Reed College Magazine December 2015

‰ December 2015

Sculpting the City Prof. Gerri Ondrizek challenges her students to reinvent urban spaces

The Siege of Vienna

|

muckraking through the ages

|

when wasps attack

When it comes to the story of your life, every year counts.

Like protagonists in their own coming-of-age novels, Reed students arrive on campus seeking intellectual and personal enlightenment. When they graduate, they know that every year at Reed has shaped who they have become.

Support every step of their transformation. Make your gift this year, and every year.

This December, all new, increased, and renewed alumni gifts to the Annual Fund will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to $1,000.

M A K E YO U R A N N UA L F U N D G I F T TO DAY enclosed

giving.reed.edu

877/865-1469

REED december 2015

14

FEATURES 10

14

Keys to the Kingdom Econ major spreads his wings at Reed.

Library of Leaves

Reed Herbarium gives botanists a glimpse into the past—and the future.

By Randall S. Barton 16

By Randall S. Barton

The Selling of Modernism

How the CIA turned the work of subversive intellectuals into a weapon of the Cold War.

By Greg Barnhisel ’92

18

Disaster on the Danube

The fate of Europe hung in the balance when the Ottoman army besieged Vienna in 1683.

6

DEPARTMENTS 4

By Rick Peterson ’15 20

Class of ’19 Attack of the Parasitic Wasps A Chunk of Salt Astrophysicist is Orienteering Star Bike Co-Op Named for Mark Angeles ’15

A Life in Counterpoint

Jan DeWeese ’71 transforms solo to duet through his art and teaching.

By Laurie Lindquist 9 24 12

12

Muckraking through the Ages

An anthology of investigative reporting shows the power of journalism to expose injustice.

By Katelyn Best ’13

cover photo by marlen mueller

Sculpting the City

Prof. Gerri Ondrizek challenges her students to reinvent urban spaces.

Eliot Circular

Empire of the Griffin Letter from your alumni prez

28

Reediana

Books, music, and film by Reedies

By Randall S. Barton 32

Class Notes

42

In Memoriam

54

Apocrypha A Bomb in the Basement

september 2015 Reed magazine 1

‰

Letter from the editor

december 2015

Return on Investment He was a quiet, scrawny kid from the wrong side of the tracks. Grew up during the Depression. Bounced around the Pacific Northwest while his parents hunted for work before settling in Portland. Washed shirts in the family’s Chinatown laundry.

Money was tight; he sometimes went hungry. Walking to Lincoln High School, past the knots of hollow-eyed men who thronged the streets of downtown Portland, Ken Koe ’45 knew that for a guy like him, college was not a luxury. It was an escape hatch.

The night before his high school graduation, he heard the sound of the escape hatch opening—Reed College had granted him a full scholarship.

So in the fall of 1942, he became a day-dodger at Reed, embarking, as he would later say, on an “exhilarating intellectual journey.” He read Homer in Literature 11 and took freshman chemistry from Prof. Arthur Scott [chemistry 1923-79]. After class, he hopped on the Eastmoreland trolley back to Chinatown, waiting tables and washing dishes at Hung Far Low. Somehow he managed to graduate in just three years, writing his thesis with Prof. Fred Ayres [chemistry 1940-70].

Ken went on to get a PhD from Caltech and pursued a stellar career developing new drugs at Pfizer Research Laboratories, where he authored or coauthored 14 patents and 150 papers. In 1977, his curiosity prompted him to pursue a line of inquiry that would ultimately lead to sertraline hydrochloride, better known as Zoloft—one of the most effective anti-depressants ever developed.

Many years later, Ken reflected on the remarkable chain of circumstances that led to the discovery (see page 42). In particular, he singled out that moment in 1942 when Reed offered him a $250 scholarship as the “critical factor” that launched his career.

We hear a lot of questions these days about the “return on investment” of a college degree, typically framed in terms of your earning power five or ten years after graduation. It’s a useful, 2

Reed magazine december 2015

www.reed.edu/reed_magazine 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97202 503/777-7591 Volume 94, No. 4 MAGAZINE editor

Chris Lydgate ’90 503/777-7596 chris.lydgate@reed.edu class notes editor

Robin Tovey 503/777-7598 reed.magazine@reed.edu in memoriam editor

Randall Barton 503/517-5544 bartonr@reed.edu art director

Tom Humphrey 503/459-4632 tom.humphrey@reed.edu REED COLLEGE RELATIONS vice president, college relations

Hugh Porter director, communications & public affairs

Mandy Heaton director, alumni & parent relations

How an investment of $250 ultimately led to a drug that has helped millions of people. important discussion. But to my mind, this definition of “return” is far too narrow. The point of getting an education at a place like Reed is not to fatten your wallet but to sharpen your mind and prepare yourself for the intellectual challenges that lie ahead.

Ken died in October, but his life journey is a wonderful example of how the pursuit of knowledge is intrinsically valuable—not just because it changes the world, but also because it transforms the mind that seeks it. And if that’s not a good investment, I don’t know what is.

—CHRIS LYDGATE ’90

Mike Teskey director, development

Jan Kurtz Reed College is a private, independent, non-sectarian four-year college of liberal arts and sciences. Reed provides news of interest to alumni, parents, and friends. Views expressed in the magazine belong to their authors and do not necessarily represent officers, trustees, faculty, alumni, students, administrators, or anyone else at Reed, all of whom are eminently capable of articulating their own beliefs.

Reed (ISSN 0895-8564) is published quarterly, in March, June, September, and December, by the Office of Public Affairs at Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97202.

Periodicals postage paid at Portland, Oregon.

Postmaster: Send address changes to Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd., Portland OR 97202-8138.

Letters to Reed Write to us! We love getting mail from readers. Letters should be about Reed (and its alumni) or Reed (and its contents) and run no more than 300 words; subsequent replies may only run half the length of their predecessors. Our decision to print a letter does not imply any endorsement. Letters are subject to editing. (Beware the editor’s hatchet.) For contact information, look to your left. Read more letters and commentary at www.reed.edu/reed_magazine.

Dancing with Judy Massee

I appreciate all the stories you collected in the June issue for your remembrance of Judy Massee [dance director 1968-98]. I’d like to add one more. I studied with Judy in the ’70s.

She gave me my first teaching job, but more importantly, gave me a sense that I could find a place in the dance world. At that time there were very few spaces on campus that would work for performance: we usually set up theatre lights and wings in the gymnasium for our department shows at the end of the term, but when Judy had the chance to bring a duet company to Reed for a performance she commandeered the student union for the weekend. We hauled our equipment in, climbing up the walls to hang lights and string cable, and then perched up in the balcony to run the show. At the end, after we’d loaded out all our gear, she was so pleased that we’d been able to transform the space into a “real” theatre.

I’ve done almost every job you could name in dance, and many of the skills that I’ve used were jump-started by Judy Massee. I am still a grateful girl.

—Sandra Kurtz ’78 Seattle, Washington

I am delighted that dance, through Judith’s efforts, has found a place of respect at Reed. I had to leave Reed to become a dancer, but while there formed a lasting friendship with Trisha Brown [dance director 1958-68], who had just graduated from Mills. No facilities— but we did find a place to dance. We would sneak into the gym, with Richard Levin ’60, and improvise. I still relish the confusion, challenge, and delights of my time at Reed. It did not train me as a dancer or choreographer (The Electric Company, Grease). What it did do:

I am delighted that dance, through Judith’s efforts, has found a place of respect at Reed. taught me to think critically, access information, listen to others’ diverse opinions, gain a sense of self, and tackle the unknown. Trisha went on to become one of the most important innovators in modern dance. I went on to become the artistic, then executive director of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and later the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, where I had the privilege of supporting Trisha through commissions and presentation. By the way, another important contributor to the new dance movement, Simone Forti ’57, was a Reed alumna.

—Liz Lauter Thompson ’61 West Stockbridge, Massachusetts

The Art of the Conference

I was the lonely, only son of an Air Force command pilot when I attended Reed from 1965–69 as Vietnam and the anti-war movement were heating up. Lacking confidence and prone to reticence in large groups, I benefited in conferences by listening intently, but rarely

focus on ‘creating space’ for marginalized participants in such ‘high-stakes performances’ is right on. The group experience needs to be one of, not merely being ‘simultaneously present’, but actually enjoying shared time together. As she so aptly puts it, content and subject matter become less relevant when our ‘intellectual personae’ are on display. Getting to know each other by name, feeling supported emotionally without fear of error, not to mention mutual trust and respect, are basic to any meaningful conference.

After working 30 years as a psychologist with groups of young people, one thing I have learned is that, before the “art” of the conference can be practiced effectively, first the “science” of group dynamics must be applied.

Here, there are a few simple, well-established rules to help facilitate the right conditions.

First, no more than eight (8) people in a group; whenever that limit is exceeded, communications begin to break down, shy students withdraw and more assertive ones dominate.

Next, comes the “elevator effect,” i.e. silence always prevails in a densely crowded elevator.

A convenient formula for this is roughly 50 sq. ft. per person, so an adequate floor area for an ideal group would be… well, you do the math!

—Ed Fisher ’69 Pine Bush, NY

No one made me feel the way reading the dialogues of Plato did. participating. Owing to my isolation, the system was somewhat wasted on me at the time.

The atmosphere in the room felt too judgmental toward my still developing, fragile worldview, so I got more from casual conversation and through personal relationships outside class. My professors were at once charismatic, energetic, insightful, well-versed, highly skilled verbally and some, even wise. Nonetheless, no one made me feel the way reading the dialogues of Plato did.

The feature on “The Art of the Conference” in the September issue touches on ‘cultivating inclusiveness’—i.e. overcoming ‘feeling silenced’, maintaining an ‘encouraging environment’, providing a ‘forum for all voices’, balancing the ‘overly talkative’ student with those who rarely speak—but only tangentially.

Prof. Minardi comes close when she talks about arranging the furniture differently, or dividing the class into smaller groups. Prof. Makley’s

Regarding your cover story on successful conferences [September 2015]: I want a do-over.

At least on my Hum 110 and Hum 220 conferences. I was really not listening in 1970 and ’71.

Your article is profound and available at once, and will affect any training I do from now on.

—Mary F. Byrkit ’74 St. Johns, Oregon

Remembering Peter Gilpin ’55

Check out reed.edu/reed_magazine for a great letter about Peter from Joe Hadden ’55.

Correction

Author Deborah J. Ross ’68 was incorrectly and inexplicably listed as Deborah Ross Wheeler in the Reediana column of September 2014. We apologize for the error.

december 2015 Reed magazine

3

Eliot Circular news from campus

Class of ’19: Accomplished, Diverse, and 426 Strong The competition to join Reed College—often described as one of the most intellectual colleges in the country—is getting stronger than ever.

Reed welcomed 426 new students to campus at convocation, painstakingly selected from a record 5,392 applicants. The number of applicants is up 86% over two years,

and 36% over last year. With the increase in applications, Reed’s acceptance rate fell from 39% last year to 35%, making it the most selective college in the Pacific Northwest.

The incoming class had an average combined total SAT score of 2070 and an average high school GPA of 3.95, with 88% ranked in the top quarter of their high school class.

Twenty-two incoming students were either valedictorians or salutatorians.

With 34% of students coming from U.S. multicultural families, the class is also the most diverse in Reed’s history.

The proportion of international students remained steady at 6.1%.

Azrah Ahmed ’19 was a top student at

photo by leah nash

the Oregon Islamic Academy in Portland, where she served as student body president, was a member of the youth ambassadors club, and was active in community service.

A first-generation Kashmiri-American, she hopes to work toward eliminating stereotypes about her faith, while opening discussions about other worldviews and “thus building bridges between different cultures and convictions.”

Amy Lazarte ’19 of Corpus Christi,

Texas, came to Reed from Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut, which she attended on a full scholarship for underserved students. At Choate, she tutored Spanish, was active in theatre, and volunteered for the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program and the sexual minorities and straight supporters group. She spent her summer as a teaching assistant at the Smithsonian Summer Camp. Her college counselor described her as an “uncommonly authentic

young intellectual.”

Reed’s need-based financial aid was instrumental in enrolling this strong and diverse class. At least 55% of the freshman class will receive financial aid, another Reed record. Reed was able to increase aid to students from middle-income families without diminishing the number of students on Pell Grants.

To learn more about the Class of ’19, see www.reed.edu/ir. —RANDALL S. BARTON

Eliot Circular

Attack of the Parasitic Wasps

Reed magazine december 2015

tom humphrey

6

Shelly Skolfield ’14 and Prof. Todd Schlenke looked at the biological arms race between wasps and fruit flies. They found that flies that survived wasp infection shuffled their genes more often—which supports the Red Queen hypothesis.

MICHAEL MARTIN

Parasites are the Rodney Dangerfields of the animal kingdom—they don’t get no respect.

But it turns out that parasitic infection can actually spur evolution and may even be partly responsible for the origin of sexual reproduction, according to a study published in Science by a team of researchers including Shelly Skolfield ’14, Prof. Todd Schlenke [biology 2013–], and colleagues at North Carolina State University.

The researchers found that fruit flies that survived infection by parasites hatched significantly more diverse offspring, presumably to out-evolve the parasites that are trying to exploit them.

Shelly’s experiment, which was an outgrowth of her senior thesis, provides a glimpse into the strategies that organisms employ to help their progeny stay one step ahead of the parasitic Joneses. She began by interbreeding typical fruit flies with a special strain of fruit flies with two mutant genes—one that turns their abdomens a shade of brown and another that makes their eyes look like microscopic disco balls. She then infected some of the flies with venomous parasitic wasps and examined their offspring for signs of recombination—a kind of genetic shuffling detected by looking at combinations of eye-type and body color.

Sure enough, the flies that survived wasp infection produced offspring with higher rates of recombination—they shuffled their genes more often.

“Making their offspring more diverse is one way for organisms to stay ahead of their parasites,” Prof. Schlenke says.

This is the first experiment showing that parasitic infection increases recombination in animals—a surprising result which implies that wasps and other parasites play an important role in evolution. “Parasites are a powerful but invisible force of nature,” Shelly says.

To perform the experiment, she peered at more than 50,000 wasps through the microscope. “I love looking through the microscope,” she says. “But, yes, it was a lot of work.”

The findings also shed light on one of evolutionary biology’s enduring puzzles— the origin of sex itself.

BUZZ KILL. A parasitic wasp (Leptopilina heterotoma) inserts her ovipositor into a fruit fly larva. Yeah, it’s grim.

Sexual reproduction is, biologically speaking, an odd way to procreate. It is not nearly as efficient as asexual reproduction and involves myriad perilous complications, from finding a reliable partner to surviving the first date to haggling over wallpaper for the nursery. Why not just stamp out copies of yourself? It’s simpler, cheaper, and doesn’t require a profile on OKCupid.

The prevailing theory about the origin of

sex is the Red Queen hypothesis, named for the scene in Through the Looking Glass when Alice and the Red Queen have to keep running just to stay in the same place. The idea is that the only way to stay ahead of predators, parasites, and all the other miscreants who want to eat your lunch is through constant evolution. Sexual reproduction provides an effective mechanism for doing this because it allows individuals to combine their most successful traits.

The Reed team partnered with researchers from North Carolina State University, Baylor College of Medicine, Winthrop University, and Emory University to write the paper. “I never imagined it would be published in Science,” Shelly says. “I still can’t believe it.”

Shelly grew up in North Portland, graduated from Benson High School, and taught outdoor science camps at OMSI before deciding to come to Reed. She is currently working in the Reed biology lab and is planning to pursue a career in science education and science literacy. —CHRIS LYDGATE ’90

Reed Hosts Masters The ninth annual west coast Graduate Liberal Studies Symposium—hosted and organized by Barbara Amen, Reed’s director of special programs—brought scholars from 10 colleges and universities to Reed in June.

Students and graduates of Reed’s Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) program presented papers on a variety of topics, including “The Role of Practice Babies in Home Economics Education during the Great Depression,” addressed by Claire Michie, Reed associate director of donor relations. Claire’s paper was developed from the MALS course “Politics, Culture, and the Great Depression,” which she took from Prof. Jackie Dirks ’82 [history].

Reed has always had a graduate program, says Barbara, who has been program director of MALS since 1995. MALS students now form a diverse group. Typically 25 to 35 students—ranging in age from mid-20s to retirees—are enrolled each year, and all are drawn to the program by the intellectual and personal challenge it offers, as well as the congenial classroom environment it affords. After completing the MALS degree, some go on to earn additional graduate degrees or to change a career focus. The program also draws Reedies back to the conference table, such as current students Stephen Foster ’69, Maggie Grove Nelson ’09, and Ben Salzberg ’94. See more at www.reed.edu/MALS. —ANNA MANN

Take Scientific Claims with a Chunk of Salt A massive study by 270 researchers, including two Reed psychologists, underscores one of the key challenges facing scientists today: Just how far can you trust the research published in professional, peerreviewed journals?

According to this project, you should take it with a chunk of salt.

The study, published in Science, set out to examine a core principle of scientific research: the property of reproducibility.

Two different researchers should be able to run the same experiment independently and get the same results. These results form the basis for theories about how the world works, be it the formation of stars or the causes of schizophrenia. Of course, different scientists may offer competing explanations for a particular result—but the result itself is supposed to be reliable.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work this way. In this study, researchers set out to replicate 100 experiments published in three prestigious psychology journals. Only 36% of the replications yielded statistically significant results. In other words, researchers were unable to replicate the original results in almost two-thirds of the studies they looked at.

The study set off alarm bells in psychology labs around the world. “This one will make waves,” says Prof. Michael Pitts [psychology 2011–], who worked with Melissa Lewis ’13 to replicate one of the 100 experiments in Reed’s SCALP lab.

For her thesis, Melissa looked at the

correlation between the “error-related negativity response”—a brainwave that corresponds to the feeling you get when you lock the keys in the car—and the “startle response” that occurs when you’re surprised by a sudden sound.

The original experiment reported a strong correlation between the two responses. Melissa found a similar pattern—but the correlation was weaker than reported in the original.

“The pattern was close, but not as strong,” she says. “This nicely encapsulates the problem of reproducibility. The reality is that science is noisy and unexpected factors can creep into your results.”

The study identifies several factors that may explain the failed replications. First, journal editors are hungry for experiments that are novel and surprising, which puts pressure on researchers to publish results at the ragged edge of statistical significance.

Second, scientists today often stockpile vast quantities of data from their experiments. Given hundreds or thousands of data points, it is often possible to find two variables that seem to be related, even though the link is a matter of happenstance.

“If you run enough t-tests, you’re going to find something significant,” says Prof. Pitts.

Although the study focused on psychological research, the authors suspect the phenomenon is widespread. In fact, the replication project has inspired a similar initiative in the field of cell biology.

—CHRIS LYDGATE ’90

december 2015 Reed magazine

7

Eliot Circular Astrophysicist is Orienteering Star tom humphrey

Prof. Alison Crocker [physics 2014–] came in 15th in the women’s sprint final at the 2015 World Orienteering Championships, the best individual result ever achieved by a US orienteer at the world level.

Prof. Crocker’s stellar performance came despite an initial stumble, when she misread the map and found herself on the wrong side of a stone wall, losing roughly 20 seconds. “Not a perfect race, but I was feisty after an early mistake and that did the job!” she wrote after the race.

The sport of orienteering combines map reading, running, and not getting lost. Competitors have to find their way between a series of checkpoints, called controls, as quickly as possible and in the right order. Orienteers do not see the map of the course until the race starts, so there can be no advance planning of routes or control locations.

By day (or is it night?) Prof. Crocker is an astrophysicist who studies the cold gas and dust within nearby

galaxies to learn more about how stars are formed. She earned a PhD in astrophysics from the University of Oxford and holds a bachelor’s degree in both physics and mathematics from Dartmouth.

At Reed she teaches astrophysics and general physics, and can be often seen (in a Doppler-shifted blur) running around campus with other Reed locomotorists. —ANNA MANN

Bike Co-Op Named for Mark Angeles ’15

8

Reed magazine december 2015

“Mark used the light that came from within to make the world a little brighter.” daniel Cronin

The Reed Bike Co-Op was officially renamed to honor avid cyclist and beloved classmate Mark Angeles ’15, who was struck down in a traffic collision just nine days after he graduated.

Hundreds of people gathered in the Quad to witness the ceremony and to listen as friends, classmates, professors, and staff shared their memories of Mark.

“I’m never going to have another friend like Mark,” said Maren Fichter ’15, sounding a theme that reverberated through the occasion.

Mark cut a distinctive figure at Reed. He majored in chemistry and wrote his thesis on the role of organometallic

catalysts in neutralizing toxic pollution. He ran the Reed Bike Co-Op and was partly responsible for the installation of the bike maintenance stations on campus. He was deeply committed to serving the community, worked closely with SEEDS, and volunteered as a mentor for underprivileged youth at Lane Middle School. He fixed bikes for free and taught bike safety to kids in northeast Portland. He served as a Paideia czar and sang

with Reed’s a cappella group, the Herodotones.

“Mark used the light that came from within to make the world a little brighter,” said his advisor, Prof. Sarah Kliegman ’02 [chemistry 2014–]. “He knew how to lift up other people’s lives.”

T h e He ro d o t o n e s p e r formed a haunting rendition of “Oblivion,” by Bastille, arranged

by Sierra Swann ’17.

We invite you to honor his memory by giving to the Mark Angeles Fellowship, which supports an intern in SEEDS who will continue his legacy of volunteerism.

Make a gift at www.reed.edu/ givingtoreed.

Empire of the Griffin

Connecting Reed alumni across the globe

Letter from the Alumni President “Eye of the Tiger” in the library, Gilbert and Sullivan, formals, the House F Owl, Nitrogen Day, Epistemology Forever, Canyon Day, Chem for Pyros, folk dancing, River Day, Friday at Four, Thesis Parade.

At Reed, there is a saying: If it happens once, it’s a tradition.

Some of these traditions are recognizable today and some would be familiar to the Reed class of 1915. (As I write this, I wonder what traditions the class of 2019 will invent.) The Reed College Alumni Association is a tradition created by the class of 1915, and this year we celebrate its 100th anniversary. Its purpose is to foster the continuing welfare of both the college and its alumni by promoting mutually beneficial interaction and a sense of community among alumni and between the college and its alumni.

But what does that mean? How does that happen? How did we get here?

A common thread that joins

us all when we become, in the words of Reed’s founding president William Trufant Foster, “Comrades of the Quest,” is the belief among those who have come before us in the potential of the next generation of Reed and Reedies. You see it in Amanda Reed’s will establishing Reed, in the admissions volunteer who interviews prospective students, in the Loyal Owl who makes a donation every year, in the alumni who welcome recent graduates into the fold.

Building on Amanda Reed’s generosity, the alumni association came into being with the adoption of the constitution by the first graduating class of Reed—the class of 1915. Four years later, the alumni welfare committee writes to alumni: “Now as to what all of us as Alumni can be doing.”

In the first organizing of the alumni association you see the idea that carries through to today—that it is our special opportunity as alumni to support Reed and Reedies so that each class can create its own

Reed and its own traditions.

Today Reed alumni, to quote that report from 1919, show their “interest and belief in the future of Reed College” and a “sense of community” in numerous ways. The volunteers of Alumni Fundraising for Reed give their time and resources to create more opportunities for Reed. The Reed Career Alliance connects students with alumni mentors in similar fields, Outreach Committee brings us together across the globe and helps other Reedies figure out how to connect, our Chapter Cities and Reunions volunteers reminds us all that we are certainly more interesting when all in one place.

That spirit is there when as a student you connect with an alumnus who helps you get a job, access research, takes an informational interview with you. And it is there in the tremendous feeling of honor when as an alumnus you receive that call from a current student asking for your help.

Our opportunity as students is to make our own Reed. And our privilege as alumni is to support each other and each generation of Reed. Olde Reed creating

New Reed—a tradition started by the class of 1915.

Kristen Earl ’05 President Alumni Association To participate in the tradition of volunteerism, please contact Todd Hesse at hesset@reed.edu or 503/777-7215.

Alumni Board Nominations The nominating committee of the Alumni Board proposes the following nominees to serve terms beginning July 1, 2016.

President (one-year term) Richard Roher ’79 Vice President (one-year term) Lisa Saldana ’94 Secretary (one-year term) Beverly Lau ’06 Alumni Trustee (4-year term) C. Morris Copeland ’82 Alumni Board of Directors, at large (3-year term) Alea Adigweme ’06 David Hardy ’71 Melissa Osborne ’13 Sebastian Pastore ’88 Shimon Prohow ’02 Nominations Committee (one-year term) Marcia Yaross ’73 Richard Thomason ’84 Katherine Lefever ‘07

Sheldon Wins Babson We are pleased to report that the recipient of the Jean McCall Babson Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service this year is Sheldon Hochheiser ’73. When you look at his track record, you can see why.

Sheldon has served on Reed’s Alumni Board since 1996, including a term as President of the Alumni Board and New York Chapter Chair. He also served as alumni trustee on the

Board of Trustees from 2006-2010. He is an active member of the Past President’s Group.

He has acted as an admission alumni volunteer and was both an interviewer and a subject in Reed’s Oral History Project. In 2003, he and his wife, Laura Leviton ’73, established the Ellen Hochheiser Memorial Scholarship in honor of his late sister, Ellen Hochheiser ’79.

Sheldon is the corporate historian for

AT&T. He earned his BA from Reed by writing an interdisciplinary thesis in chemistry and history (can you even do that?) and later earned both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in the history of science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is the author of the book Rohm & Hass: History of a Chemical Company and coauthor of The High Tech Company: An Historical and Archival Research Guide.

DECEMBER 2015 Reed magazine

9

Library of Leaves Reed Herbarium gives botanists a glimpse into the past—and the future

BY RANDALL S. BARTON

On the second floor of the biology building is a narrow room lined on one side with wooden cabinets. The location is hardly exotic, but it represents a botanical treasure— the nearly 10,000 specimens of the Reed College Herbarium.

Affixing dried plants to archival paper labeled in India ink may seem a relic of the Victorian era, but the herbarium offers timeless benefits to researchers. Many of its specimens are unique to the Pacific Northwest; each one has been identified, photographed, and entered into a vast digital system. In many ways, the herbarium becomes more valuable as it ages.

In Portland’s founding days, collectors gathered plant specimens that had been introduced into the area accidentally—arriving as ballast in the holds of ships or attached to shipments in railcars. Such specimens tell the story of flora that

“At one time there were probably hundreds of small herbaria like this in the country,” Prof.

Brehm says. “They’re slowly being condensed, with the smaller ones being folded into larger ones.”

Students doing theses involving native plants mount specimens of the plants they are working on, which are stored in the herbarium as vouchers.

Rachel Cox ’84, for example, studied how Native Americans used suffocants, horticultural death agents, to harvest fish. After soaking the plants and crushing them, they would allow the juice to flow downstream and collect the fish as they floated to the surface. Anyone wanting to replicate or expand upon that research can use the voucher to determine exactly which plants were used.

Many of the things for which plants are utilized pertain only to limited groups. Certain species are good for wood, others for medicines or foods or crop improvements.

“In things like bio-prospecting for medicines, the diversity of compounds is what is ultimately going to yield the things that are most useful to us,” explains Prof. Keith Karoly [biology 1994-], director of the Reed College Herbarium.

“The only way to wade through that diversity is to

“As a resource it gives us a kind of connectivity. . .” —Prof. Keith Karoly [biology] have disappeared from the landscape, as well as ones that have gained a foothold. Botanists can investigate the traits of successful invaders, versus the plants that didn’t establish.

Herbaria also demonstrate dramatic shifts in flowering time, indicating patterns of climate change and other human impacts on flora.

The Reed Herbarium began with a gift of nearly 1,600 specimens of Pacific Northwest flora dating from 1848 to 1909. The identity of the original donor was shrouded in mystery for many years, until some sleuthing by Vernon Marttala ’70 revealed that the handwriting on the labels matched that of Louis Henderson—a neighbor of Thomas Lamb Eliot, the Unitarian minister who urged Amanda and Simeon to establish the college.

Over the years other gifts trickled in: a collection of forest flora from a retired forest service worker; specimens Prof. David French ’39 [anthropology 1947-88] collected while researching botanical materials used by Native Americans. Prof. Bert Brehm [biology 1962-93] organized the collection when he came to the college. As funds became available, he secured a room to house it in the biology building.

10 Reed magazine december 2015

have some system of naming, some way of recognizing that you’re dealing with an entity that may be different from what people have studied before, which might make it worthy of investigation. Recognizing those distinctions allows you to know where you want to target your investigation for practical purposes.”

Every spring Karoly teaches a class on plant evolution focusing on plant diversity in the Pacific Northwest. Many plants being studied are not in bloom as the class commences, but the herbarium gives students an opportunity to study and recognize them by their characteristics before getting out in the field. Students working on independent projects involving flora in the Reed Canyon use the herbarium to identify whether the plant has been here since the college was founded or has been previously identified in the region. Keying a plant digitally is not as effective as pulling out the specimen sheet and studying it under a dissecting microscope.

“You might want to know what the characteristics are on the underside of the leaf, and the photograph doesn’t show you that,” Brehm

explains. “Another possibility is studying the specimens for their internal chemistry. If you can get a small amount of plant material off the side, you can do a DNA analysis, which gives you an extraordinary amount of information about that system.”

Researchers are able to call up digitized files to discover whether a certain plant, for example, always occurs in places with ultramafic rock.

Conversely they could call up locations containing such rock and see if that plant is growing there.

Though Reed’s collection is digitized and available online, researchers from other institutions frequently request mounted specimens, which fosters a collegial relationship between institutions.

“Maintaining the herbarium is a matter of prestige,” Karoly says. “As a resource it gives us a kind of connectivity, not unlike our nuclear reactor.”

As a student Vernon Marttala ’70 was passionate about biology and the Reed Herbarium.

After graduating from Reed, he earned a master’s in biology from the New York Botanical Society and returned to Portland, where he botanized with professionals, collected plant specimens, and published papers. Reed’s herbarium was not the only one to which he was devoted, but the fever of first love cannot happen twice, and before he died in August he insured that his beloved herbarium would benefit from his legacy.

The Reed Herbarium already contained more than 800 specimens that he had collected. But when Vernon passed away, Karoly agreed to store his large, personal collection until the estate could be sorted out. Many of the specimens are not mounted or labeled, and the entire collection must first be fumigated to prevent animal pests or fungi from damaging the larger collection.

Vernon’s financial bequest to the herbarium could be used to help fund the process of fumigation, curation, and accession— all of which are likely to be undertaken by the Portland State University Herbarium, which has the necessary resources. As Vernon was also a board member and volunteer at the PSU herbarium, the bulk of his personal collection of more than 8,000 plants will probably end up there. But Karoly has expressed his preference that any part of the collection that relates to Vernon’s time at Reed or the biology of the campus comes to the Reed Herbarium.

See more about the Herbarium at www.reed.edu/biology/ herbarium.html

december 2015 Reed magazine 11

Muckraking through the Ages An anthology of investigative reporting shows the power of journalism to expose injustice. from investigative journalism into political advocacy. What unifies all the work in this Antwerp, late 1890s. Edmund Dene Morel, volume is each reporter’s recognition—like a young employee of the British shipping Morel’s revelation at the docks in Antwerp— company Elder Dempster, stands on the that an injustice was occurring, and that they docks, supervising the unloading of ships had the power to show it to the world. arriving from the Congo. One ship arrives Beyond being a compelling study of carrying a load of ivory, the next is packed journalism itself, Global Muckraking neatwith rubber—lucrative commodities, par- ly illustrates how various issues faced by ticularly for Morel’s employer, the developing world perpetwhich enjoys a monopoly on uate one another. Global hunshipping to the colony. In the ger for Peruvian rubber, West course of his duties, howevAfrican oil, or Indonesian sneaker, Morel begins to sense that ers enriches first European colosomething is amiss: while the nizers, and later on corrupt local ships that arrive in Antwerp officials, while workers suffer are filled to the gunwales with poverty, abuse, and displacevaluable cargo, the ships that ment. Ethnic tensions, stoked sail back to the Congo are loadby a conflict over oil rights, ed with soldiers and guns. erupt into conflict in Nigeria, From thousands of miles while in Equitorial Guinea, a Global Muckraking: 100 Years away, Morel had caught a president builds a personal of Investigative Journalism from Around the World glimpse of an unimaginably fortune with his country’s oil Edited by Anya Schiffrin ’84 brutal system of forced labor. [The New Press, 2014] wealth. Political murders from In short order, he quit his job Argentina to South Africa allow and dedicated himself to exposthe beneficiaries of these ineqing the atrocities taking place in the name uities to keep benefiting from them. And all of profit. the while, journalists are working to expose Morel’s intrepid reporting on the Congo these issues, risking—and sometimes losis the starting point for Global Muckraking, ing—their lives. an anthology of bold, insightful, and impasSchiffrin says the intellectual origin of sioned investigative reporting edited by her book springs from her days on campus.

Anya Schiffrin ’84. Many of the writers Reed’s intellectual atmosphere was “liberatin this collection risked their lives and rep- ing, because it was a place where the only utations to expose corruption, labor abuses, thing that really mattered was intellectual and environmental destruction throughout pursuits,” she says. For the first time, “all the developing world.

I had to do was read and write.” Prof. Bill Included here are some familiar stories, Lankford [English 1977–83] and Prof. Gail such as Liu Zhiyi’s undercover exposé of life Kelly ’55 [anthro 1960–2000] were imporat a Foxconn factory, or the 1999 National tant influences, but it was Prof. Richard Enquirer report on Salvadoran sweatshops Fox [history 1981–90] who urged her to producing Kathie Lee Gifford clothing. write her thesis on a short-lived, left-leaning Others, such as a report on corporate mal- New York newspaper called PM. Schiffrin feasance in the construction of a Brazilian examined both the paper’s business model railroad, will be new to most readers. Some and the historiography of subsequent writpieces, such an exposé on footbinding, veer ing about it, an experience that sparked her

BY KATELYN BEST ’13

12 Reed magazine september 2015

interest in journalism. Reed “completely formed me, really” and “laid the foundation” for a career in the media.

After Reed, Schiffrin interned at the Nation, then worked as a business reporter for various papers, living in London, Istanbul, Amsterdam, and Hanoi. She finally landed at Columbia University, where she teaches and directs the International Media Advocacy and Communications program.

Much of the repor ting in Global Muckraking was first published in obscure newspapers or magazines, and one of the book’s themes is that the proliferation of small media outlets, which modern readers associate with the rise of the internet, is by no means a recent phenomenon.

When it comes to the predigital era, she

photo for reed magazine by mark abramson

Anya Schiffrin’s interest in journalism was sparked by her history thesis on the New York City newspaper PM.

says, “we always imagine enormous media houses that last, but actually, it was much more like today. There were millions of startups . . . millions of passionate people who said, ‘This is an outrage, I’m going to set up a newsletter.’”

One publication featured in the book, a colonial-era revolutionary leaflet from coastal Bengal called Biplabi (“rebel” in Bengali), was smuggled to Calcutta in vegetable carts. Many were self-published newsletters. Schiffrin compares the vast world of short-lived media startups she encountered while researching the book to today’s blogs: “lots of funny, random stories, hilarious announcements, stuff that wasn’t really sourced.”

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the book is how the same stories recur many

times, separated by decades and continents, a pattern Schiffrin highlights through thoughtful selection and juxtaposition. A 1895 article on footbinding precedes a 2012 piece about female genital cutting in Liberia. A 1906 exposé of slavery on chocolate plantations in São Tomé and Príncipe is followed by a 2008 article exposing West African chocolate as a conflict resource produced by underage workers.

It was at the urging of her publisher that Schiffrin turned Global Muckraking into an anthology, each article introduced by a journalist, academic, or activist. The introductions help to contextualize the pieces, and the context is often bleak. In some cases, the journalists were expelled or even murdered.

In others, the reporting had little impact.

In the words of Nigerian journalist Ken Saro-Wiwa—who was hanged by the military government on trumped-up charges in 1995—“Is anyone listening?”

It’s a difficult question. These days, Schiffrin says, “measuring impact is really fashionable . . . there are way more philanthropists funding journalists, and donors want to see an impact.” In her mind, however, the impact of journalism is impossible to quantify and sometimes takes decades to be felt. Rather than being a direct force for change, good investigative reporting can reframe “the way we think about something.”

Like E.D. Morel in Antwerp, reporting the news often involves seeing a story that others have chosen to ignore—and having the courage to stand by it.

september 2015 Reed magazine 13

Student profile

Keys to the Kingdom Econ major spreads his wings at Reed

BY RANDALL S. BARTON

He was running out of time.

It was his first biology quiz at Reed, and Emmanuel “Chuks” Enemchukwu ’16 thought he had prepared himself. But the problems were trickier than he had anticipated. He was running out of time and yet he couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t focus.

In truth, it had happened to him before, back in high school, but he kept hoping that he could break through, find the formula, demonstrate his knowledge like the other students. He hoped that somehow it would be different in America, different at Reed.

He stared at the paper, willing the answers to come into focus.

He was out of time. And he was only halfway through the quiz.

An African proverb holds that “Nobody is born wise.” Nobody knows that better than Chuks, an econ major who overcame numerous hurdles before he flourished at Reed, where he has won the Davis Project for Peace, a Financial Services Fellowship, and a McGill Lawrence Summer Internship Award, working with Mercy Corps.

“Chuks is among the most driven, passionate, and inspiring students with whom I’ve worked at Reed,” says Dana Lawson, assistant dean of students for international student services. “It has been an honor to see him develop as a scholar and global citizen. His perspectives and contributions have made a great impact on the Reed community and beyond. He is thoughtful and serious about his future, and I’m excited to see all that he accomplishes in life beyond Reed—I know he has a promising future ahead.”

Chuks grew up on the shores of the Niger River in Onitsha, Nigeria, one of the fastest growing cities in the world. Raised by a mother who is a teacher and a father who is a dentist, he and his two sisters

14 Reed magazine december 2015

always took education seriously. At the age of 11, he was admitted to a boarding school for gifted children in Sulejua, Nigeria. Partway through his second year he realized that he was learning the wrong things and for the wrong reasons.

“In their love and academic fervor, my family wanted me to become a doctor like my father,” he says. “Somewhere along the way I mistook their impression of me as my impression of myself.” With only a year to go before the national examinations, he switched from science to business and faced the daunting task of cramming three years of coursework into a year. Nevertheless, he aced the exams, posting the top scores in his school,

and among the best in the entire country.

“My Nigerian education taught me how to be resourceful and get a lot done with very little,” he says. “I look back on my ability to turn this around to reassure myself that I can accomplish whatever I set my mind on.”

After graduating from high school, Chuks was accepted into the African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa—a two-year program that combines college preparation with African studies and entrepreneurial experience. When it came time to choose a college, he relied on advice from his guidance counselors and a favorite book, “Colleges that Change Lives” by Loren Pope,

m at t d ’a n n u n z i o

and picked Reed.

“Reed’s reputation for rigorous, intellectual pursuits, and learning for the sake of learning really appealed to me,” he says.

But in his freshman year, Chuks found that an old problem was coming back to haunt him. As far back as grade school, he had been slow to synthesize and reproduce knowledge.

Rarely completing tests, he suffered from a short attention span. He hated high school science because the teachers went too fast for him. Found dozing in class, he would be awakened with a slap to the cheek and sent outside to cut grass. When his college counselor suggested that he be tested for a learning disability, Emmanuel refused to concede

that anything was wrong with him.

“If you keep competing on an uneven playing field,” she warned, “sooner or later you’ll exhaust yourself.”

After he ran out of time on the biology quiz, Chuks recognized that he needed help. He made an appointment with Reed’s Disability Support Services, which worked with him to get the necessary accommodations.

It worked. With support, he was able to make the most of his time at Reed. He is working on his senior thesis on the economic cost of disabilities in Tanzania with Prof.

Denise Hare [economics 1992–].

“It has been a pleasure to observe his progression from Introductory Economics with

me his first semester at Reed up to the present,” says Prof. Hare. “It will be fun to watch as his thesis unfolds, and I expect he will continue to do interesting and admirable work after he graduates.”

Chuks appreciates Reed’s small class sizes, highly motivated student body and the effort professors make in developing students’ critical thinking and problem solving skills.

“Without the remarkably generous financial aid package, my dream of studying in the U.S. would have been dashed,” he says. “Reed also tries to match its tradition of promoting intellectual discourse with action, providing students with ample opportunities to travel and learn about the world and the different cultures in it.”

He also believes in giving back. He volunteers at SEEDS and is involved with the Rotary Club. “To be a good leader, an influencer, you have to serve,” he says. “I feel a sense of satisfaction knowing I can give back.”

Over the summer, he was invited to address a conference of college admission counselors from around the world in Eugene, Oregon. His talk impressed one counselor so much she contacted Reed to convey her appreciation. “Emmanuel delivered a message that inspired all of us to work harder, do better, for the sake of students we work with all around the world,” she said.

Chuks hopes one day to return to Africa and use what he has learned as an econ major to help developing businesses grow.

If he decides to pursue an MBA, he is confident that his time at Reed will give him an advantage. Last year he won a Financial Services Fellowship, which brings students to New York City to learn from alumni who work in the field of finance.

He invokes Hum 110 as a metaphor for the value of a Reed education. “Twenty years from now you might remember some of the content,” he says. “But at the end of the day what lasts is the skill set you develop. I was volunteering at a youth camp in Corbett and a number of them said, ‘I like the way you think. You think outside the box.’ I was delighted by that feedback but not surprised, because it’s what Reed is preparing us to do.”

december 2015 Reed magazine 15

The Selling of Modernism How the CIA turned the work of subversive intellectuals into a weapon of the Cold War in wartime, become more eminent after that?

The answer, I concluded, was James My Reed profs and classmates cautioned Laughlin. A Pittsburgh steel heir, Laughlin me that getting a PhD in English would be stayed away from the family business. He a long, difficult, and risky thing to do, given wanted to be a poet, but Pound advised him the scarcity of professor jobs. They also said to use the family money for good, and go frankly that probably only five or six people into publishing. would actually read my dissertation, the Laughlin did just that, starting New 300-page book I would spend lonely years Directions Books in his Harvard dorm room. researching and writing.

My dissertation ultimately focused on how I didn’t increase my potential readership he published and marketed Pound in a way any by choosing to write on the difficult Ezra that turned a traitorous anti-Semite who Pound. I’d been turned on to Pound in Prof. wrote relentlessly difficult poetry into one Ellen Stauder [1983–2013] and of the acknowledged greats of Prof. Gail Sherman’s [1981–] American literature.

English Literary History—the New Directions Books is class that, even after 20 years still around, and the staff there teaching literature, still forms allowed me to poke around the my view of the literary tradition. company files. This sure wasn’t A postgraduate year in Rome the spreadsheet era—in the ’30s, increased my fascination with sales were recorded in pencil on the poet, who lived much of his notecards! More exciting still life in Italy. was the opportunity to interI was less interested in view the mostly retired Laughlin Pound’s often-obscure poetry at his estate in northwestern Cold War Modernists: than in how he had become such Connecticut.

Art, Literature, & American Cultural Diplomacy a respected poet. During World Laughlin lived in an aristoGreg Barnhisel ’92, War II, Pound did radio broad- By cratic yet frugal world. He had a (Columbia University casts for Mussolini’s Fascist gov- Press, 2015) Matisse in the dining room. He ernment. He was charged with hadn’t bought it; it was a gift treason, captured, and returned from Matisse’s granddaughter, to the U.S. for trial, and eventually confined to who had been his secretary for a time. His a mental institution for 13 years. The revolt- cook served us tuna sandwiches (no crusts) ing and fascinating Pound brought up urgent and small cups of tomato soup for lunch. questions for me about literature, politics, I eventually published that dissertaand culture. tion, but I continued to learn more about Graduate study can be so relentless and Laughlin. Particularly intriguing to me was unrewarding that it’s crucial to have a prob- a four-year stretch in the mid-1950s, when lem you are driven to investigate. In Pound’s he published a journal called Perspectives USA, case I knew I’d found that compelling ques- which reprinted American modernist litertion. If the Dixie Chicks, for example, basi- ature and highbrow magazine articles for cally ended their careers with one offhanded European audiences. comment about President George W. Bush in The somewhat dull contents of the magthe wake of 9/11, how could a man who did azine were less provocative than the peopropaganda broadcasts for an enemy nation, ple involved. Laughlin edited it, but on the

BY GREG BARNHISEL ’92

16 Reed magazine December 2015

board of directors was a surprising array of notables: the publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Laughlin’s childhood friend “Jack” Heinz (of the Heinz foods company), and William J. Casey, identified only as the president of “Business Reports, Inc.” I knew, though, that a William J. Casey had headed the CIA under President Reagan, and some digging revealed that this same Casey had served, during World War II, in the London office of the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor of the CIA).

This really piqued my interest. I had already come across a number of people involved in both modernist literature and spycraft. Laughlin’s friend James Angleton, for instance, had run an avant-garde literary magazine at Yale, then became chief of

James Laughlin with poet Ezra Pound circa 1934 in Rapallo, Italy.

counterintelligence at the CIA. having connections with Norman Holmes Pearson taught “The Company.” One even modernist literature, worked mentioned, conspiratoriat OSS London, and recruited ally, that he could get me promising young men into CIA an interview at Langley if I after the war. wanted. I couldn’t imagine a What was the connection? In more unlikely combination. the ’30s and ’40s, modernist art University English departand literature were widely seen ments today are notoriousas subversive, anarchistic, and ly leftist. Now I learn they Pound was captured by US communistic, immoral. How did used to be fertile grounds troops in 1945. these men reconcile their love for the CIA? for modernism with their work To start exploring this question, I returned to Laughlin and for the national-security establishment?

This question became the germ for my Perspectives USA. The magazine was next book. Even back in graduate school, a Laughlin’s idea, but the money came from the Ford Foundation, which was swimming number of my professors had made veiled in cash in the early ’50s and wanted to help comments about scholars and professors

improve America’s image abroad, to prove to skeptical European leftist intellectuals that we were more than chewing gum, cowboy movies, and the A-bomb. In Laughlin’s papers at Harvard, I read about his ambitious plans for the magazine, Ford’s frosty response, and ultimately, the termination of the project.

I soon came across references to a small explosion among some fractious New York and London intellectuals in 1967, when they discovered that their literary/cultural magazine Encounter had been funded secretly by the CIA. The archives of Encounter and its parent body, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, demonstrated how British and American spies had created the organization in 1950, and tried—not always successfully—to steer it in the following years.

Brittle carbons and triplicate memos stored in the sublimely immense National Archives revealed the backstories to what the government had done out in the open. A 1947 State Department exhibition of abstract and modernist paintings sparked media and Congressional outrage at this “un-American” collection. Although the show was unceremoniously killed, abstract and modernist art gradually became a mainstay of our cultural diplomacy.

Voice of America radio and State Department book programs rounded out the broad endeavor that I came to call “Cold War modernism,” or the campaign of the U.S. establishment to brandish modernist art as Exhibit A to prove that American culture wasn’t an oxymoron. And it worked: by the end of the ’50s, Euroleftists’ loyalties to the West were no longer in doubt, and a growing number (at least outside France) even took American art and culture seriously.

It’s tempting to wrap this up by pointing out how this all started in my ELH class at Reed, with Prof. Stauder’s enthusiasm for Pound. To a degree it did, but that wasn’t the ultimate cause. Rather, both of these projects came from another legacy Reed has given me: curiosity and compulsion, the need I had, and have, to learn more about these people and these past times and these not-asdead-as-they-seem controversies, even if the ultimate product (a degree, a book, or just a clever anecdote) is sometimes hard to predict.

Greg Barnhisel teaches in the English department at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

December 2015 Reed magazine 17

Tales of the Thesis Tower

Disaster on the Danube

The fate of Europe hung in the balance when the Ottoman army besieged Vienna in 1683

BY RICK PETERSON ’15

On a bright spring day in 1682, Mehmed IV, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, raised his banners, the seven ancient horsetail tūg of the House of Osman, in front of the Tokapi palace in Istanbul, and massed a gargantuan army: formidable Janissaries, cavalry from Egypt, infantry from Bosnia, Tatar scouts from the Crimea, plus specialized units dedicated to artillery, mining, tent-pitching, and even breadmaking. Marching across the Hungarian plain, along with herds of sheep and camels, the vast Ottoman force was united by a single goal—the conquest of Vienna and the destruction of the Hapsburg Empire.

The campaign that is often referred to as the “Siege of Vienna” (a more accurate title would be the “Second Ottoman Siege of Vienna”) was really all about ego. On one side was the Imperial House of Osman, which claimed descent from Noah and to be the rightful inheritors of the Roman Empire.

On the other side was the Imperial House of Hapsburg, which also claimed descent from Noah and the title of Holy Roman Empire.

Their rival claims to the throne of Rome, as well as the proximity of their empires, had led to generations of warfare.

Mehmed, who had acquired a reputation for laziness and hedonism (his appellation was “The Hunter”), desperately wanted to be seen as a great Sultan such as Mehmed II (who took Constantinople) and Suleiman the Magnificent (who launched the unsuccessful First Ottoman Siege of Vienna). The Hapsburg Emperor, in contrast, was the bookish Leopold, who had trained to be a priest. He was not considered a particularly effective leader by many contemporaries, but he saw himself as a bastion of Christendom besieged by an army of heathens.

Perhaps the biggest ego of all, however, belonged to the Ottoman Grand Vizier, Kara Mustafa. Kara Mustafa was an adopted son of the legendary Köprülü political dynasty; the Köprülüs had rescued the empire from the brink of collapse when Mehmed was still a child and enlarged the powers of the Grand Vizier so greatly that they, not the Sultan,

18 Reed magazine december 2015

effectively ruled the empire. Kara Mustafa was especially ambitious; to this day, many historians believe he intended to usurp the throne or carve out his own kingdom.

Vienna—known to the Turks as the “Golden Apple”—must have seemed like over-ripe fruit in 1682. That year, Protestant Hungarians under Count Imre Tekeli rebelled against the repression of their Catholic Hapsburg overlords and sought protection from the Ottomans. Thanks to this uprising, the Ottomans now had allies inside Hapsburg territory, ready to deliver them to the gates of Vienna—and all that lay beyond it.

Going into my senior year, I had originally intended to write my thesis about the American war in Vietnam, but by the time I submitted my ideas to the history department (at the last possible moment), there were no more experts on American history left to advise me. I turned to my fallback topic, a vague idea about Istanbul in the Early Modern period. During my first meeting with Prof. David Garrett [history 1998–], we dismissed that topic and started exploring new ones. At one point, he asked,

Did the croissant originate from the siege of Vienna?

“What is so fascinating about the Ottomans of this period to you?” Basically, I wanted to know why the Ottomans had given up on the dream of ruling the Mediterranean world.

After some research, I decided to focus on the siege of Vienna. Also, I wanted to find out if that was really where and when the croissant was invented (it was not).

All told, the Ottoman force numbered an astonishing 200,000 men—almost ten times the strength of the Hapsburg armies. The Ottomans swept across the vast Hungarian plain and approached Vienna from the southeast. Leopold, believing it was merely a border incursion, did not evacuate the royal family (or the royal silverware) until the dust cloud

of the invaders darkened the horizon. The Ottomans arrived to find the city’s suburbs on fire (which helped conceal their movements from Hapsburg artillery) and immediately started digging siege works.

Common sense dictated that a second line of works also be built, this one facing outwards, to protect the besieging army from counterattack. But for some reason, Kara Mustafa did not do this. For the next two months, he wasted the Janissaries—arguably the best infantrymen in the world at the time—in penny-packet attacks on breaches in Vienna’s fortifications made by his artillery and mines, typically for little to no gain.

Meanwhile, conditions inside the city

The Battle of Kahlenberg, 1683 by Frans Geffels. Polish horsemen descend upon the Ottoman forces besieging Vienna. The Janissaries were not called out of the trenches until it was too late.

were growing desperate. A form of dysentery known as the “red flux” sickened thousands of Viennese. Stocks of food and water were dwindling fast. The Ottomans fired mortars and arrows into the city, sending silent death arcing over the defenses every night.

Leopold pleaded for help from his European allies, but assurances were vague and timetables uncertain.

H i s to r i a n s o f te n i nvo ke g ra n d technological and economic forces to explain why wars are won or lost. But the fate of Vienna often seems to have hinged on minor details, such as the defense of a ruined ravelin (a type of v-shaped, free standing earth work) that lasted three days longer than the Hapsburgs had dared to hope, or the moment when an Ottoman mine breached the main wall at its most vulnerable point—just as the Hapsburgs were changing guard, so the

Janissary assault wave ran right into a double dose of musket fire and were ripped apart on their new “ramp.” The stalemate took its toll on Ottoman morale. The soldiers stopped maintaining the sanitary discipline that had been one of their hallmarks; soon disease was spreading throughout the corpse-choked trenches.

On September 12, Leopold’s reinforcements finally arrived. Led by Polish King Jan Sobieski, Polish horsemen—the famous winged hussars—seized the Kahlenburg heights over the city. As Kara Mustafa tried to shift troops to deal with them, a confused fight in the hinterlands turned into an Ottoman rout. The Janissary battalions were not ordered out of their trenches until far too late, leading to more needless losses, and many miners were trapped in their tunnels as the Poles and Hapsburgs swept through the trenches. The

Ottomans’ great gambit had turned to disaster.

Kara Mustafa was executed on Christmas day for his failure. This did not end the war, however; smelling blood, the victorious Europeans formed a “Holy League” and counterattacked the Ottomans. An incompetent series of Grand Viziers oversaw battlefield defeats, which led to mutiny and political upheaval. The power of the Sultanate was weakened, and the Janissary corps—the heart of the Ottoman war machine—was gutted. After 17 years of bitter conflict, the Ottomans signed the humiliating Treaty of Karlowitz, conceding many territories in Europe and the Mediterranean.

The daring strike against Vienna had backfired more completely than perhaps any other military operation in history. Instead of revitalizing their empire, Mehmed and Kara Mustafa had sealed its fate.

december 2015 Reed magazine 19

A Life in Counterpoint Musician Jan DeWeese ’71 transforms solo to duet through his art and teaching.

20 Reed magazine DECEMBER 2015

photos by robert delahanty

BY LAURIE LINDQUIST

The sky opened up that night and the rain came down in torrents, transforming sidewalks into rivulets and street corners into lakes.

But nothing could dampen the spirit of those who gathered in a southeast Portland garage to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. They arrived by scores and packed in tight, nursing cups of stout, snacking on plates of potluck, and craning their necks to listen to the music: a threehour program orchestrated by the man who seems to have taught practically every banjo player in Portland—Jan DeWeese.

Over a span of more than 40 years, Jan has introduced hundreds of students to the joy and mystery of the banjo, mandolin, Irish flute, tin whistle, and the bodhran. But if you watch him dashing around on stage—introducing performers, tuning instruments, and plucking melodies—it’s clear that he is more than an instructor. He is a friend, mentor, and performer. He is also an artist who has spent his career wrestling with a profound dilemma.

Jan and siblings Cathie DeWeese-Parkinson ’69, MAT ’70, Gretchen, Tina, and Josh were raised in Bozeman, Montana, in a home dedicated to the arts. Their father, Bob, who taught at Montana State College, and their mother, Gennie, achieved notoriety for their work as abstract painters. “They believed that artistic freedom was an innate human freedom, and thus innately good for a just society,” says Jan. Insulated from the cultural restrictions in that place, the children flourished in a virtual religion of creativity. “We ran wild in the hills at the edge of town and danced through the night to the drummers at the Crow Fair outside Billings.”

Jan took piano lessons, stretching his little hands into Bartók and Kabalefsky, before disappearing into the clarinet. Some of his first privileges were playing Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with the Montana State University Orchestra and scoring a superior at the state competition with Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet.

Cathie inspired Jan’s academic leanings, and he joined her at Reed after two years at Whitman College. “She tuned the DeWeese creativity toward social and political issues,” says Jan, who came to the college in 1968, when Cathie, her friend Ron Herndon ’70, and other students took over Eliot Hall to demand a black studies program.

Watching this confrontation, and many others of the turbulent ’60s, aroused a fierce debate for Jan: Is a good artist by definition a good person? What is the artist’s obligation to society? What is the right way to balance ethics and aesthetics? One clue came out of a dream at that time. Jan was back in the wild Bozeman hills, climbing a barbed-wire fence—strung like a music staff—in counterpoint with his childhood friend Eric. “The dream was of melodies, playfully providing space and encouraging freedom for each other.

Common simple kindness, as in kin and the German Kinder.”

At Reed, Jan studied with Catherine Halverson Palladino, first clarinetist in the Oregon Symphony, and fell under the spell of J.S. Bach’s keyboard suites, thanks to Prof. Fred Rothchild [music 1953–78].

In Bach, Jan sensed a deep ethical undercurrent, a beacon to a resolution of the great debate. “This exquisite counterpoint posed equity between voices.”

He did his thesis on Bach’s “French Suite in D Minor” with Prof. Herb Gladstone [music 1946-80] and wrote fugues with Czech

DECEMBER 2015 Reed magazine 21

A Life in Counterpoint composer Tomáš Svoboda—experiences that further immersed him in the syntax of this intoxicating language.

After graduating, Jan worked for Reed’s music department, teaching ear-training— Bach chorales, Hindemith pitch studies, Schenker structural analysis—three times a week in Winch Capehart. But this austere, crystalline intellectual pursuit was destined to be thrown off course—by a penny whistle.

Jan was teaching in Winch when it happened.

A group of underprivileged high-school students was visiting campus as part of the Learning Community orchestrated by Prof.

Howard Waskow [English 1964–72]. “One of Howard’s kids, Sylvia Hackathorn, played an annoying little thing called the penny whistle, whose sounds drifted from the Commons right through my secure classical insulation,” Jan says.

The incident made him think again about the role of traditional musics in raising consciousness for social inequities. And at roughly the same time, another little instrument from afar landed in his hands. “On the mandolin, I could transform Bach keyboard soloness into duetness, into actual human dialogue with guitar friend Jeff Flowers.”

Jan (background, arms crossed) with kleng master Bua Xou Mua (wearing ceremonial necklace) and his son Lee (far right) at the CityFolk festival in 1981. Also pictured are Bua’s young kleng student and his father.

Jan was hired by the Portland Mime Troupe to help refugee children arriving from the war to acclimate to their new home in Portland. “They joined in with my Ella Jenkins songs, in a proto-ensemble of bamboo flutes, xylophones, and gourd shakers.”

One morning in 1980, at Boise-Eliot School, a shy Hmong refugee revealed to Jan that her father was also a musician. Soon, on a rainy night, in a dank Albina basement apartment, Jan met Bua Xou Mua and his family.

and Lao musicians fund their teaching and instruments.

The whirlwind culminated in two fine victories: Bua became the first Asian American to win a National Heritage Fellowship from the NEA, which brought him, his son Lee, and Jan to Washington, D.C., where they met the preeminent musicologist Alan Lomax.

“Lomax was stunned to recognize in Bua’s dance the link between Asian and European culture,” says Jan. The second victory was

“Music is the bridge for dialogue, commingling, and conversation on the side of good.”

Propelled by the mandolin and the penny whistle, Jan found musical pathways linking folk traditions with the classical canon. Soon he and his mandolin student, Bill Bulick ’74, won a grant from the Metropolitan Arts Commission to form the Lost Arts Quartet, exploring Celtic and baroque styles. To further expand his musical vocabulary, Jan worked with Irish flutist Cathal McConnell, who came to Reed with Boys of the Lough, and studied African and Indian rhythmics with Collin Walcott, who performed at Reed with jazz trumpeter Don Cherry.

“Maybe the gap was closing, maybe the little peoples of the world, the victims of the empire and outcasts from the academy, were talking,” Jan recalls. “But the gap in our real world, the wound we’d inflicted on the innocent humans of Southeast Asia, was bleeding into our midst.”

22 Reed magazine DECEMBER 2015

He devoted the next decade of his life to the Hmong, whose improvised courtship songs tap the wellspring of counterpoint.

It was the start of a bold campaign, he says, “to help these delicate aesthetics survive the violent insult of their being here.” His ally in this gritty war was Mike Sweeney—one of the St. Patrick’s Day party hosts—soon to begin his career teaching anthropology at Lincoln High School. Mike procured funding for a Foxfire project, enabling hundreds of refugees to tell their stories through writing, radio, and photography, and Jan joined the team. They did fieldwork together for the National Endowment for the Arts’ CityFolk Festival and produced the six-week LincolnFest with more than 50 ethnic artists.

Jan also did extensive multiethnic programing in elementary and middle schools, and wrote over a dozen grants to help Hmong

the NEA’s funding of Jan’s grant to begin the nation’s first apprenticeship program for refugees.

In the late ’80s, Jan’s musical career changed keys. He and his sweetheart, Robbin Isaacson, who had volunteered with Foxfire, married and welcomed their first child. And a new flowering of counterpoint inspired Jan’s work on the mandolin.

Jan and poet Kim Stafford combined melody and lyrics to record Wheel Made of Wind, and with violinist Harriet Wingard they recorded Pilgrim at Home. Along the way, Jan teamed with Brendan Fitzgerald and Teresa Baker for his Irish group, High Road.

He formed the group CubaAche with Cuban refugee songwriter Roberto Gonzalez. Over the years, he has collaborated and recorded with dozens of musicians; his current songwriting friend is Chris Lydgate ’90. “The gift

of helping each other far surpasses the lonely artist ego,” says Jan. For his students, Jan serves as a messenger, bringing the wisdom of teachers from afar, channeling the structural elements of Celtic and African diasporas: Ireland to Appalachia, Mali to New Orleans, Galicia to Andalusia to Cuba, Congo to Cuba, Cuba to New Orleans. Reed figures fundamentally in his teaching: the structural approach to his Bach studies led to his teaching method, using both mathematical and stylistic elements, and his ear training provides the vocal tools for cementing these deep into his students’ musicianship. Jan says he is indebted to Reed students who have hauled their mandolins and banjos to his studio over these many years, to challenge him to hone all this into practices most useful to them. Katie Halloran ’15 has been one of his favorites.

“I took mandolin lessons with Jan all four years at Reed,” says Katie. “Jan is brilliant, and he’s got this remarkable ability to both pull high-level thinking out of his students and to meet students wherever they are. In my time with him, we covered everything from Bach to Bill Monroe, Irish music to Cuban music, and wide swaths of musical space in between. Along with all those different styles, he made me such a better musician—better at reading music, playing by ear, and thinking about the way a tune is constructed.”

“Music is the bridge for dialogue, commingling, and conversation on the side of good,” says Jan. But, in these times, music may not be powerful enough to bring about universal understanding, tolerance, or even peace. “Each of us has our own little piece of this puzzle, whether interpersonal or intercultural, so let your time on earth be filled with the rewards of creativity.”

Back at the party, the night has already fled into the wee morning hours when the band plays a stirring rendition of “O’Neill’s March” and takes up the banner song of the Irish Revolution of 1916. Next is traditional Ghanaian drumming by the ensemble led by Alex Addy, whose father, the late Obo Addy, was another of Jan’s teachers.

Then something extraordinary takes place. Responding to the infectious beat of the drums, Jan, on the penny whistle, and Doug Halsebo, on flute, get up on stage and bust out the reels and jigs. Fingers are flying and the crowd is on its feet. In this moment of cultural communion, the gap is closed. Another lesson, perhaps the greatest, in the art of counterpoint.

GIFTS FOR BIKERS AND MORE

REED COLLEGE BOOKSTORE ‘Tis the season to resupply on Reed gear, and the bookstore is your one-stop shop for your Reed gifts. We have everything from classic college sweaters to new bike jerseys—perfect for those first rays of sun just around the corner.

bookstore.reed.edu

Sculpting the City

Prof. Gerri Ondrizek challenges her students to reinvent urban spaces

BY RANDALL S. BARTON

On the rise above Reed lies Woodstock, a neighborhood of 11,000 that has long been the stomping ground for students, professors, and staff. Like many Portland neighborhoods, Woodstock—which once looked like a small-town Main Street—is undergoing rapid change. A gleaming New Seasons Market offers upscale groceries and wild salmon. A Grand Central Bakery is crowded with millennials nursing lattés. The old RadioShack is now the Portland Fish Market, Country Bill’s Restaurant has become Gentle Dental, and Dick’s Kitchen is opening across from the Woodstock Library. Having witnessed the sudden transformation of other neighborhoods nearby, residents have both pride and trepidation about Woodstock’s future.

In 2014, Reed worked with neighbors, developers, and city planners to host a charrette—a conference where stakeholders can explore what the neighborhood might look like in 25 years. The charrette issued a report on the current state of Woodstock that contained some eye-catching statistics.

Nearly 8% of the roadways crisscrossing Woodstock lack some combination of pavement, curbs, or sidewalks, compared with 1.9% citywide. Because fire trucks have other access and there are no plumbing or electrical lines running through them, these roadways are likely to remain unpaved—which gave Prof. Gerri Ondrizek [art 1994-] an idea.

Every few years she teaches a 300-level art class called Intersection: Sculpture, Landscape, Architecture that investigates the junction between architecture and sculpture and challenges students to meet the psychological and physical needs of people using spaces. In 2011 the students studied the difference between commercial architecture and the kind of work done by Architects for Humanity. This year the study was weighted more towards outdoor sculptural installations The nine students in the class were asked to look at a drab, featureless, unimproved crossroad measuring 225 square feet, and reimagine it as an asset to the community.

24 Reed magazine december 2015

They read A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, which explains how architecture and urban plans are made through patterns. Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space got them thinking about space and phenomenology, and Martin Heidegger’s Building, Dwelling, Thinking purported (among other things) that building is really about dwelling in a place—particularly in peace.

To open their minds, they studied experimental projects sponsored by New York’s Museum of Modern Art and read Hal Foster’s Design and Crime, about how the world is being “Frank Gehryed” with spectacular, coollooking architecture. “Is it working?” Foster asks. “Do we need something so elaborate that costs so much money?’”

Prof. Ondrizek encouraged her students to push the edges and offer something different.

“I’m not interested in students making something that looks pretty, a precious object to be bought and sold,” she says. “I’d like them to leave here trained to think about architecture, art, and politics.”

Widely exhibited in galleries and museums, Ondrizek has been featured in 34 solo exhibitions and numerous group shows. For the last 20 years she has created architectural-scaled works that house medical and biological information, working with geneticists and biologists to gather and compose images of human cellular tissue and genetic tests that relate to ethnic identity and disease. She earned an MFA from the University of Washington, and when she was working on her BFA at Carnegie-Mellon University, interned at an installation museum in Pittsburgh called the Mattress Factory.

“It was the 1980s and we had thrown out the object, right?” she recalls. “We were dealing with material semiotics, dealing with space.

We were taught that would be the future, and while it hasn’t come to pass in quite that way, I’m decidedly not a gallery artist.”

Urging students to use space to offer something new, she encourages them to pay attention to how the structures they are creating

photo for reed magazine by marlen mueller

would be impacted by the sun, the wind, and the rain, as well as the trees and the building next door.

“I want the students to consider how we feel and act in and around spaces made from different materials and at different scales,” she says.

You feel different standing next to a fivestory concrete structure than you do in a windowed, wooden house. The latter is informed by nature, and its scale and pattern is more familiar than the impenetrable concrete form.

Humanistic spaces serve the psychological and physical needs of those using them.

“Not to say that one material is bad and another good,” Ondrizek adds, “but attention to the form and pattern being set up in a space is essential.”

W hile students may discover the emblematic Swiss architect Le Corbusier in Urban Anthropology, or discuss the Haussmannization of Paris during the history of modernity in Hum 220, Reed offers no formal classes in architecture. So the Intersection class is a rare opportunity. As one of the students, Rennie Meyers ’15, observed: “It’s a cool class.”

Prof. Ondrizek is adamant that art classes present opportunities to interact physically with the material world.

“What we’re putting together is not just a sentence they can pack, unpack, and reform,” she says. “We live in a material world and you need to know about materials and how to make decisions on levels that have multiple repercussions.”

Before taking the class, students need to have completed Sculpture I or have a basic knowledge of sculpture materials, woodshop, and/or welding skills. Sculpture I teaches how to build with wood, think about skeletal structure and physics, and the formal language of making something.

So while the Intersection class is about the convergence of sculpture and architecture, it proposes taking a potholed roadway—bereft of either car or foot traffic—and re-imagining it as a neighborhood asset.

Students learn to do simple scale drafting, write architectural briefs, make presentation boards, build a scale model, and defend their projects in an oral presentation.

For her individual project, Rennie designed an urban farm school, replete with a chicken coop, small gardens, and an outdoor learning

december 2015 Reed magazine 25

photos courtesy of gerri ondrizek

Ondrizek’s students learned how to do simple scale drafting, write architectural briefs, make presentation boards, build scale models, and defend their projects in an oral presentation.

Sculpting the City center with reading nook and lending library to encourage learning and the exchange of ideas about urban farm development.

“I liked the cutting-edge technologies we were exposed to, like the laser used to cut our models,” she said. “Gerri’s interested in theory, so we were asked to negotiate the theoretical and the practical, and that’s not always a negotiation where you’re sacrificing one or the other.”

Students in the class designed meditational spaces, gardens with tables and lounge beds, and covered porches that face one another and can be slid together to form a single structure.

Lucy Weisner ’16 wanted to create something that was participatory but did not impose architectural structures. She fabricated a folding chair that can be stored in a box and moved from site to site as portable placemaking.

Inspired by philosopher Mar tin Heidegger’s musings about voids—for example that a jug’s “thingness” is informed by its void—Chloe Truong-Jones ’16 created a subterranean chamber. The project reflected her interest in the notion that “to build upwards you have to start downwards.”

For their final project the students broke into three groups, each taking a block along Woodstock Boulevard and reimagining it as a civic space. During the charrette, Woodstock

26 Reed magazine december 2015

residents complained that the neighborhood is boring. Ondrizek asked teams to create a “third space,” one that was neither home nor work, where people could recreate. Students were to consider LEED standards and use only low-impact materials. Drawings of the scanned models were superimposed on photographs and maps of the actual locations.

“I get them to work in teams because in the real world none of us are really solo geniuses, out there flying alone and predicting how things will happen,” Ondrizek says. “We have to collaborate, coordinate, form partnerships and relationships, and appreciate other people’s fields.”

One team transformed what is now a BiMart store and strip mall into a residential, entertainment complex fronted by a Japanese-style garden. Explaining his vision for the garden, Wyatt Heidenfelder ’15 said he wanted “something that is more felt than seen, a contemplative space where you can’t chart your adventure.”

Another team proposed to raze the Key Bank and punctuate the streetscape with an art gallery and lecture space surrounded by landscaping. The team envisioned the facility funded and shared by area colleges and universities. Three pods at the rear of the property would serve as residences and studios for visiting lecturers and artists.

The third team took a piece of unimproved roadway on Southeast Knight Street and imagined it as a community space and

mutable market, including a farmers’ market. The space would be lined with 10’ tall LED poles to which canvas tents could be affixed for vendors, and the design incorporated transit pathways, a small stage for musical performances, and picnic tables.

“The beauty of this particular project is that no decision can be made without affecting 20 other things around it,” Ondrizek notes. “In the world you’re part of a bigger picture.”

While a commercial developer would probably focus on condos or strip malls, she pushed her students to think sculpturally and artistically.

“I realize these projects might look like completely absurd gestures for the Woodstock neighborhood,” she says, “but it’s important to push the population to think what art can be. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an object, a bronze statue of a deer or a beaver, which Portland loves. It can be a picnicking area where everything from the plants to the sunlight to the furnishings is considered part of the sculptural paradigm.”

The art world of museums and galleries tends to be contemplative, gazing at its navel without regard for the world at large.

As they digest the principles that govern the intersection of architecture and sculpture, Ondrizek’s students are forced to think in terms of social practices and how to interface with the rest of the world.

Uptrends?

DownTrends?

WHY NOT MORE FULFILLING ENDS? Give appreciated stock to Reed and receive fixed payments for life.

Sure, it’s great!

When you establish a charitable gift annuity at Reed with a gift of cash or appreciated stock, you can take advantage of multiple benefits—including life income, a charitable tax deduction, and reduced capital gains tax—and still provide substantial support to the college.

Call Audrey Anderson at 503/517-7937 or email plannedgiving@reed.edu. To learn more, visit our website at reed.edu/cga.

Reediana

Books. Music. Film. Send us your work!

Email reed.magazine@reed.edu

Eating Words: A Norton Anthology of Food Writing Edited by Prof. Roger Porter and Sandra M. Gilbert

then we are ensconced in Horace’s cozy dinner invitation to a friend and the Satyricon’s feast-as-performance-art. A few quick centuries later and Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal is shocking us all over again with its savage wit.

Many of the selections are delightfully unfamiliar. Food being an inescapable cultural marker, the memoirs of the marginalized often revolve around their culinary traditions and transgressions. Diana Abu-Jaber’s Jordanian father scandalizes his suburban Syracuse neighbors by holding a barbecue in his front yard. Linda Furiya furtively devours her mother’s onigiri in a bathroom stall instead of the school cafeteria. Henry Louis Gates grew up wondering why civil rights activists were so eager to integrate restaurants and lunch counters. “White people couldn’t cook; everybody knew that. Which made it a puzzle.”

Eating Words covers so many aspects of food, from the metaphysical to the political, that I contacted Prof. Porter to ask him what had to be left out. Among his regrets were food poems by Neruda, Allen Ginsberg, and Billy Collins, and an essay on the Iron Chef television shows. He added, “Of course

leah nash

For decades, the Norton anthologies have helped define the literary canon. For its first food anthology, the publisher anointed Prof.

Roger Porter [English 1961-2015] (a James Beard-nominated food writer) and literary critic Sandra M. Gilbert to select and annotate what they see as the essential food writing of the last 2,500 years.

It’s an impossible task, of course—nobody could do it in the allotted 464 pages—but these 96 entries, from Leviticus and Rabelais to Anthony Bourdain and Barbara Kingsolver, constitute a groaning board of literary delights, far too rich and expansive to be devoured in a single sitting.

Even the six-page foreword by literary gourmet Ruth Reichl is no mere garnish but a perfect little essay in itself, drawing a line from M.F.K. Fisher’s famous defense of her food writing (“Like most other humans, I am hungry”) to the current culinary golden age, in which food writers no longer feel obliged to justify themselves.

It’s a bit ironic, then, that the collection kicks off with the Old Testament’s Leviticus 11, a list of all those potential foodstuffs that God-fearing Hebrews may not eat. But

W.W. Norton & Company, 2015

Literary gourmet Prof. Roger Porter.

each of us had our favorites, and there was a great deal of back-and-forth negotiating and horse-trading. I love John Thorne, and had to argue for his piece attacking food processors and the microwave. Sandra insisted on Rachel Laudan’s diatribe against locavores and the slow food movement.”

The delicious creative tension between the editors has produced a true literary feast on a subject that is always ripe for discussion.

—ANGIE JABINE ’79

John Surratt: The Lincoln Assassin Who Got Away

By Michael Schein ’76

bennett & hastings publishing, 20/15

It is difficult to consider the epochal moment of the Lincoln assassination without conjuring to mind the infamous image of renegade Southern loyalist, thespian, and triggerman John Wilkes Booth.

Nearly lost to the vagaries of history, however, is the beguiling and improbable parallel story of John Surratt, a Rebel spy and coconspirator of Booth’s in the plot against Lincoln.

28 Reed magazine december 2015

This account delivers in gripping detail the trail of bread crumbs linking Surratt to the assassination plot, tracking the fugitive as he eludes federal troops and bounty hunters across three continents, and finally through the bungled trial which ended in Surratt’s release.

A meticulously cited piece of archival sleuthing, and a potent indictment of a man overlooked,

this work demonstrates that even if Surratt managed to outsmart the U.S. legal system, he will not so readily evade the scrutiny of the keen historian.

A former professor of legal history, Michael has also written the acclaimed historical novels Just Deceits and Bones Beneath Our Feet. Find out more at www.michaelschein.com.

—SAM SMITH ’08

A House Alive with Words: Stories from the ABC Program, A Path to College for Inner-City Youth, by Patricia Zita Krisch ’59 (Deason Press, 2015). In A House Alive, Patricia relates the story of eight inner-city boys and their experiences as A Better Chance (ABC) scholars, living in a group home and attending an elite suburban high school along Philadelphia’s Main Line. She examines the challenges they met as minority youth in a largely white school and as poor in an affluent community, and looks at how they addressed demanding academic standards. She also looks at adjustments they made to living in a group setting and how they found solace with one another on their way to getting to and succeeding in college. “A House Alive with Words captures in a compelling and engaging way the commitment, the spirit, and the creativity that emerged in the public school program at the ABC House,” says Richard L. Zweigenhaft, coauthor of Blacks in the White Elite. Patricia earned a PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago, where she was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. She also served as a board member for ABC for 20 years.

Heart Land, by Caroline Miller ’59, MAT ’65 (Koho Pono, 2015). Caroline’s book is a fictional memoir of a boy growing up in rural Ohio in the 1930s, a time of social and historic importance: the close of the Depression and before America’s entrance into World War II. In this period of American innocence, Ockley Green exists as a sleepy farming community where a kid with an imagination can convince his younger brother that monsters live under the bed or stop by the local diner, where working men gather to talk crops and politics. In this safe world, Oliver Larson learns lessons that will guide him through life. The adventure begins when an alley cat named Bodacious Scurvy crosses his path and gives 11-yearold Oliver an idea.

Caroline’s novelette Agent of God was published in the WolfSinger Publications’ October 2015 anthology Under A Dark Sign. Caroline describes her allegory as dark, Chaucerian in tone, but taking up a theme from Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” which questions the purpose of chaos.

The Spirit of 74: How the American Revolution Began, by Ray Raphael ’65, MAT ’68, and Marie Raphael (The New Press, 2015). A companion to Ray’s book Constitutional Myths: What We Get Wrong and How to Get it Right, this book examines the political climate in New England months before the Boston Tea Party. The book follows the trajectory of the revolution and reveals that a climate of change on a grassroots level fueled the spirit of independence of 1776. Find out more about Ray’s work and books at www.rayraphael.com.

The Heir of Khored, by Deborah J. Ross ’68 (DAW, 2014). For Shannivar, warrior of the Azkhantia Steppe, the future is grim. She faces twin threats: the mighty Gelon empire, ruthessly conquering independent nations like her own, and the malevolent entity of Fire and Ice, unleashed from its prison in the Far North. And she must face them alone. This is the third and final volume of the Seven-Petaled Shield series, an epic fantasy based on the conflict between the Romans and Scythians.

Somatic Experience in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy: In the Expressive Language of the Living, by William Cornell ’69 (Routledge, 2015). Though there is a renewed regard for the understanding of embodied experience and sexuality as essential to human vitality, existing literature in contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice has been written by analysts with no formal training in body-centered work.

William has devoted 40 years to the study and integration of psychoanalysis, neo-Reichian body therapy, and transactional analysis, and has established an international reputation for his teaching and consultation as a training and supervising transactional analyst. In this book, he draws on his experience as a body-centered psychotherapist to offer an informed blend of the two traditions, to allow psychoanalysts a deep understanding in psychoanalytic language of how to work with the body as an ally. Says child and adolescent psychotherapist Anne Alvarez: “This is a brilliant, bold

and groundbreaking book. Cornell urges psychoanalytic clinicians to deepen and extend their work by paying closer attention to their patients’ bodily experience, thus enabling them to find something beyond a secure base, which he calls a ‘vital’ base.

He also brings passion and scholarship to the study of theory and the book achieves a major integration of, and development in, psychoanalytic theory. It is a great read, too.”

“Isle Ronan,” a sestina by Linera Lucas ’71, was published in Elohi Gadugi Journal (Summer 2015).

(See Class Notes.)

Cannot Stay: Essays on Travel,

by Kevin Oderman ’72 (Etruscan Press, 2015). A book of journeys, this collection examines the reasons we travel—what it means to shake loose the at-home identity and get by on the contents of a daypack. Cannot Stay bears witness to how travel reawakens us to the world by revealing the strange in the familiar and the familiar in the strange. “Kevin Oderman proves himself one of our most interesting and original travel writers,” says Neil Shepard, author of (T)ravel/Un(t)ravel. “In these dozen essays he journeys from the Baltics to Lahore, Pakistan, from the arid Turkish and Greek coastlines to the tropical humidity of Southeast Asia, from familiar tourist haunts like Florence to the spooky otherworld of Corsica, from Bali to Nepal, and even, incredibly, on imagined voyages to Mali and Mexico.

His prose style is both exacting and lyrical, visually alive and philosophically astute.”

Zelestina Urza in Outer Space,

by David Romtvedt ’72 (University of Nevada Center for Basque Studies, 2015).

This novel follows the lives of two women in northern Wyoming—a Basque immigrant and a half Cheyenne, half Arapaho orphan. The author’s sharply humorous style, full of pop and literary references, blends the historical and magical into an engaging conversation with the reader. Zelestina Urza is a piercing look at the American West of the 20th century, showing two women, one immigrant, one native, both outsiders from the traditional narrative of Manifest Destiny. The novel is full of “magical invention, driving emotion, and sustained notes of grace,” says author Kim Barnes (In the Kingdom of Men). David won a grant from the Wyoming Cultural Trust to support a series of readings from the book along with performances of Basque music. A recent event featured David on accordion, along with his daughter, Caitlin, on violin.

december 2015 Reed magazine 29

Reediana David is professor in the creative writing program at the University of Wyoming. He was Poet Laureate of Wyoming 2003-2011 and has written several books of poetry.

My “New Yorker” Stories, by Thomas Owen ’73 (Create Space, 2015). “As far back as the ’60s, I have submitted stories to the New Yorker, writes Thomas, and the accompanying dilemma about what to do with a rejection, faced by 9,999 of every 10,000 writers, he notes, brought him to the publication of three stories in his latest book. He invites you to read and report your take on the collection.

What I Say: Innovative Poetry

by Black Writers in America, by Lauri Ramey ’74, coeditor (University of Alabama Press, 2015). Lauri and Aldon Lynn Nielsen have produced a second book for their landmark anthology, expanding the definition of African American poetry by introducing experimental work often excluded in previous scholarship. What I Say covers work produced in the time period from the mid-’70s to the present, while her book Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone covered work of the World War II era to the mid-’70s.

“This anthology offers a uniquely valuable range of poems by contemporary writers that is as necessary and expansive as air while as imaginatively fluid as the equally essential property of water,” writes Meta DuEwa Jones (The Muse is Music: Jazz Poetry from the Harlem Renaissance to the Spoken Word). “What I Say deserves a prominent place on the shelves of readers, writers, and scholars interested in the literary and aesthetic future of black American poetics. Yet, since it is such a compelling read, it won’t stay on those shelves!”

Greed: A Confession, by Diana Goodman ’78 (Able Muse Press, 2014). This first collection of Diana’s poetry is a wellspring of keen observations, insight, and secrets of nature, freely spilling out for those greedy for knowledge and enlightenment—as in the immediacy of “a certain joy/ that depends on nothing” and “wraps a tightness around your heart.” Finalist for the 2013 Able Muse Book Award, Diana’s poetry brims with delight, wit, and insight. Award-winning writer Kelly Cherry describes Diane’s technical control and powers of observation as extraordinary and her diction, meter, and rhyming, superb. “Writing about an egret, she details ‘its mind/ a laserfocused eye, the weight of will’—attributes that apply equally to the poet.”

30 Reed magazine december 2015

Chris Newfield ’80 calls for a new strategy for protecting faculty rights in an op-ed he wrote for Inside Higher Ed (July 20, 2015). “Faculty have models of collaborative self-governance that we now rarely bother to develop, that we have allowed to serve an ever-smaller share of our colleagues, that are not taken seriously by many administrations, but that are designed to allow both intellectual originality and decent, honorable workplaces.

Faculty must now model how shared governance, if spread to other workplaces, would improve society as a whole. And we are going to have to do it soon.” Chris is a professor of English at UC Santa Barbara and is coeditor of the blog Remaking the University (utotherescue.blogspot.ca). His book, Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class, was published by Harvard University Press in 2011.

Metaethics: A Contemporary Introduction, by Mark van Roojen ’81 (Routledge, 2015).

Selected for the Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy series, Mark’s new book provides a solid foundation in metaethics for advanced undergraduates by introducing a series of puzzles addressed by most metaethical theories. Mark discusses many positions in metaethics related to the puzzles and poises questions about the study of metaethics. Notes Prof. Russ Shafer-Landau of the University of North Carolina: “Mark van Roojen’s new work is now the finest book of its kind. It is focused on the right questions, it sympathetically reconstructs and fairly criticizes the major arguments offered for the major metaethical positions, and it is informed throughout by a deep familiarity with the philosophical terrain.” (See Class Notes.)

Play at Work: How Games Inspire Breakthrough Thinking, by Adam Penenberg ’86 (Penguin, 2013).

Smart game design and its impact on the brain can help us immerse ourselves in an enjoyable task, and individuals and institutions who use games to achieve this effect are often rewarded with astounding results, Adam reports in Play at Work. Drawing on the latest brain science on attention and engagement plus his own firsthand reporting, Adam shows how games are revolutionizing business, science, technology, and culture. (See Class Notes.)

Eating Earth: Environmental Ethics and Dietary Choice,

by Lisa Kemmerer ’88 (Oxford University Press, 2014). This book examines the environmental effects of dietary choice, focusing on animal agriculture, fishing, and hunting; fish physiology and whether or not the consumption of fish is healthy for human beings; and bycatch, the indiscriminate nature of fishing technology; and what these mean for endangered species and fragile seascapes. Lisa outlines the historic link between the U.S. government, wildlife management, and hunters, and then debunks common hunting misconceptions. Each chapter closes by exploring possible alternatives, such as organic, local, grassfed, aquaculture, new fishing technologies, and enhanced regulations. Supported by nearly 80 graphs and summary slides, the book is told in clear writing, punctuated with wry humor.

Animals and the Environment: Advocacy, Activism, and the Quest for Common Ground, by Lisa Kemmerer ’88 (Routledge, 2015). Drawing on a wide range of issues and disciplines, this diverse collection of essays examines the common ground and controversies between earth and animal activists, including philosophical foundations for a unified front such as Asian ethics and ecofeminism, as well as wildlife and wilderness and dietary choice. One portion elucidates the connections and fissures between earth and animal advocates through politics, organized activism, and personal encounters, including such topics as materialism, birth control, the limits of democracy as practiced, and the importance of human rights and feminism. The final two sections of the book highlight the work of Raincoast Conservation Foundation (British Columbia), folks at Camp Uganda, Sahabat Alam Malaysia, and a few dedicated activists who both exemplify and speak out on behalf of a more holistic, unified approach to earth and animal advocacy.

Bear Necessities: Rescue, Rehabilitation, Sanctuary, and Advocacy, by Lisa Kemmerer ’88 (Brill, 2015).

What is it like to rehabilitate sun bears in the rainforests of Malaysia? Why are bears killed or kept for body parts from Vietnam to Vermont? What happened to India’s “dancing” bears? Dedicated scholars, grassroots activists, and bear sanctuary attendants come together in Bear Necessities to explore pressures driving the world’s eight bear species to extinction. Authors working to protect bears in remote landscapes from Peru to Pakistan

also offer a tapestry of possibilities for protecting and preserving these delightful but dwindling species. This book offers much to anyone interested in bears, wildlife, or wilderness.

Law at Work: Studies in Legal Ethnomethods, by Tim Berard ’90, coeditor (Oxford University Press, 2015). Tim’s book, published with coeditors Baudouin Dupret and Michael Lynch, follows in the tradition of the previous survey collection, Law in Action: Ethnomethodological and ConversationAnalytic Approaches to Law, edited by John F. Manzo ’86 and Max Travers (Ashgate, 1997). Law at Work is the result of an interdisciplinary, international collaboration, and addresses a number of topics relating to ongoing debates and concerns, including the teaching of intelligent design and creationism; the observable impact of sharia law in Egyptian family court; and accusations of international violations during the Gaza war.

The Underground Reader: Sources in the Trans-Atlantic Counterculture, by Robert Saxe ’93, coeditor (Berghahn Books, 2015). This collection of primary sources, edited by Robert and colleague Jeffrey H. Jackson, takes readers on a journey through the intellectual and cultural history of the underground in the 19th and 20th centuries. Readings demonstrate how thinkers in the U.S. and Europe engaged in an ongoing trans-Atlantic dialogue, inspiring one another to challenge the norms of Western society. Author also of Settling Down: World War II Veterans’ Challenge to the Postwar Consensus, Robert is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.

Sugar and Civilization: American Empire and the Cultural Politics of Sweetness, by April Heideman Merleaux ’95 (University of North Carolina Press, 2015). In the weeks and months after the end of the Spanish-American War, Americans celebrated their nation’s triumph by eating sugar. Each of the nation’s new imperial possessions, from Puerto Rico to the Philippines, had the potential for vastly

expanding sugar production. As victory parties and commemorations prominently featured candy and other sweets, Americans saw sugar as the reward for their global ambitions. University of Victoria professor Jason Colby calls the book “extraordinary, ambitious, and a pleasure to read.”

April is an assistant professor of history at Florida International University.

Napoleon Never Slept: How Great Leaders Leverage Social Energy, by Maren McConnell-Collins ’98, coauthor (Maren Ink, 2015).

Maren and her father, Randall Collins, a sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, investigate the common thread in highly successful individuals throughout history.

They share their discovery that charismatic leaders motivate and are motivated by emotional energy. “Charismatic leaders set in motion positive feedback loops: people in the group build up a shared emotion; the stronger the emotion, the more they feel themselves in tune with each other, and the more tightly they focus together.

And the more tightly they focus, the more their shared emotion pumps each other up.” More at www.maren.ink.

Salome, by Kim Oldenburg Stern ’99 (Broadview Press, 2015). In this new edition of Oscar Wilde’s most experimental and controversial play, Kim uses the English translation

by Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, which was overseen and corrected by Wilde himself. Appendices detail the play’s sources and provide extensive materials on its contemporary reception and dramatic productions, and include a visual history and a history of the play’s translation. Heidi Hartwig, associate professor of English at Central Connecticut State University, says: “This edition presents Salome as a formally complex, richly intertextual, and generative phenomenon of international modernism. This is where all students of Salome should start.” (See Class Notes.)

Pipe Politics, Contested Waters: Embedded Infrastructure of Millennial Mumbai, by Lisa Björkman ’00 (Duke University Press, 2015).

Despite Mumbai’s position as India’s financial, economic, and cultural capital, water is chronically unavailable for rich and poor alike. Mumbai’s dry taps are puzzling, given that the city does not lack for either water or financial resources. In rich ethnographic detail, Pipe Politics explores how the everyday work

of getting water animates and inhabits a penumbra of infrastructural activity—of business, brokerage, secondary markets, and sociopolitical networks—whose workings are reconfiguring and rescaling political authority in the city. Mumbai’s increasingly illegible and volatile hydrologies, Lisa argues, are lending infrastructures increasing political salience just as actual control over pipes and flows becomes contingent on dispersed and intimate assemblages of knowledge, power, and material authority. These new arenas of contestation reveal the illusory and precarious nature of the project to remake Mumbai in the image of Shanghai or Singapore and gesture instead toward the contested futures and democratic possibilities of the city. (See Class Notes.)

“Cottonmouth,” a short story by Hannah Gildea ’06, was published in Big Muddy: Journal of the Mississippi River Valley (15.1). The story won the Mighty River Short Story Contest of 2014 and received honorable mention for fiction in the New Millennium Writings Contest. (See Class Notes.)

Every Parent’s Dilemma: Why Do We Ignore Schools That Nurture Children? by Don Berg ’12 (Trafford Publishing, 2015). Psychological research contradicts the hopeful assumption by parents that K–12 teachers are inherently nurturing and that their children will naturally be nurtured in spite of policies that may undermine teachers’ nurturing instincts. The research puts them on the horns of a dilemma: if they want nurturing schools it appears that they must choose unfamiliar alternative schools. Every Parent’s Dilemma follows from Don’s thesis with Prof.

Jennifer Corpus [psychology 2000–] on the patterns of motivation at two Portland alternative K–12 schools where instruction is optional, not mandatory. (See Class Notes.)

Mobilizing Poor Voters: Machine Politics, Clientelism, and Social Networks in Argentina, by Prof.

Mariela Szwarcberg [political science 2012–] (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Prof. Szwarcberg, who specializes in the study of democracy with a geographic focus on Latin America, has written about the emergence, maintenance, and disappearance of political, partisan, and social networks. Using data gathered through field research in Argentina, her book explains why candidates use clientelistic strategies to mobilize poor voters. Scholars studying clientelism, political parties, poverty, and democratic consolidation will find this book useful.

december 2015 Reed magazine 31

In Memoriam The Architect of Zoloft Kenneth Koe ’45 Most of them will never know his name. But millions of people around the globe have fought off depression and led more fulfilling lives thanks in part to his discovery—sertraline hydrochloride, better known as Zoloft.

Chemist B. Kenneth Koe ’45 died peacefully on October 7, 2015, in his daughter’s home in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, at the age of 90.

Ken was born in 1925, in Astoria, Oregon, the son of Chinese immigrants who worked at the salmon canneries. The family later moved to Portland, where his parents purchased the C&H Laundry on Northwest Sixth Avenue and lived with Ken and his sister in the back.

“When I was a senior at Lincoln High School, I really had no idea where I would be attending college, if at all,” Ken said. “Coming from a poor family and living near Portland’s Chinatown, I applied for scholarships to several colleges within the city and hoped for the best.”

On the night before his high school graduation, he learned that Reed had offered him a full scholarship. He enrolled in the fall of ’42 as a commuter, or “day dodger,” as they were known in those days. On weekends, he washed dishes and waited tables at the bustling Hung Far Low restaurant in Chinatown.

Ken wrote his thesis, An Apparatus for the Porous Disc Method of Determining Osmotic Pressure, with adviser Prof. Fred Ayres [chemistry 1940-70]. Deemed too skinny to meet the physical requirements for military service, he headed to graduate school, first at the University of Washington and then Cal Tech, where he received his doctorate in chemistry.

After his postdoc at Cal Tech in 1954, he worked as an organic chemist at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, and taught organic chemistry at San Antonio College. The following year, he and his wife Jo Ann moved to New York City, where he started as an organic chemist with Pfizer Research Laboratories, first in Brooklyn and later at their headquarters in Groton, Connecticut.

In a short time he moved to their central research department as a pharmacologist/ neuroscientist.

In 1977, Ken became interested in a family of psychoactive compounds already 42 Reed magazine december 2015

developed at Pfizer known as the tametraline series. Pfizer had discarded the series because some of the compounds had shown an undesired stimulant effect in animals. But Ken was curious. He knew that depression was linked to low levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin. Could the tametraline series be modified to block the absorption of serotonin in the brain’s synaptic channels, thus boosting its concentration and lifting a depressed person’s mood? Convinced that the question was worth pursuing, Ken worked with another Pfizer chemist, Willard Welch, to synthesize some new and unexplored derivatives.

“Two compounds with chlorine [atoms] in particular positions had very interesting properties,” he said later. “I tested every one of those isomers—one turned out to be a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor [SSRI], and that compound became sertraline hydrochloride, which developed into Zoloft.”

Ken published the first paper on the new compound in 1983. Nine years later, the drug hit the pharmacy shelves and became an overnight sensation. As one of the socalled “new generation” of SSRIs, it proved much more effective than earlier medications. More than 115 million people have been treated with it for a variety of disorders including depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder,

“But maybe the most critical factor for me is that many years ago Reed College offered me a scholarship . . . enabling me a start towards a scientific career.” panic, and social anxiety issues. And while the drug can have serious side effects, many people say it has rescued them from despair.

“Zoloft makes me more the person I’ve always struggled so hard to try to be,” writes one blogger. “It took my life from living like everything was the end of the world to everything having a solution somewhere.”

Drug development in the late twentieth century, involving many stages of synthesis, testing, and refinement, lay far beyond the reach of any single individual. Nonetheless, Ken played a central role in the discovery of Zoloft. Recounting the discovery in

1995, his co-discoverer Welch wrote: “Hundreds of very talented individuals contributed to the development of this compound during and after the events described in this review, and it would be unfair to single out some individuals from among the many.

However, it should be obvious that, without the scientific ability and curiosity of Dr. B. Kenneth Koe of the Pfizer Department of Pharmacology, it is unlikely that this discovery would have come about.”

Ken held 14 U.S. Patents and wrote or cowrote 150 technical articles and abstracts during his time at Pfizer. But the discovery

photo by Tim Martin

A Steady Hand at a Critical Moment Don C. Frisbee [trustee 1978–98]

June 25, 2015, in Portland, following a long illness.

of Zoloft was the highlight of his career. In 2008, he was accorded the Howard Vollum Award for Distinguished Accomplishment in Science and Technology. During his acceptance speech he acknowledged that strangers and friends had thanked him personally for his part in the discovery of the antidepressant.

“My role in the discovery of Zoloft depended on many factors coming together,” he said.

“Personal prerequisites include a solid technical background, a willingness to learn and adapt, a prepared mind, and perseverance.

Having congenial colleagues and understanding bosses is important. A key factor in all drug discovery efforts is still luck! I was lucky to have been part of the golden era of the pharmaceutical industry, which gave me a unique opportunity for creative thinking and doing scientific research in technical areas outside of my chemistry training. But maybe the most critical factor for me is that many

years ago Reed College offered me a scholarship to come here—enabling me a start towards a scientific career.”

Active in local Connecticut politics, Ken was a three-term councilman in Ledyard and served on the town’s Democratic Town Committee. He sang in the choirs at the United Methodist Church of Gales Ferry and the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Chorus. He also served on the board of trustees of the Thames Valley Music School at Connecticut College.

Kenneth was predeceased by his wife, Jo Ann (Lew), who died in 1995, and by his brother, Richard Koe. He is survived by his daughters, Kristin M. Koe of Shrewsbury, and Karen E. Koe of Long Beach, California; his five grandchildren, Joshua, Jacob and Rebecca Steinberg, and Ethan and Joanna Rucker; and his sister, Virginia Wong of Oakland, California.

—RANDALL BARTON

Long a leading light in Portland’s business and civic circles, Don Frisbee served as CEO of Pacific Power & Light (later PacifiCorp) for 17 years and chairman of its board of directors for a further 21 years. His significance to Reed, however, stems from his influence on the board of trustees in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when the college suffered from internal strife.

“Don Frisbee was a critical bridge in the course of the college’s history,” said former President Steven Koblik [1992–2001]. “He was a key player in the transition that took place in the ’90s at Reed.”

Reed went through a difficult stretch after the retirement of President Paul Bragdon [1971–88]. The campus was beset by a series of divisive policy and employment issues. President Jim Powell [1988– 91] clashed with the faculty and departed after three years. The recession of 1990 wrought havoc with the college’s finances.

“The campus mood was dour, the faculty were angry, the students were frustrated and left in droves,” said Koblik.

Frisbee, who became chairman of the board in 1991, was a rock of stability during this period. He enjoyed unusual insight into the often-difficult relationship between boards and presidents, perhaps from his own experience as CEO. He provided steady leadership but never tried to micromanage.

“No president is successful without a partner on the board of trustees,” says Koblik.

“Don knew that the board needed to protect and to affirm a president’s ability to get a job done.” By the time he stepped down as chairman, Reed had weathered the storm and its finances were substantially stronger.

Frisbee graduated from Beverly Hills High School and served in the U.S. Air Corps meteorological program in 1943– 46. He completed his undergraduate work at Pomona College and married classmate Emilie R. Ford in 1947. After he earned an MBA from Harvard, the couple moved to Portland, where he worked as an investment analyst for First Interstate Bank of december 2015 Reed magazine 43

The Spirit of Reed READ about departed classmates and professors at our new website, www.reed. edu/reed_magazine/in-memoriam/.

HONOR them with a gift in their name at www.reed.edu/givingtoreed/.

SHARE your memories on our website or via email at reed.magazine@reed.edu.

Daniel Harvey Labby ’35, trustee

August 30, 2015, in Portland.

Oregon in 1949–53, and then for Brown Electro-Measurement (Electro Scientific Industries). A year later, he joined the local utility Pacific Power & Light (PacifiCorp) as assistant treasurer, advancing to vice president, CEO, and chairman during a time of great expansion for the company. In 1991, the Oregon Business poll of readers and community leaders named him the business community’s service leader of the decade.

Frisbee steadfastly served the cause of higher education as trustee, chairman, director, and member of many educational institutions, including the Oregon Independent College Foundation, Oregon Health & Science University, the Oregon Partnership for International Education, Portland State University, and Whitman College. He chaired the Governor ’s Commission on Higher Education in the Portland metropolitan area. With his daughter-in-law, Denise, he also founded and operated the Statewide Organization for Schools.

He volunteered with dozens of organizations, including the Boy Scouts of America, the Cascade Center for International Business and Policy, the Children’s Museum, the City Club, the Clatsop County Historical Society, the Greater Portland Trust in Higher Education, the High Desert Museum, the OHSU Foundation, Oregon Public Broadcasting, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Oregon Trail Project, the United Way, the Oregon Zoo, the World Affairs Council, and the YMCA. He was instrumental in the creation and growth 44 Reed magazine december 2015

of the Oregon Leadership Forum.

“He cared deeply about the civic infrastructure, how to encourage and empower individuals to make a difference the way that he, himself, had,” notes the Congressional Record of July 13, 2015.

Success is attributed to many factors, including natural inclinations, luck, and a sensitivity to people, Don remarked. “In each one of us there’s a need for a sense of satisfaction, a sense of worth. An organization can do the unusual, or by some standards the impossible, if it can constructively take advantage of that desire in people.”

Don and Emilie established the Don C. and Emilie Frisbee Scholarship in 1986.

They raised three sons and one daughter.

The family enjoyed hiking, camping, and spending time at their ranch in Sisters, Oregon. Don excelled at trail riding, tennis, handball, racquetball, and body surfing.

With Emilie, he traveled around the world, often returning to Mexico and Italy. Emilie died in 2003, and Don later met musician Betty Perkins, whom he married in 2014.

“Don was a wonderful father, grandfather, husband, friend, and mentor,” says his family. “He was curious about life and people, engaging in conversations with everyone he met. He was interested in his children and grandchildren’s lives and activities, always asking questions and supporting their choices. He will be deeply missed.”

Sur vivors include Betty; children Robert, Ann, Peter, and Dean; and four grandchildren.

The son of Russian immigrants, Dan grew up in Portland, along with brothers Robert ’43 and Arnold ’51. He sold newspapers on downtown street corners and played violin in the Junior Symphony, and at Reed, earned a BA in biology, with a thesis on the embryology of the heart. His adviser was Prof.

L.E. Griffin [1920–45].

Dan went on to earn an MD from the University of Oregon Medical School (Oregon Health & Science University) in 1939. He interned at Johns Hopkins University and completed a fellowship in medicine at Cornell Medical College. After two years in the army medical corps, where he contracted hepatitis from a contaminated vaccine for yellow fever, he returned to New York to do a residency in internal medicine. During the final year of training, he was chief resident and an instructor in medicine and neuropathy at Cornell Medical College and Bellevue Hospital. Subsequently he joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research to study liver metabolism and was appointed acting chief of the division of liver disease in 1946.

Dan and Margaret Selling ’40, MAT ’62 met at 16 and were married in 1940. After WWII, they returned to Portland and raised their family of three, Joan, Louise, and David Labby ’66. Dan entered private practice and served part time as assistant clinical professor at the University of Oregon Medical School.

He joined the faculty in a full-time position in 1951 and was chief of the division of diabetes and metabolic diseases.

As a professor of medicine in 1958–71, Dan developed an extraordinary range of expertise not just in metabolism, diabetes, and liver disease, but also in human sexuality, doctor-patient relationships, and medical ethics. In response to concerns that increasingly

technical medicine was moving away from “taking care of the person” he organized an ethics seminar in the mid-’60s at Reed, “The Sanctity of Life,” with an international faculty. He did further training at the Tavistock Institute in London, and in 1972 he transitioned to professor of both medicine and psychiatry, focusing his practice on psychiatry until his retirement.

In 1989 he helped launch the OHSU Center for Ethics in Health Care and began a senior clinicians’ seminar, which he led until age 92 and which continues today. Reed honored him with the Distinguished Service Award in 1995.

Dan was active in a wide range of community activities. He served on Reed’s board as an alumni trustee from 1965–69 and a regular trustee from 1969–75. He was the traveling physician for the Junior Symphony. He was a rare plant collector who created a magnificent garden, a lover of classical music, art, and Chinese porcelains, a fount of knowledge and stories, and a world traveler. Survivors include Margaret and their three children, five grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren; brothers Robert and Arnold; and sisters-in-law Lore Caro Labby ’47 and Eva Lamfrom Labby ’51.

John Telfer MacTarnaghan ’37 July 7, 2015; he was 101.

John attended Reed for one year, a time he valued throughout his life for the cultural perspective provided by classes he took in the humanities, the writing skills he gained, and for the Honor Principle. He earned a BS in engineering from Oregon State College (University). John and Helen A. Bennett ’39 married and had two children, Jean and Sidney. John worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Portland for 20 years, and for the U.S. Naval Ordnance Test Station in China Lake, California, for 5. He retired from the U.S. Air Force Space & Missile Systems Center in El Segundo, California, after 13 years. John enlisted in the navy in 1943 and continued to serve in the navy reserve, achieving the rank of lieutenant commander. Reflecting on his Reed experience for his 75th class reunion, he noted, “I still remember my good life at Reed, although I am only 98 years old now.” Helen died in 2003.

Mary Frances Bankhead McBrayer ’39 June 6, 2015, in Huntersville, North Carolina, following a brief illness.

Mary came to Reed from South Carolina and studied at the college for two years before leaving to marry. “I’m so grateful that I had the opportunity to go,” she noted in 2007. Through the years she kept in touch with her roommate, Betty Workman Hedrick ’39, as well as other alumni, including Emilio Pucci MA ’37. Mary visited Emilio’s clothing shop in New York City and met him at an exhibition featuring his

designs in Denver, Colorado, in 1965. “He invited us to Florence to visit, but we did not get there.” Mary and her husband, John A. McBrayer, who was in the navy and had a career in aeronautics, resided in 11 states. “We met many nice friends wherever we lived.” Mary completed a bachelor’s degree from Winthrop University in South Carolina and studied for an additional degree in library science. She held teaching certificates in five states. Mary was predeceased by John, their daughter Ann, and their grandson Jonah. Survivors include daughters Susan and Jane, four grandchildren, a sister, and a brother.

Mary Frances Sophie Kuylaars Jones Pennington ’39 May 28, 2015, in Mount Vernon, Washington.

Born in Stockholm, Sweden, and raised in Portland, Mary earned a BA from Reed in biology, writing her thesis with Prof. L.E. Griffin [biology 1920-45] on the thyroid gland of lamprey larvae. After graduation, Mary worked for Prof. Griffin, making histology slides. She went on to earn an MA in bacteriology from the University of Oregon Medical School (OHSU) and was elected to Sigma Xi. She married fellow medical student Charles H. Jones, who became a physician in psychology. His career and war service with the army took them to locations throughout the United States. Mary worked as a bacteriologist and medical technologist in several hospitals and state and private clinics. She volunteered with the medical auxiliary, the American Association of University Women, and Camp Fire. She was devoted to her children, enjoyed travel with Charles abroad and stateside, attended Elderhostel sessions, sewed, painted, and hosted wonderful events.

Following Charles’ death, Mary married Lloyd D. Pennington ’39. Survivors include her three daughters, a son, 9 grandchildren, and 10 greatgrandchildren. Lloyd died in 2007.

Gordon C. Facer ’41 May 5, 2014, in McLean, Virginia.

Gordon attended Reed for two years, later describing his break from the school in this way: “Until June 1939, I was well on my way toward becoming a physics major under Prof.

Tony Knowlton [A.A., 1915–48]. Then suddenly my fortunes took a different turn when I departed Reed for a career in the navy. By July 1942, I was a married navy ensign, joining an ancient World War I four-stack destroyer that could have been right out of Caine Mutiny . . .” Gordon earned a BS from the U.S. Naval Academy, and following the war, was a naval aviator. He went to UC Berkeley, where he completed an MS in radiology. In 1969, he retired from the navy and spent an additional 14 years as a civilian employee in nuclear radiation safety for the Atomic Energy Commission. In retirement he did consulting in the field. “Being a

Mary Pennington ’39

former Reed student has always been an advantage to me, even though I’ve been away all these years,” he wrote. “I like to think that my Reed heritage has helped me to become a fairly laid-back person, unbothered by most of the silliness that is Washington. Even so, I am far from placid, for I have strong views on our government and country and disagree with majority views on almost anything.” Gordon and his wife, Maryann, had two daughters and a son. His brother, Fred Facer ’36, graduated from Reed.

Esther Christine Dorles Lewis ’42 July 4, 2015, in Portland at home, surrounded by the care and love of her family.

Esther was the oldest of three daughters born to Harold and Lula Dorles, and spent her childhood in southeast Portland. She earned a BA in general literature writing a thesis on the evolution of Leaves of Grass with Prof. Victor Chittick [English 1928–41]. Following graduation, she married engineer David J. Lewis. They had four children and lived in Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., Venezuela, and Thailand.

Their house in northeast Portland was Esther’s home for the last 58 years. She was a welcoming hostess and a devoted gardener; she was active in the public schools and philanthropic organizations; a patron of the arts; and an expert at living an active, long life. Following David’s death in 1985, Esther traveled, engaged in many civic endeavors, wrote, and swam. “She was a generous person,” says her family, “with a fierce belief in the ability of people to do what was right and ethical.” She received the Babson Award in 1996, honoring her long service to Reed and to the alumni association, including hosting students, organizing events, revising december 2015 Reed magazine 45

In Memoriam the alumni association’s constitution, and serving on the Foster-Scholz Club committee and the alumni board. She also assisted her friend Ruth Cahill ’43 in the final years of Ruth’s life.

Survivors include her children, Christine (Tim) Kopp, Nancy Roth, Mark (Dianne) Lewis, and Reed (Margaret) Lewis; six grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; eight foster children; and her sister Edna C. Dorles ’46.

Elizabeth Anne Funge Macaulay ’43

May 19, 2015, in Laguna Niguel, California.

A Portland native, Betty graduated from Franklin High School and worked for two years before enrolling at Reed. She earned a BA in economics, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, and wrote a thesis with Prof. Blair Stewart [1925–49] on the U.S. policy related to sugar.

She also did secretarial work for then-President Dexter Keezer [1934–42], and assisted Prof.

Frank Munk [political science 1939–65] with the typing of his first book after his arrival in the U.S. Following graduation, Betty worked as an economist for U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C. In 1946, she married fellow economics major Robert W. Macaulay’43, and worked as a secretary while he earned an MBA from Harvard. The couple moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where they remained for 60 years. Betty was a statistician for Pacific Telephone, and while she raised a daughter and son, she was a volunteer in schools, with the Girl Scouts, the League of Women Voters, and the Presbyterian church. She later worked as an executive secretary. In 2006, the couple moved to Laguna Niguel to be near family.

Harry Bernat AMP ’44 December 11, 2012, in Washington, D.C.

Harry was a member of Reed’s premeteorology program during his service with the air force and a graduate with distinction of the University of Minnesota, where he also earned an MA in public administration. He worked as an assistant to the chief scientist for research and development in the Defense Communications Agency in Washington, D.C., and was vice president for Manna Financial Planning Corporation, as well as an independent financial planner. He was selected for the Congressional Fellowship Program and worked at the Democratic National Headquarters on legislation and committee hearings. He taught financial planning and public speaking, including at Washington Saturday College, which recognized his contribution by conferring on him an LHD. Harry held office and received numerous awards as a volunteer, including with Toastmasters International. He and his wife, Frances, also were volunteers with the Minnesota State Society. Harry was an 46 Reed magazine december 2015

Esther Lewis ’42 won the Babson Award in 1996.

Harry Bernat ’44 with his wife Frances

exceptional athlete into his late years, demonstrating prowess in everything from track to tennis, and bowling to basketball. He was captain of several tennis teams and participated in Senior Olympics events in Virginia and Maryland, where he earned dozens of gold medals, and he also competed and earned gold medals in National Senior Olympics competitions. A dedicated volunteer for Reed, he was recognized for superior service to alumni relations in 2004. “I am so proud to be associated with Reed,” he wrote. Harry and Fran had three daughters. Survivors include Fran and Harry’s sister.

He completed an MS in 1948 and continued to work for the navy and then IBM. Working in the company’s federal systems division, he participated in the early space program. He led a computing system project for NHK Broadcasting in Japan, and ended his career with IBM as director of the systems engineering division for IBM Europe. Bruce and Martha Kenyon married in 1958 and had five children, three sons and two daughters. They settled in Washington in 1989. Bruce purchased a cherry orchard, which he managed with one of his sons. He played golf, and Bruce and Martha achieved life master status in bridge. “Bruce will be remembered for his larger-than-life personality and his determination to live life to the fullest.” Survivors include his wife and children and five grandchildren.

Ellis Robert Herbon AMP ’44

August 13, 2015, in Harland, Wisconsin.

A graduate of Marquette University in economics and law, Ellis studied at Reed and at Yale in the Army Air Corps premeteorology program during World War II. In 1950, he was recalled by the air force to serve for two years in the judge advocate general’s department in Denver, Colorado. Ellis practiced law in state and federal courts in Milwaukee until 1989. He was married to Helen Moore, who preceded him in death, as did his second wife, Elizabeth.

Survivors include his son, two grandsons, and a great-grandson.

Bruce Garr Oldfield ’45

July 4, 2015, in his sleep on a plane over Alaska, returning from a family fishing trip. He was a resident of Port Angeles, Washington, and fished throughout his life.

Br uce grew up in Milwaukie, Oregon, and earned a BA from Reed in physics. His thesis, advised by Prof.

A.A. Knowlton [physics 1915–48], was on ice crystal formation.

Following graduation, he worked at the U.S. Naval Ordnance Test Station in China Lake, California, and was sent on by the navy to Harvard for a graduate program in computing.

Melba Jeanne Hansen Gordner ’46 May 20, 2015, in Lacey, Washington.

Jeanne majored in political science and history at Reed. Her thesis on Pan-American relations was advised by Prof.

Rex Arragon [history 1923–74]. She also earned a BA in educat i o n f ro m C e n t ra l Washington College (University) and taught at Franklin Junior High in Yakima, Washington, for decades. She was active in politics, conservation, hiking, gardening, and the arts, and traveled throughout the world. A well-respected poet, Jeanne published three volumes of her work. Her study of poetry began in a class with Prof. Lloyd Reynolds [English & art 1929–69], she said. “I write largely about what I know, but like to venture occasionally into absolute imagination.” Jeanne was widowed twice. Survivors include two sons and a daughter, a foster daughter, a stepdaughter and stepson, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and a sister.

Richard Walton Blohm ’48 June 3, 2014, in Chesterton, Maryland.

“I cannot remember ever being unaware of Reed College,” Dick wrote. His grandparents came to Oregon via the Oregon Trail from Missouri.

Many of his relatives and friends went to Reed, including his mother, Margaret Walton Blohm ’17; aunt, Helen Walton Manlove ’15; and cousins Charles Manlove ’43, Paul Manlove ’45, and John Manlove ’55. The earlier grads told stories of Campus Day and Canyon Day, steamer trips up the Columbia, and espoused the curriculum and faculty, Dick wrote. “It all seemed to be of a piece to them, and yet more—they shared the sense of the ‘Quest’ in a very real way.”

His own experience at Reed involved sports, hiking, music, theatre, Doyle Owl escapades, and meeting Barbara Hathaway KelloggSmith ’46, a pre-med student who intended a career in veterinary medicine. Called into military service during World War II, Dick was in Texas when the couple married in 1944. After he completed a degree in economics at Reed, they moved to Massachusetts, where he earned an MBA at Harvard. He worked for Lincoln Mercury and Ford Motor Company—moving from Massachusetts to Michigan, and then to California, where he worked for Lockheed Missile.

Rapid development and population growth in the Santa Clara Valley provided the couple and their growing family with an incentive to move. They arrived at Hathaway’s 100acre family farm near the Chester River in Maryland in 1970. Their portion of the farm included room for horses, a dream come true for Hathaway. Dick managed the farm, and the buildings and machinery, and operated a business via the internet. They sold their farm in later years for a small cottage in the woods.

Following Hathaway’s death in 2003, Dick reported that he was “learning to live alone, finding usefulness, and getting adjusted to being superfluous.” But adventure called to him and he outfitted a 1990 Volkswagen Vanagon in the fashion of a covered wagon and spent three months on the road in 2005, driving the Oregon Trail, accompanied by his dachshund Taylor. “Being a second generation Oregonian, I had grown up hearing stories from my grandfather about his family’s crossing of the prairies, the mountains, and rivers, with a wagon train headed to Oregon.” Dick says the stories were “pieces of a puzzle” he mused about, and hoped to piece together one day.

In 2008, Dick and Taylor made an 8,000mile car trip, first to Florida, and then along the Gulf of Mexico to Texas. They traveled to San Diego and up the West Coast, with stops at Reed and in Everett, Washington, where his brother, Philip, lived. Their return trip to Maryland included travel through Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois,

Kentucky, and West Virginia. What impressed him most on his trip, he reported, was the perspective he gained about the condition of the planet, its human population, and the planet’s ability to survive destruction. “What mankind does on the face of the earth is really inconsequential.” And reflecting on Reed, Dick wrote that the longer he lived, the more he appreciated his undergraduate experience. “Reed’s independence and focus on quality education are priceless.”

Robert Claud McKean ’48

August 1, 2015, in Oregon.

Robert grew up in Portland and attended Franklin High School. He married his childhood friend, Lora Hobson, just before serving in World War II as a fighter pilot for the U.S. Marine Corps. Returning to Oregon after the war, he earned a BA from Reed in psychology, with Prof. Fred Courts [1945–69] serving as his thesis adviser. Robert went on to earn an MA in education from Lewis & Clark College and taught at Sherwood High School and Beaverton High School. He then earned an EdD from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he taught until 1984. He also taught at San Francisco State College and Indiana University. In retirement, Robert and Lora moved to Oregon. They traveled, boated, and enjoyed many years with their three sons, eight grandson, and five great-grandchildren.

Lora died in 2013.

Edith Katherine Griffith Swoboda ’48

March 31, 2014, in West Grove, Pennsylvania.

Born in Portland, both Edith and her brother, Joseph Griffith ’48, majored in physics at Reed. She worked with P ro f. R ay m o n d T. E llickson [physics 1946–48] on her thesis on diffraction patterns with X-rays. In her work as a scientist, she did textile testing for Dupont and also studied environmental influences in the Chesapeake Bay watershed—the latter, related to her role on a Delaware state commission, reflected her enjoyment of fishing. She was a gardener and an active member in local garden clubs. She was a member of the League of Women Voters and a charter member of the Skating Club of Wilmington, Delaware. We read that Edith surpassed the pregold level ice dance, the Blues, with flying colors at age 69, and she was an accomplished ballroom dancer. Edith and Thomas J. Swoboda were married for 44 years. Survivors include Thomas, two daughters, a stepson, and two grandchildren. “We still miss her warm, welcoming smile and unbridled enthusiasm.”

Shirley Ann Georges Gittelsohn ’49

June 12, 2015, in Portland, from cancer.

An artist whose dramatic landscapes of the Pacific Northwest earned her national acclaim, Shirley grew up in Portland and attended Lincoln High School, following her brothers Thomas T. Georges Jr. ’42 and Maurice O. (Ossie) Georges ’47 to Reed. (A third brother, Paul Georges, was also an artist.) She met William A. Gittelsohn ’48 at Reed when he returned from service in World War II. They fell in love and were married a week following Bill’s graduation. Soon after, they moved to California, where Shirley completed a BA in elementary education at San Francisco State while Bill earned an MBA from UC Berkeley. After five years they returned to Portland, where Shirley raised their three children—Dena, John, and Judy—and began painting. Bill joined with Tom to operate the Georges family business, Oregon Laundry (Oregon Linen Rental).

Shirley’s work was in oil and acrylic and she became renowned for her paintings of landscapes—especially of Cannon Beach, where the family had owned a home since 1944. She also painted still life, gardens, flowers, and portraits of her children and their friends. Her art was created with a bold contemporary style.

“Much of my work is in the form of not-sostill life, exuberant plant life, huge landscapes, or excesses of one sort or another,” she said. “It is doing that sort of work that makes me feel wonderful.” Shirley noted an influence in her art from the works of German expressionist Emile Nolde, American landscape artist Jane Freilicher, and Édouard Manet. She was also influenced by Japanese screen painting, and found fascinating the work of botanical illustrator Pierre-Joseph Redouté. Her paintings were shown and represented in a number of galleries in the Pacific Northwest, including the Fountain Gallery, the Gottlieb Gallery, the Antoinette Hatfield Gallery, and the Cannon Beach Arts Association Gallery.

Her work was celebrated in a retrospective exhibition, Paintings and Reflections, held at Reed in 2009. Her art was also prominently featured in an episode of Oregon Art Beat on Oregon Public Broadcasting in November 2013.

“Painting has added a dimension to my life I would never have dreamed possible,” she said.

During 52 years of marriage, Bill and Shirley enjoyed time in their three homes, in Portland, Cannon Beach, and Vida del Mar, Mexico. They traveled to Micronesia, Greece, and France, where Paul lived. The couple was closely connected to Reed through family—Bill’s brother, Alan Gittelsohn ’50, and his wife, Sharon Goodman Gittelsohn ’48; Shirley’s brothers and sister-inlaws, including May Director Georges ’37— and friends, such as Karen Vedvei Atiyeh ’47, Ernie Bonyhadi ’48, Ilo Lehmann Bonyhadi ’51, Anna Lou Melson Dehavenon ’48, Dorothy december 2015 Reed magazine 47

In Memoriam

event with many former tent show professionals participating, which he documented in his book Trouping Through Texas: Harley Sadler and his Tent Show.

From extensive travels throughout the Mediterranean, studying ancient Greek theatre structures, Cliff wrote Classical Greek Theatre: New Views of an Old Subject. In 2001, he was awarded the Chancellor’s Award of Excellence, Texas Tech’s highest faculty honor. As professor emeritus, he continued his research and writing, submitting an article for scholarly publication this spring.

Cliff enjoyed life in the great outdoors and traveling. He built a log cabin in Wyoming, did river canoeing, and made numerous whitewater runs of the Rio Grande. In 1989, he completed a 1,100-mile, single-canoe run of the Yukon River, from Canada through Alaska, to the Arctic Circle.

He was a longtime member of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Despite being legally blind for the past decade, Cliff walked his dogs daily and maintained a seat in the Chaucer Society, one of the oldest poker games in West Texas.

Cliff never lost his connection to Reed, donating a number of books from his extensive theatre collection to the Hauser Library. Survivors include his wife, son, daughter, granddaughter, and sister.

Leonore Marianne Courant Berkowitz ’50 July 19, 2015, in New York, New York.

Still life with artist Shirley Gittelsohn ’49.

Robinson Freedman ’49, Regina Tarlow Kriss ’47, Lore Caro Labby ’47, Phiz Mezey ’48, Joy Spalding Rabin ’48, Ellie Boettiger Seagraves ’49, Van Seagraves ’48, and Estelle Asher Wertheimer ’46. Bill was active at Reed in his work as a volunteer and a member of the board of trustees. In 1986, when Bill and Tom sold the business and retired, Shirley and Bill created the Gittelsohn-Georges Endowed Scholarship Fund. She served on the Western States Arts Association and the Oregon Arts Commission.

Following Bill’s death in 2000, Shirley began spending time in the company of Ernie, who had also been widowed. Shirley and Ernie married in October 2007 and were featured in “Love Stories” in the winter 2007 issue of Reed. A memorial for Shirley took place in August. Survivors include Ernie and Shirley’s children and granddaughter.

Clifford Charles Ashby ’50

May 28, 2015, in Lubbock, Texas, following a sudden illness.

Cliff grew up a child of the Great Depression in Illinois, earning money by sweeping the shop floors of John Boos & Company, the butcherblock manufacturer cofounded by his great-grandfather in 1892. He became proficient at ham radio in his youth and served two years in the Merchant Marine in the South Pacific as a radio 48 Reed magazine december 2015

officer during World War II. After the war, he studied at Reed for the better part of two years, where he gained experience working on theatre lighting and set building.

Intent on majoring in theatre, he transferred to the University of Iowa, where he fulfilled his goal.

Cliff and Sylvia Girsh, a fellow student in the theatre department and a playwright, married in 1950. He continued his study of theatre at the University of Hawaii–Manoa, and received an MA in theatre while working as a technical director. Next, at Stanford, Cliff earned a PhD in theatre history and joined the faculty at Texas Tech University in 1963. He made a directorial debut at the Cracker Box Theatre with Firebugs—Texas Tech’s first racially integrated production. The following spring he designed the set and lighting for the premiere performance in Tech’s new theatre building, and for 38 years, Cliff taught theatre and speech, and did directing and set and lighting designs for productions such as The Lower Depths, Tobacco Road, The Tempest, Mister Roberts, and Oklahoma! In 1976, he revived the famous Harley Sadler Tent Show as a Bicentennial

The daughter of eminent mathematician Richard Courant, Lori transferred to Reed from Swarthmore and earned a BA in literature. Her thesis, advised by Prof. Donald MacRae [English 1944–73], was on the art and life view of poet Robert Frost. Music was the great love of Lori’s life, and she went on to earn a BA and MA from the Berklee School of Music, to teach at the Manhattan School of Music, and to be principal violist for the American Symphony Orchestra. She cofounded Loon Lake Live! and was an instructor at the Children’s Orchestra Society and at Princeton Chamber Music Play Week. She also coached viola and played chamber music. We learned of Lori’s death from Annice Mills Alt ’51, who recalled that her husband, Franz Alt, played string quartets informally with Lori. “Because there is so much in the repertoire, you can never play too often,” Annice wrote. The couple also hiked with Lori for a number of years.

Hiking, berry picking, and stargazing were just a few of the pleasures Lori took from her time in the outdoors. Lori and mathematician Jerome Berkowitz were married in 1954; they had a son and daughter. Following his death, she married widower Peter Lax, who received the Abel Prize for mathematics. Lori’s husband and children survive her, as do two grandchildren. “She was an original and a welcoming, gentle soul, who loved her family.”

Ralph Eugene Pratt ’50 July 5, 2015, in Portland.

Ralph grew up in northe a s t Po r t l a n d a n d served with the navy in t h e Pa c i f i c d u r i n g World War II. He wrote a thesis on the welfare economics and consumer cooperation with Prof. Arthur H. Leigh [economics 1945–88] and earned a BA in economics. In 1953, Ralph and Evelyn F. Norell, or Evie, were married.

They had two daughters, Melanie and Clare, and a son, Bruce. Ralph was the director of finance at the Double T Holding Company and worked for Halton Tractor, and Evie taught science. They traveled, enjoyed folk dancing, rafted, and were active in the West Hills Unitarian Fellowship. Ralph taught folk dancing at Reed for many years and led folk dancing events for Reunions for a decade. Following the death of their son in 1985, Ralph and Evie volunteered for many years with the Dougy Center. “A lover of coffee, beer, liberal politics, Mount Hood, the Gorge and the coast, Ralph was a true Oregonian.” Survivors include Evie, their daughters, and three grandchildren.

Ralph’s cousin, Charles H. Hawkins ’52, also graduated from Reed.

Wilmer Albert Cummins ’51 July 9, 2015, in Los Angeles, California.

Will earned a BA in physics from Reed, writing a thesis on the electromagnetic theory with Prof. William Parker [physics 1948–79].

After graduating, he took a position as a particle beam researcher at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington and then was employed with General Electric in Riverside, California, where he met his wife, Catherine.

Will studied computer programming at UC Berkeley and worked for the Sperry Gyroscope Company, the Rand Corporation, and Litton Data Systems. He was a consultant from the time of his retirement in the mid-’90s to 2007.

Survivors include three sons and six grandchildren. His wife died in 2003.

Joseph McClair Hardman ’51 May 22, 2015, in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

Joe earned a BA from Reed in political science and economics. His thesis on American schools of geopolitics was written with Prof. Frank Munk [political science 1939–65], who was an “all-star” gentleman, Joe said, as was Prof.

Charles McKinley [political science 1918– 60]. “Many Reed items and exposures were

decades ahead of their time, such as ecology, environment pollution, and foreign policy (geopolitics).” Following graduation, Joe served in the Korean War and earned an LLB from Willamette University. Influenced by Prof.

Munk, he entered the foreign service in Italy and Newfoundland, and then became chief of the college eligibility section for the U.S. Office of Education, in Washington, D.C. He retired in 1989, and was a volunteer for 21 years at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. For this work, he received three presidential citations and a lifetime award from the interior department. He was also a board member of the First Flight Society. Joe and Margaret Smith were married in 1954 and had three sons. His sons, seven grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren survive him. Margaret died in March.

Arthur M. Schneider ’51 March 11, 2015, in California.

After studying at Reed for two years, Arthur earned a BA in physics. He received an MS in electronic engineering from the University of Southern California and worked for a number of corporations as a research engineer, and also was a programmer and analyst in data processing for Los Angeles County. He and Alice Berson were married in 1957 and lived in San Dimas. Arthur participated in Reed alumni events in the Los Angeles area.

David Bradley Straus ’53

June 11, 2015, at home in Gardiner, New York, from congestive heart failure; he lived with insulin-dependent diabetes for 80 years.

David came to Reed from Francis Parker School in Chicago, Illinois, driving west in fall 1950 with Joe Hearst ’53 and Mur ray Work ’53.

Before leaving home, the Reed freshmen were admonished not to exceed more than 500 miles in one day and not to drive after sunset.

David earned a BA in chemistry in three years, writing his thesis on the gamma irradiation of insulin with his adviser, Prof. Art Livermore [chemistry 1948-65]. At Reed, he met Harriet McWethy ’54; they married in Portland in 1955.

David earned a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Chicago in 1960 and did postdoctoral work at Princeton University. He taught at SUNY–Buffalo and SUNY–New Paltz, where he researched the structure of RNA and taught biochemistry, nutrition, and a course on pollution, population, and the future of human life.

David served as a councilor for the American Chemical Society for many years. He was involved in environmental preservation and

land use issues, and was active in local government and with the Gardiner Democrats.

He did photography throughout his life and was an early adopter of new technologies. He also enjoyed spending time gardening and in the outdoors. In addition to Harriet, who provided the details for this memorial, survivors include their daughter and two sons, Lisa, Lee, and David; eight grandchildren, who were truly enjoyed and encouraged by their grandfather; and a sister and brother. “In memory of David, please preserve the environment and vote for the candidate of your choice.”

John Robert Wallace ’54 May 5, 2015, in Las Vegas, New Mexico.

Bob came to Reed from Illinois and earned a BA in anthropology, working with Prof. David French ’38 [1947–88] on his thesis on the language of the Warm Springs Indians. Bob worked for the U.S. Department of Labor in California, during which time he discovered a mark used on applications to designate race, which made it possible for the department and potential employers to engage in illegal discrimination. “Bob’s discovery did not endear him to his employers,” says his family.

He later went to live in Puerto Rico as a single father with two sons. The three learned Spanish and lived on a beach, where Bob wove hats and baskets from palm leaves that they sold to tourists from San Juan. From the beach, the three moved to a shack on a river, where they lived without utilities or other conveniences. Bob was an excellent photographer and a number of his pictures have been shown in exhibitions.

For the past 22 years, Bob and Betty Quick have been partners. Betty communicated to Reed that Bob was unable to read and write following a severe stroke in 2008, but was maintaining his fine spirit. In 2014, Betty let us know that she was reading Reed magazine to Bob, that he had fond memories of his years at Reed, and that he hoped to stay connected to classmates and friends. Bob and Betty lived in Las Vegas for 10 years and enjoyed the company of a beloved dog. In addition to Betty, Bob’s survivors include his sons, a stepdaughter, and a brother. “He had a full life.”

Helen Marise Knowlton Wolfard MA ’54

August 10, 2015, in Portland.

Marcy lost her father at an early age and traveled the world with her mother, settling in California. She earned a BA from Stanford in 1948, and within years of completing an MA from Reed, she discovered her passion for flying.

She was an accomplished pilot and flight instructor, and accumulated more than 4,000 flight hours during her career. She volunteered as a fire spotter for the forest service and transported patients to medical facilities in Oregon, Idaho, december 2015 Reed magazine 49

In Memoriam and California for Angel Flight. She retired from flying at 78. Marcy and James C. Wolfard were married for 50 years. They sold real estate, traveled to Europe, and enjoyed hiking. Survivors include her three daughters and one son, seven grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

Caroline Kittredge Crosby-Williams ’57

April 21, 2015, in Arcata, California.

Kit attended Reed for three years and earned a BA and MA in behavioral clinical psychology from San Francisco State. She was married to Donald L. Williams and lived in Austin, Texas, for nine years, while Donald earned a PhD. They moved to Hyampom, California, in 1969 and raised their three children, daughters Margo and Kathleen and son David, on a 125-acre ranch. Her family reports, “Here Kit realized her homesteading dream, learning and practicing land stewardship, animal husbandry, and self-sufficient living with and from the land. Her commitment and dedication to her children was unwavering, always present, enduring, reliable and bedrock solid.”

Following divorce, Kit moved to Arcata. She had a private practice focusing on family and marriage counseling in Eureka. She worked for the Behavioral Development Center and the Open Door Clinic, and in private practice was an advocate for adults and children surviving abuse. She was a court-appointed advocate for children. She cofounded the Arcata Marsh Commons Co-Housing project. “She was intent on living in a cooperative community composed of people and the adjacent environment, with a conscious minimal impact. She lived there and participated for many years. Her commitment to community and the land was, as always, steadfast and purposeful.” Kit supported and volunteered with local organizations advocating human rights, environmental and land stewardship, and peace. She spent her final years in the Freshwater area, surrounded by her horses, fruit trees, wild azaleas, and a herd of deer. “As I look at my life,” Kit wrote, “I realize how much my years at Reed are part of who I am. Thanks!”

Survivors include her children, three grandsons, and a great-granddaughter.

David Thomas Mason ’58 March 17, 2015, in Bellingham, Washington.

“Earlier this spring , David T. Mason died from far too long suffering with Parkinson’s d i s e a s e ,” w ro t e Jonathan Hough ’59.

“Throughout his trial, he retained to the end his love for music. It was a basic element of his life.

50 Reed magazine december 2015

At Western Washington University, he continued the Reed tradition of Prof. Herb Gladstone [music 1946–80] by bringing Gilbert and Sullivan productions to the stage.

His efforts went to both the popular operettas and the nearly unknown. Through the years, he directed the entire Gilbert and Sullivan repertoire. An accomplishment extraordinary and beautiful.”

David’s parents, Herbert Mason and Lucille Roush Mason, were renowned botanical scientists and faculty members at UC Berkeley and Davis. With Reed biology professors G.F. Gwilliam [1957–96] and Helen A. Stafford [1954–87], David investigated the environment and nature of the sediments of Reed Lake for a senior thesis, and he earned a BA from the college in biology. In the summer following, he did research in biology on a grant from the Carnegie Institute and enrolled at UC Davis, where he earned an MA in biology and PhD in limnology.

While in the doctoral program at Davis, he also directed The Mikado. David joined the faculty in biology at Western Washington University in 1971 and taught ecology at the university’s Fairhaven College. He also taught a variety of interdisciplinary and experimental learning courses, including humanities, natural habitats and streams, recycling, and gay and lesbian studies, and he integrated his teaching and research with theatre arts and creative writing.

He composed music, directed, and created stage designs for Fairhaven theatrical productions.

David wrote to Reed, “I’ve, fortunately, found a way to live out my liberal education in my profession, where my values and politics are all related to the role model image projection which constitutes an effective part of my job.”

In 1973, he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to pursue environmental research in Uruguay. With research primarily in limnology and ecology, he studied environments such as Arctic Alaska, Mono Lake, New Zealand, Australia, and Japan. In 1989, he was appointed dean of Fairhaven College and retired in 1998, an individual beloved by generations of students, colleagues, and friends. The Center for Pacific Northwest Studies at Western Washington University maintains the David T. Mason Papers.

David C. Newell ’62

August 18, 2015, in Long Beach, California, from diabetic complications.

Musically gifted and adept at mathematics, Dave earned a BA from Reed in mathematics. His thesis, written with Prof. Joe Roberts [1952–2014], was “Propositions Equivalent to the Axiom of Choice.” After graduating, Dave went to Brandeis University, where he earned a PhD in mathematics. He taught at Tufts College and then at UC Irvine, but his political leanings prevented him from receiving tenure. He

Gentle giant: David Newell ’62.

also taught at California State University at Long Beach and West Los Angeles College, and retired in 2005. “Mostly I was a ‘freeway flyer,’” he wrote, “going from school to school each day, teaching a class here and there.”

Described as a “gentle giant” for his stature—6 feet 7 inches—and his behind-thescenes approach to issues, he was drawn into advocacy in the late ’70s, when he campaigned against the Briggs Initiative, a proposal to ban gays and lesbians from public school teaching positions. Distressed by the injustice, prejudice, and suffering he observed during the AIDS crisis, he became an active member of the Long Beach Lambda Democratic Club and served as club president. A plaque recognizing his advocacy is mounted in Equality Plaza at Harvey Milk Promenade Park in Long Beach. His concern for those dealing with addiction led him to be a founding member of the Atlantic Alano Club, a 12-step meeting for LGBT people. He also was an active member of the California Democratic Party, at one point serving as regional director.

“I am proud to say I was part of the transition of the city of Long Beach, being known as ‘Iowa by the Sea’ when I moved there, to the progressive and diverse city it is today.” Dave got involved in the U.S.–China Peoples Friendship Association, traveled twice to China, and was chair of a local chapter. He also traveled to Costa Rica, Egypt, South America, Southeast Asia, and the Panama Canal. At the time of his 50th-class reunion, though his health was of great concern, he looked ahead to a trip to Europe. “I do what I can, and I enjoy my books, CDs, and my subscriptions to the LA Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and to many chamber music series.” Survivors include two sisters, a niece, two grandnieces, and a grandnephew.

Richard C. Roistacher ’65 June 23, 2015, in Belmont, California.

Democratic Party ward heeler, I have also taken up my first expensive hobby, marksmanship.”

Dick and his wife, Barbara Noble, who retired as chief technical officer from the HewlettPackard Company, enjoyed traveling to countries such as Greece, Spain, Russia, and India. In 2012, Dick wrote, “Of course most of the geekiness and lack of self esteem from my Reed days has dissipated, leaving behind a fully formed and admirable human being.” Survivors include Barbara.

Peter Dvorak Albert ’67 (aka Peter Albert Dvorak) August 20, 2015, in Portland, from cancer.

Dick came to Reed from Chevy Chase, Maryland, and majored in psychology. His thesis, “Automatic Intravenous Injection: A Manual for the Experimenter,” was completed with Prof. William J. Devery [psychology 1963–70]. During his years at Reed, he was involved in theatre, helping to create costumes for a 1961 production of Peer Gynt, for example, and performing in The Beggars Opera. He was also active in the Reed Gun Club (see “A Bomb in the Basement”).

Influential in his college and later years was Prof. John Hancock [chemistry 1955–89].

Dick earned an MS in psychology from Purdue University, followed by a PhD in social psychology from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

He wrote to the college: “While in graduate school I was one of those who wandered into the computing center and never came back. I began as an academic, a research assistant professor at the Center for Advanced Computation at the University of Illinois, where for seven years I published and perished. My area of interest was computer-mediated human communication, which was adjudged by sociology not to be sociology and by computer science as not really computer science. After realizing that I was not about to grab the brass ring of life at Urbana-Champaign, I took my externally funded research group to Washington, D.C., and began a three-year minicareer as a beltway bandit, working on government grants and contracts.”

Dick left the Bureau of Social Science Research to learn more about computer science, migrating to Silicon Valley, where he did “everything in software” from marketing to coding to designing to managing. [In 1998, he reported to Reed that he was working on a novel set in the Silicon Valley, where a brilliant woman heroine, who was a Reed graduate, foiled attempts at criminal hacking and computer malice.] Of the seven software company startups he founded or worked in—as chief executive officer, chief technical officer, software architect, development manager, product manager, and software engineer—none remained, but he had had fun in the process. Dick retired in 2005, and reported that he was busier than ever. “Between being security manager at my synagogue [Congregation Kol Emeth], a literary intellectual, and occasional

Raised in Portland, Peter attended Reed for three years beginning in 1963.

He did advanced work in mathematics in high school, and he continued to pursue this interest; but at Reed he discovered psychology, which became his intellectual passion. His Reed connections led to lifelong friendships with, among others, Steve Engel ’68, Vern Lindblad ’67, Steve Metz ’72, and Randy Puseman ’69. He earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Portland State University (PSU) in 1969 and a master’s degree in Asian studies and economics from the University of Oregon in 1983.

Peter suffered from chronic depression and was an alcoholic. He became sober for good in 1984 and devoted much of his career to helping others with similar challenges. He developed pragmatic cognitive therapies and accessible, behaviorally based materials and techniques to use with clients who ranged from teenage girls at a detention facility to adult Native Americans.

Moving to Seattle in 1991, Peter changed his legal name from Peter A. Dvorak to Peter D. Albert, and expanded his interests to include ways to more effectively communicate with people needing to make changes in their lives. He hosted and produced programs on public access television, including Seattle Stop Smoking; became active in Toastmasters, winning a regional competition; and developed and led workshops for both clients and addiction therapy professionals.

By 2004, however, a complex of medical conditions ended his career in addiction counseling.

Faced with chronic pain and limitations in his ability to write by hand, type, use a mouse, or drive, he moved back to Portland and started a new career tutoring statistics. Living in a modest downtown apartment, he built a client base among students in the social sciences and business at PSU. Over a 10-year period he helped them not only to pass exams, but to overcome math phobia and acquire an appreciation for and competence in using statistical tools.

Peter became fascinated by the work of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and others

in the field of cognition. His area of interest was how cognitive biases are rooted in the way neural networks are structured. He cultivated collaborative relationships with faculty in the psychology department and the Systems Science Program at PSU; gave informal presentations; and was instrumental in creating the Cognition and Systems Society and neural network reading group. Peter shared his materials with Randy, who will make his work products available on the web for all to enjoy.

Peter’s drive to share his discoveries to benefit others was with him until the end. He was a favorite with caregivers because he was engaging, cooperative, and appreciative. One day he told his hospice nurse that if he gained strength he would write a booklet called, “How to Be a Patient Patient,” and verbally gave her a list of the points he would cover. She wrote them down and later shared them at a staff meeting. Days before he died she told him that his list would be published in their newsletter. Although he was weak and fading in and out of consciousness, he smiled with pleasure.

Survivors include a sister and brother, cousin Ellen Luoma Ullrick ’73, who created this memorial for Peter, and cousin John Ullrick ’73, and their families.

Stephen Mitchell Tipton MAT ’68

May 12, 2015, in Sherborn, Massachusetts, following a 15-year battle with frontotemporal degeneration.

Steve earned a BA in English from Cornell University and then came to Reed, where he studied English literature. He also completed a certificate of advanced study in human development at Harvard University School of Education. He taught English for 32 years at Brookline High School, where he was instrumental in developing an innovative interdisciplinary curriculum. “Courses I took at Reed, Cornell, and Harvard gave me a wonderful, wide range of information and theory,” he wrote. “I certainly remember a great time at Reed.” Symptoms from primary progressive aphasia forced Steve to retire. He loved outdoor activities, including hiking, fishing, and gardening apples, rhododendrons, and vegetables. Steve and Sally Baldwin Tipton were married with three children, Becca, Nat, and Debby, and seven grandchildren—all survive him.

Vernon Marttala ’70

June 19, 2015, in Portland, from Parkinson’s disease.

Vernon was a botanist at heart, writes his sister, Cathy Marttala Douthit. His dedication to the Reed Herbarium began while he was still in college, and his writing on the subject was published in the Reed College Science Journal in december 2015 Reed magazine 51

In Memoriam 1969. He earned a BA from Reed in chemistry and went on to earn an MA from the New York Botanical Garden. Back in Oregon, he worked at Citizens Photo, developed his skills in photography, and did field studies with Prof. Bert Brehm [biology 1962–93] and the Native Plant Society of Oregon. In the early ’70s, Vernon identified a new species, Romanzoffia thompsonii Marttala, in the Rogue River National Forest, and published his findings. He contributed to the Native Plant Society’s bulletin and to other publications, and was coauthor of Urbanizing Flora of Portland, Oregon, 1806–2008. “Notes on the Reed College Herbarium, Particularly Its Origin,” which he completed in 2008 during his work on the herbarium renovation, reported on the nearly 10,000 regional specimens in the collection—the oldest dating to 1848. Over the years, he also made generous financial gifts to the herbarium and to the Annual Fund. “He spent his life photographing and cataloging plant specimens and left his vast collection to Reed,” Cathy reports. “Vernon was overwhelmed with emotion when he learned his life’s work had been accepted and will be used in the future

by Reed.”

Georgianne Schmuckal Kimberley ’75

August 23, 2015, in Portland, from cancer.

Georgianne came to Reed from the Academy of the Holy Child in Portland, and earned a BA in psychology, writing a thesis on the behavior of serval cats. Her 45-year career in telecommunications began in high school, when she was a directory assistance operator; continued through her years at Reed; and evolved into installation and maintenance for business telephone systems (including climbing telephone poles) and to senior systems engineer positions for the global and nationwide networks of AT&T, Cerium, FAST, and Avaya. Clients and coworkers held her in great respect. Georgianne is remembered as an exceptionally bright person, with a quick and delightful sense of humor, a love of travel, and a spirit for adventure. “She was kind and generous, and was forever a beacon for lost, misfit cats and dogs.” Survivors include her husband of 15 years, Ogden Kimberley, bagpiper for many Reed commencement ceremonies, and their extended families.

Gary Wallace Wright ’76

May 16, 2015, in Cincinnati, Ohio, from cancer.

“Gary can’t be summed up simply, as he was far from a simple soul,” writes his partner Anna B. Collins, who so admired the dignity and grace with which Gary dealt with his illness. “He was intelligent, interesting, a man of courageous character and conviction, a wine connoisseur, foodie, avid traveler, bicyclist, biker, runner, opera enthusiast, and a ladies man.”

52 Reed magazine december 2015

Gary Wright ’76

Gary grew up in San Diego, California, and earned a BA from Reed in sociology, writing a thesis on ascription in modern societies with Prof. John C. Pock [1955–98]. He also earned an MBA from the University of Maryland in 1985. Gary shared his liberal views with those he met and favored civil and political liberties to help those who were underprivileged or exploited, Anna reports.

In 2014, the city of Cincinnati recognized Gary for his accomplishments on behalf of the community, such as serving as chair of the successful campaign, Citizens to Restore Fairness, to repeal a charter amendment that prohibited passing laws to protect LGBTQ citizens from discrimination; and serving as first president of Queen City Bike, as a board member at Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio, and as demographer for the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce and the United Way. In the last year of his life, he completed his first novel, which he had worked on for many years, including a year in London. As his illness progressed, Gary provided Anna with a memorial statement to share with others, which includes the following: “Do something to relieve someone’s pain or suffering: Feed someone who is hungry, provide someone with clothes and shelter who have none, comfort someone in emotional pain. Do it for someone who is the least like you that you can find, who shares nothing with you but your humanity.”

In addition to Anna, survivors also include his sister Doreen, extended family, and friends.

David Edward Heinze ’79 June 3, 2015, in Des Moines, Iowa.

“David was very proud of his degree and affiliation with Reed College. Indeed, one of his finest accomplishments was his completion of this degree and subsequent acceptance to Phi Beta K appa,” re p o r t s h i s s i s t e r, Denise Heinze Newell. David engaged in the pursuit of knowledge from an early age. A devoted reader, well versed in a wide range of topics, he created challenges for himself, such as reading the complete works of Shakespeare.

He also enjoyed sports, beginning with Little League baseball. He was a graduate of Rock Island High School in Illinois, and earned a BA from Reed in American Studies, writing his thesis on transportation policy in the Por tland metro area with Prof. Peter Steinberger [political science 1977–]. He also attended Augustana College, Western Illinois University, and Duke University, where he studied law. David lived for several years in the Los Angeles area, working for the Disney Company as an underwriter and editor. He returned to Iowa and worked for Wellmark Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Iowa. David’s family and friends recall the care and support he gave them, as well as his “beautiful and brilliant” writing, his keen intellect, and his fantastic sense of humor.

In addition to Denise, David is survived by his mother and stepfather, Dorothy and Melvin; his sister, Debra; four nieces, and three great-nephews.

David Lynn Ranals ’79 May 21, 2015, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, from a heart attack.

David attended Reed for a year and also studied at Evergreen College and Denver University. He earned an MA from the University of Redlands and Cambridge University, and worked in project management and facilities operations. He also established several successful real estate and consulting businesses. David is remembered for having an exceptional intelligence and a wicked sense of humor. He was a gifted artist and designer who enjoyed cooking, gardening, and international travel. Survivors include his brother, Jim; and sisters Linda, Tammy, and Sharon Ranals ’76.

James Brougham Dinsdale ’84 May 20, 2015, in Estacada, Oregon.

A native of Tennessee, James moved with his family to a dairy farm near Cornelius, Oregon, in 1953 and attended Reed for five semesters.

His father was James H. Dinsdale ’40. His brother, Peter B. Dinsdale ’66, and sister, Sara S. Dinsdale ’68, also attended Reed. A rugby player at Reed, James also ran Hood to Coast races and coached Little League baseball. He farmed alfalfa and Christmas trees and did construction work. In 2006, he completed a BA at Marylhurst University, and in 2008, he earned a teaching certificate from George Fox University, and then taught at Reynolds Learning Academy, H.B. Lee Middle School, and at the Timber Lake Job Corps. James had a lifelong love of blues music. He sang and played a variety of instruments, though favoring his blues guitar. He had an independent streak and an irascible wit, coupled with a resilient and compassionate nature. Survivors include his beloved daughters, Meredith and Madeline.

Evan Stuart Rose ’86

July 13, 2015, at home in Brooklyn, New York, from cancer.

An architect whose innovative view of urban design and passion for life inspired students, colleagues, and friends, Evan fought a rare form of cancer for eight years.

“It’s cliché to say that somebody’s battle was ‘brave,’ but in Evan’s case, it was brave, honorable, public—nothing like I could even imagine for myself,” wrote John Manzo ’86. “A couple of weeks ago he posted pics of himself with his beautiful little son in the new wheelchair that, he wrote, his son had chosen for him. It was sweet and heartbreaking and honest and loving.”

Evan arrived at Reed when he was 17. It was his first choice for college, he said, and though he was astonished by the amount of required coursework, he loved the experience from the start. “Reed taught me how to think.

What more could I want?” Lifelong friendships formed during his undergraduate years included those with Ben Wirtschafter ’86, Sheldon Yett ’86, Deborah Kamali ’85, Kevan Shokat ’86, and Robert Wilson ’86. He earned a BA from Reed in international studies, writing his thesis “Babylon Makes the Rules: Inequality, Ideology, and the Perpetuation of the Status Quo in Jamaica” with Prof. Robert D. Whittemore [anthropology 1985–86]. He played piano and basketball, was a member of the social affairs board, and supported the student-led anti-apartheid movement.

After Reed, Evan went on to be a research assistant at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, where he also took classes in photography, film, and drawing. He enrolled at UC Berkeley and earned a master’s degree in architecture and environmental design. In 1992, he joined the San Francisco Planning Department and helped develop a comprehensive design plan for pedestrian spaces in San Francisco, including the award-winning San Francisco Waterfront Urban Design and Access Plan and the acclaimed Downtown Streetscape Plan.

“Where other planners take a bureaucratic approach to their job, content to enforce the rules, Mr. Rose saw his job as a way to enhance the pleasures of everyday life—making it easier to add sidewalk seating outside cafes, for instance, or trying to make the lines at the Powell Street cable car turnaround more civil,” wrote John King in his obituary for Evan in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“He could listen to people, and then sketch the drawing or diagram that would bring what everyone was talking about to life,” said Karen Alschuler, who hired Evan as a principal for the San Francisco firm SMWM in 1997. “You’d sit in the room with a team of city planners, and Evan just jumped out.” Evan led the SMWM urban design practice for 11 years and built the New York office for the firm. His sketches and watercolors, which he called Urbanologies, were featured in an exhibition in 2005 and

“Reed taught me how to think,” said Evan Rose ’86. “What more could I want?”

are represented online at urbanologies.com.

In 2008, Evan founded Urban Design+ and led a wide range of distinguished and challenging commissions across the United States and internationally, including the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative and Poplar Point Plans in Washington, D.C., the Willamette River Concept Plan, and the BI Village Greenville and Kamenskoe Plato projects in Kazakhstan.

He cofounded SITELAB Urban Studio in San Francisco in 2012. He also worked on affordable housing, believing that a city should be a home for everyone, regardless of income, background, or circumstances.

In addition, Evan served as adjunct associate professor of architecture at Columbia University, where he taught in the Graduate Urban Design Program. He served as a board member for the San Francisco American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the California Council of the AIA, and was president of the Architecture and Design Forum at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where he joined the board of directors.

Evan joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design (PennDesign) as professor of practice in the city and regional planning department in 2011. He received the 2014 G. Holmes Perkins Award for Outstanding Teaching.

In the PennDesign obituary for Evan, John Landis, chair of city and regional planning at the university, remarked: “From his first day leading his urban design studio, it was clear that Evan was special. He combined a love of cities with a clear sense of stewardship for their future as places for people. He also loved infusing his enthusiasm for cities and urban design in his students, and although his time at Penn was all too brief, he had a huge impact on how Penn’s planning and design students think about cities and how to make them more livable and more memorable.”

PennDesign dean Marilyn Jordan Taylor stated: “Evan Rose was the smartest urban designer I will ever know. He knew where urban design came from and, far more than the rest of us, where it had to go. His commitment to exploring the 21st-century public realm, with its diversity, technology, and edge, defined his works and his teaching. They will leave a lasting impression–indelible we might believe–on all those with whom, for whom and alongside whom he worked, taught, and learned.”

In 2007, Evan was diagnosed with an ossifying fibromyxoid tumor, which he was able to fight with the use of precision or personalized chemotherapy. “Yes, there’s all this cancer stuff that I deal with,” he wrote to Reed, “but for the most part I live a pretty normal life.”

The struggle and the success of this treatment were described in the article “The Perfect Drug” published in Newsweek in June 2014.

“My best friend at Reed (and to this day) is Kevan Shokat ’86, one of the world’s leading cancer researchers,” Evan wrote. “His contacts and his work are deeply intertwined with keeping me alive. Weird coincidence. Lucky me.”

Evan and Josslyn Shapiro were married with one son, Ryder.

Reed classmates, family, and friends have launched the Evan Rose Fund. Gifts in memory of Evan will support a student opportunity focusing on urban study and design. To make a gift, visit giving.reed.edu.

PENDING

Harris Dusenbery ’36, Elizabeth (Lamb) Tate ’39, Francis Ann Hazen ’42, Phyllis Riddell-Shapiro ’42, Ellen Talman ’42, Ellis Herbon ’44, Hadley C. Meinders ’44, Jean (Leonard) Ullman ’45, Ena June Shrauger ’47, Bonnie Robison ’49, Gloria Conver ’50, Iris Burton Holt ’50, Roddy Daggett ’51, Kenneth Jacobsen ’51, Mary Jo Mickelson Gillespie ’55, David Novogrodsky ’55, Lyn McGuire ’57, Robert McRae ’58, Frederick Anderson ’59, Keith Mills ’60, Elizabeth (Berry) Barber ’63, Peter D. Albert ’67, Elizabeth Fink ’67, Penelope Cofrin ’75, Joel M. Schuman ’78, Jennifer Ingham ’97, Julia Bean ’05.

december 2015 Reed magazine 53

apocrypha

tradition • myth • legend

A Bomb in the Basement

BY RICHARD C. ROISTACHER ’65

It was such a very little bomb. Surely not a bomb large enough to worry about. At least, not immediately. In fact, it was hardly even a bomb at all. But enough of a bomb to get a bang and, from the dean, a whimper.

In May 1961, I was finishing the first of my two junior years at Reed. One of the things I did to quiet my anxieties (which were many) while not studying (which was often), was to shoot a pistol on the range under the Old Gym [located roughly where Kaul Auditorium now stands, demolished in 1965—Ed]. The range, which seems to have begun life as a crawl space, was too damp and insecure to store weapons and ammunition. The Reed College Rifle Club therefore maintained a set of lockers in the basement of Ladd House, a women’s dorm close to the range. The lockers were little square things; the sort of lockers you got in junior high school gym classes, where they didn’t care if your clothes got mashed. Each locker we secured by a cheap warded lock, the kind opened with a sheet metal key with notches cut into it. (Remember this detail; it will be useful later.)

One afternoon in May, I went to Ladd for a pistol and some ammunition. I had temporary custody of a ring of keys to all the lockers. While searching for some cleaning solvent, I looked in a previously opened locker. There, behind a heap of cleaning patches, was a small bottle bearing a plain paper label on which was written “PbN3.” If the label were to be believed, the several ounces of grey-brown stuff in it was lead azide—a primary explosive.

And now, gentle reader, a digression. A primary explosive is one used in primers. It detonates when struck or, perhaps, when heated.

Primary explosives are useful, but not popular. Alfred Nobel got rich turning the primary nitroglycerin into the safer dynamite.

I knew all of this at the time because, while my first home was Reed, my second home was Detachment 3, Company A, 17th Special Forces Group (Airborne), U.S. Army Reserve. I was a gung-ho reservist, having joined the army after dropping out at the end of my freshman year. I had been trained, and

54 Reed magazine december 2015

Philosophy major Dick Roistacher ’65 went to see Dean Ann Shepard ’23 about his unpleasant discovery.

worked on reserve weekends, as a demolitionist; making loud noises; polluting the air; cutting four-by-four timbers, railroad tracks, and girders; and teaching others to do the same.

I opened the jar, saw that it was about half full of whatever it was full of, put it back, and went off to shoot my pistol. Since I am somewhat absent minded and it was, after all, a very little bomb, I forgot all about it for the remainder of the summer.

I returned to campus in late August.

About a week before the beginning of classes, I remembered the jar in the locker in the basement of the dorm. It really was time to get rid of the thing. Unfortunately, I had given my ring of keys back to Lee Bull ’62, the president and éminence grise of the rifle club. Lee was in parts unknown, probably in

Dean Shepard was discomfited to find that lead azide is a primary explosive. the national rifle matches in Ohio.

In those days, when faced with an otherwise insurmountable problem, one went to see Ann Shepard ’23 [dean of students 1926–68]. A tall, thin spinster with an angular New England face, Dean Shepard had listened sympathetically to countless hours of student anguish and looniness, including several hours of mine. I was therefore surprised when my innocent account of a bottle of high explosive in the basement of one of her dormitories discomfited her so much that she immediately called the police.

Very soon Officer Q.P. Humpelmeyer1 arrived, accompanied by two reporters from the Oregonian, who attached themselves like barnacles to chairs in Dean Shepard’s office.

Officer Humpelmeyer had on his sleeve a patch in the shape of an aerial bomb, on which were the initials “EORA.” I assumed that the patch meant that Officer Humpelmeyer was an EOD, an explosive ordinance disposal specialist, a grandmaster in the league of those who deal with explosives. An EOD is 1

A pseudonym. The only one in this story.

a graduate of a yearlong course that qualifies him or her to go down into a 30-foot hole to unscrew booby-trapped fuses from a World War II bomb, or defuse a World War III nuke.

I later found out that EORA stood for “explosive ordinance reconnaissance agent,” which meant that he had taken a one-day course in what a bomb looks like.

Officer Humpelmeyer’s first question was, “What’s lead azide?” I was too busy trying to impress him with my knowledge and general explosive expert’s savoir faire to catch the hint of ignorance. It is not always true that knowledge conquers ignorance. Sufficiently large and vigorous ignorance can grab a tiny scrap of knowledge, skin it, and wear it like a coonskin cap.

I told him (and the reporters) that lead azide is a primary explosive, with a sixinch drop test. Now all of us real explosives experts know that a Picatinny drop test is done in a machine that drops a one-pound steel hammer on a small cup of explosive.

An explosive with a six-inch drop test could probably be dropped several feet without danger of detonation. Such a small and tender piece of knowledge was instantly caught and skinned. The evening’s readers of the Oregonian learned that a mere six-inch jostle would set off what was now “the Reed College bomb.”

Since no keys were available, the police bomb expert was joined by the police lock expert. While the bomb expert was underqualified, the lock expert was overqualified.

He had the equipment to pick all sorts of expensive cylinder locks, but nothing to pick a cheap warded lock. An afternoon of tweaking and twiddling went by without any success at opening the locker. Since everyone knew that the bomb was but six inches from doomsday, there was no question of drilling through the lock.

Finally, Orval Agee [1929–72], the head of Reed’s maintenance department, who had been watching for some time, spoke up to ask if anyone was interested in using his master key. They were; they did, and in seconds, the locker was open. (In the Reed of bricks, pipes, shrubs, and locks, Orval was sovereign.)

Now that the devilish device was exposed, what was to be done? Parked in front of the

55

apocrypha

continued

dorm were several police cruisers, an army jeep from Vancouver Barracks bearing the red fenders designating an EOD vehicle, and a battered Chevrolet station wagon belonging to Bill Ellston, my special forces buddy and qualified EOD specialist. The owners of this stationary car chase lounged around the basement, discussing who would do what.

After a brief conference, the police and the army bomb squad agreed that Bill and I were perfectly qualified to dispose of the jar. Dean Shepard, who did not share this opinion, sent Prof. John Hancock [chemistry 1955–89] with us to maintain order and shield us from the press.

Prof. Hancock was a Reed legend. A character out of Masterpiece Theatre, he combined Mr. Chips with John Cleese. He was my mentor and friend during all my time at Reed, even though I dropped the one course I took

Prof. Hancock delivered a lecture on the chemistry of lead azide, while courageously holding the deadly bottle in his very hand. from him with an F. He was a tall, angular man, with a reputation for being unflappable. That reputation was somewhat scored by the explosion of the Reed College bomb.

The four of us, Bill, John, myself, and the jar of lead azide, set off for our secret destination. Bill’s father had a farm outside the city, and on it we reservists kept a magazine of explosives. The army issued explosives only in 50-pound cases, and only after extensive bureaucratic purification rites. Since my unit never used a full case at one time, and liked to operate in a somewhat less formal fashion, we, quite against regulations, had our own stash. Our plan was to take the jar to the farm, prime it with a single blasting cap, and get rid of it.

“I’m glad you didn’t try to open that jar last spring,” Bill said to me, as we bounced along a dirt road.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because old lead azide can form crystals. If there are crystals in the threads of the cap, opening the jar can leave you blind and fingerless.”

56 Reed magazine december 2015

“Oh,” I said tonelessly. I decided not to mention that I had opened the jar.

We arrived at the farm to find a TV news crew with its camera already set up. As the camera rolled, Prof. Hancock delivered a lecture on the chemistry of lead azide, while courageously holding the deadly bottle in his very hand. In the background, Bill pried open a case of C-4 plastic explosive. I tried to look nonchalant while crimping a detonator and fuse lighter onto a time fuse that draped around my neck like a python around a carnival snake charmer.

Our original plan of detonating the jar with a single cap was abandoned in our media-inspired frenzy. We placed the bottle next to a stump and I primed a half-pound block of TNT to place next to it. Then Bill added five pounds of C-4 to the heap, and I added another pound of TNT that I found in my pocket. The newsies asked if we could put some dirt on the mess; we did. They asked if perhaps we could use something more interesting than a stump as a demolition site, perhaps that little structure over there.

Bill observed that his father would not appreciate it if we blew up his hayrick.

I had measured three minutes’ worth of time fuse. Since I had primed the charge, it was my duty to fire it. Everyone else took cover several hundred feet from the stump.

I checked the charge, the fuse, and the fuse lighter, a plastic gadget with a pull ring. The rule is that if you prime a charge that does not explode, then you must investigate and clear the misfire. The rule generally ensures careful work. I pulled the pin from the lighter, heard it pop, checked to see that the fuse was burning, and walked slowly back to colleagues and camera. Never run from a charge; you can trip, hurt yourself, or tear things up.

I got it right. We saw the results on the evening news, where the Reed College bomb was the lead local story. There was a shot of the police and the army waiting outside Ladd.

Then the film cut to John, bottle in hand, lecturing deadpan into the camera. Behind him, we Corsican pirates prepared our deadly wares, trying not to gape into the camera.

Finally came the static scene of a field, empty but for the stump, while on the sound track, John’s clipped, British voice counted down, “Five, four, three, two, one . . . any time now . . . .” Then it happened.

Had the charge consisted of a blasting cap and a bottle containing sand, “it” would have been a pop and a puff of dust. Had the bottle contained lead azide, “it” would have

been a bang and a cloud of dust. But through the miracle of television, “it” consisted of a bright orange flash, a deafening boom, and a 100-foot flume of black smoke and dust.

Thus was the world shown what would have happened in the basement of Ladd House had the bottle dropped the deadly six inches.

The dean was not amused. We were.

Dean Shepard and John Hancock are dead now. I have not seen Bill Ellston in 26 years, and Officer Humpelmeyer’s fate is unknown to me. I was told who put the bottle in the locker, but it is for that person to say so. It all happened, and I am sure that it all happened exactly as I remember. Who else is left to say otherwise?

Ed. Note: We are sad to report that Dick Roistacher ’65 died in June (see In Memoriam). After learning of his demise, we stumbled upon this piece in the archives.

It was written in 1989, shortly after the death of Prof.

Hancock.

Reunions SAV E T H E DAT E : J U N E 8 – 1 2 , 2 0 1 6

For honor, for intellect, for community, for Reed.

Reed College Reunions reed.edu/alumni blogs.reed.edu/riffin_griffin alumni@reed.edu 503/777-7589

REED COLLEGE

3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard Portland, Oregon 97202-8199

Periodicals Postage Paid Portland, Oregon

leah nash

Offspring of Reed Generations of Yesteryear: Ethan Manuel ’96, Stephanie Manuel, and Jordan Witt ’19. Julia Gatenio ’19 (Alberto Gatenio ’84). Katherine Woods-Morse ’01 and Torin Woods-Eliot ’19.

Ellen Eades ’86 and Marchas Bamberger ’19. Keith Allen ’83 and Emily Allen ’19. Barbara Bull McGough ’90, Bruce McGough ’91, and Miranda McGough ’19. Shadab Hashmi ’95 and Yaseen Hashmi ’19.