child, the first baby in a new generation of my family. Jenny is two weeks old and has red tufts of hair, button eyes, and fat cheeks that dimple when she nurses. She has an impressive appetite. She gurgles and smacks her lips and gulps and burps until her milk-drunk eyes close and she sleeps. Carol smiles, her own milk-drunk eyes closed. Jenny stirs and latches her lips onto Carol’s nipple and slurps noisily. Carol strokes Jenny’s head. She looks at me and she whispers, this is all I’ve ever wanted. I kiss Carol’s freckled cheek and we both lean down and kiss the top of Jenny’s head. Jenny has stopped nursing. She has fallen asleep. Her tummy is full. She is safe and warm in the loving arms of her mama and her auntie. We study the tiny blue veins of her eyelids. We watch her lips pucker and twitch. Jenny smiles. She is dreaming of her mama’s milk. Eat! Live! Love! Television chef Wolfgang Puck proclaims. Chef Puck is a short man with delicate hands and a loud German-accented voice. His choice of a culinary career over the trades cost him the love of his father. His success as a chef and restaurateur cost him the love of his wife. But his studio audience loves him. He whips up their enthusiasm while he whips up chocolate soufflé. Eat, live, love! He booms. His raucous audience joins the chant. Eat, live, love! Eat, live, love! I start chanting along, too. Eat, live, love! I holler back at the television screen. I can’t help myself. Eat, live, love! Eat! Live! Love! n Nina Ramsey is a psychiatric nurse and writer in Seattle.
NOTRE DAME DE LA FAIM
An extraordinary sacred place, a stone’s throw from the University. By Ursula K. Le Guin
visited a great cathedral this week. It’s situated in a mixed industrialsmall business-residential area not far from the Portland Airport, an odd place for a cathedral. But it has a huge congregation and is full of people, not just on Sundays but every day of the week. And it’s big. Notre-Dame de Paris covers about 67,000 square feet, this one is nearly twice as big — 108,000 square feet, two full city blocks, with an adjunct building across the river that covers 94,000 square feet. From the outside it looks like a huge warehouse, but it hasn’t the strangely
menacing, fortress-like look of the great windowless citadels of consumerism, WalMart and the rest. When you get inside this building, you see the cathedral. The high, airy entrance hall leads you first, on a elegantly stonetiled floor with little bronze decorations set in here and there, to an area of offices and cubicles. Most churches hide their administrative department, but this one puts it right out front. The walls are blond wood; everything is spacious and handsome. Like the high nave of Notre-Dame, the startlingly high ceiling of steel-braced wood soars above all the small human activ-
ity down on the floor beneath. In the old cathedral, that height creates a great, mysterious, upper space of shadows. But the space beneath this vault is luminous. It wasn’t till I entered the interior, the cathedral proper, that I understood why they’d built the ceiling so high. As there should be, there are great doors to open into the sacred space. And as a sacred space will do, the first sight took my breath away. I stood silent. I remembered what the word awe means. Much of the interior of the huge building is visible from that doorway, or would be except that the whole
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floor is covered with immense, towering blocks and piles and stacks of crates, cartons, boxes, and containers, arranged in gigantically severe order, with wide aisles between each tower or bay. Only down the aisles can you see the far walls in the far distance. There are no permanent walls or divisions. The immense, splendidly cantilevered ceiling stretches serenely above it all. The air is cool, fresh, and clean, with the faintest smell of garden stuff, fresh vegetables. Vehicles run quietly up and down the aisles, miniforklifts and the like, looking quite tiny among the high blocks and stacks, constantly busy at moving crates and boxes, bringing in and taking out. Well, it isn’t a cathedral. That was a metaphor. It’s just a warehouse, after all. But what kind of warehouse stores
nothing to sell? Nothing, not one item in all these (literally) acres of goods, is or ever will be for sale. Actually, it’s a bank. But not the kind of bank where money is the only thing that happens. Here is where money doesn’t happen. This is the Oregon Food Bank. Every box in the great cubical stacks between the aisles, every carton, every can, every bottle, every crate, holds food. Every carton, every can, every pound, every ounce of that food will be given to the people of Oregon who haven’t the money to buy what they need to live on. It is a cathedral, after all. The cathedral of hunger. Or should I say the cathedral of generosity? Of compassion, or community, Portland 30
or caritas? It comes to the same thing. There are people who need help. There are people who deny this, saying that God helps those who help themselves, and the poor and the unemployed are merely shiftless slackers sponging on a nanny government. There are people who don’t deny poverty, but they don’t want to know about it because it’s all so terrible and what can you do? And then there are people who help. This place is the most impressive proof of their existence I ever saw. Their existence, their efficiency, their influence. This place embodies human kindness. In, of course, the most unspiritual, lowly, humdrum, even gross way. In a thousand cans of green beans, in towers of macaroni boxes, in crates
of fresh-picked vegetables, in cold side-chapel-refrigerators of meat and cheese... In hundreds of cartons with improbable names of obscure beers on them, donated by the brewers because beer-cartons are particularly sturdy and useful for packing food... In the men and women, employees and trained volunteers, operating the machinery, manning the desks, sorting and packaging the fresh produce, teaching survival skills in the Food Bank classrooms, kitchens, and gardens, driving the trucks that bring food in and the trucks that take food out to where it’s needed. For these towering walls and blocks and reefs of goods — 12 to 18 thousand pounds of food in each bay of the warehouse — will vanish, melt away like sandcastles, tonight or in a few days, to be replaced instantly by the
supply of boxed, canned, glassed, fresh, and frozen food, which in turn will melt away in a day or a week, going where it’s needed. And that is everywhere. The Food Bank distributes in every county of the state of Oregon plus one county of Washington state. They don’t have to look far to find people who need help getting enough to eat. Anywhere kids are, to start with. Many school-age children in our country, towns, and cities don’t get three meals a day, or even two. Many aren’t always sure if they’ll get anything to eat today at all. How many? About a third of them. One child in three. Put it this way: If you or I were a statistic-parent with three statistic-kids in school, one of our three children would be hungry. Malnourished. Spring 2012 31
Hungry in the morning, hungry at night. The kind of hungry that makes a child feel cold all the time. Makes a child stupid. Makes a child sick. Which one of our children...which child...? n Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is the author of the masterpieces The Left Hand of Darkness and Always Coming Home, among many other books. She was the University’s Schoenfeldt Series visiting writer in 1990. The University’s students devote thousands of hours annually to helping out at the Oregon Food Bank and Portland’s Blanchet House, which has fed millions of people since it was founded by University alumni in 1952. For information, see oregonfoodbank. com, blanchethouse.org, or the University’s Campaign site, rise.up.edu.
YEAR ONE The University’s brandnew women’s rowing team, through the sharp eyes of a fine Oregon photographer. Photographs by Steve Hambuchen A year ago the University started its first intercollegiate women’s rowing team by hiring a most interesting man named Bill Zack – Coast Guard lieutenant commander, president of the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association, renowned coach, and veteran of the Olympic Games and World Rowing Championships. Six months ago Pilot boats hit the Willamette River. Five months ago the Pilots won their first race. Three months ago the team got its first commitments from vaunted recruits in Alaska and Seattle. The sky is the limit for the women’s rowing team, and we have been fascinated to watch a whole new varsity sport born with hard work and laughter and exhaustion and mist and parents and friends cheering from the riverbank, so we asked the fine Oregon photographer Steve Hambuchen to catch some of the wet joy of the team, which he did. Editor
To help out the Pilot rowing team, or to help out any and all of the hard-working grinning student-athletes on The Bluff, see rise.up.edu. And thanks.
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REUNION 2012: JUNE 21-24 Save the date to join us this summer as we transport the idyllic Greek Isles to The Bluff at Reunion 2012! We will bring the best of the Mediterranean to Portland and welcome back our historic social fraternities and sororities, and celebrate the Golden Anniversary of the Class of 1962 and the Silver Anniversary of the Class of 1987. On Thursday another class of legendary Pilot athletes will be inducted into the Athletics Hall of Fame and on Friday the 26th annual National Alumni Board Golf Tournament will be played at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Course.Watch your mailbox for a detailed schedule of events, and visit the Reunion 2012 website at alumni.up.edu/reunion. We welcome all of our alumni and their families and hope that they’ll return to campus. See you at Reunion 2012. Opa!
ALUMNI AWARDS & STATE OF U.P. Seating is limited at our annual State of the University and Alumni Awards luncheon so mark your calendars for Tuesday, March 20, 2012 and plan to join us at noon at the Multnomah Athletic Club in downtown Portland. University president Fr. Bill 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 hear about the University’s continued growth and accomplishments.
The UP Hive is an open forum for alumni of all ages, current M.B.A. students, and University of Portland supporters interested in business and entrepreneurial activity within the community. The Hive organizes events focused on connecting and assisting alumni and supporters in finding new business partners, clients, and investors through networking and interactive and fun educational presentations. If you have a speaker in mind or would like to host a Hive event, please contact the Hive committee directly at hive@pilotwm.com. To learn more about upcoming Hive events please visit their website at uphive.wordpress.com.
NATIONAL ALUMNI DAY OF SERVICE: APRIL 28 Tough times call for kind actions. Join fellow Pilots and their families and friends across the country to donate time and energy to various charitable causes. Each alumni chapter organizes a different volunteer activity, from sorting food boxes, to serving a meal in a day shelter, to sprucing up a yard and doing minor home repairs. So mark your calendar for Saturday, April 28, 2012 and watch your mailbox or check the alumni website at alumni.up.edu for information about activities in your neighborhood.
2012 ELECTION PRIMER This course presented in three parts seeks to energize political junkies and provide new insights to political novices throughout the course of the 2012 election cycle. Br. Donald Stabrowski, C.S.C., University of Portland provost and political scientist, will analyze and
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CHEF’S TABLE SET FOR APRIL 13, MAY 18 Plan to attend our Chef’s Table dinners on April 13 and May 18, where Bon Appétit general manager Kirk Mustain and his chefs will select a delightful menu and prepare eight to ten mini-plate courses with wine pairings, all prepared before your eyes as you enjoy the show from the kitchen in the Bauccio Commons. Cost is $75 per person. Contact alumni relations for more information.
SUMMER IN SALZBURG The University of Portland’s Salzburg Center will be available for alumni travelers this summer from August 20 to September 2. Salzburg provides rich cultural opportunities, including the internationally acclaimed Salzburg Festival of music and drama. Come soak up the unique history and culture of this Austrian jewel when you work with the Office of Alumni Relations to choose your own activities and site visits, all while using the University’s Salzburg Center as home base. $75 U.S. per person per night (single occupancy), includes breakfast. Double and triple occupancy rooms are also available. Contact alumni relations for more information.
ROLL IT UP: FLAVORS OF THE EAST Immerse yourself in the cultures and bold flavors of the East in this cooking class offered by Bon Appétit general manager Kirk Mustain on June 2, 2012. You’ll learn to make sushi, egg rolls, salad rolls, spring rolls, and lumpia. Cost is $20 per person. Contact alumni relations for more information.
MEN OF COLUMBIA PREP RETURN TO CAMPUS
BREW IT UP: THE ART OF HOME BREWING Join University alumnus and brew master Chris Oslin ’81 as we give you the history of brewing and present a handson introduction to the fine art of zymurgy. In this two-part class, you will brew your own beer, learn to refine the developing flavors, and take home your class “final” to enjoy! Part one of Brew it UP will take place on May 12, 2012. Part two will be on June 2, 2012. Cost is $30 per person and includes the cost of supplies and lunch. Contact the alumni relations office for more information.
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Please plan to share memories and renew friendships when you return to campus for the Columbia Prep All-class Reunion on Sunday, April 29, 2012. This year’s celebration commemorates all Columbia Prep alumni. However, special recognition will be given to the classes of 1952, 1947, 1942, 1937, and 1932. Reunion begins at 10:30 a.m. with a Mass in the Chapel of Christ the Teacher followed by a served brunch at St. Mary’s lounge. Plan to enjoy brunch, raise a toast, and sing the fight song with your fellow Preppers. The cost is $15. For more information or to RSVP, contact the Office of Alumni Relations at alumni@up.edu or 888.UP.ALUMS (888.872.5867).
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Yes, that is indeed the estimable Jimmy Dorsey on the sax, at the University’s 1955 Air Force Ball. Fascinating man, Jimmy – very fine horn player, Tommy Dorsey’s big brother, Charlie Parker’s favorite sax player, and probably the jazziest of the big band leaders of his time. The Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra is still going, 55 years after Jimmy’s death in the spring of 1957. The University, of course, welcomes scholarship gifts for jazz musicians, Air Force cadets, guys named Jimmy, and women with cool shoes, among many other entertaining Rise Campaign targets. See rise.up.edu.
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C L A S S The Slabtown Boys took a hard hit with the passing of the irrepressible Stan Bozich ’53 on November 15, 2011, in Portland, Ore. Stan was born in Northwest Portland and attended St. Patrick Elementary School, Benson High School, and of course the University of Portland, where he earned a bachelor’s degree and then returned for a master’s in secondary education. Stan loved working with youth and sports and spent 35 years as a teacher, counselor, and baseball coach at Sweet Home Union, Roosevelt, and Lake Oswego high schools. While Stan’s first love was family and friends, baseball was right up there too, and he could regale those around him for hours about the time he spent in Northwest Portland’s old Vaughn Street ball park watching the Portland Beavers. He loved spending time with his wife, kids, and especially his grandkids, and always made time to volunteer with local children, notably through the Start Making A Reader Today (SMART) program. Survivors include his wife of 46 years, Virginia; son, Dan; daughter, Ann-Marie Cordova ’88, four grandchildren; brother, John; and sister, Eldine Anderson. What can we say? Stan was just a stand-up guy, always wanting to know what he could do to help others, a great and loyal friend to the end. He will be missed terribly. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the University’s Slabtown Scholarship Fund. Our prayers and condolences to Stan’s family and friends. FIFTY YEAR CLUB Richard W. Johnson ’36 passed away on October 23, 2011, in Portland, Ore. Survivors include his wife, Doris M. Johnson. Our prayers and condolences to the family. John Anduiza ’40 passed away on October 14, 2011, in Boise, Idaho. After his military service he went to work for the
Internal Revenue Service in 1945, retiring in 1973 as chief of administration. Survivors include his wife of 70 years, Mary; daughter, Joann; and two grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences. Carl Nydegger ’40 passed away on October 6, 2011, at the age of 95. He came to The Bluff on a football scholarship and
N O T E S played semi-pro football in Portland after college. He taught high school and coached in California, Guam, and Oregon until retiring in 1978. Survivors include his wife of 71 years, Barbara; sons, Carl and Richard; daughters, Joan Rivers, Dorothy Bray, and Margaret Vedder; 18 grandchildren; 27 great-grandchildren; and one great-greatgrandchild. He was preceded in death by one son, James Patrick, and two grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Norman Alfred “Norm” Stoll ’42 passed away on November 30, 2011, in Portland, Ore. He and his late wife Helen taught dancing and etiquette to generations of Portlanders through the Norm Stoll Dance Studio, which they opened in 1950. He attended the University of Portland on a full scholarship, graduating Maxima Cum Laude with a B.A. in business administration. After graduation he went to work in the Portland shipyards, building Liberty Ships for the war effort; it was after the war that he began to teach dance. While he was also a very successful businessman in the real estate field, the dance studio was where Norm and Helen made many lasting impressions, especially in the magical moment of every class when Norm would join Helen for a turn on the dance floor. Survivors include son Wayne; daughter-in-law, Alison; grandchildren, Annsley and Kaitlyn; great-granddaughter, Isabelle; and brother, Jack. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Kenneth Baricevic ’42 passed away on March 9, 2011, in Los Altos, Calif. He was a veteran of the U.S. Army and served in World War II and Korea, and had a 38-year career with Westinghouse. Survivors include children Katherine Rogness, Julia Browne, Lawrence Baricevic, and Maria Baricevic; sister, Cecilia Baricevic; and sixteen grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Kenneth K. Maher ’43 passed away on December 30, 2011, at the age of 90, in Morton, Wash. He served as a state representative in the Oregon Legislature from 1961 to 1973, where he worked with political figures like John F. Kennedy, Mark Hatfield, Tom McCall,and Vic Atiyeh. Survivors include his seven children, Patricia, Creighton, Patrick, Richard, Stephen, Michael, and Kimberly; 16 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Dr. Alfred James Grierson, M.D. ’44 passed away on
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October 31, 2011, in Portland, Ore. He was predeceased by his wife, Norma Keefe Grierson ’45. Survivors include eleven children: Norma Hamblin, Nancy Ikeda, Ann Strayer, Maureen Stearns, Virginia Browning, Molly Mataele, Jim, John, Mike, Greg, Larry, and Patrick; 26 grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Prayers, please, for Evangeline (Huie) Walker ’44 on the loss of her husband of 61 years, W. Parks Walker, Jr., on October 19, 2011. Parks had a long and distinguished career in the forest management field and retired from the Naval Reserve as a captain in 1973. Evangeline and Parks are members of the Hooyboer, society, which honors those who support the mission of the University of Portland by including us in their estate plans. They also established the Parks and Evangeline Walker Endowed Scholarship Fund to support nursing students. Survivors include Evangeline and their children, Catherine Strait, Carol Hodgin, and W.P. Walker III; seven grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences. Loa Beauchamp McElligott ’45 passed away on December 25, 2011, surrounded by family, in Ione, Oregon. After earning her nursing degree on The Bluff she worked for two years at St. Vincent Hospital, then married her husband of nearly 60 years, the late Charles Richard McElligott ’47, after he returned from service in the Army Air Corps and graduated from the University. Survivors include twelve children: John, Jim, Tom, Joe, Annie, Melissa, MaryPat, Charles, Catherine, Daniel, Martha, and Dick; 42 grandchildren; and 20 great-grandchildren at last count. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Joseph Mikolavich ’47 passed away on November 22, 2011, in Portland, Ore. Joe served in World War II in the China Burma India (CBI) Theater, worked as an insurance adjuster in civilian life, and lived for most of the past 48 years in Grants Pass. Survivors include his wife of 59 years, Bette; children, Mike, Mark, Chris, Tanja, and Vince; and their families. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Carl Plass Sr. ’47 died on December 3, 2011, at the age of 89. He was born on July 29, 1922, in Portland. He attended Llewellyn Grade School and Washington High School. After one year at the University of
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Family, friends, and members of the Serra Club of San Francisco gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Holy Cross Father Joe Peixotto C.S.C. ’54 on July 10, 2011, at St. Brendan Church. Fr. Joe, who was ordained in 1961, has spent 49 years in educational mission work in Bangladesh at his congregation's Notre Dame College. As a young man, he earned an engineering degree on The Bluff and had offers at a major aeronautical firm as well as the U.S. Air Force. “I wanted to choose a path in life in which I could best serve God and my church,” he said about entering the seminary.
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C L A S S ON THE BENCH An hour with Judge Joe DiLoreto ’63 of the California Superior Court. He’d much rather talk about his twenty race cars, like the 1959 Jaguar XK150 and the 1965 Cobra Daytona Coupe, but I steer His Honor into the law instead. “My business law course at the University of Portland planted a seed, so I went to Loyola University’s law school, and then worked with a deputy district attorney, a wonderful job. I went into civil law, and loved going to trial. I enjoyed being a lawyer more than I enjoy being a judge, I think. There’s more personal satisfaction. As a lawyer, if I’ve got a client who is injured and is seeking redress, and I’ve got an adversary who doesn’t want to pay, and I to trial and get that money, my client’s life is changed for the better. That’s a real joy to me. “As judge, I’m an umpire. I’m here to make sure the law is enforced. It doesn’t mean I agree with everything I do. I didn’t write the law. My job is to interpret it. The facts are there. Sometimes I don’t like it, and some decisions haunt me, like the time I had to sentence a boy to life in prison. In that case I am especially happy that he has a right to appeal. The system is pretty darn good, if that’s the only case I can point to in 16 years on the bench that really made me unhappy. “My weakness as a judge? Sometimes I’m shorttempered. I have jumped all over lawyers and later regretted it. I dislike arrogance in my court, and there are a few lawyers who are so arrogant I assign the cases to another judge, to protect their clients from me, sort of. The Los Angeles Daily Journal said it right: ‘Di Loreto can come across as slightly gruff if you disrespect his time...He basically tries to scare attorneys straight.’ “I’ve learned a few important things as a judge: don’t make snap decisions, don’t prejudge, do listen to everybody, do give everybody a fair chance to be heard. “I’d like to work one more year and then retire. I have one more great dream: to ship some of my race cars to Italy and race on some of the European tracks before I croak. Wouldn’t that be cool?” —Claire Sykes
N O T E S Portland, he enlisted in the Navy and served in the Pacific as an officer aboard the U.S.S. Joseph E. Campbell until 1946. He returned to the University of Portland and graduated in 1947 with a degree in business administration. He married Audrey Louise Williams in 1949. After a 40-year career in the insurance industry, Carl retired in 1985. He was preceded in death by his wife in 2001. Survivors include his children, Rick (Kris), Mike (Kathy), Suzanne, Steven “Beaver,” Joseph and Mary Kay; and seven grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Prayers, please, for Jerome J. Bleeg ’49 on the loss of his wife, Jane Bleeg, who passed away on March 31, 2011, in San Jose, California. Survivors include Jerome and their children, Stephen, Janet, Nancy, Jerry Jr., Mary Jo, and Jean; and eighteen grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Lewis Archer McMurran ’50 passed away on November 14, 2011, in Portland, Ore. After serving in World War II, he returned to Portland and worked at ESCO Corporation for 30 years. Survivors include his wife of 53 years, Gina; son, Lewis; daughter, Mary Helen; twin brother, Robert; and two grandsons. Remembrances to Blanchet House. Our prayers and condolences to the family. William Isaac Phillips IV ’50 passed away on January 2, 2012 at the age of 85, in Mt. Vernon, Wash. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy and was stationed aboard the U.S.S. Aaron Ward in 1944 where he served as a radio technician 1st class. After graduation from UP he took a position as a sales representative with C&H Supply Company in Seattle. In 1966 he established Western Technical Sales with a home office in Bellevue, and later opened offices in Portland and Spokane. Bill was preceded in death by an infant son and is survived by his wife, Marilyn; daughters, Kimberly Reid and Mary Lanigan, and sons, William, Isaac, Steven, and Jeffrey; ten grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. He is also survived by Marilyn’s sons, Jeffrey, Matthew, Nathan, and Anthony Thostenson, and daughter, Sarah Bolton; nine grandchildren, and two greatgrandchildren; and his brother, Ralph Phillips. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Prayers, please, for Kenneth Heuvel ’51 after the loss of his wife of 63 years, Patricia Ann Heuvel, on November 29, 2011, in Portland, Ore. Survivors in-
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clude Ken; sons, Dan and Paul; daughter, Diane Moshofsky; seven grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Phillip DeVito ’54 passed away on November 27, 2011, at his home in Salem, Ore. He worked for many years in private clubs and many of the top restaurants in Portland and was a pioneer in the development of Oregon’s renowned wine industry. Survivors include his wife, Janice Busch Morrow DeVito; children, Sudan, Greg, Paul, David, and stepdaughter Shannon Page; six grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Ernestine Alexis Palmer Brown ’56 passed away on March 26, 2011, in Prairie View, Texas. She was a licensed professional nurse and a member of the Whiting Nurses Guild, and was affiliated with the Prairie View College women’s basketball team and Delta Sigma Theta sorority. Survivors include two daughters, LaNell and Jeanine; two sons, Baron and Eric; grandchildren, Latoya, Lakekia, Baron Jr., Keisha, Kayla, Dee Dee, Jeremy, Ragan, Damion, Floyd Jr., Tiffany, Courtney, and Alexis; and Alleyne Taylor, Mauvelyene Henry, and numerous great-grandchildren, cousins, and friends. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Mary Ann Foley Scheuring ’58 has made a contribution in the amount of $10,000 toward renovation of the University’s Wilson W. Clark Memorial Library as part of the RISE Campaign. “I am grateful for the education that I received there,” she writes. “I was a scholarship girl and was able to go on to graduate school on a fellowship before undertaking a career as a teacher, editor, and writer. I warmly remember my undergraduate extracurricular activities as editor of the yearbook, violinist in the string orchestra, and actress in several drama department productions. I also remember, somewhat less warmly, working part-time as a sophomore reshelving books in the library, which at that time was largely housed in the cramped basement of Christie Hall. UP has come a long way since then! Because I have used a great many libraries extensively throughout my life for both research and pleasure, I would like my contribution to the RISE campaign to be dedicated to improvements in the University library.” Our thanks and prayers of grati-
C L A S S tude to Mary Ann for her generosity. Chuck Moran ’60 and Carol Weeks Moran ’62 celebrated 50 years of marriage on January 27, 2012.
’64 BOB’S LATEST HONOR Robert E. “Bob” Maloney of Lane Powell has been appointed to serve on the Lawyers Committee of the National Center for State Courts (the National Center) as one of two lawyer representatives from the state of Oregon. The National Center’s members include the chief judges of each state's Court of Appeals and Supreme Court, in addition to two attorney representatives from each state. Collectively, the organization works to ensure the quality of state courts throughout the country and to advocate improvements in the civil justice system ranging from jury reform, to judicial independence, to management of complex civil cases. Congratulations, Bob! Kay D. Toran, president and chief executive officer of Volunteers of America-Oregon and member of the University’s board of regents, was nominated to Oregon governor John Kitzhaber's Oregon Education Investment Board, which oversees all education spending in the state of Oregon. Toran also serves on the board of the Oregon Community Foundation and the Chalkboard Project, and was leader of the State Office of Services to Children and Families from 1993 until 1999, and was an affirmative-action director under Gov. Vic Atiyeh.
honor. She chaired this high powered board (the first woman in the country to do so), which requires an appointment by a state representative in order to participate and attend. I listened to all of her accomplishments in awe. I am so proud to be a part of her close knit family!”
’73 SAD NEWS James Murray Acres passed away on November 17, 2011. “James had a wonderful sense of humor and loved life,” reads his death notice. He was a top sales manager for Wright Line Furniture Company but his true passions were always acting, music, cars, and making people laugh. He is survived by his wife Patti; brother, Robert; and many dear friends and family members. Our prayers and condolences to the family.
’77 LIFE’S JOURNEY Lynette Jones-Baucke published a fictionalized memoir, Evidence of Divine Intervention, in 2011. “The divine intervention series illustrates how our journey through life takes us down a road full of the inane, the absurd, and the farcical yet simultaneously, the road is also full of divine and serendipitous events,” she writes on her website at www.divineinterventionseries.com. “It’s as
’64 PRAYERS, PLEASE Please keep the family of Karen and Bradford Williams ’94 in your prayers for the loss of Karen’s husband and Bradford’s father, William H. Williams, who died on December 21, 2011. Other survivors include sister, Maryella; stepsister, Marla; daughter, Leslie; granddaughters, Summer, Audra, and Hannah; and great-granddaughter, Kloie. Our prayers and condolences to the family.
’66 AN HONOR FOR SANDRA Jo Chisholm writes: “I just returned from a luncheon honoring my best friend and college roommate at the University of Portland, Sandra Van Handel Suran, who was awarded the William H. Van Rensselaer Public Service Award by the National Association of State Board of Accountancy (NASBA), in Nashville, Tennessee. What an
though life, the universe, and our reason for being all swirl around us in concentric circles of meaning. We just need to read the road signs.” Lynette served on the University’s National Alumni Board from June 2007 to June 2010.
’79 WHAT A LONG STRANGE TRIP IT’S BEEN We heard recently from Terry Young, who writes: “A few months ago I rode my bicycle from Mustang, Oklahoma to
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N O T E S It didn’t take long for the e-mails to come flooding in for our winter 2011 mystery faculty member, who is of course the ebullient Jill Peterson Hoddick, professor and master costumer in our performing and fine arts department. “What a delight to open the recent issue of the magazine to find a photo of myself as the mystery faculty member,” writes Jill. “I still have that suit, now relegated to my ‘costume’ collection. I will retire in May after 35 years at UP, and while I look forward to becoming an art quilter and fiber artist in my ‘second act’ I will miss the day to day contact with students, faculty and staff. I hope to return to campus once in a while to take in a play, concert, or lecture or to have lunch with old friends.” We hope you do that Jill, we will miss you dearly and wish you the very best. Moving on to spring 2012, our current mystery faculty or staff person, pictured below, second from left, has been employed here on The Bluff for 40 years, earning her a delighted round of applause from fellow employees when her milestone year was announced at our annual Christmas banquet in December 2011. “She first arrived on campus in 1971 to serve as secretary for history professor Fr. Barry Hagan, C.S.C.,” writes University archivist Fr. Bob Antonelli, C.S.C. “She would do typing for him, and help him grade papers and do research, effectively serving as his eyes, because he was legally blind. She also drove him places around town, especially to upscale hamburger restaurants. At one point she was president of the campus secretaries group. She is very good at making lists and meticulous in researching and recording facts, skills which are invaluable both for history professors and archivists.” Not to mention gracious, unassuming, and very warm and friendly to one and all. Best guesses to mcovert@up.edu.
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N O T E S pass it on. The third angel I met lives in Lordsburg, New Mexico. Her name is Reverend Angel. She wears a long denim coat, a straw hat, brown combat boots, and a large cross necklace. She used to be a street preacher in San Antonio, Texas, spreading the Gospel. The fourth angel is named Robert. He was smoking a cigarette at the Vija Truck Stop near Casa Grande, Arizona, when I met him. He was wearing camouflage pants and a sweatshirt. He had a dog. He found a bed and an American flag blanket for me at the truck stop. Before I went to bed we watched a Roy Rogers movie, The Bells of San Angelo. He also had a cat
Canaan Chatman ’95 was all-WCC as a basketball player on The Bluff and then a professional ballplayer for six years in Israel, Australia, Japan, Poland, Turkey, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates before ending his career to focus on something more important: children, both his own (like son Kameron, pictured with his Dad above) and those he has taught and mentored in his ten years back home in Portland, where he was a star at Benson High. Today, after working with Adidas and Nike over the years, he’s the executive director of the YMCA facility called The Hoop in Beaverton, creator of the Rose City Showcase tournament, founder of the Inner City Portland team (whose alumni include the Detroit Lions’ Ndamukong Suh), owner of a company called Courtside Entertainment, and proud dad of one of Oregon’s best young basketball players, Kameron Chatman, among his three children with his high school sweetheart, LaShea Chatman. “I really wanted to help put UP on the map as the city’s premier basketball program,” he says of his college days, “but I also knew that when the ball stopped bouncing, my education would serve me well...” —Nathan Dinsdale ’00 Carlsbad, California, during which time I met several angels. On my ride I thought about the road ahead. I thought about glass, nails, potholes, flat tires, the wind, cracks in the blacktop, huge trucks, the physical limitations of my own body, candy bars, my four sons, my son’s First Combat Marine Engineers platoon. I thought about Upton Sinclair: ‘Faith in its actual working out has to go through spells of unsyllabled isolation.’ The first angel I met used to be the mayor of
Apache, Oklahoma. His name is Bill. He sat down with me at breakfast at the Hop & Sak gas station and store. He loves cars. We talked about focusing on safety on the road. The second angel I met lives near Turkey, Texas. His name is Jerry. He put my bike in the back of his pickup truck and drove me 42 miles to a town where I could get spare tires and a good night’s sleep. He wouldn’t take the money I offered for his gas but only asked that I not forget the good that was done for me and
named Arizona. He liked to drink beer. At the very end of my journey I was toiling up a hill when a young man in battle fatigues called out to me. After a moment I realized it was my son. At the top of the hill were two more of my sons, who emptied a bottle of champagne on me, a moment I will treasure the rest of my life. God sends messengers. God unseals our eyes. God shows us how the ordinary is extraordinary. I did see angels. I met people without homes or food or money and they gave me what they had and I gave them what I had and I know they are angels.”
’80 MANNY AND MIKE Retired School of Engineering professor Larry Simmons and Manny Hotchkiss ’78 had a very enjoyable visit with Mike Monteith and his wife Catherine at their home on the St. Maries River in Northern Idaho, according to a note sent by Simmons in October 2011. “Both Manny and Mike are retired after long engineering careers,” writes Larry. “Manny has been volunteering for about 15 years as a member of the UP Engineering Dean's Advisory Council.”
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’81 MICHELLE VENTURES A GUESS “It is Jill Peterson,” writes Michelle Crukshank in response to our winter 2011 mystery faculty photo. “I did improvisational children’s theatre with her for three years at UP” Thanks Michelle, you guessed correctly, and Jill has always had the magic touch when it comes to children’s theater.
’84 THE GUESSES CONTINUE Yet another correct guess as to the identity of our fall 2011 mystery faculty member: “Probably lots of correct answers already,” writes Dave Sarchet. “Ken Lulay, class of 1984. One of a whopping dozen BSME’s that year.” Yes, it’s Ken, who is now a member of our engineering faculty here on The Bluff. Dave works at the Georgia-Pacific mill in Camas, Wash., as an asset availability leader. Pat Hensler knows the identity of our winter 2011 mystery faculty member: “Definitely Jill Hoddick. Jill is just one of those quality friends!” “The mystery faculty person for winter 2011 is obviously Jill Hoddick,” writes Randall Hobson, “with whom I have had the pleasure of teaching Fine Arts 107. I graduated with a masters degree in music in 1984 so I’ve known Jill for a long time.” Dorothea “Dot” DeLapp writes: “Your winter 2011 mystery faculty member is Jill K. Peterson-Hoddick. And yes, she was one of my best teachers. I knew her when she was Jill Peterson.”
’86 GOOD HEALTH TO ALL Chunwah Richard Lee writes: “I would like to wish Fr. Tom Hosinski and Bro. Fulgence Dougherty a Merry Christmas. I am now associate professor and assistant chair at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Wishing everyone at UP good health.” Thanks Chunwah, and good luck with your teaching career and life in general. We received sad news recently from Matt Waite ’84, who writes: “I thought you might like to know Kenny Meyerson passed away recently at 47, he only attended UP for one year, he was on the tennis team, as you can see in the 1982 yearbook. If you google ‘Kenny Meyerson Tennis’ you’ll get all the details. I knew him personally, he was a good guy.” Thanks Matt, we did that and found that Ken passed away in his sleep on Wednesday, October
C L A S S 19, 2011. He had a lifelong love of tennis and worked as an agent for former No. 1ranked tennis pro Andy Roddick, Chris Evert, Justine Henin, Fernando Gonzalez, Gael Monfils, and others. He leaves his wife, Claudia, and daughters Charlotte and Emily. Our prayers and condolences. Gregory McGreevey joined Invesco as head of Invesco Fixed Income on November 28, 2011. He is based in Atlanta, Georgia. McGreevey most recently served as president of Hartford Investment Management Company and executive vice president and chief investment officer of The Hartford Financial Services Group.
’90 IN A BLINK OF AN EYE Sudihugeng Hardjojo recently wrote to engineering professor Larry Simmons, who couldn’t resist sharing: “How are you, in a blink of an eye 21 years passed and I have not contacted you nor let you know of my whereabouts. I was one of the students in your class and also one of your assistants in your research of helical screw expanders together with Dan Sperling. I remember vividly when I went and tried to help you with your house construction, and that day you gave all of us a fright because you swallowed a nail you held with your lips, when you coughed while trying to drive a nail into the ceiling. Anyway, my wife Li-Kheng Lee and I have two sons, they are Anson Hardjojo (20 years old), and Adrian Hardjojo (15 years old). Oh how I miss the school and everybody there that has made a meaningful impression in my heart.” Thanks for sharing, Larry, and thanks for writing, Sudihugeng. And we certainly hope Dr. Simmons isn’t still walking around with that nail inside him. Paula Webb writes: “I just got the current issue of Portland and recognized Jill Hoddick as your mystery faculty member immediately! I spent many hours in the costume shop ironing shirts and sewing sleeves (backward) under her watchful eye.”
’94 PRAYERS, PLEASE Please keep the family of Karen ’64 and Bradford Williams in your prayers for the loss of Karen’s husband and Bradford’s father, William H. Williams, who died on December 21, 2011. Other survivors include sister, Maryella; stepsister, Marla; daughter, Leslie; granddaughters, Summer, Audra, and Hannah; and great-grand-
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daughter, Kloie. Our prayers and condolences to the family.
’95 OOH! OOH! I KNOW THIS ONE! “Jill Hoddick!” says Christina Sigler, breathlessly we might add, which makes her the first alumna or staff member (she just so happens to be both) to guess the identity of our winter 2011 mystery faculty photo. She’s right, too, which would have netted her a glitzy nifty prize were it not for the fact that we do this for funsies. Christina is associate director of stewardship in our development office.
’96 PRAYERS, PLEASE Bruce A. Hamm passed away on July 27, 2011, according to a call we received from his mother, Roberta Hamm, in November. Our prayers and condolences to the family.
’97 AND BABY MAKES FOUR We heard recently from Gabrielle Baker, who writes
with wonderful news: “I would like to introduce Mira Elliotte Coe, born on December 13, 2011, at 8 lbs., 14 oz., eleven days late but just in time for Christmas! Happy Holidays to you all.” Mira joins her big brother and proud papa Damion Coe.
’98 WYNNE CHECKS IN Wynne McIntosh writes: “I graduated in both 1998 (B.A.) and 2006 (M.A.T.), was lucky enough to coach soccer with Clive, Garrett and Big’n from 2002-2005 on The Bluff. I am married to James Tanner and we have three kids ages five and under in Seattle. I run the Pilots soccer alumni group on Facebook for former players and we are regularly trying to get people together, both in Seattle and Portland, so check us out at https://www.facebook.com/groups/portlandsoccer/. Soccer player alumni just need to request to join.” Sharon Wood Wortman writes: “I decided to come out of retirement, which lasted about 15 minutes anyway, to lead two fundraising bridge walks, one on October 30, and the other on Saturday, November 19. All proceeds from the walks go toward
At work on his second record of his own compositions: Scott Reis ’98, whose first, Carpe Diem in 2005, was done with fellow alumna Maureen Briare ’92 and her husband Tim. “That's my friend’s son, Erikson, he is so cute!” wrote Scott when asked about the above photo. “I was singing to him on his birthday. Toni Rosenquist is his mother, she’s a UP alum, class of ’97. We went to Salzburg together.” Scott’s day gig is teaching mathematics and calculus at De La Salle North Catholic High in North Portland. printing Big & Awesome, the first comprehensive book about Portland’s many Willamette River bridges written exclusively for children. The Society of Women Engineers at Portland State University and a PSU Civil and Environmental Engineering Department professor have adopted the book as a community project. This means adult engineering students will be available to work with teachers and students in the elementary classroom for the bridge building and load testing activity found in Big & Awesome. Of course, the book will also include poetry and the art of elementary students, and interviews, including an interview with the Willamette River.” Sharon, of course, is best known for her iconic Portland Bridge Book, published in 1989, now in its third edition, and her always-fascinating guided bridge walks. Erik Goldschmidt has been named director of the Church in the 21st Century Center at Boston College. Since its inception in 2002, the center has explored handing on the faith, especially with younger Catholics; relationships among lay men
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and women, deacons, priests, and bishops; sexuality in the Catholic tradition; and the Catholic intellectual tradition.
’99 PILOT GENERATIONS More babies to report: Anderson LaFrenz was born to our San Francisco area alumni representative Ryan LaFrenz and his wife Jessica on September 20, 2011. Anderson weighed 9 lbs., 13 oz., and was 20.5 inches long. He joins a large UP alumni family including grandparents Margaret (Ryan) LaFrenz ’74 and Robert LaFrenz ’75; uncle and aunt Christopher ’98 and Molly ’98; uncle and UP biology teacher Andy LaFrenz ’02; aunt Megan LaFrenz Filly; and aunt Katherine LaFrenz ’12. Talk about a legacy family!
’00 DOING GREAT THINGS Patrick Fenessey has recently been appointed principal of St. Joseph’s school in Seattle, Washington, “the largest grade school in the system, and well-respected,” according to Fr. Stephen Rowan, dean of the University’s College of Arts and Sciences, “and Joe Womac is the executive direc-
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C L A S S Sandi Dennis ’08 sent a note and this photo from Africa to her business professor, Howard Feldman, and we quote a bit of her letter: “Much has happened on this continent these last ten months, from the Arab Spring, intense economic struggles, drought, and wars compelling people to leave home in order to survive. I was recently in northern Burundi, just within walking distance of the border with Tanzania. I was asked by a donor to check on a program that has been building homes and supporting education for the Batwa, the country's earliest inhabitants, representing less than 1 percent of the population. We also visited the community orphanages of Youth For Christ. One is located in Gitega, the center of Burundi, and the newer one is in Chibitoke on the eastern side near the border with the Congo. The primary school is open to the community and the students have done so well that there is now a waiting list to get in. “Builders without Borders just finished the first secondary school buildings. There is a community health clinic but it is not yet operational. They use solar power and a water filter system for drinking water. The orphans are placed into campus homes each in the care of a home mother. “My general observation is that Kenyans and Ugandans are benefiting from employment in the service sector, the Chinese are working hard on infrastructure and mining, while the Indians are bringing in quality technology products. The majority of the young educated Burundians I have spoken with seem determined to stay and develop their country. All in all my time in Africa has been challenging, humbling, and eye opening….”
N O T E S tor of the Fulcrum Foundation in Seattle.” To be married in June: Air Force Major Erich Kunrath and Dr. Mary Miller, a Santa Clara graduate; the poor lass, could she not find a Catholic university? Mary is a pediatrician at a community health clinic in Gladstone, Oregon, and Erich is a B-1 pilot flying missions over Afghanistan. Most interesting
souls, these two: Erich has taught at the Air Force Academy, where he also coached the ski team; Mary was a goalkeeper for the Broncos, spent two years of research with NASA, and has practiced in Eugene and Albuquerque. Our best wishes and prayers. We hear wonderful news from Deborah Vaughn recently, who writes: “January 9, 7:31 a.m., as the sun rose; 9 lb., 14 oz., 21 inches; 12 hours active labor, no complications. Emery Anne Vaughn, ‘Emmy’ born at home, nurses like a champ. All are exhausted, but well. While we want to run thru the streets showing off how beautiful she is, for now we sleep. Love to all from our new family of 5.” Congratulations Deb, by now you don’t need to be told to grab as much sleep as possible, whenever possible, wherever possible.
’02 HEY! I KNOW HER! Sean Chiles knows the identity of our winter 2011 mystery faculty member: “Jill Hoddick,” he writes, that and nothing more. Concise and to the point, our Sean.
’03 A TWO PERCENTER Brian Cahill has been selected for early promotion to the rank of major in the U.S. Army. This “below the zone” selection is limited to about the top two percent of Army officers. Congratulations, Brian!
’05 LIFE COACHING Jessica Heller writes: “I just wanted to let the UP community know that I’ve started my own life coaching business called Ignite Life Coaching. If you are someone who is looking to make a change in your life, if you’re feeling stuck, or just looking for a direction to choose, I would love to be a part in giving clarity to the situation. Just look up Ignite Life
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Coaching on Facebook and Twitter.” Kelsey Wingate writes: “I just received my UP magazine today and couldn’t wait to look through it! I’m almost positive that the mystery faculty member is Jill Hoddick. I graduated in 2005 from the theater department and have many fond memories of taking classes from Jill and being laced into a corset by her! Also, she taught me the parts of a sewing machine and how to paint my face to make me look old! She’s a treasure and must be looking forward to retirement. Thanks so much!” Yes, Kelsey, that’s Jill, and she is looking forward to the next chapter in her life, although she will miss her many friends, colleagues, and students here on The Bluff. Hopefully she’ll have time left over from her new pursuits to come visit.
’06 THEY’RE BOTH ADORABLE, AREN’T THEY? Caitlin Johnston Guante writes: “Just wanted to pass along a picture that I thought was classic, of Fr. Jim Lies and my newborn baby girl, Lilia Lisbet
Guante, born September 10, 2011. Maybe (nudge, nudge), you can print it in the next Portland Magazine? My cousins Fiona and Ailis Thornhill came over with Fr. Lies for this photo session.” Alicia Bolster writes: “I recently married Captain Jacob Debevec (Notre Dame ’05) and switched from Active Army to the Reserves (in which I am also a Captain) so that I could move to Edwards Air Force Base with my husband as he starts test pilot school and I work as a civilian labor and delivery nurse.”
’07 EMMA’S UPDATE We heard recently from Emma Benzar, who shared the following with Fr. Art Wheeler, C.S.C., who shared with us: “It has been a busy year, but I just wanted to say that I am thinking of you, and wanted to send a quick update. In June I graduated from medical school at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU). A couple
C L A S S of weeks later, I moved to the Seattle area and started residency in internal medicine at the University of Washington. Residency has been grueling so far. I’m working long hours on most rotations. I’m still considering oncology, but I also like my primary care clinic at the VA a lot, and may end up doing general medicine/ primary care. So far, I’ve done rotations in the intensive care unit at Harborview, general medicine and primary care at the VA, other outpatient clinics (HIV, rheumatology, dermatology), cardiology, and hematology/oncology at University of Washington. On September 3, Devon Greer and I were married at the First Baptist Church in Portland. Devon is a grad of West Point, and we met in school at OHSU. He is originally from Montana. He is doing his residency in ear, nose, and throat at Madigan Army Medical Center near Tacoma. We are living in Federal Way, which is about halfway between Tacoma and Seattle. Although it is a long commute, it is a blessing to see each other at the end of the day. We are enjoying married life and, of course, wish-
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ing our days off corresponded more often! We miss our activities in Portland, especially our Christian Medical and Dental Association (CMDA) group, attending church together, and the symphony. However, we had a wonderful wedding celebration with many friends and family from all over, and we feel very blessed to have matched close to each other.”
’08 PURPLE PRIDE OVERSEAS We heard recently from Danielle Bruno Matteson ’09, who sent us a bonus photo-
graph of her new husband, Donovan Matteson, along with news of their wedding in Sep-
Danielle Bruno ’09 and Donovan Matteson ’08 were married on September 4, 2011 at Willamette Valley Vineyards. The wedding party was comprised almost entirely of 2009 UP graduates, including (back row, l-r) Nate Pramuk ’08, Adam Cyr ’08, Terry Thompson ’08, Mike Rumely ’08, Donovan Matteson ’08, Chris
Seen on The Bluff, literally: a heartfelt memorial to Miyoko, a Japanese fighting fish who obviously made up in personality what he/she lacked in longevity. tember 2011. “I’ve attached a photo of Donovan sporting his Pilot Pride in front of his plane while deployed in Afghanistan this summer,” she writes. “He takes the UP flag with him each time he deploys and flies it next to the U.S. flag during his daring missions as a KC135 pilot. We thought you might like to see it!” Thanks so much, Danielle, and congratulations to you both.
’09 SO MUCH FOR UNDECLARED
Jackson ’07, William Dana ’09, Doug Pederson ’09, Sam Pogue ’08, Mike Rittman ‘08, (front row, l-r) Whitney Piper ’09, Lindsey Griffin ’08, Danielle Matteson ’09, and Linda Collins ‘09. Donovan is currently a KC-135 pilot in the U.S. Air Force and is stationed at MacDill AFB in Tampa, Florida.
Cara Phipps writes: “I believe that your winter 2011 mystery faculty member is Jill Peterson Hoddick, one of the amazing members of the UP drama faculty. Jill was my advisor during my years at UP and saw to it that my ‘undeclared’ major shifted to a drama major. As we planned my classes during the first couple of years she gently pushed me toward Mago, and in doing so awakened a passion I wasn’t even aware I had. I knew the theatre was where I wanted to be for the rest of my life. I was fortunate enough to have the guidance of a great teacher like Jill and it’s partially thanks to her that I am where I am today. I
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couldn’t be more grateful. I currently live in the Bay Area in California and split my time between freelance theatre directing and working in the development department for TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, California.” Thanks Cara, you’re correct, of course. Jill is retiring after 35 years here on The Bluff, at the end of the spring 2012 semester.
’10 SEEMS A LITTLE “CORNY” TO US Pilot soccer legend (and Seattle Sounders goalkeeper) Kasey Keller has been immortalized in a corn maze, according to Seattle Sounders FC blogger Joshua Mayers. The maze was located at the Schilter Family Farm in Olympia (141 Nisqually Cutoff Road SE) during the month of October 2011. Kasey’s maze featured Keller trivia, a petting farm, hayrides, corn and pumpkin cannons, round up railway cow train, a hay maze, a hay jump in a 140-year-old barn, and other activities. “It’s certainly a unique tribute and very fitting given this is my hometown and my family has known the Schilter family for years and years,” said Keller in a news
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N O T E S neer-in-training for the firm’s Geotechnical Engineering Group. He is a graduate of the University of Portland with a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering with an emphasis in geotechnical engineering. Jennifer Pesut writes: “I just got a promotion, and I can’t believe it either! I’ve only been with UTi Worldwide since March 2011, and even then it was part-time until after I graduated. But yes, I am moving from being project administrator to being a business analyst. In this new role I will be responsible for researching, defining, and documenting requirements for the software system we are building. My first official day was Monday, November 14.”
’13 COVER STORY One of our current social work majors, Janie Oliphant, made the cover the New Social Worker magazine for winter 2011. See for yourself at www.socialworker.com/digitalmag/winter2012.pdf.
FACULTY, STAFF, FRIENDS THE CHOCOLATIER Kelly Callahan ’08, owner and head chef of ‘naKed chocolat,’ as she calls her company, graduated with a psych degree and went right to the Notter School of Pastry Arts in Florida. “The most physically demanding 24 weeks of my life,” she says cheerfully, and this is a young lady who has had rheumatoid arthritis since she was a kid. “We did everything, breads, pastries, cakes, tarts, ice creams, and candies, but I absolutely fell in love with making chocolates, with the finest ingredients, no additives, no preservatives, and I want to make each and every one a tiny piece of mouth-watering art,” says Kelly. We tried them. The Pilot women’s soccer team tried them. Conclusion: O my sainted mother. Kelly is making mouth-watering art. See for yourself: nakedchocolat.com. release. “I honestly don't think too many other athletes can say they’ve had their likeness featured in a corn maze, and that is what makes it really cool to me. I hope a lot of fans can make their way to Olympia and enjoy it.” See the maze for yourself at http://tinyurl.com/3e3mp9b. Carolyn Borsch writes: “I have graduated from Boston University School of Public Health with a master of public health (MPH) degree concentrating in epidemiology. I currently work on a colorectal
cancer risk factor study and a shared decision-making study at Boston Medical Center. I look forward to returning to the beautiful Pacific Northwest to utilize my degree.” We got some wonderful news from Caitlin (Nusbaum) Fitchett recently: “On June 21, 2010, Derek Fitchett and Caitlin Nusbaum were wed.”
’11 NICK’S JOINING UP Nicholas Moran has joined Hattenburg Dilley & Linnell, LLC, an engineering firm in Anchorage, Alaska, as an engi-
Paul Richard Richter III, husband of the late Judy Richter, died on September 29, 2011. Paul was born in Tillamook. He retired from the U.S. Postal Service after a 30-year career. Judy, who retired from the University after 24 years of service as an instructional media coordinator on May 31, 2010, passed away on Tuesday, November 2, 2010. Survivors include sons, Scott and Justin; granddaughter, Lillian Rose; brother, Frank; sister, Bobbie; nephews, Matt, Nathan, Danny, and David; and niece, Angie. Our prayers and condolences to the family. Robert “Bob” Allison passed away on November 19, 2011, in Portland, Ore. Bob served in the U.S. Air Force and after that worked for many years in the printing industry, including the University’s printing services shop. Survivors include his wife, Suzanne ’02, and son, Matthew, Portland; Melanie Snitker ’00 and Michael Allison, Texas; Tracey Allison and Kim Smith, Michigan; three brothers; and eight grandchildren. “All of our kids were here, right by him, when he passed,” writes Suzanne. “His dog was on the bed at his feet. He went peacefully, without pain or discomfort.” Our prayers and condolences to the family. University German professor Alexandra Merley Hill and Middlebury German professor Florence Feiereisen are the editors of a new book from Oxford
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University Press, Germany in the Loud Twentieth Century: An Introduction, November 2011. The book examines recent German history and contemporary German culture through “its sounds and musics, noises and silences, using the means and modes of the emerging field of Sound Studies.” More information at www.oup.com/us/. A team of University of Portland students and professors are researching the Occupy Portland movement. Communication studies professor Renee Heath and her team are studying how the group is organized, how it builds consensus at general assembly meetings, and how it communicates. Heath also says they are documenting the group’s demographics. She says they have talked to people of all ages and all backgrounds. Heath says she is fascinated by the Occupy movement and predicts scholars be reading about it in academic journals in years to come. We received word that Fred Fields passed away in the morning of December 13, 2011. Fred and his wife, the late Sue Schoenfeldt, were the beneficiaries who made it possible for the University to build Fields and Schoenfeldt halls. It was Fred’s wish that he be cremated and that a memorial service be held for him at Lewis and Clark College, where he was the former chair of the board of regents. Our prayers and condolences to the family. The University of Portland Museum welcomes offers of donations of Columbia Prep and University of Portland memorabilia and photographs from alumni, friends, and faculty for the museum and campus display cases. If you have items of interest about Columbia Prep and University of Portland academic, social, religious, and athletic history (examples could include sports uniforms and equipment; overseas studies mementos; social, religious, and academic clubs/organizations memorabilia; educational materials; publications such as yearbooks, sports programs, handbooks, etc.), contact Carolyn Piatz Connolly at museum@up.edu or piatz@up.edu or (503) 9438038; University of Portland Museum MSC 015, 5000 N. Willamette Blvd., Portland, OR 97203. More mystery faculty photo guesses, this time from music professor Hal Logan, who writes: “The mystery faculty member is, of course, our esteemed theater costumer, Jill
C L A S S Hoddick. Wow, were we ever that young?” Nice work Hal, that’s Jill pictured in her days as a rookie professor here on The Bluff, some 35 years ago. Joe Bianco, longtime editor of the Oregonian’s Northwest Magazine, has written a book about his life and career, The Story Never Ends: A Memoir of a Newspaper Reporter, published in 2011. Bianco delivered the
summer 1975 commencement address at the University and was presented with an honorary doctorate; he also served as an adjunct faculty member on The Bluff. Mathematics professor Lewis Lum was featured in an article by Larry Ellis in the December 2, 2011 edition of the Curry Coastal Pilot titled “Formula excellent when no scales available.” The article concerns the “Lum Formula,” developed by Lum to determine the weight of steelhead which need to be released by sport fishermen unharmed. Ironically enough, Lum has not the slightest interest in ever catching a steelhead himself, and finds the idea of suffering though numbing cold, unrelenting downpours, slippery rocks, and odoriferous bait container exposure to be borderline insanity, which many steelhead fisherman will readily admit. He has nevertheless achieved a sort of underground cult status among local steelhead aficionados. See the article at http://tinyurl.com/ 7txnkje. Steve Mayer writes: “I just grabbed Portland Magazine from my mailbox and as is my custom, began flipping through it before I could even sit down. Regarding the mystery faculty...Jill Hoddick.” That’s a good way to walk right into a light post, or worse, but he’s right, it’s Jill, who will end her 35year career on The Bluff when she retires at the conclusion of the spring 2012 semester. Anissa Rogers, professor of social work here on The Bluff, let us know about the following: “I wanted to send this along: One of our social work majors, Janie Oliphant, made the cover the New Social Worker magazine! It would be great if we could give her a little publicity somehow.” Consider it done, and thanks, Anissa! Velma (Reid) Springer
writes: “Jill Hoddick is your spring 2011 mystery faculty member. It looks just like her! I worked as office secretary for both performing and fine arts and communication studies for several years. Roger Doyle and Steve Ward were the chairpersons at that time. All great people, I enjoyed many conversations with Jill during my time there. Dr. Doyle and I have remained friends throughout the years and I still visit with him and Kay as often as possible when his health allows. This music issue brought back many great memories and the CD is wonderful. I still correspond with many students and adjunct faculty. I love the Portland Magazine.” Thanks Velma, and we love hearing from employees both present and past. Lisa Reed from the Pamplin School of Business writes: “The winter 2011 mystery faculty photo is Jill Hoddick, with short hair! Am I first?” Sorry Lisa, while you are correct that it is Jill, you were beaten to the punch by Christina Sigler ’95, who guessed first. French professor Trudie Booth writes: “The mystery professor this time is Jill Hoddick, right?” Oui, Madame Booth, c’est Jill effectivement. “Who is that professor?” writes Sr. Angela Hoffman, chemistry professor extraordinaire. “’Twould be Jill Hoddick, of course! I just got my magazine and wanted to jump in for the fun.” James Francis McKenna, Jr. passed away on October 29, 2011, in Portland, Ore. University alumni, faculty, and staff who frequented the Twilight Room will remember Jim as half owner of the venerable UP watering hole (along with Doug Penner ’53) since the early 1980s. He was 65 years old. Survivors include his mother, Virginia Ella McKenna; daughters, Kristen Fitzpatrick and Amy Insera; son, James Frances McKenna III; brothers, Michael, Thomas, John, and Peter McKenna; sisters, Suzanne M. Fogg and Maryanne M. Himmelsbach, and grandchildren Ethan, Riley, Mae, Eli, Harley, and Oliver. Jim was a warm, congenial, loving man whose toothy Teddy Roosevelt-like smile and fullthroated cackle were welcome
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N O T E S The campus community was shocked to learn of the tragic death of public safety assistant director Steve Watson ’75 on Tuesday, October 25. He lost his life in a midair collision involving two small planes near Newberg, Ore. Steve served here on The Bluff with grace and distinction and he will be missed greatly. Students, faculty, and staff alike were familiar with the tall, quiet, smiling man in the immaculate suit and tie and ever-present sunglasses who bustled about campus on his daily rounds. He was a 26-year veteran of the Oregon State Police, and joined the public safety staff after retiring from OSP. He leaves his wife Gale; daughters, Madison and Emily; brother, John; and extended family and friends. A celebration of Steve’s life was held on October 29 at his home. Please include Steve and his family in your thoughts and prayers. features behind the bar of the T-Room for many years. We’ll certainly miss you, Big Guy.
DEATHS Richard W. Johnson ’36, October 23, 2011, Portland, Ore. John Anduiza ’40, October 14, 2011, Boise, Idaho. Carl Nydegger ’40, October 6, 2011. Norman Alfred “Norm” Stoll ’42, November 30, 2011, Portland. Kennethy Baricevic ’42, March 9, 2011, Los Altos, Calif. Kenneth K. Maher ’43, December 30, 2011, Morton, Wash. Dr. Alfred James Grierson, M.D. ’44, October 31, 2011, Portland. W. Parks Walker, Jr., husband of Evangeline (Huie) Walker ’44, October 19, 2011. Loa Beauchamp McElligott ’45, December 25, 2011, Ione, Ore. Joseph Mikolavich ’47, November 22, 2011, Portland, Ore. Carl Plass Sr. ’47, December 3, 2011. Jane Bleeg, wife of Jerome J. Bleeg ’49, March 31, 2011, San Jose, Calif. Lewis Archer McMurran ’50, November 14, 2011, Portland, Ore.
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William Isaac Phillips IV ’50, January 2, 2012, Mt. Vernon, Wash. Patricia Ann Heuvel, wife of Kenneth Heuvel ’51, November 29, 2011, Portland, Ore. Stan Bozich ’53, November 15, 2011, Portland, Ore. Phillip DeVito ’54, November 27, 2011, Salem, Ore. Ernestine Alexis Palmer Brown ’56, March 26, 2011, Prairie View, Texas. William H. Williams, husband of Karen Williams ’64 and father of Bradford Williams ’94, December 21, 2011. James Murray Acres ’73, November 17, 2011. Steve Watson ’75, October 25, 2011, Newberg, Ore. Kenny Meyerson ’86, October 11, 2011. Bruce A. Hamm ’96, July 27, 2011. Paul Richard Richter III, husband of the late Judy Richter, September 29, 2011. Robert “Bob” Allison, November 19, 2011, Portland, Ore. Fred Fields, husband of the late Sue Schoenfeldt, December 13, 2011. James Francis McKenna, Jr., October 29, 2011, Portland, Ore.
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Chol Isaac Achuil was eight years old, minding the cows in his native Sudan, when the war began. He ran into the forest to escape the fire and guns. He lost his family. He walked for weeks, holding onto the shirt of the boy in front of him as they walked all night. The boys lived in the forest for years, being attacked regularly by militias. Finally the Red Cross found him and brought him to a refugee camp in Kenya. He lived there for years. He was seventeen years old when the United States accepted 3,600 Lost Boys of Sudan as immigrants. He arrived in Oregon in 2000. He worked on campus hauling recycling buckets, and started classes on The Bluff, but he didn’t have a cent, and things looked bleak until University president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., told him the University would pay for his education if he promised to go try to heal the Sudan when he was finished. He graduated in 2008, returned to the Sudan, “joined my fellow South Sudanese citizens voting for the independence of South Sudan, and in 2011 joined the United States Embassy to the Republic of South Sudan; I am standing here with U.S. Ambassador Barrie Walkley and Elaine French, and yes, that is Air Force One behind us.” Wow. Our prayers, Chol. To help students like this remarkable young man get a chance at the University, see rise.up.edu. Portland 48
Or here’s a Campaign story. Augusto Carvalho Dias Carneiro ’01 is the founder of Nossa Familia Coffee. His family has been growing coffee on its farm (where the photo above of young Mr. Giovani St. Onge Carneiro ’30 was taken) for 121 years – six generations of hard work in the lush mountains of Minas Gerais, in southern Brazil. Augusto arrives at the University in 1996 and gets utterly engaged by entrepreneurial energy, the roaring market in the Pacific Northwest for really good organic coffee, and sustainability and stewardship as not only cool moral responsibilities but excellent profit engines. In 2005 he and Jason Lesh ’01 start a company, bringing freshly harvested coffee from the family farm in Brazil to roast and sell in Oregon. The company does well, and Augusto, a bright young soul, does not forget the cheerful verb of a place that gave him ideas, training, and encouragement to dream huge; he makes a thorough annual Campaign gift, does coffee tastings and seminars for the University’s alumni office, and will lead a “coffee tour” to Brazil from May 4 to May 14, all welcome, see alumni.up.edu. To make your cool Campaign gift, aimed at anything you like, see rise.up.edu, or call the effervescent Diane Dickey at 503.943.8130.
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THE DISTAFF SIDE
The University’s Peg Hogan, 1963 The eminent philosopher and scholar Margaret Hogan, who graced the University for years as both the first holder of the McNerney-Hanson Chair in Philosophy and first director of the Garaventa Center for American Catholic Life, played college ball for the legendary Immaculata College Mighty Macs, who won the first three truly national women’s college titles, from 1972-1974. We swore for years to find this photo, and print it with high glee, just for the unimaginable vision of Peg, a woman of stalwart and untrammeled dignity and dresses, wearing sneakers and a letterwoman jacket; Peg (second from right) swore it no longer existed on this planet. To her credit, she just sent it, laughing. The excellent Pilot women’s basketball team, by the way, led by the coach with the most wins in West Coast Conference history, is a terrific target for your Campaign gifts, as is the verve and joy of Pilot athletics in toto. See rise.up.edu for information.