Portland Magazine spring 2014

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CELEBRATING FATHER BILL

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VISITATION DAY Here’s a small thing that isn’t. As usual, as always. A father and his daughter are strolling across the University campus. It’s Visitation Day — the last day before new students either enroll here or decide to go elsewhere, poor things. So the campus this morning is filled with students and their parents and sometimes grandparents and they are all walking in every direction toward every sort of informational meeting imaginable.

It’s all beautifully meticulously planned and paced and there is excellent signage and there are tall confident friendly current students acting as guides and ambassadors and the campus is glowing in the sudden sunlight, partly because the groundskeepers spent the previous week begging the roses and dogwoods to bloom and editing scraggly bushes and laying down redolent bark dust and erecting bright new banners and persuading the ground squirrels to take a day off from mating in small wriggling knots on the main quadrangle.

Because we are a Catholic university we dearly love the title Visitation Day because we think that Mary the Mother of Jesus has a wry sense of humor, and when She is apprised of the date of our Visitation Day She will smile and clear Her calendar and decide to visit, probably registering Her Son in the humanities, although there are those of us who think of Him more as an engineer or an entrepreneur. One of us annually puts in for a special parking pass for Her and Her Son in front of the gym where the opening informational motivational session starring the president is held, but we never are actually granted Her pass, which maybe why She has not yet come for Visitation Day, that we know about.

The father and the daughter in the opening paragraph of this essay are actually heading directly toward our sweet lovely bronze statue of Mary the Mother of Jesus, which stands at the nexus of several pathways, so that no matter how you are cutting across the quadrangle you must pass pretty close by Her left hand, which is held out in greeting or blessing to passersby, and many is the time I have seen someone scurrying past lean toward Her and brush his fingers against Her fingers, which always moves me deeply, and has more than once made me weep, for murky reasons. Also I have seen students place notes in Her hand, and I have seen a man holding Her hand while praying with his head bowed so low I bet his neck was sore for days, and twice now I have seen Her hand filled with snow.

As the daughter walked with her father she twice danced all around him so smoothly and gracefully that he never broke stride but only smiled, and then just before they got to Mary the Mother of Jesus, the daughter, now back in stride with her dad, reached for his hand, and he took her hand, and for another few steps they walked hand in hand, just like they must have done when she was a tiny girl, although now she was a tall woman. By now they were only a few steps from Mary but I never did see if either or both of them reached for Her fingers because I was standing in the redolent bark dust under the oak trees weeping yet again.

You would think a man long past age fifty would be able to explain or at least try to explain why a young woman reaching for her father’s hand so gently like that would set him to watering the oaks but I haven’t the faintest idea. Perhaps it was the sharp stinging scent of the bark dust in my eyes. Perhaps it was because my daughter is a woman now and we used to walk hand in hand when she was tiny and when we did I was so happy there are no words for how happy I was. Perhaps because it is always Visitation Day in this bruised blessed world and when we reach for each other in the sudden sunlight we are also somehow reaching for Her. That could be. That could most certainly be. n Brian Doyle is the editor of this magazine and the author most recently of A Shimmer of Something, a collection of ‘proems.’

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F E A T U R E S 14 / The Line of Light, by David James Duncan ’04 hon.

Love, death, swallows, prayers, pens, and the Wildness that made us all.

18 / Attending, photographs by Mia Kennel and Michael Casey In Guatemala with nurse Mary Stempel ’78 and her medical colleagues, trying to heal a little of the bruised blessed world. page 14

22 / Aphorisms, by Yahia Lababidi “Certain silences are actions... You can’t bury pain and not expect it to grow roots... The ultimate act of trust in life is to have children...

Just be yourself, they say; but which one?...”

24 / Father Bill, by Brian Doyle The University’s wry calm witty patient 19th president takes stock after ten years, as he strolls toward his final day as boss this spring. page 18

28 / Faith of Our Fathers, by George Venn An epiphany, one spring evening long ago, in the wide green hand of the Skagit Valley.

33 / The Best Professor No One Knows, by Marc Covert ’93 The University’s tart brilliant funny energetic bicyclomaniac photography teacher, Pat Bognar.

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2 / The new president of the University!!, the energetic Father Mark Poorman, C.S.C. 4 / The hardest-working people on campus, period 5 / Queen of Freshmen: the ebullient Brenda Greiner 6 / The Kindest Man Ever: the late great physics professor Paul Wack 7 / Inside the University’s Crab Lab in Swindells Hall 8 / “What are you doing for people like me?” U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy on The Bluff page 24

9 / Korey Thieleke ’14: “I won’t always play ball here, but I’ll always be a Pilot...”

10 / “My great-great-great-grandfather was a saint...” — Phu Nguyen ’16 11 / Now filming on campus: NBC’s Grimm (and Nike, and Hollywood movies, and...)

12 / Sports, celebrating retiring women’s basketball coach Jim Sollars (nearly 600 wins as coach, and 26 WCC All-Academic players, wow) 37 / The late brilliant generous energy of Father Ambrose Wheeler, C.S.C. 48 / How I found the right parents for my daughter: Sydney Syverson ’11.

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THE UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND MAGAZINE

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Cover photo of University president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., by Oregon photographer Steve Hambuchen (www.stevehambuchen.com).

Spring 2014: Vol. 33, No. 1 President: Rev. E. William Beauchamp, C.S.C. Founding Editor: John Soisson Editor: Brian Doyle Brilliant Grumpy Deft Designers: Matt Erceg & Joseph Erceg ’55 Mooing Assistant Editors: Marc Covert ’93 & Amy Shelly Harrington ’95 Fitfully Contributing Editors: Louis Masson, Sue Säfve, Terry Favero, Mary Beebe Portland is published quarterly by the University of Portland. Copyright ©2014 by the University of Portland. All rights reserved. Editorial offices are located in Waldschmidt Hall, 5000 N. Willamette Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97203-5798. Telephone (503) 943-8225, fax (503) 943-7178, e-mail address: bdoyle@up.edu, Web site: http://www.up.edu/portland. Third-class postage paid at Portland, OR 97203.

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

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The University’s Twentieth President: Father Mark Poorman, C.S.C.

JERRY HART

Elected by the Board of Regents in January to succeed the wry calm Father Bill Beauchamp, who steps down after ten remarkable years.

And his successor’s dreams and visions for the University he will lead as of July?

“I think we are too humble,” he says, smiling but not kidding. “We’ve been too modest. We are producing extraordinary students who are technically and professionally savvy, who have had concrete experience in personal formation and ethical decision-making, who are intent on contributing to the common good. In this time of enormous economic pressure, they are terrific resources for companies and communities.

The world wants and needs them and we will do much better at showing the world how to find them. Much better.

“My vision is that we are unabashedly and unapologetically about character formation, in every sense. I am not talking merely applied ethics, although we need to do more of that here as well. I am talking every aspect of life, about real moral education and development. I’d like us to establish a genuine expertise and a respected reputation for that. Why not us? Our Catholic character is the perfect context for this, especially now, with this Pope — a big-tent open-hearted place where we are reaching out to help others rather than huddling behind a wall with like believers. There’s an energy and creativity here that we have to bring out to thousands more people in the city, the region, the nation. We have got to do a much better job of telling the world who we are, how great our students are, how unique our Holy Cross approach to education is. It’s time to really raise the profile.

That’s my overarching dream, I suppose.

“Details? Two priorities — academic infrastructure, and scholarships. We need new academic offices and classrooms.

We’re way behind there. We need a real student center, to gather and expand student services, especially career prep.

We need two new residence halls — I’d like to get up to 70% of students living on campus. And we’ll start work on the river campus, probably with practice fields first. And we need ever more scholarships. A kid who wants to be here, who can do the work, who is hungry for what we can provide, has got to have access to financial help.”

He’ll continue to teach a class — his beloved “Character Project.” He will reluctantly leave Schoenfeldt Hall, although he wants to keep celebrating his famous Wednesday night Mass there. His first phone call when elected was to his mom and dad. He begins a really hard and possibly amazing job on July 1. He could use your prayers. Keep your eyes peeled — this could be a stunning voyage, with Father Mark at the helm.

Editor

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“These I singing in spring collect for lovers,” says our greatest poet, wild exuberant Walt Whitman, “here, lilac, with a branch of pine; here, some moss which I pulled off a liveoak…” ¶ Among the saints celebrated in April: Julie and Joseph, Anthony and Agnes, George and Hugh, Isidore and Stanislaus, and the estimable brave tough tart testy salty blunt rude Damien of Molokai, of whom no less than Robert Louis Stevenson wrote elegy (“An Open Letter to the Reverend Doctor Hyde”). ¶ Spring is a massive bloom on campus, especially the cherry trees on the west quad; architect Dan Danielson stitched them everywhere, and when they bloom and the breeze rises there is an unforgettable redolent snow and sweet shower. Thank you, Daniel.

ARTS & LETTERS Washington Post writer Brigid Schulte ’84 reads from her new book Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has Time, April 10 at 7.30 in The Commons, free. ¶ Poet Lilah Hegnauer ’04 is back on campus to read from her new book Pantry, March 31, 7:30 p.m., BC 163. ¶ On stage in Hunt Theater April 9-13: Will Shakespeare’s Cymbeline.

Details: 503.943.7287. ¶ Same stage, April 23-24: staged readings of new plays by students. ¶ Same stage in June: the glorious Mock’s Crest annual summer light opera, this year Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe, from June 6-29. ¶ And the usual sweet slather of jazz, choral, orchestral, and sym-

THE FACULTY The University’s new president (our twentieth), a professor of theology and scholar of character and ethics, begins his duties officially on July 1, and will formally be inaugurated in September; to meet him, look to your left. ¶ The nineteenth president, the wry calm Father Bill Beauchamp, a professor of business, finishes his ten-year tenure this spring, and will return to Notre Dame to serve his estimable religious order, the men of Holy Cross.

He will be celebrated and justly so on May 8, at a gala event formally closing the $175 million Rise Campaign. See page 24. ¶ Retiring this spring, after 50 years as a professor of philosophy: Thom Faller, who will be feted at Reunion on June 28. (For the whole remarkable panoply of Reunion events, see alumni. up.edu, or call 503.943.7328.) The only other professor with 50 years of teaching: the late Paul Wack (see page 6.) ¶ Also retiring this May, after 35 and 31 years, respectively: literature professor Herman Asarnow

and his wry and patient spouse, psychology professor Susan Baillet. ¶ And biologist Chris Kodadek (32 years), sociologist Bob Duff (42 years), librarian Caroline Mann (16 years), and the irrepressible brilliant political scientist Father Claude Pomerleau, C.S.C. (23 years).

What a loss.

THE UNIVERSITY The University’s soaring Rise Campaign officially ends on May 8, with a gala celebration in the Chiles Center, starring the great Portland band Pink Martini. Details: Laura Hanna, 503.943.8607. ¶ Whole Foods Market co-CEO Walter Robb will deliver the annual Bauccio Lecture in creative business, free and open to all, March 27 in BC Aud. ¶ The annual State of the University speech from the president about where we stand/alumni awards event is April 1 at the MAC Club in downtown Portland; tickets are $20. Call 503.943.7202 for details. ¶ The national Alumni Day of Service this year is April 26; see alumni.up.edu to find projects in your region. ¶ Reunion this year is June 26-29, with special events for Salzburg Program alumni and Villa Maria residents over the years. Details: 503.943.7328. ¶ Chris Corrado ’82, CEO of one of Oregon’s best ‘green companies,’ Environments, speaks about his work March 31 at 7 p.m. in BC Aud, free to all. ¶ Ann Garrido from the Aquinas Institute in Missouri will talk about spirituality and administration, April 11, from 9 am to 2 p.m. in Bauccio Commons, free and open to all.

STUDENT LIFE Spring is election season for students: the new student president and officers, editor of The Beacon, editor of The

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Log, and manager of radio station KDUP are chosen in spring. ¶ March 28: students and faculty celebrate Cesar Chavez’s birthday: the visionary American social activist died in 1993, at age 66. ¶ April 4 in Mago Hunt at 7:30 p.m.: the hilarious Bluffoons improve comedy troupe, led by Christopher Belisle, one of the first 3 students to win the new Humor Scholarship. ¶ April 8: Founders’ Day, on which all classes are canceled and hundreds of student performances, exhibits, speeches, and readings enliven campus; all welcome. See www.up.edu/ foundersday. ¶ The University closes at 4 p.m. on Holy Thursday, April 17 this year; the most haunting event of the year is Good Friday in the chapel. ¶ Commencement: May 3 (graduate) and 4 (undergraduate). The speaker on May 4 will be NBC environmental reporter Anne Thompson.¶ And then summer sessions begin on May 12.

FROM THE PAST Some notable spring days in University history…March 8, 1957, when sophomore Donald Gorger installed his own phone in room 24 of Christie Hall, the first private phone on campus…March 27, 2002, the prickly hilarious brilliant history professor Father Barry Hagan, C.S.C., dies at age 70, and probably immediately stated arguing eruditely with his Maker…

March 29, 1968: Senator Robert Kennedy swings by campus while campaigning in Oregon for the Democratic nomination for president; 1000 folks packed the Commons to hear him…April 20, 1967: the Congregation of Holy Cross hands over all authority, properties, assets, and charter to the newly formed Board of Regents, wow.

ARTWORK BY MARY MILLER DOYLE

THE SEASON

phonic ensembles, performing Britten, Bernstein, and Tchaikovsky, among much else: call 503.943.7228 for details. ¶ Discussing the image of God in Saint Augustine’s Confessions and Terrence Malick’s film The Tree of Life: Notre Dame philosophy professor John O’Callaghan, March 22 in BC Aud. A free screening of the film is at 3 p.m., and John’s burble at 6. Details: Jamie Powell in the Garaventa Center, 503.943.7702. ¶ Mark your calendars now: the best Catholic novelist in America will be on campus for a free Schoenfeldt Series reading and talk on February 25, 2015.

Welcome, Alice McDermott.

Homework: read Charming Billy and After This.

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Fact: the coolest hardest-working people of all anywhere are those who get down on their blessed knees and clean toilets.

Those are the coolest people. Here are some of the 48 patient diligent graceful calm witty people who do that at the University of Portland, night and day. Bless you. Thank you.

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…who has run the Shepard Freshman Resource Center since 2006, and done so deftly and hilariously and remarkably, for which she earned a roaring standing ovation in December, when she won the University’s annual Miltner Award as best administrator.

The Center’s mission: know every single first-year student; catch the ones who are struggling and lonely; make sure at least five staffers know about every freshman; be versed in course loads, emotional and financial counsel, career preparation, airline and bus schedules, all faculty and health center and residence hall staff; offer free cocoa and cider (5000 cups disbursed last year) and tissues (3600 sheets); handle all staff, faculty, and parent referrals (146 direct requests last year) dealing with family trauma, faculty worried about students, hall staff worried about students, and social angst; connect freshman to learning assistance, health center, campus ministry, career services, etc.; and have meetings with students and everyone else as necessary (more than 5,000 meetings in seven years, so far). Whew.

“Worth it,” she says, grinning. “We meet the ones who need us. We listen hard. We try to reframe the discussion from not doing well to what needs to happen. It’s not time management; it’s understanding that college time is different. Kids leave here because of fit, academics, or money, mostly, and we can work with the second and third of those.

We want to make their roads here easier.

Our biggest asset is parents, actually— parents hear trouble before we do, and they’ll call us for help.

“Hardest times? Between Thanksgiving and Christmas in the fall, and between spring break in March and finals in April. Everyone’s tired. I’m tired. But we are the one place that speaks both academics and student service language, and we have listened to thousands of kids, so we have a sense of common problems – homesickness, money, romantic trouble, trouble grappling with independence and responsibility. Our rules are (a) we don’t give wrong information and (b) the goose chase stops here. Our best tool? The freshmen cohorts – every freshman gets assigned to a sort of small tribe by academic interest. There’s 66 of those, maybe 13 students each. Those matter first semester when you don’t know a soul otherwise.

Coolest dream? Find more ways to get connected with upperclassmen who are struggling. Eventually maybe we’ll be the Student Resource Center.

“Listen, I was one of thousands of freshmen at a big college, and I floundered, and no one helped me. That’s not going to happen here, I swear. If we can give kids one moment when they can steady themselves, we did right. And sometimes years later they tell you it mattered. I have a set of Army Airborne wings on my desk from a kid who we helped who then earned his wings. He came in and handed them to me and said he never forgot our help. Sure, I cry when I talk about that. Sure I do…”

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PHOTO BY JERRY HART

The 2013 Employee of the Year: The Exuberant Ebullient Brenda Greiner…

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THE KINDEST MAN I EVER MET The wonderful gentle friendly physics professor Paul Wack died in November, at age 94, and was eulogized with immense affection and humor by his colleague Karl Wetzel, in Paul’s beloved Holy Cross Church, which he had served for sixty years.

The breadth of his knowledge in physics was most impressive and it continued to impress me even after we had both retired from the University. Often, even as an experienced teacher, I would go to Paul to ask for a suggestion of how to explain a certain point or how to prepare a demonstration for the lecture room. He always was a generous resource—a day or two later he would hand me a sheet with calculations and a sketch, and an idea that he had worked out. Sometimes it included a page number where an article could be found in a journal that he just happened to remember and sometimes it might be some hardware that he had set up for the lecture demonstration.

I never knew Paul to lose patience with a student or a colleague. Never did he raise his voice in a meeting, and goodness knows most of the rest of us did, at one time or another. Were these qualities born of his Midwestern roots, his Catholic life and education, or of the very nature of the man himself? In recent years his equanimity and his faith carried him through a difficult period in which he lost his wife, Mary Ellen, and his older son, Paul. Likewise, his care as a nurturing father and grandfather flowed from this same richness of spirit, as his son Ed will soon relate.

While Paul officially retired in 1986, after 37 years of service, he continued to teach for another 13 years, finally stepping down in 1999 after fifty years of uninterrupted service. He was also a foundational force in the physics department, and he earned many grants, among them one from the National Science Foundation, to bring high school teachers

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of physics and chemistry to campus for two or three summer, which directly benefitted some sixty teachers and untold students.

But those are not Paul’s great accomplishments; his intrinsic curiosity and kindness are the true measures of the man. Let me illustrate. Paul and I exchanged many emails after we both retired; here are a few which are classic Paul Wack in curiosity, subtlety, and innocence.

“I found a nearly-new golf ball in the park and decided to measure the coefficient of restitution between it and the concrete basement floor.

“If Superman were to throw a 15pound bowling ball with a velocity of

4,000 miles per hour toward a 3,000 pound car approaching at 40 miles per hour, the elastic collision would stop the car.

“The latest edition of the American Physical Society News has an article on the life and work of the French mathematician, Jean Baptiste Fourier. I was surprised to learn that he was almost beheaded.

“At what time between 2 and 3 o’clock are the hour and minute hands at right angles to each other?

An imagined or actual glance at the face of a clock would suggest about 2:25. I did the problem, and found the time to be 2:27 and 16 seconds.

I added a part B to the problem: What is the angle between the hands at Portland 6

2:25? It is 88 degrees.

“Last night I got out of bed to go to the bathroom and one of my two slippers was not on the floor at the edge of the bed. I looked with a flashlight but could not find it, so I got up with one slipper on, walked to the foot of the bed, turned left and there was the missing slipper on the floor. Quantum physics tells me that there is a probability that the position of the slipper could be at the foot of the bed.

“The sprinkling egg experiment requires that you spin a hard-boiled egg in a saucer of milk. After I hard-boiled an egg and tried to reproduce the experiment I could not get it to work; the egg did not spin correctly.

My experiment was a failure.

I ate the egg.

“For several weeks now I feel warmth after I have laid down in bed with the left side of my head resting on a polyurethane pillow. My explanation is that this is an adiabatic compression of the pillow so that the temperature increases.

“I dropped a super ball from a height of one meter upon our kitchen table, and tried to measure the rebound height.

It was about 80 centimeters.

I then put the ball in the freezer and was surprised that the frozen ball rebounded to the same height as when it was unfrozen. [This experiment conducted when he was 93 years old.]

“Every morning I have microwaved oatmeal with raisins and a prune mixed in.

My tongue tells me that the raisins and prunes are hotter that the oatmeal. I attribute this to the fact that the raisins and prunes are black and the oatmeal is grey.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful, still, today, to be in an open-ended class with Paul? Such enthusiasm and wonder!

Let me leave you with the words of Tom Nelson, former dean of the School of Engineering at the University, who spoke of Paul just a few days ago. “I met Paul when I arrived at the University in 1974,” said Tom. “He is, without exception, the kindest person I have ever known.

I have often wondered what a special world it would be if every person were as kind as Paul.”

Amen, Tom. Amen.

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The funniest hour on campus in recent months: the University’s child care kids visiting Swindells Hall’s crab lab, where biology professor Tara Maginnis and her students study crabs, snails, chitons, anemones, algae, fish, and sea urchins.

O my it was hilarious, and wet. The Crab Lab could use Campaign gifts, sure it could; call Diane Dickey at 503.943.8130, dickey@up.edu.

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WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR PEOPLE LIKE ME? U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy was on campus this fall, as a guest of the Garaventa Center for American Catholic Life. Some of his remarks: I think people who did not live through the election of John Kennedy as president don’t fully realize that it made America come to terms with a longlingering, deeply ingrained, often-invisible anti-Catholic bias. Kennedy’s victory made people actually face it, face the fact that Catholicism had been called the Ku Klux Klan without the white sheets, and worse. I’ve always enjoyed the quip from Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson, who himself had run for president and tangled with the leading mainstream Protestant clergyman at the time, Norman Vincent Peale. Peale had said that Kennedy was unfit for the presidency because he was Catholic.

Stevenson replied, “Speaking as a Christian, I find the apostle Paul appealing and the apostle Peale appalling.”

But this anti-Catholic fear and bias was a serious and unresolved issue at that time. It was an old bias even then in this nation. My maternal grandparents, Catholics, came to this country from Italy and settled in the small town of Rye, Vermont. My grandfather and his brother were both master stone-carvers, but they were looked on as papists who spoke funny. The nearest Catholic church was 20 miles away, and the priest, when he came to visit my grandparents, would enter though the back door of the house, with the shades all drawn, to say Mass for all the Catholics within miles. It didn’t end then, either. My grandfather, Patrick Leahy, died when my father was in his early teens, and my father went to work to support his mother and his sister, and yes, he read signs that said NO IRISH NEED APPLY and NO CATHOLICS NEED APPLY. My father did find work, as a printer, but he was told he could not be promoted because he was Catholic. So he started his own company, which is still in business — the other company closed long ago.

The state of Vermont has changed

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considerably from those days. I was the first Catholic to be elected to the United States Senate from Vermont; now that’s a non-issue. The acceptance of gay and lesbian communities in Vermont is now no longer an issue. And there is a proud legacy of independent thought and action in my state: We were the first state to outlaw slavery in our constitution, for example.

But I remember…

I remember campaigning for John Kennedy door-to-door, while wearing my St. Michael’s College jacket, and people telling me they didn’t like Richard Nixon, but I couldn’t seriously expect them to vote for a Catholic.

And they didn’t —Nixon won handily, even though Kennedy was our nextdoor neighbor. I thought about all this 14 years later, when I announced my candidacy for the United States Senate, and my campaign team took a poll about the Catholic question.

Notice the change: 5% of the people in Vermont said they would not vote for me because I was Catholic, and another 5% said they would vote for me because I was Catholic!

So that’s a bit of how my Catholic faith centers my life, forms my perspectives, sparks my career as a public servant. But let me be serious here: the Catholic ideals of social justice and service are what I believe in, what I believe we must do. I believe that faith enlightens hearts. Faith propels us to serve others, to put ourselves in their shoes. Faith allows us to stand up for the oppressed, the hungry, the afflicted. Does this sound like the Gospels? Exactly so. Faith enables us to give voice to those who are voiceless and powerless.

I have over my desk in my office in Washington a photograph I call my conscience picture. It’s a photograph I took in a refugee camp. A man with a stubbled beard staring straight at me. Every time I see him he asks me, What are you doing for people like me?

I think the first amendment of the Constitution is the most important thing we have —the right to exercise our faith, to practice the religion of our choice, or no religion. That amendment delivers the right to free speech. If you guarantee the right to religion, the right to make up your own mind, to speak as you think fit, you guarantee the freedom of the person. If you guarantee the person, you guarantee democracy.

Look at the theocracies around this world: if you don’t believe exactly as Portland 8

you are told to believe, you are oppressed. Wars are started over this, as you well know. Faith is a powerful motivator, for good and ill. It can be terribly misused, of course; and I believe when it is misused, when we lose the big picture that faith provides, it leads to the loss of self-restraint and respect for the views of others. This is a great danger; respect for the free speech of others is not only a virtue in a democratic society, it is a necessity. What I see increasingly in Congress is a loss of exactly that respect. I hear, My way or no way. We will close down the government if we don’t get exactly our way, no matter how much harm we cause to millions of Americans. For shame.

Two men I particularly admired for the way their faith infused their lives were both Oregonians: Senator Mark Hatfield, born in Dallas, Oregon, and Senator Paul Simon of Illinois, born in Eugene, Oregon. They did not wear their deep faiths on their sleeves, but it infused their hearts in every aspect of their lives. These are important examples, and those of you are thinking of any way of public life —read the writings of Mark Hatfield and Paul Simon. And there are so many other men and women I could name — Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Calvinists, Presbyterians, Mormons, Republicans, libertarians —maybe, when you get away from labels, and seek people of good will who want to do the right thing, you find people whose faith is a catalyst. I think this is the case for millions of our fellow Americans, and that’s what I value. That’s what will make a better country and world for our children and grandchildren, if we work hard enough.

Listen!

Listen!

A chorus. Hear their voices: wind among the leaves, chickadees in the dogwood, cloud passing through cloud, your children’s laughter, your father’s storytelling, your grandchild’s cooing; they are your song.

Listen!

Louis Masson

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We forget sometimes that athletic scholarships change lives. We forget that, under the roar and glow of the students’ grace and diligence. So here is Korey Theileke. He was raised in Bakersfield by his grandparents. His parents were lost in drugs and crime. He has been shot at, robbed, beaten, threatened with death for playing basketball well. He was once beaten for wearing red in a neighborhood where the local gang wore blue.

Friends of his were shot dead. Often he had one meal a day, a poor one. He and his siblings stole to stay alive. He has played basketball for the Pilots for four years now. He will graduate in May with a communication studies degree. “I won’t always play ball for the University, but I’ll always be a Pilot,” he says. His life changed here. Scholarship gifts made that happen. That’s what the Rise Campaign is about. Want to help more Koreys? All gifts welcome, large or small or eye-popping. Call Diane Dickey at 503.943.8130, dickey@up.edu.

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MY GRANDFATHER THE SAINT We all know we are descended from saints, of course; we all have mothers. But Phu Nguyen ’16 can point to his ancestral saint in chapels and books and paintings: his great-greatgreat-grandfather was Saint Matthew Nguyen Van Phuong, one of the thousands of revered Vietnamese Martyrs whose feast day is annually celebrated on November 24. These men and women and children—perhaps 300,000 murdered in purges from the 17th through the 20th century—were tortured horribly (many branded on the face with the words ta dao, sinister religion), and many saw their villages burned to the ground for the crime of believing in Christ.

Phu’s ancestor Saint Matthew was born in Vietnam in 1801. Orphaned young, he was raised by the local priest in Quang-Binh. Matthew married and became a devout lay supporter of the church; one of his labors was finding homes where priests could say secret Masses. Caught by government officials in 1861, Matthew and the parish priest were told to stomp

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on a cross etched in the dirt, and so renounce Christ. When they refused they were beheaded on the spot.

Phu grew up with a statue of Saint Matthew in his family home, a constant symbol of the “love and sacrifice that my faith asks of me,” he says — a faith that first entered Vietnam in the 17th century, the Word carried by Jesuit and Dominican missionaries.

But persecution of the new religion began then also, and continues in the Communist regime of modern Vietnam, which Phu’s family fled in the 1990s. Phu’s father, having fought with the Americans against the Viet Cong, was confined for six years to a labor camp after the war, and even after his release in 1981, he and his family were blackballed; among the punishments was a ban on education for the children. The family moved to Portland from Quang-Binh in the early 1990s. Phu, the youngest of six, was born in America and became a superb student; he was the valedictorian at Madison High, is majoring in biology on The Bluff, and plans to attend medical school—in part because he has been inspired by the doctor who helped his father (with him below) manage heart disease.

The Nguyens of Portland celebrate their saint-ancestor every May, in the chapel of the former Holy Child

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Academy in northeast Portland, now the archdiocesan Southeast Asian Vicariate. Relatives and friends convene for Mass, an emotional talk by Phu’s father, and a festive meal.

Prominent near the altar is a statue of a placid St. Matthew Nguyen Van Phuong, with incense burning nearby.

Phu, perhaps much like his saintly ancestor, is honest but not bitter about his family’s travails. He can understand the paranoia that led to Matthew’s murder, and so many others: “The Vietnamese officials were scared,” he says. “They were being colonized by the French and being Catholic was seen as collaborating with the French. And even today there is not much religious freedom in Vietnam. Catholics can practice, but it doesn’t take much for an official to snap his finger and take down a church.” He shakes his head, amazed yet understanding. The faith inspired by a skinny Jewish carpenter is full of both peace and fire.

When it’s really being lived, it threatens the mighty.

Ed Langlois (who will earn his master’s degree on The Bluff next spring) is an esteemed writer for The Catholic Sentinel newspaper in Portland; his most recent piece in these pages was a lively history of Holy Cross Parish.

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Filming on campus in January: the NBC television show Grimm, for which Romanaggi Hall (Old Science Hall) became a startling Institute of Archeology for two days. The campus is often used for films and advertisements: Mr Holland’s Opus (1995, with Richard Dreyfus) shot scenes in Buckley Center, and many sports-star commercials have been filmed in Howard Hall’s ancient woodiness, among them a Nike spot with Michael Jeffrey Jordan.

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O N S P O R T S Women’s Basketball The sad news: legendary coach Jim Sollars retired in March, after nearly 600 wins as a college coach. See below. ¶ Good season for the women, who were 14-12 at presstime, led by three players averaging double figures. ¶ Former Pilot All-American (and Academic All American) Laura Sale O’Connell ’96 was inducted into the West Coast Conference hall of fame this spring.

Laura, fifth all-time for the Pilots in total points, led the Pilots to three NCAA tournament berths and was the WCC Player of the Year in 1996.

Fittingly Laura is now a teacher and…a basketball coach.

Men’s Basketball Fine season for the men, who were 15-11 at presstime, led by senior forward Ryan Nicholas (top rebounder in the league) and wing Kevin Bailey (17 points per game). Not once but twice this year the students stormed the court after terrific wins, against Gonzaga and BYU. Go to youtube for the sweet wild hilarious scene after the Gonzaga game. ¶ Coach Eric Reveno, we note, is not only closing in on 100 wins in seven years, but 100% of his players have graduated, his teams have a perfect 1000 rating in the NCAA’s Academic Progress Rate, and 11 of his players have been Academic All-WCC selections. Whew.

Track & Field Junior Ryan Poland set a new Pilot men’s record in the mile: 4:01.38. Three-time AllAmerican Scott Fauble was just behind, at 4:05. Madison Leek set a new 400-meter school record (57.70) in her first meet ever as a Pilot, and junior Melissa Baller ran 25.99 in the 200-meter dash, second all-time. ¶ The University once again opened the Chiles Center track for Tuesday nights at the races in January and February, a great idea for all comers age 13 or older; this year there were even indoor shot-put competitions.

Whoa.

Baseball Chris Sperry’s men opened the season with a bang, shutting out defending national champ UCLA in Los Angeles; they’ll finish a 50-game season in mid-May. Back for the Pilots are All-Americans Travis Radke (on the mound) and Turner Gill (outfield), and infielder Cody Lenahan, who hit .300 last year. The Pilots welcome 13 new faces, 11 of them freshmen. For the whole schedule (featuring Oregon and Oregon State) see

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portlandpilots.com.

Volleyball New coach for the women: Brent Crouch, who coached USA Volleyball and both indoor and sand volleyball at Saint Mary’s College in California (and who earned a doctorate in philosophy, hmm). The University is seriously pondering a sand volleyball team, no kidding. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Tennis Highlights for the men: backto-back sweeps of Seattle and Liberty U. to open the home slate; a sweet alumni celebration in the LP Center; and a good recruiting year that will bring brothers Mathieu and Pierre Garcia (France), Steffen Dierauf (Germany) and Jamie Fisher (Corvallis) to The Bluff this fall.

Fisher, from Crescent Valley High, is the state 5A champ. ¶ All-WCC Maja Mladenovic is back for the Pilots, who will welcome Amanda Zuidema from Anaheim this fall; she is ranked in the best 50 players in California and won gobs of United States Tennis Association matches as a junior.

Rowing The women start their spring season this month, and will be in Seattle, San Diego, and Oregon’s Dexter Lake (the vaunted Covered Bridge Regatta), before heading to California for the Western college championship meet, or maybe the NCAA finals, in May. Women’s Soccer Drafted by the Seattle Reign in the American women’s pro league: All-American Amanda Frisbie (seventh pick overall) and All-WCC Ellen Parker (30th).

They’ll join alumnae Stephanie Cox, Danielle Foxhoven, Megan Rapinoe, Elli Reed, and Keelin Winters there; back for the league’s defending champion Portland Thorns are Christine Sinclair and Angie (Woznuk) Kerr. ¶ Among the new Pilot faces this summer: all-Kansas Madeline Dieker, all-Oregon Hannah Griffiths Boston (from Grant High) and keeper Taylor Luty (Sunset), all-Washington defender Maddie Seckman, and allColorado defender Kaycie Young. ¶ Among the returnees for the Pilots, who ranked as high as sixth nationally last year: sophomores Ariel Viera and Allison Wetherington (the WCC freshman of the year) who were both called up to the U.S. Under-20 Women’s National Team training camp this winter. The team is coached by Pilot alumna Michelle French.

Men’s Soccer Midfielder Eddie Sanchez was named to the AllAmerican freshman team, and won the WCC’s freshman of the year Portland 12

award, after leading the league in points (27) and goals (12). New faces for the men this fall: all-Oregon Cristian Arntson and keeper Marco Gonzalez-Yanez, both from Central Catholic High in Portland; U.S. National Youth Team veteran keeper Paul Christensen (Woodinville, Washington); Jacob Hanlin and Kurtis Young, who trained with the professional Colorado Rapids’ youth academy; Oregon 5A player of the year Michael Hobson from Woodburn; and Quinn Mello-Bastida from San Jose, who spent his summers training with Argentina’s legendary River Plate club.

Women’s basketball coach Jim Sollars retired in March, after 28 years and nearly 400 wins with the Pilots. Blunt, funny, honest, and a gifted raconteur, Jim also taught history on The Bluff, was WCC coach of the year five times, and saw forty of his players earn WCC All-Academic honors. “We will miss Jim’s humor and work ethic, his wry wit and competitive fire,” said University president Father Bill Beauchamp, “but most of all we will miss a very fine teacher here on The Bluff.”

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O N B R I E F L Y The Rise Campaign concludes May 8, with a joyous celebration in the Chiles Center, and well it is that we should caper: at presstime $172 million has been raised, half the campus has been renovated, there are some 170 new scholarships, $8 million was raised for faculty, and there are riveting new projects focusing on ethics, humor, entrepreneurship, engineering, and clean water, among much else. Details: rise.up.edu. Are we still wheedling for whopper gifts?

Heavens, yes. Call Diane Dickey at 503.943.8130, dickey@ up.edu.

Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., is stepping down as president after ten years, and will return to Notre Dame to serve his beloved Holy Cross order as sage financial wizard. (See page 24.) A remarkable presidency, by all measures: some $220 million raised for students, a soccer national title, two new residence halls, new riverfront property, the new bell tower, a tripling of applications for admission, national awards for bang for the buck, national honors for Fulbright grants, Peace Corps volunteers, student community service hours, and entrepreneurship programs. And much else. Admired his work? Tell him yourself: beaucham@up.edu.

Best in America The University’s student accounting team won the national American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Accounting Competition, carrying off the $10,000 prize after a semester-long effort.

Judges “were particularly impressed with the students’ creative solutions, detailed written analysis, and teamwork,” says faculty advisor Ellen Lippman. “A lot of getting to bed at three in the morning. They represented the University very well.”

Best in Oregon For the fourth consecutive year the University was the top Oregon school in the Kiplinger’s Personal Finance annual rankings of best values in private colleges and universities. The project ranks 600 schools nationwide by academic quality, affordability, student admission rate, ratio of students to faculty members, graduation rates, financial aid, and student debt at graduation.

Among Recent Gifts & Grants: $4 million more from regent Amy Dundon-Berchtold and her husband Jim Berchtold ’63 (after $525,000 in 2011) for their eponymous Institute for Moral Development and Applied

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Ethics, which funds the Character Project and ethics scholarships and fellowships ¶ And $50,000 as a challenge grant for the new Beachamp Rec Center from regent Rich Baek ‘93, if 601 graduates of the last decade match him by June 1; Rich’s theory is that young alumni will be delighted to help replace Howard Hall, at last.

Student Feats Peter Pappas’s ED 456 class helped build the new free iPhone app “Japantown PDX,” working with Portland’s Nikkei Legacy Center. The class also published an iBook: Exploring History: Ten Document-Based Questions, available for free download at iTunes. Peter Pappas: cool guy. ¶ The speech and debate finished 7th in the West, a remarkable feat considering their ninecent budget. Campaign gifts welcome. ¶ The new Clark Library, totally renovated with Campaign gifts, saw its normal usage rate rise a whopping 73% since reopening last year; its 19 group study rooms were in ferocious demand, with an average of 3,000 students using them per week. The University has 4,000 undergrad and grad students in toto.

Our Commencement Speaker will be Anne Thompson, NBC News’ chief environmental affairs correspondent.

Catholic Relief Services CEO Carolyn Woo receives the Christus Magister Medal, and honorary doctorates will be draped upon inventor and philanthropist John Beckman ’42 (who was instrumental in inventing the photofinish camera!), testing expert and author Jim Popham ’53, Oregon State University president Ed Ray (who helped the Beavers raise $900 million for students and faculty during his tenure), and Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland (the 11th such, the fourth such being University founder Alexander Christie).

Faculty Feats The best science professor in Oregon? University chemist Sister Angela Hoffman of the Order of Saint Benedict (who has six international patents), says the Oregon Academy of Science. Last year’s winner of the same award: University geologist Bob Butler. ¶ Historian Mark Eifler will appear soon on cable television’s Military Channel, discussing the California Gold Rush (subject of his book Gold Rush Capitalists: Greed and Growth in Sacramento). Half the households in America get that channel. ¶ Journalism professor Steve Duin is an Oregon Book awards finalist for his graphic novel Oil and Water (Fantagraphics), about the fouling of Spring 2014 13

the Gulf. ¶ Communication studies’ Vail Fletcher’s work on youth in Rwanda will be shown at the United Nations in New York in May, part of events on the 20-year anniversary of genocide there. ¶ Thom Faller, retiring after fifty years of teaching philosophy, was appointed by the Vatican as a regent at Bethlehem University in Palestine. ¶ International languages’ Allie Hill won a $10,000 Graves Award in the Humanities, which she’ll use to study the old German Democratic Republic in today’s reunited Germany. ¶ Engineering’s Aziz Inan was interviewed

by BBC Radio Scotland on his brilliant and peculiar number mania. ¶ University music professor Michael Connolly, in a talk on Martin Luther King Day, noted that the University’s neighborhood, until 1964, had this legal restriction on property: “No part of said land shall be used or occupied by any Negro, Chinese, Italians, Greeks, Hindus, Armenians, Indians, or Japanese, except that persons of said races may be employed thereon as servants.” Wow. Hosting the riveting Fourth World Conference on Science and Soccer, June 5-7, on The Bluff: biology professor Terry Favero, who doubles as Pilot soccer conditioning coach. Some 300 scientists, coaches, trainers, physiotherapists, physiologists, professors, and students from around the world are expected for three days of talks and workshops. Passes cost $200 to $450, and there are only 300 spots; for details on passes and housing call Terry Favero, 503.943.7373, favero@up.edu.

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THE LINE OF LIGHT Love, death, swallows, prayers, pens, and the Wildness that made us all.

by David James Duncan

’m at my mother’s place, on day fifteen of her home hospice. I suspect tomorrow could be the day. Yesterday I crossed the street to explore a little Bitterroot River locust grove and bottomland that nobody ever walks, because private homes hem it in. I hadn’t gone 300 yards before I’d spooked 21 whitetail deer out in front of me.

Also found deer-hair-filled coyote scat and a fawn’s rib cage, stripped back to an oversized white thumb piano, with a single beetle running down a long thin key.

Why do we write? Any of us? One of the best reasons I’ve encountered is that, with a pen in my hand, I somehow gain access to a depth in my own life, in the lives of others, and in the life of this beautiful wounded world, to which I cannot gain access without the pen. Another reason to write is the solace of knowing and speaking to and listening to other writers who’ve learned how to relate to one another in depth. As my mother lost the ability to swallow, for instance, swallows arrived en masse over the little lake she lived beside. Pablo Neruda: The birds have come / to bring light to birth...

And Jane Kenyon: Let the fox go back to its sandy den. / Let the wind die down. / Let it come as it will, and don’t / be afraid. God does not leave us / comfortless, so let evening come...

The climax of my first novel is based on an experience I once had with a wild steelhead. In the Cascade Mountains in my mid-twenties, I went trout fishing. For the first time ever, I used three-pound test leader, in the belief that very light leaders fool very big fish. My theory proved too true: at the witching hour, sunset, I hooked a fish so ridiculously large and powerful I immediately knew I had no chance of landing it. But contact was a joy. To prolong that contact, I released all pressure, all desire, all fish lust, and let the steelhead do whatever it chose.

It then amazed me by choosing to

continue its journey from the ocean to its high mountain birth house, as if my hook and line and I weren’t even there.

As evening turned into moonless night, the world went black. The steelhead journeyed so serenely into this blackness that its wild trust entered me.

As I fumbled my way upstream over boulders and cobble, the predator/prey, fisherman/quarry paradigm melted away like blood in water. I fell in love with the steady throb the fish’s tail

A zealot stuck a needle he called faith in my heart; but I pulled it out, and started to write with it. strokes sent up the line, down the rod, into my hands and body. It felt, I later wrote, like the pulsing of the river’s own silver heart, and in the enveloping, trustworthy blackness became the very definition of the word migration.

When I finally chose to end my connection to the wild pulsing, the leader broke so gently that, impossibly, I continued to feel an unbreakable line linking me to a vanished steelhead, and to a Wildness who’d created us both.

I dubbed that connecting thread “the line of light” and rewrote the manuscript that became The River Why around this experience. And I’ve learned more, since, about why my description of an invisible-but-unbreakable thread image strikes a chord in so many people. Early Coptic monks speak of a mystery running through our lives called “the indestructible connecting line.” Rumi calls the same line “the cord of causation.” Socrates calls it “the fastening of heaven.” The forest rishis who set down the Rg Veda Spring 2014 15

call it the sutratman — “soul-thread.”

The late great William Stafford spoke of these invisible lines like so: The way it is there’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

I was born into a family of staunch Seventh Day Adventists. But the churchgoing practiced by that faith made me feel like a Joseph held captive in Egypt. The end of my captivity came shortly after the death of my oldest brother. I was thirteen at the time, John seventeen. He was my best friend and my protector, the noblest of big brothers, but he was born with a congenital heart defect. After three failed surgeries his heart became too shredded to be repaired. It kept faithfully beating even so. This was very hard for we who loved him. Though his doctors pronounced him doomed and couldn’t help him, John held on month after month. He contracted staph infection, tripling the certainty of doom.

He held on for weeks even then. I went to visit him many times during this awful limbo, but his inability to any longer be the person I loved, inability to launch the blithe, quirky conversations we’d always enjoyed, and (yes, I was this superficial) his increasingly appalling appearance, made me flee his room after very brief visits. I’d then huddle in the hospital hallway, burning with shame at my inability to remain at his side.

One evening after I’d fled his room

PHOTOGRAPH: JOHN BARGER / CORBIS IMAGES

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in this way, down the hall marched a stalwart young Adventist man fresh out of seminary, with a Bible under his arm. This man had never met my family and didn’t know my brother’s prognosis. He was what certain weathered old priests sometimes call “a Faith Monster.” His confidence in his belief system was systematic indeed, and blind, and total. When he saw me slumped on the floor, he asked if I was John Duncan’s brother. I stood to be respectful and allowed that I was. The minister then swooped like a sparrowhawk on a vole, seizing my shoulders, gazing with crazy intensity into my eyes, and saying: “Faith can move mountains! If you pray for your brother hard enough, with a pure enough heart, you can save! his! life!”

You can imagine what then happened: when my brother died two days later I now felt a bit as if I’d snuffed him myself. I hadn’t prayed hard enough; wasn’t pure enough of heart; my small dose of doubt-laced faith had failed to move the necessary mountains.

That moment has never left me.

A faith-filled zealot with intensions as pure as any suicide bomber had more or less stuck a knitting needle he called “faith” in my heart. It stayed there, hurting like hell for years, till finally I realized I wasn’t helpless: I pulled the damned thing out. And I started to write with it.

The number of men and women who have commenced to write, or paint, or sing, or make pilgrimages, or undertake insane acts of adventure or kindness, or make a fresh start, after similar harms, is staggering. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a devout clergyman, lost a brother as a boy, then a wife and son, and was suddenly as done with the clergy as I was done with Christian zealotry in that hospital hallway. Kim Stafford, Wallace Stegner, Deirdre McNamer, Ted Leeson and Ian Frazier all lost a brother. Peter Mattheissen lost a wife, Joe Wilkins his father, Terry Tempest Williams her mother, Dave Eggers both parents, Sherman Alexie his sister in a fire, Jim Harrison his sister and father to a drunk driver, and on and on. Loss of loved ones, loss of home or homeland, loss of innocence or faith or sense of mission or purity of intention, forges writers, artists, dreamers, monks, story-tellers, musicians, seekers, leaders, and losers, too, by the thousand.

After a few years of full on religious rebellion, followed by decades of more circumspect struggle and reflection, what became undeniable about my hospital hallway experience is what powerful gifts we are sometimes given,

not via anything that feels good or uplifting or numinous or revelatory or cool, but via what hurts like hell and won’t stop hurting. There’s an old Buddhist saying that our enemies are our best teachers. The seminarian in the hospital hallway epitomizes this for me. Without even trying, he taught me the meaning of Anne Lamott’s statement: “The opposite of faith is not doubt: it is certainty.” He also showed me the need for Amory Lovins’ statement, “In God we trust. Everyone else, bring data.” That seminarian taught me how wrong it can be to poke at the wounds of another person’s loss with the sharp implement of our own little faith. He taught me that, in the face of a great loss, it might be best to leave the Bible at home, bring along fresh buttermilk biscuits doused

Maybe the only Jesus who can help you is the one being born in the manger of your own ragged heart. in honey and butter, sit on the floor with the distraught kid in the hall, and maybe say, “This sucks, doesn’t it? I’m sorry. But I’m with you. Here. Have a warm biscuit.” By inspiring me to repudiate and flee every church or faith that resembled his, that seminarian unintentionally freed me to discover a thousand things I have deeply loved and trusted. He drove me in anger, pain, and loneliness toward wild places that have healed and inspired and remade me. He drove me toward writers who assuage grief not with faith formulas but with stories or poems that make their own grief, pain and loneliness bearable, and sometimes even beautiful, like, say, Jane Kenyon and Pablo Neruda. That seminarian left me burning to learn how to live at such depth and tell such stories, even if it took my whole life to begin to do it.

The way it is, there’s a thread I then began to follow. I’d heard at church, as a child, that the kingdom of heaven is within me. But our preachers didn’t seem to believe it. Instead they declaimed a faith that excluded almost everyone I knew but a small fold of yea-sayers. Whereas, the first time I walked up a trout stream, rod in hand, I was struck all day, and on thousands Portland 16

of days to follow, by a suspicion that mountains and rivers are myself, turned inside out. The Earth’s capacity to create a stage and ten thousand intricate living characters, sustain those characters, destroy them, then resurrect the whole process again from scratch, began to move me fiercely.

An unexplored kingdom began to lure me in. In 1960, in the weedy shallows at the west end of Wallowa Lake, in Oregon, I put on a pair of goggles for the first time, saw clearly underwater for the first time, went swimming through the waterweeds, and discovered a world peopled by an entirely different order of creature than us land-lubbing air-breathers: I saw galaxies of minnows, tadpoles, froglets, troutlings; saw intelligent looking little beings I didn’t yet know to demean as “mere insects,” and so thought of as a possible form of fairy or miniature water dragon. I was dumbfounded.

The whole phantasmagoric populace down there was able to withstand coldness that had turned my lips blue.

They found food in that cold, found and breathed air hidden in it, found each other in it, found the cold fire in water that enabled them to generate their kind in a world of makeshift to nonexistent homes, long frigid winters, impossible odds. In that Wallowa Lake weedbed a fastening of heaven began to sing in me: Paul Valéry: There is another world, but it is in this one.

Amen! said Wallowa Lake. There was life in that beautiful, fecund weedbed in the very act of being created.

It was Genesis, page one, down there!

Was I supposed to just keep reading the Bible when I’d discovered it was possible to swim in it? Was I to throw away my goggles, let vision blur, and spend my life pretending the money church-goers gave to faith-blinded seminary graduates was really being given to Jesus? A thread that goes through things that change, but doesn’t change, began to whisper: Maybe the only Jesus who can help you is the one being born in the manger of your own ragged heart. And who knows, He might be as eager to escape the scribes, pharisees, goody-goodies, and theological insurance salesmen as you are. So go ahead. Connect Him to wild weed beds and mountains and rivers and an unseen world inside you. As the Gospel has it, there “are so many other things Jesus did that, should they be written, every one, I suppose even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.” So, that same eighth year of life, I sold Christmas cards door to door, then bought swim fins, a snorkel,

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It turns out the seminarian who seared me with words about mountainmoving-faith and brother-saving-prayers initiated a shifting of tectonic plates in me. It turns out this moved me to believe so firmly that faith, or something, does indeed move mountains that I was moved, twenty years after my brother died, to deploy the knitting needle a zealot once stuck in my heart and write a little memoir about my brother John called “The Mickey

Mantle Koan.” It turns out that memoir restores vital pieces of his life to public memory after embalming fluid and the banal words of yet another scripture-citing cleric obliterated our memories of who John really was at his ironically named “memorial service.” It turns out I was moved, in part by enthusiastic response to that memoir, to see what would happen if I used the same knitting needle pen and restored more big brotherliness to the world via a major work of fiction, so I created a kid named Kincaid, bequeathed him not one but three big brothers, sent all three through the Vietnam War years my brother John missed by dodging the draft, via his death. It turns out that, by becoming this Kincaid kid every work day for six years, with a ton of help from countless friends, I managed to make a novel called The Brothers K that dove so deep into the magic of brothers and families, including the knitting needles we sometimes stick in ourselves and

each other, that a thousand readers were moved to write me astounding letters describing their own brothers and sisters and war experiences and religious and spiritual struggles and analogous wounds and guiding soulthreads.

It turns out my grief for my brother has come to a deeply fulfilling end.

It turns out that same fulfilling end became part of a thread that goes among things that change, but doesn’t change, and so gave me strength, this past month, as my siblings and I tended our mother. It turns out we did not

slump helplessly in a hospital hallway or get soul-molested by a cleric or submit to despair. It turns out we stood by her bed in her small home on a small lake and served till a soul and body parted ways. It turns out that parting was as moving, in the end, as any music I’ve ever loved. It turns out that, after studying and translating The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Robert Thurman summarized the Tibetan belief about death thus: “All beings are.

They never are not. They are either alive or between. There is, hypothetically, a split second between life and the between that is properly called death. A boundary, a line with no width, something ultimately not there except as an arbitrary border.” It turns out that Tibetans and Mother Nature and the explosion of renewed life in spring seem to agree that the opposite of life isn’t death at all: it’s unmanifest life.

It turns out that as my mom was taking her last breaths by that same lake, a mother mallard duck landed Spring 2014 17

outside her patio door for the first time in the twelve years she lived there, walked over to a flowerbed, and laid four eggs. It turns out that, amid a spring snow flurry, my mother then did launch from her home by the lake. It turns out that, after we’d said goodbye to her body, I collected the mallard eggs despite the snow that had covered them, sent them to a friend with an incubator, and one egg lives.

It turns out I don’t know squat about the afterlife though my mom’s in it now, but I do know that many forms of life are no more visible than the line of light still connecting me to a migrating steelhead. It turns out that, in receiving a plethora of consoling poems since losing my mom, I feel a third mother of sorts might be the accurate, lovingly exchanged words we all try to incubate like mallard eggs till something warm and deathless makes itself felt. So I’ll turn us loose with a few last beautifully incubated words from the Very Right Reverent Mary Oliver: When death comes like the hungry bear in [springtime!]... when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut... when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower as common as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth tending as all music does, toward silence, and each body a lion of courage precious to the earth.

When it’s over I want to say: all my life I was a bride, married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. n David James Duncan, who received an honorary doctorate from the University in 2004 for the “power and passion and prayer” of his work, was the Schoenfeldt Series visiting writer this past October; this essay is drawn from his talk on The Bluff. David’s epic whopping soaring novel Sun House will be published in 2015 by Little Brown.

PHOTOGRAPH: CHARMIAN KORING

and a much better swim mask to help me seek out my ragged heart’s Jesus.

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Attending In Guatemala with nurse Mary Stempel ’78 and her medical colleagues, trying to heal a little of the bruised world.

Photographs by Mia Kennel and Michael Casey; text by Jeff Kennel.

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he patient’s name is Elvira. She is an elderly woman of Mayan descent. She has traveled 12 hours by bus and then 3 hours on foot to be operated on by an American doctor making more money in his usual day than she makes in a life. Guatemala is poor. Rural Guatemalans of Mayan descent are the poorest of the poor. Elvira has needed surgery for 12 years. She has a prolapsed uterus; the muscles and ligaments that hold her uterus in place have weakened and can no longer support it. She has been in pain for 12 years.

This surgery will change her life. Even though she is well past 60, she needs to be able to farm to feed her family.

She hiked for hours down from the hills to catch a bus. She rode a bus for the first time in her life to get to Obras Sociales del Santo Hermano Pedro, a Catholic church and hospital and orphanage funded by Faith in Practice, a U.S.based non-profit that sets out to improve conditions of the poor in Guatemala through short-term surgical, medical, and dental mission trips and programs.

Elvira and hundreds of other Guatemalans will be seen this week by Team Stempel, led by nurse Mary Stempel ’78 and her husband Dr. Jim Stempel. The Stempels have headed up a Faith in Practice surgical team to Hermanos Pedros in Antigua, Guatemala one week a year for the last 12 years, to perform surgeries that local hospitals aren’t equipped to handle or cannot afford. Their two sons also go as translators, and their daughter Katie, a junior nursing

student on The Bluff, assists in the surgery rooms. This year there are also four nursing alumnae working: Jennifer Booth Kooistra ’04, Jennifer Fleming Marx ’96, Marcy Torbenson Pfaffle ’78, and Dodie Hannon Jensen ’78. The good news: Team Stempel will operate on 95 patients in 4 days.

The bad news: more than 300 Guatemalans who came for screening could not be treated, for all sorts of reasons.

Faith in Practice has other teams from all over the U.S. coming regularly, though, and the untreated this week will get another chance.

Watching the nurses and doctors work this week, watching the patients’ lives change, the thought occurs to me that this is the University’s mission in action, put to work, loose in the world. This is why my job at the University is more than a paycheck to me. This is why the University, I think, is more than just a good school, and why our students and alumni are more than merely prepared to make money, get a job, get ahead. There’s something more, something deeper, something...holy. n Jeff Kennel is the University’s photographer and filmmaker; to see his video on the trip, see tinyurl.com/stempelteam. For more information on Faith in Practice, see faithinpractice.org; to read Team Stempel’s trip blog, see faithinpractice.org/ blogs-and-media/354. And can you make gifts to help the University’s student and faculty and alumni nurses? Heavens yes. Call Diane Dickey at 503.943.8130, dickey@up.edu.

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APHORISMS A poem arrives like a hand in the dark.

Certain silences are actions.

Aphorisms respect the wisdom of silence by disturbing it briefly.

The air is dense with stray spirits.

You can’t bury pain and not expect it to grow roots.

The sight of blackened lungs is enough for some smokers to change; if we could see the state of our souls, would we change?

It is always those with low self-esteem who try to diminish ours.

It is an extension of selfishness not to forgive another what you do not forgive yourself.

To forgive is radical and visionary; it not only overlooks the past, but sets aside the need for justice, in the interest of a better future.

Envy is admiration grown sick.

If you wish to be heard, speak kindly. The same holds true when speaking to yourself.

The air is heavy with poems, ripe for plucking.

Conspiracy theories are the offspring of impotence.

You cannot faithfully engage this world and the next. You must choose one.

Revolutions are about overthrowing the tyranny of fear — dictators are merely stubborn symbols.

The ultimate act of trust in life is to have children.

Perhaps unbelievers are the responsibility of believers, the way the underprivileged are the responsibility of the privileged.

Pity atheists their pitilessness. They are like persons hurt in love, who vow never again.

Logical interpretations are the Miracle’s modesty.

Mystic: a shepherd of secrets.

Just be yourself, they say. But which one?

Poetry: the native tongue of hysterics.

There is a way to sanctify each moment: attend to it.

There are no poets except when writing a poem.

We can still become who we once were.

To aestheticize is to anesthetize.

To write is to bow is to pray.

There are many ways to donate blood; writing is one.

We can never dip into the same book twice; it is always changing, as we do.

The danger of cynicism is getting what you believe in.

The prayers most likely to be answered are ones we make for others.

You can never go home again, but you can never leave home either.

Every vice is selfishness, yawning.

To mate with the sublime, sublimate.

Each time we betray our conscience, we strangle an angel.

Those for whom the natural is extraordinary tend to find the extraordinary natural.

All good things might never last, but they never end, either.

Everything we do here matters elsewhere.

Yahia Lababidi is the author of five books, among them Trial by Ink (essays) and Barely There (poems).

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PHOTOGRAPH: KASIA DERWINSKA / GETTY IMAGES

In the deep end, every stroke counts.

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Father Bill As he leaves office, the University’s 19th president talks about lanky children, luck, tuition, Mass, the glory of scholarships, the rise of the digital world, and laughter.

And other things.

By Brian Doyle

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is office is imposing. The huge bay windows stare out over the river and there are always hawks and eagles and osprey floating by unnervingly at eye level. There is a didgeridoo almost as tall as he is, a gift from Australian friends, in thanks for the way he helped start a Catholic university in Fremantle. There is a khukuri, a wicked-looking traditional Nepalese dagger, a gift from a Nepalese friend.

There is a football signed for him by Johnny Lujack, who won college football’s Heisman trophy in 1947. There is a stunning stone head of Christ, a good deal bigger than the actual One was. There is Black’s Law Dictionary, because he is a lawyer. There is a large lovely vase painted for him by Kim Dae-jung, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000. There are various golfing mementos, because he is a very good golfer, with a handicap of 11.

There is a slate from the original roof of the Dome at the University of Notre Dame. There are a vast number of medals and medallions and statues and photographs of him with famous people, the usual detritus of a respected chieftain. There are a startling number of cool pens, because apparently everyone he had ever met has given

him a cool pen. And there is a whole shelf devoted to statues of the Madonna, because Bill Beauchamp has devoted his life and labor to the idea that light will defeat darkness, and love will defeat despair, and life will defeat death, and there will come a world where compassion is king and violence and greed flee shrieking into the darkness.

He is not kidding about this. He has been a priest for 37 years, and he thinks being a good priest is more important than being a good university president, and when I ask him what his late parents would say, as he concludes his ten years as president, he says they would be most proud I was faithful as a priest. And when I ask him what few words he wants on his gravestone, what few words might catch the verve and essence of the man from Detroit who ended up devoting his life to the two best Holy Cross universities in America, he says, with his usual wry half-smile, Reverend William Beauchamp, C.S.C.; that sums up what was important.

I ask him lots more questions, one sunny winter morning, a few months before he heads back to live at Moreau

Seminary at Notre Dame this summer, and he leans back and answers them without the slightest pomposity or overweening ego. You can certainly say about Bill Beauchamp that he was dignified, but you can never say he was pompous or arrogant or that he thought he was cool. We should remember that, when we remember Bill Beauchamp; for I think that was essential to his steering of the ship, to the University’s vision of its future, to how it might indeed become, as he said himself ten years ago, the most unusual and creative small Catholic university there is.

Worst moment as president?

When a student fell off the roof of Shipstad and died. Ten years ago now.

I remember sitting with his parents.

That’s the worst thing of all here, when a student is badly hurt or dies. They are our children while they are here and to lose your child is...unthinkable.

What did you do best?

Didn’t mess up, much. I had very good people working here, we hired good people, I mostly left them alone to do good work. I was awfully lucky as president — there wasn’t anything for me to repair. My job was to help us advance calmly, to get better at what we were good at, to make sure we didn’t lose who we are as we jumped ahead. Now we’re ready for the next steps, but I don’t have the energy. Time for a new man.

What did you love? What was the most fun?

I made a difference. My work mattered here, had a real effect on who we are becoming. We were on the verge of being a really fine university and I helped push us over the edge. And I loved living here. It took me a while to get used to it, after many years at Notre Dame, but I was happier here, in the end. Though I really missed living in the halls with students. I missed saying Mass with students in the halls more than anything else, I think. The best part of being a priest for me is being a priest with students; they need a good priest. And I only taught one class, one semester — business law. It would have been fun to teach more, again to be with students. But I just couldn’t find the time.

What’s the one thing we need to be truly great? Amazingly good?

Money for students in need. That more than anything. I’d love for us to get to the point where students’ decisions aren’t about money. We just do not have enough money for kids who are

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ing in some fashion, I guess. Holy Cross is my ministry. And Holy Cross’s needs are pressing.

Teaching, traveling?

No. I haven’t taught law for years and I couldn’t now. And I have traveled so much I’d like to not travel. Although I will go back to Australia this summer.

Why does the University of Portland exist? Why are we here?

Why should people give us money to make us great? What is great for us?

Look, we are unique. We are Catholic in the Holy Cross tradition, and that latter phrase is crucial. Holy Cross is its own kind of Catholic. We live in the halls, we’re in students’ lives. To live with them, be there for them, be compassionate and open spiritually, at this crucial juncture of their lives — that’s a chance to have a tremendous effect. And we are a teaching university, with terrific teachers who do research with students, who know their names, who stay in touch after they graduate, who really are mentors.

Those two things — and the fact that we take ourselves seriously but not too seriously, our friendly intimate personal, humorous, honest, character — there’s not another university in America with that combination.

That’s us.

Huge changes coming for the University?

Digital education and communication.

We have to find ways to make that sort of innovation and creativity work with who we are at heart. We cannot give up the personal, the spiritual, the communal, but we have to adjust.

That’s a huge change ...which will be managed by the next president. I’ll wish him well, from afar.

With Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.

poor, kids who should be here, kids who would love to be here. Gifted students earn scholarships, as well they should, but the final frontier for us is enough money to help any and all kids who really want to be here. It kills me that those kids can’t come because of money. It’s a real shame.

The rising cost of college? The constant scary creep of costs?

We can’t raise tuition forever. We’ve got to raise more money from donors because we can’t significantly raise the price anymore. We just can’t. Look, if you make widgets, you either raise the price of widgets or you make more widgets to sell. We can’t make more widgets — we can’t grow past 5,000 students without ruining the

Can we actually do that?

Yes. One great thing we do not talk about is that we have twice as many alumni now as we did twenty years ago, because of admissions success and our rising national reputation. Many of them are now entering their prime earning years, so...And certainly we will be trying to reach new audiences to interest them in the University’s work.

Last question: what will you miss most?

[Long pause] At one level, the beauty and wonder of the Northwest — my garden, the coast, the mountains...it’s just gloriously lovely here, and I will really miss that. But the deeper thing?

People. Their excitement and laughter and kindness and generosity. I think I will miss the easy access to dear friends more than anything. You don’t know how good something was until it’s gone, and I am just beginning to realize that. People — that’s what I’ll miss most. n

What will you do when you get back to Notre Dame?

Work for Holy Cross. That’s who I am first and foremost. Probably fundrais-

Brian Doyle is the editor of this magazine, and the author most recently of a collection of ‘proems’ called A Shimmer of Something (Liturgical Press).

flavor of the experience here, without betraying the mission and essence — and we can’t keep charging more.

We’ve got to raise more money.

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Faith of Our Fathers

By George Venn

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An epiphany, one spring evening long ago, in the green hand of the Skagit Valley.

fter dinner one June evening, my stepfather, the Reverend Venn, announced he was going to “preach to the Indians,” and he told me to go to the church and get about thirty spiralbound songbooks. I was to assist him.

Picking up his Bible and accordion, he started for the new gray Chevrolet.

The Skagit Valley evening was palpable — a bowl of soft gold light. From the North Cascades a cooling land breeze flowed easy down river. The air smelled of cream, ripe peas, dairy cows, new-mown lawn. Everything seemed muted and quiet — the log train chuffing towards Sedro Wooley, the dog sleeping in the street, our neighbor washing his boat, Johnny Martin’s logging truck rattling home empty. In the alley, kids played hideand-seek or kick-the-can. Bats, nighthawks, herons, ducks, geese — the whole sky seemed to be flying.

We drove south from Burlington to a large white farmhouse, and I saw a group of Upper Skagit people sitting in rows on the green lawn. We parked in the shade of some cottonwoods. I saw children running and playing on the lawn, and behind them, quiet adults seemed to be waiting for us.

There must have been a group of about thirty people there. In front, women and older children — washed, dressed, quiet — sat on the grass in several rows, and behind them stood a row of men — all ages — black hair recently washed, combed, gleaming. I could see the stained fingers of the women and girls. Strawberry pickers. They were going to listen to my stepfather preach. The Upper Skagit were all poised, quiet, ready for something. I didn’t know what. They were expecting us. They seemed organized. One or two men in the back row seemed to be watching us intently.

The Reverend Venn went to the trunk of his polished gray Chevrolet and took out his accordion, in a black patent leather case. I thought that instrument was like him somehow — heavy, awkward, strapped, difficult.

But he seemed to slip it on easily, as though it were a natural breastplate.

“Pass out the songbooks, George,” he said.

Carrying the stack of spiral-bound songbooks with smiling white children’s faces on the cover and “He Owns The Cattle on a Thousand Hills” all over the back, I walked down the front row and gave one to each child. They all took them very carefully — more carefully than I ever did. They stared at them as though they might have been gifts and, in their culture, they might well have been gifts. At the end of the second row, I gave the woman Spring 2014 29

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a stack and the same for the men’s row. They all seemed eager to get a songbook. When I finished, I didn’t know where to go, whether to stand or sit or get back in the car. I knew I didn’t want to be up in front with the Reverend Venn. So as the Reverend Venn introduced himself and announced the first song, “Heaven Sunshine,” I sat down on the grass by a girl my size. The Reverend started playing his accordion. It sounded whining, thin, out of place, but he started singing, and a few Upper Skagit attempted to sing along, but it was obvious that “Heavenly Sunshine” was not in their repertoire. The Reverend chose another song and sang it largely by himself again, though he nodded his head at me vigorously, by which he intended to encourage me to sing loudly with him, so the Upper Skagit could hear me singing too. I was embarrassed and did not want to identify with him. I sensed something strange was happening, something I did not understand, something that had never happened to me before. There was silence, there was waiting. There was polite but explicit non-participation.

I did not sing loudly enough for anyone to hear me. I pulled up grass, stared at the sky, watched the cottonwood leaves cliddering in the late gold light across the road. When a brown dog came from the cabins behind the house and began to sniff and amble around the way dogs do, I was extremely grateful. When the dog lifted his leg and peed on the mailbox post behind my stepfather, I saw several women put their hands over their smiles. One of the men, however, called the dog a word I had never heard before, and the dog came to him and he led him away behind the main house again.

After three or four attempts to get the Upper Skagit to sing his hymns, the Reverend stopped, snapped his accordion shut, slipped in back in its patent leather case, and picked up his black, leather-bound, gold-lettered, gilt-edged Bible. “Let us pray,” he said, and then there was the usual flurry of “these” and “thous” and “Our Fathers” and “lookdowns.” After the prayer he read some Biblical passages to these polite and quiet people, who were respectful.

His strategy was about the same as St. Paul’s: there’s this perfect God and just when you think you’re good, you’re really evil — and there’s nothing you can do about it; your lower nature will always win out and — no matter what you do — you’re helpless in your own destruction unless — well — there is one way — outside help — from Jesus the son of this per-

fect God. My stepfather just happened to know personally this Jesus and this God. He would explain what God wanted, quote some supporting texts, read some more, explain some more of why God killed his son, but my stepfather’s story never changed. As the sunset light came down, the scattering clouds over us became brilliant orange fish scales, and I knew that we were now headed toward the last song and final prayer of the service.

My stepfather once more strapped on his accordion and asked — again — if anyone would like to choose a song.

It was obvious now that the Upper Skagit were not on his side, that politeness and pressure from their Presbyterian employer had kept them there listening. Some huge differences were in the air that were not being bridged at all. By this time, I wanted to leave or hide or become invisible.

However, a preacher’s stepson only has a right to move around, so I had taken up a new seat away from everyone, by a stack of empty strawberry crates.

So, when my stepfather made this last invitation, I was astonished to see a younger Upper Skagit man in the back row put up his hand and say “Yes, please. Page 17, please.” My stepfather seemed visibly shocked and surprised, then I thought he looked relieved.

He turned the pages in his hymnbook and began to play an introduction to the hymn, “Faith of our Fathers.” He knew all the music from memory.

As the Reverend began to sing, so did all of the Upper Skagit. They knew this music, these words, and they knew them well. Men, women, and children all sang and their unison voices drowned out my stepfather completely from the very first words. “Faith of our fathers living still, in spite of dungeon, fire, and sword.”

The men’s voices were rich and deep, the women’s tremulous and strong. My face flushed and my heart started to beat faster. Something was happening. I didn’t know what. Was there something wrong? Had they been fooling him all along? “Oh how our hearts beat high with joy, when e’er we hear that glorious word.”

Was this their joke? I studied the Upper Skagit faces and they were all happily singing and seemed to be singing at my stepfather whose calm face never flinched from its usual stolid self. “Faith of our fathers, holy faith. We will be true to thee ’til death.”

And the rest of the stanzas followed — as they must — since my stepfather always believed in singing the entire song, all the way to the end: “Faith of our fathers we will love / Both friend and foe in all our strife: / And preach Portland 30

thee, too, as love knows how / By kindly words and virtuous life.”

When the Upper Skagit stopped singing, I saw all the men in the back row looking at my stepfather, waiting for him to say something more, but he said nothing now. In silence, he shut the golden bellows of his wheezing accordion and snapped the latch.

Silence. Everywhere. No one moved.

Greater silence. Then, far away in one of the cabins where the pickers stayed, I could hear a baby crying.

There was something more going on.

When I picked up the songbooks, everyone was still silent. I didn’t know what had happened. A huge question mark formed over this moment.

On the way home, my stepfather said nothing.

I have never forgotten this evening the Upper Skagit sang “Faith of our Fathers.” Their singing created some powerful unspoken feeling, but it took me maybe twenty years to recognize what might have been going on. Maybe the Upper Skagit man had, in fact, known that a Christian hymn might be used to enlighten a Presbyterian preacher. After all, the Noo-qua-chamish had their fathers, Ch-la-ben, Spikcum, Be-bash-chad, Scha-ha-lab-ki, and their fathers had their own faith — the guardian spirit tradition — and their own mythic texts, including the beautiful Star Child myth, their creation narrative. Maybe that Upper Skagit man had seen how “Faith of Our Fathers” protested — for everyone everywhere — religious persecution.

Maybe he’d learned at the federal Chemawa Indian School in Oregon how the Upper Skagit persecution

by Americans during the invasion of western Washington was similar to Protestant persecution by the papists in Europe prior to the settling of America. It is impossible to know how much that man intended that night.

One thing, however, is clear: the Protestant hymn had lost its sectarian content. Someone among the Upper Skagit had recognized the universality within Frederick Faber’s lyrics and the song had crossed from one religious and cultural tradition to another — without changing a word.

I still see that Upper Skagit man in the back row raising his hand. With that gesture, he opened the fortress of racism that night, with a song, and I walked out, a lucky boy. Here I finally thank him for that. n George Venn, a memorable guest when the University hosted a memorial for the late Wallace Stegner, is a writer in Oregon.

This essay is excerpted from a new collection of his essays, Keeping the Swarm.

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THE BEST PROFESSOR HARDLY ANYONE KNOWS

by Marc Covert

Rue des Rosiers, Paris

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Infra-red film image: Auvers-sur-Oise, France

The University’s brilliant blunt bicyclomaniac photographer teacher, Pat Bognar.

Photographs by Pat Bognar except as noted.

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here is an oasis in Buckley Center’s drab, no-frills basement. It’s impossible to miss: a mad array of art prints, posters, photography magazines, books, film cans, cameras, camera parts, flash units, tools, tripods, film scraps, paintings, and other objects that seem to have cascaded out of a tiny office near the fire doors, covering the walls and folding tables outside the University’s darkroom and photo lab. Peering into that small office, you will find more of the same: every surface stacked with sculptures and knickknacks, prints framed and unframed, buckets of cameras and parts, plus a thick pelt of postcards and thank-you notes from former students tacked to the door.

Congratulations: You have entered

the domain of Patricia Bognar, who for the past 18 years has taught some thousand lucky students the art of black and white or creative photography. And lucky they were, for Pat might well be the best instructor of all at a university that prides itself on terrific teaching as the core of its missions.

Watch her in action. Her courses are taught using field trips, classroom sessions, and darkroom photo labs.

When students are working in the darkroom, she dashes back and forth from her office to the lab, holds court in the hallway, dispenses film and batteries and photo paper, and peers closely at dripping prints and test strips offered up for comment by anxious

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Palladium print image: Statue of Abraham Lincoln on the Park Blocks, Portland, Oregon

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students. Today Pat and a student are sweating over a flash unit gleaned from a weekend garage sale; after a thorough cleaning and new batteries it still won’t work. “Just hit it!” says Pat, giving the thing a solid rap on a table. It now works perfectly. A student walks up to her with a print fresh from the developer tray, says “I need more contrast,” and walks right back into the lab, Pat never having uttered a word. “See?” she beams. “They’re already figuring out what they need to do on their own.”

Classroom sessions always begin with “Pull up your chairs, guys, and let’s talk.” Her students have put up that week’s assigned prints and are expected to critique each other’s work. Photo I students tend to be freshmen and a bit timid at first; when one raises his hand and says “I like that one,” Pat immediately says “Tell me why.” No student gets off the hook once they hear Pat’s favorite question. “I like that photo because it tells a story...ish?” he stammers. Photo II or Creative Photo students have been around the block a few times and are more relaxed: “Why don’t people pick up their dang contact sheets?” or “I hate pinhole photography, it doesn’t work!” Pat’s reply: “It works if you keep at it.” One student has committed the cardinal sin of neglecting to dab a special dye on his prints to cover up the inevitable white marks made by dust particles on the negative. “David got married over the break and didn’t have time to spot,” Pat says to the class with a smile. You just know she won’t have to say that again next week. Still smiling, she remarks that fall break is coming up the following week. “You don’t have to shoot photos over the break, but I will be very disappointed if you don’t.” They get the message.

You never know where you’ll spot Pat around Portland. On all but the rainiest days she dons a helmet, slings a camera around her neck, and rides her bike from downtown to The Bluff, the Oregon College of Art and Craft, U-Develop, or any location where she might be interested in shooting a roll of film. Many of her best works are the result of paying attention as she goes from point A to point B. Pat long ago found her niche as a “street photographer,” moving back and forth from black and white to color film, from her trusty Canon SLR to self-made pinhole cameras to boxy, bright plastic Holgas, anything to keep her work and artistic outlook fresh. She shoots every day, period. Is she as good a practitioner as she is a teacher? Ask

Pinhole camera image: St. Johns Bridge, Portland, Oregon

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the Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh in Amsterdam, the Art Company in Leeds (England), or the Regional Arts and Culture Council in Portland, only three of the entities around the world who own and exhibit Bognar prints.

But Pat the Teacher is the role where she really shines. In the classroom or darkroom or bustling about Buckley Center’s main-floor gallery (which she runs), she exudes the passion and inner calm you find in the lucky few who choose their life paths wisely. Just don’t expect her to suffer fools, tardiness, digital photography, or posing for photos gladly.

Her love of photography and enthusiasm for sharing that love with others is simply irresistible; her fierce determination to practice honesty, integrity, and ethics in her art and teaching makes an unforgettable impression on her students as well.

Her photo classes are structured, with weekly assignments, lectures, and handouts, but she allows a remarkable degree of independence when it comes to what her students want to pursue as themes and subjects. “I had to stick to very rigid assignments when I was a photography student, and I hated it!” she says. “I’m trying to get my students to decide what it is they want to shoot. Do they like portraits? Nature?

Urban scenes? I want them to move on until they find the subjects that interest them.” Pat frets about this.

“I mean, what enriches their lives?

Do they get much of whatever that is?”

It’s easy to dismiss film photography as archaic in today’s digital, screenaddicted culture, but Pat will have none of it. “Photography as I teach it isn’t meant to be easy,” she says. “Digital is good for some things – fine art, commercial photography, snapshots – but there is still a lot to say for film.

I compare it to ceramics: it’s a lot of hard work, very time-consuming, and it doesn’t always work out. But it’s the process that’s important. What I want my students to get out of photography is self-knowledge. They need to find out who they are. All their lives they’ve been trying to please their parents, their friends, their teachers, their professors. But who are they really? I want to give my students the freedom to find out. The search for what is important to them is what is important to me. The camera is a tool that can help students discover what their interests are, and lead them to the path of self-discovery...” n

Boots by Talley Carlston ’13

Marc Covert ’93 is an editor of this magazine and a scholar of the work of the Northwest writer Moritz Thomsen.

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ALUMNI AWARDS PRESENTED AT STATE OF UP LUNCHEON Seating is limited at our annual State of the University and Alumni Awards luncheon so mark your calendars for Tuesday, April 1, 2014 and plan to join us at noon at the Multnomah Athletic Club in downtown Portland. University president Rev. E. William Beauchamp, C.S.C., will deliver his final annual State of the University address as president and take full measure of one of the finest Catholic universities in the West. We will also honor the three 2014 Alumni Award winners and recognize the student recipient of this year’s Gerhardt Award. Watch for your invitation in the mail this spring and plan to attend to honor your fellow alumni and hear the latest news about the University’s continued growth and many accomplishments.

RSVP online at http://rise.up. edu/info/register.

SAVE THE DATE FOR REUNION 2014, JUNE 26-29 Save the date to join us this summer (June 26-29, 2014) as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Salzburg study abroad program. More than 2,000 alumni have lived and studied in the hometown of the Von Trapps, and we’re bringing the best of Salzburg to The Bluff as we welcome back 50 classes of our beloved Salzburgers. The celebration begins on Thursday evening with a “Farm to Fork” dinner, a multi-course meal prepared table-side with the freshest treats of the summer harvest.

We’ll transform the main quad into a traditional Bavarian beer hall on Friday night, and

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host a family-friendly singalong “Sound of Music” viewing on Saturday before the traditional Welcome Home BBQ & Dance that night. During the weekend, we’ll also celebrate “30 years of Manliness” with the Villans of Villa Maria, cheer the Golden Anniversary of the fabulous Class of 1964 and the Silver Anniversary of the Class of 1989, as well as all classes ending in ’4 and ’9.

We’ll wrap up the weekend with the All Alumni Mass and Brunch on Sunday. All this, and the National Alumni Board Golf Tournament, too!

We invite all alumni, their families, and friends to join us for the fun. Circle the last weekend of June 2014 on your calendar, and plan to return to campus to catch up with classmates and faculty while you create some exciting new memories. See you at Reunion 2014!

NATIONAL DAY OF SERVICE 2014 Mark your calendars for Saturday, April 26, 2014 for the National Day of Service.

National Alumni Board representatives will host volunteer opportunities across the country. In the Portland metro area, join our local National Alumni Board representatives as they lead projects with Rebuilding Together.

Please check our website at alumni.up.edu for updated information on your area’s plans for the National Day of Service.

CAREER SERVICES LAUNCHES PILOTS GUIDING PILOTS The University’s career services office has launched Pilots Guiding Pilots, an online tool that connects current students with UP graduates for career

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advice, networking, and support. They are seeking alumni who might be interested in providing career guidance through informational interviews and job shadows or providing internship or graduate and professional school advice. Questions can be directed to Amy Cavanaugh at cavanaug @up.edu or Amanda Wheaton at wheaton@up.edu.

Get more information at http://tinyurl.com/kaw5xan, or by contacting alumni relations at 503-943-7328, 888-UP-ALUMS, or alumni@ up.edu.

SALZBURG 50TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT The University Singers celebrate the 50th anniversary of UP’s Salzburg program with the sound of music from Austria. You’ll hear classics from Salzburg’s favorite son, Mozart, as well as music by Bruckner, folksongs, and a few Alpine surprises. The concert will take place on Saturday, April 12, at 3 p.m., in Buckley Center Auditorium. Free and open to all. Find out more by contacting alumni relations at 503-943-7328, 888-UP-ALUMS, or alumni@up.edu.

BRIGID SCHULTE LECTURE, APRIL 9 Please join us on Wednesday, April 9 as we welcome University of Portland alumna Brigid Schulte ’84 back to The Bluff.

She will speak at 7:30 p.m. (with a reception at 6:30 p.m.) in Bauccio Commons. Schulte currently works as a reporter for the Washington Post and is the author of Overwhelmed — Work, Love and Play When No One Has Time. Overwhelmed is a map of the stresses that have ripped our leisure to shreds, and a look at how to put the pieces back together. Schulte

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spoke to neuroscientists, sociologists, and hundreds of working parents throughout the world to tease out the factors contributing to our collective sense of being overwhelmed, seeking insights, answers, and inspiration.

Overwhelmed is the story of her journey. Sponsored by the Office of Alumni Relations, her lecture is free and open to all. Find out more by contacting alumni relations at 503943-7328, 888-UP-ALUMS, or alumni@up.edu.

THREE UP ALUMNI NAMED TO FORTY UNDER 40 LIST Three University of Portland alumni have been named to the Portland Business Journal’s annual “Forty Under 40” list, which recognizes forty upand-coming business leaders in the Portland area that are both professionally accomplished and civically engaged.

The three UP alumni recognized this year are: • Thomas Brenneke ’03, founder and president, Network Redux • Dan Brown ’98, principal and vice president, Cascade Energy • Augusto Carneiro ’01, owner, Nossa Familia Coffee.

The winners will be honored at The Nines Hotel in downtown Portland with a lunch on Thursday, February 13.

UP students and alumni are recognized locally as a rich resource for research, internships, and full-time employment. More than half of the University’s 31,000 alumni reside in the Portland/Vancouver metropolitan area.

To learn more about why University of Portland students and alumni make excellent employees, visit our career services office in person or go to www.up.edu/ career, or call 503-943-7201 or career@up.edu. You can also find out more by contacting alumni relations at 503-9437328, 888-UP-ALUMS, or alumni@up.edu.

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As the University and its alumni prepare the celebrate the 50th anniversary of our iconic Salzburg Program, let us sing the song of Father Ambrose Wheeler, of the Congregation of Holy Cross, and of his native Tipperary, in Ireland. It was Ambrose who gathered Fathers Paul Waldschmidt and Bob Beh as co-conspirators in creating the Program, which has sent more than 2,000 students and alumni to Austria for a year, very often thoroughly changing the shape and tenor and scope of their lives. It was Ambrose who persuaded Waldy, then the president, to kick and insist and wheedle the Program into being when the University was adamantly sparse of funds. It was Ambrose who led the first contingent of students to Mozart’s city, who designed the program’s basic structure (serious study, but lots of time to travel to other countries), who was the beloved leader for the first four years. He was a riveting soul in many other ways, was Amby Wheeler, and there are many sweet stories to sing: how he moved to New York City at age 11, and sold newspapers in the streets of Brooklyn; how he earned a doctorate in biology, and taught beautifully on The Bluff, and at St. Dominic’s College in Illinois, and Notre Dame College in Bangladesh; how he founded the Literacy School for the orphans of Dacca, and taught hundreds of boys to read, and pushed them toward school; how he soon became rector at Notre Dame, which is to say president; how he played golf and skiied with joy and told stories with high glee; how he quietly helped out at dozens of parishes over the years, and served eight years as chaplain at St. Francis High in California; and how the first Salzburgers, the Erste Gruppe, loved him so that they created the Father Ambrose Wheeler, C.S.C., Scholarship, to which you, yes, you can contribute any amount you like, and help sing a lovely soul. Call Diane Dickey, 503.943.8130, dickey@up.edu.

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C L A S S Well, what can we say about Doug Penner ’53, who passed away on November 25, 2013, after a brief illness? That he was a longtime resident of North Portland and owner of the Twilight Room? Everybody knows that. Or that he attended the University of Portland on a football scholarship and was a member of UP’s last football team?

Most people know that too, since Doug loved to say he singlehandedly killed football on The Bluff. That he purchased the T-Room after serving as a lowly bartender and ran it for over 50 years, partnering with and employing many family members over the years? Common knowledge. Or how about the fact that Doug loved to follow soccer and basketball teams at UP and was often seen at the games sporting a purple Pilots cap and jacket? Well, he was hard to miss with his trademark white beard and hipster glasses. And it goes without saying that Doug dearly loved his wife Janet ’60, ’71; sons Chris, Greg ’85, and Bart; daughter Cassandra; and grandchildren Josh, Aubra, Blake, Annabelle, Lindley, Wyatt, and Sophia, and that the tragic loss of his youngest son, Bart, was a blow he and the rest of his family bore with astounding grace and dignity. Perhaps there are so few unheard tales about Doug because of his long tenure as a public figure to North Portland residents and UP alumni, faculty, and students alike, or his utter lack of any sort of hidden agenda. Doug was just Doug to all and sundry, what you saw was what you got, and it was hard not to love and respect him for that. The stories and tears flowed like so many pitchers of Heidelberg at his funeral in the Chapel of Christ the teacher and reception in the T-Room.

Our prayers and condolences to Doug’s family and many, many friends. In lieu of flowers, please consider donations to Blanchet House.

N O T E S FIFTY YEAR CLUB Deacon John Ries ’41, ’52, who was in the first class of deacon candidates in Oregon after Vatican II re-established the order in 1965, died on Friday, November 22, 2013. He was 90 years old. Ries served as deacon at St. Mary’s Cathedral Parish for 17 years, where he became known as “plumber to the archbishops” for all the free maintenance work he did around the church. Following graduation from Columbia Prep, he attended Mt. Angel Seminary and graduated in 1945. After serving in the U.S. Navy he began a varied career that included positions with the University of Portland (director of admissions), the Portland Fire Department, and as a teacher in Portland, Redmond, and Burns. In Portland he was appointed as director of home repair training; he then founded a program to teach construction skills by fixing homes of low-income, elderly, and handicapped persons. That program formed the basis for the University of Portland’s Christmas in April program.

Now known as Rebuilding Together, the charity helps people fix their neighbors’ homes that have fallen into disrepair. He was ordained a deacon by Archbishop Levada in 1993, and was assigned to St. Mary’s Cathedral, where he remained until his retirement in 2009.

In 1992 he received the University’s Rev. Thomas Oddo Outstanding Service award for his leadership roles. Survivors include his wife of 65 years, Elinor; son, John Ries; stepdaughter, Cheryl Weir; daughters, Bibi Clarke, Elizabeth Pendergrass, Juli Currie, and Rose Jones; 15 grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren; and sisters, Ina Rose Zuelke and Doris Litchfield. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Gloria Clarice Ann Jones ’44 passed away on October 11, 2013, in Milwaukie, Ore. A graduate in nursing, Gloria served as an Army nurse at Fort Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, during World War II. She was awarded the Army Commendation ribbon for her service in aiding survivors of the wrecked S.S. Yukon near Seward, Alaska. Survivors in-

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clude brother, Don Donofrio; daughter, Elizabeth Jones Kyle; grandson, Kevin R. Kyle; and granddaughter, Jennifer Kyle Hamilton. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Richard “Dick” Carney ’44 passed away on November 28, 2013, at the age of 90. Richard and his twin brother Robert ’44 studied business at the University of Portland, where Dick met his future wife, nursing student Mary Gritsch ’44. The brothers’ courses were interrupted by World War II and they finished their studies at Harvard with their brother, Bill. After the war, the twins enrolled at the University of Oregon Law School, earning their law degrees in 1949. Richard created his own firm and retired from Carney, Hays & Marsh after 52 years of practicing labor law.

He will be missed at the monthly “Slabtown Boys” breakfasts. Survivors include Mary, his wife of 62 years; daughter, Helen Miller; granddaughters, Erin and Amy; twin brother, Robert; and many nieces and nephews. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

William Franklin Thomas ’44 passed away on November 11, 2013, at the age of 86. Upon graduation from George Washington University in 1952, Bill and his first wife Mary Ann returned to Portland, where Bill started his law practice. Bill and Mary Ann had three children. In 1965, Bill married his second wife, Helen (Hunti) Wall, and had four children.

Survivors include his brother, Frank Thomas; children, Chad Thomas, Thea Thomas, Martha Menchinger, Peter Thomas, Mary Thomas, and Ann Thomas; and six grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Lois M. Compton ’44, formerly of Medford, Ore., passed away on December 11, 2013, in Vancouver, Wash. She entered the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in 1945, and worked at several hospitals in the area before going to work at the VA Domiciliary in White City, Ore. where she retired after 20 years of service. Survivors include sons, David, Michael, Tom, and James; daughters, Sue Kamody, Joanne Compton, and Diana Compton; and

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C L A S S several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Edward Clapperton ’46 passed away on November 23, 2013, after a brief illness. He was a much loved father, devoted husband, favorite uncle, ground- breaking scientist, and decorated veteran. Ed received his master's in chemistry from the University of Portland after serving with the U.S. Army's Eighth Air Force in Europe, where he earned a Distinguished Flying Cross.

He was a chemist and microscopist in the pulp and paper industry, where he qualified for a number of patents. He was preceded in death by his wife of 50 years, Alvina. Survivors include his son, Edward Clapperton; daughter, Anne Pearson; and grandsons, Tyler and Andrew. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Barbara Ruth (Lyons) Kelly ’46 passed away on November 3, 2013, in Vancouver, Wash., with family members close by her side.

Barbara is survived by two sons, Mike and Pat; six daughters, Kathy Kerkvliet, Eileen Kelly, Mary Webb, Barbara Braskett, Helen Maffeo, and Elizabeth Kelly; 17 grandchildren; and 37 great-grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Lee Robbins ’48 passed away on November 28, 2013, at the age of 96. He was a member of the 41st Infantry Division in World War II, serving in North Africa and Italy, where he became a member of the 91st Division Band serving under General George Patton.

He was the owner of Standard Stationery, Standard Printing & Office Supply, Discount Office Supply, and creator and owner of Standard Accounting Systems. Lee was a longtime member of the First Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Portland, serving as an elder and Sunday school teacher. He founded Gladstone Presbyterian Church and Calvary Christian School in Gladstone. He

founded the Orthodox Presbyterian Church on Puget Island, Wash., and was the Elder Emeritus of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Longview, Wash. Survivors include his daughters, Eileen Stewart, Pamela Rice, and Peggy Butler; 11 grandchildren; numerous great-grandchildren and greatgreat-grandchildren; and cousins in Washington, Oregon, and Texas. He was preceded in death by his beloved wife, Dolores (“Puggie”); and brother, Howard A. Robbins.

Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Bernard “Bernie” Fritz ’48, ’54 passed away on November 14, 2013, at the age of 83. Bernie was Commander of the 83rd Aerial Port Squadron, which was selected to help recover the astronauts from Apollo 11.

Survivors include his wife, Barbara; three children; four grandchildren; one cousin, and a number of nieces and nephews, one of whom is Tom Gannon ’03. Tom writes: “My Uncle Bernie was a graduate of Columbia Prep and UP. He was in the Air Force ROTC program through college and served in Korea, and did amazing and noteworthy things (other than being a classmate and childhood friend of the wily Fr. Art Schoenfeldt, C.S.C.), like marrying my mum’s sister Barbie, fathering three kids, and being a keen supporter to my brother Ji m and I while we were on the Bluff. Rest in peace, Uncle Bernie. He was an officer and a gentleman, in addition to being my uncle.” Well said, Tom, our prayers and condolences to the family.

George Raymond Fortun ’50 died on Friday, January 17, 2014, in Portland, Ore., at the age of 89. He was a veteran of World War II, serving in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He sold heavy equipment for AllisChalmers and Star Machinery Co. before beginning a long career with Farmers Home Mutual Insurance Co., retiring in 1989 as a regional vice president. He loved fishing, camping, and traveling, but most of all he loved socializing with his many friends and family.

George was a member of Holy Cross Parish for 64 years and recently attended Masses at Assumption Village. He is survived by children John (Amy) Wiley of Spokane, Wash.;

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Today’s students choose the University of Portland for a thousand reasons, but Dorothy (Kembel) Sawyer ’54 (pictured above in her classroom on April Fool’s Day 1968) chose UP for only one: bus service. Living with her parents in SE Portland, working full-time at the downtown library, and itching to earn her master’s degree so she could teach, she saw that The Bluff was more busfriendly than Lewis & Clark College, and that was that.

Enrolling was equally direct, she says: she wandered the campus until she ran into Fr. John Scheberle, C.S.C., acting dean of the College of Liberal Arts.

Got any money? asked the dean. Not enough to pay my tuition, said Dorothy. But she had the library job.

Sign her up, said Father S to the admissions office after he escorted Dorothy there. She’ll pay.

Today Dorothy Sawyer laughs often as she talks about her days as one of the first lay women on The Bluff. She remembers many priests praying for her — a Protestant who’d spent her undergraduate years at the fundamentalist Bob Jones University. “I experienced, I think, the love and compassion of our Lord,” she says — mixed up with quite a lot of worldly language from the famously salty Fr. Scheberle. This confused her enough that she asked a classmate about it. “You Protestants expect your ministers to be perfect, but we Catholics know that our priests are human,” he said.

Sawyer went on to teach everywhere from Portland high schools to a county GED program to a cozy classroom in her home, where she still tutors. And outside her window is another of her classrooms. Special education students at nearby Gladstone High School cultivate flowers there for a landscape class. There’s no budget, but Sawyer pays for plants and supplies and offers up her yard as a blank canvas to the students.

—Geoff Koch

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We heard recently from Chris LaRocco ’67, who writes: “Attached is a wonderful picture of our group with Fr. Ambrose Wheeler. It captures the energy and essence of our year together. I think there are other pictures coming to you, but I wanted you to see us all together, the first group, Die Erste Gruppe. And we all owe so much to our energetic leader, Wheels. That year changed our lives forever.” Thanks Chris, it’s great to see that first group gathered together, especially as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Salzburg Program.

Karen (Patrick) Driscoll of Vancouver, Wash., Brigid Allen of Portland, Anne (Harry) Sibley of Vancouver, Wash., Kristen (Jack) Hammonds of Steilacoom, Wash., James (Julie) Wiley of Scappoose, Ore., Kathi (Spence) Johnston of Portland; and Mike (Mary) Wiley of Portland; brothers Leonard of Beaverton and Ed of Woodburn, Ore.; 10 grandchildren; six great-grandchildren; and numerous nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his first wife, Lorraine Usselman Fortun, in 1970, and second wife, Mary Owens Wiley Fortun, in 1994; daughter, Kathleen Novak; son-in-law Terry Allen; and three daughters who died at birth. Memorial contributions may be made to Holy Cross School and Holy Cross St. Vincent de Paul Society. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Armand Santilli ’50 passed away on December 8, 2013, in Portland, Ore. He was a proud U.S. Army veteran of World War II. Survivors include his beloved wife, Shari; daughter, Christina Lewis; and grandsons, Morgan and Christian Lewis. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Robin K. Durkee ’52 writes: “I received my Portland Magazine and realized that I hadn’t notified you of my new address.

My wife, Kathy, and I have moved into a retirement facility not too far from our home of over 50 years in Santa Barbara, California. We are both in reasonably good health and enjoy our life here in Santa Barbara, particularly this month of January 2014. The sunshine and mild temperatures are really unbelievable.” Thanks Robin, we can’t always say the same around here in Portland.

George Matsuda ’52 passed away on December 31, 2013, at the age of 85. He served in the U.S. Armed Forces from 1946 to 1948. He worked as a chemist for Charlton Laboratories and the City of Portland, and also served with the Oregon State Police as a lieutenant in the police crime laboratory. Survivors include his wife, May Matsuda; and sister, Kathleen Sato. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Donald Frazier Hering ’53 passed away on October 4, 2013, after battling health issues since suffering a stroke in 2004. He served in the United States Marine Corps with active duty in Okinawa, Japan. Upon returning to Portland, Don Sr. began a long career as a stockbroker. Survivors include his sons, Don Jr., Ross, and Jack; sister, Molly Edison; brother, Clayton; Linda O’Keefe Hering; Sue Ross Clark; many nieces

N O T E S and nephews; and his beloved black lab, Holle.Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Al ’55 and Sue Corrado, longtime University of Portland friends and benefactors, received the 2013 Spirit of Holy Cross Award at a special Mass celebrating the Feast Day of Blessed Basil Moreau C.S.C., founder of the Congregation of Holy Cross, on Monday, January 20. The Spirit of Holy Cross Award is given annually to lay collaborators of the Congregation of Holy Cross, United States Province of Priests and Brothers. The award acknowledges the critical importance the recipients play in living out the vision and mission of Blessed Basil Moreau to

make God known, loved, and served through education, parish and mission settings. Al and Sue Corrado are generous benefactors to the University of Portland and have given more than $10 million to various efforts and projects. Al joined the board of regents in 1991 and has served ever since, including six years as its chairman. In 2001, their generosity and care for the University were recognized with an honorary doctorate for Al; and in 2003, Al and Sue together were honored for their lifetime of philanthropy in the city of Portland and the state of Oregon. Corrado Hall, a three-story residence hall built in 1998, was named in honor of the couple. The Corrados are also supporters of St. John Fisher Parish, Central Catholic High School, the Archdiocese of Portland, and countless other organizations and institutions in the area. The couple has a family of seven children, 18 grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

Gerald D. Williams ’57 passed away on October 28, 2013, peacefully of natural causes, with his loved ones by his side.

Jerry worked as a parole officer in Tacoma, Wash., then practiced law as a deputy district attorney for the City of Portland, and then went into private practice until his retirement. Jerry is survived by his children and his ex-wife and caring companion of 40 years, Junko Hidaka. Our prayers and condolences to

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the family.

Thomas James Hollcraft ’59 passed away on November 18, 2013, at his home in Portland, Ore. He was raised in St. Johns and attended Holy Redeemer Parish in North Portland. Survivors include his wife of over 20 years, Marie Marckx; children, James H. ’84, Julie B. ’83, Michael H., Therese C., Elisabeth R., Kevin H., Cory H., David H. and Dennis A.; siblings, Richard H., Diane H., and Mary M.; 21 grandchildren; and two greatgrandchildren.

Thomas will be remembered for his love of education, the outdoors, and his family. In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to St. Rita Catholic Church or to the Edward and Helen Marckx Scholarship Fund for Central Catholic High School. To view his memorial page, please visit www.gatewaylittlechapel.com.

Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Claudia Ditter ’59 passed away on January 10, 2014. Survivors include her husband, Richard Ditter ’57, children, Paul, Beth, and Jason; and five grandchildren. She was predeceased by her son, Mark. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Valery Kay (Thomas) Steckel ’60 passed away on October 13, 2013, in Kent, Wash., after battling advanced dementia and lung cancer.

Valery attended Roosevelt High School in Portland, where she was active in the theater, an accomplished pianist, and class valedictorian.

She went on to attend the University of Portland, where she met and later married Gordon Thomas ’59. She worked most of her career as a legal secretary at law firms in Bellevue, Wash. She is remembered as a loving wife, mother, grandmother, and friend and will be greatly missed. Survivors include daughter, Kimberley Brudvik; and granddaughters, Lauren, Kelly, and Malia Brudvik of Auburn, Wash. Our prayers and condolences.

Ruta Jurisons ’60 passed away on December 30, 2013. A na-

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C L A S S tive of Riga, Latvia, World War II called her father into military service and she and her mother were forced to leave on foot with just a suitcase and her teddy bear, which she still had at the time of her death. Her father died in the war, and in 1949 she and her mother boarded the General McRae transport ship in Bremerhaven and arrived in New York on October 24. They then boarded a train for Oregon, where their sponsor lived.

Ruta graduated from UP with a bachelor’s in nursing one month after marrying her Latvian sweetheart and companion, Juris, also a Latvian refugee. She worked for many years as a pediatric nurse for Kaiser Permanente. Ruta died peacefully in the early morning hours in her own home while her family slept. She was not one to be fussed over and wanted to exit on her own terms, in her own t ime. She is survived by her family: Karl and Mary, Viktor, Mara and Peter, as well as her grandchildren, Sarah, Paul, Klara, Dominique, and Jacob, as well as Tigger, her purrsonal cat scanner. She is also survived by many other friends and family members in the U.S. and Latvia. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Robert I. Downey II passed away on September 2, 2013, in Bend, Ore.,where he retired after a successful career as owner of Broadway Imports in Portland. Bob was preceded in death by his wife, Jonnie. Survivors include his children, Kimberely Crabtree, Teresa Roff, Stephen Downey, Heather Naasz, and Jeffery Downey; seven grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

John Cach ’62 passed away on November 29, 2013, at the age of 75. Survivors include his wife, Sandy. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Lynda Benson Dickson ’62 writes: “My husband and I will mark our 50th anniversary in June and we plan to celebrate it with a Panama Canal cruise in April. If you think the trip is information you would like to include in Class Notes, you have my permission.” Thanks Lynda, you bet we would like to include your happy news.

Congratulations on your 50th!

Gloria Eleanor Wollam ’63 of Lebanon died on Monday, December 9, 2013, at the Samari-

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tan Lebanon Community Hospital. She completed her nursing internship at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Portland, where she completed over 30 years of service. Survivors include her daughter, Michelle Gomez, and husband, Noel, of Portland; four grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren. She is also survived by her mother, Lucille Wollam of Lebanon; and brother, Dale Wollam. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

’67 PRAYERS FOR FANNIE Fannie Chatman passed away on November 19, 2013, at the age of 98. A native of Shreveport, La., she earned bachelor’s degrees from Southern University and Portland State University and a master’s degree from the University of Portland. In 1943, she moved with her husband Vernon V. Chatman, Jr. ’72 and their children to Vancouver, Wash., where Fannie became the first black teacher in the Clark County School System. She went on to a 36-year Portland Public School teaching career.

Survivors include her children, Vernon III and Jean Chatman-Stevenson; five grandchildren; 10 great-grandchildren; and three great-great-grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

’69 LET’S HEAR IT, CLASS OF 1969!

Much to our chagrin, we have no class notes to offer for the Class of 1969, a situation that can be easily remedied by the time we compile Class Notes for Summer 2014 by sending any and all Class of ’69 news to mcovert@up.edu. This is your honored year at this summer’s Reunion, you know.

’71 GOD’S BLESSINGS It’s always a good day when we get to hear from Kevin Belton, who writes: “You may know that my wife Janet, who went with me to many UP reunions, passed away three and a half years ago. God has since blessed me and sent a won-

It’s just marvelous, the things we turn up when we’re looking for something else in the University of Portland Archives. While searching for a photo of the University’s Christus Magister medal, we found this — a photo of university president Rev. Thomas Oddo, C.S.C., presenting the University of Portland Medal to legendary band leader and television star Lawrence Welk in January 1983. Our thanks to University archivist Rev. Jeffrey Schneibel, C.S.C., for sending it in. derful and lovely Ecuadorian lady by the name of Margarita Sarche Vinueza into my life.

We were civilly married last April, but we had our nuptial Mass on Saturday, December 21, at St. Apollonaris Catholic Church in Napa, Calif. We were joined by my eight children and many family and friends, including UP alums Tom Charters ’72 and Bob ’65 and Cathy ’67 Yeend. Bob is a fellow teacher at Justin-Siena High School (Christian Brothers) with me here in Napa.”

Congratulations, Kevin, we couldn’t be happier for you.

’74 PRAYERS FOR DONALD Donald McMullan passed away on October 8, 2013, in Billings, Montana, while traveling with his wife. Survivors include his wife, Charlene McMullan; three children, Don Jr., Mike, and Christi; and five grandchildren. He was a veteran of the Vietnam War, and served in the U.S. Army for six years.

He worked for the BPA as an electrical engineer, retiring in 1996. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Don’t forget that the Class of 1974 is an honored year at this summer’s Reunion, June 2629, here on The Bluff. Come celebrate the 40th year since graduation with fellow alumni from all years. Visit the Reunion web page at up.edu/ alumni to keep up to date on

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our plans, and make sure to join us back on campus for Reunion 2014. You can always find out more from the alumni relations office at 888-8725867 (888-UP ALUMS) or alumni@up.edu.

’76 PRAYERS FOR MARGARET Please remember Melanie Raies in your prayers on the death of her mother, Margaret Bitar Raies, on November 23, 2013. Margaret and her late husband, Norman Raies, owned a publishing company in Portland for many years.

Survivors include Melanie and her sister Jenni Morrison, four grandchildren, and several nieces and nephews. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

’78 SAD NEWS Stuart Lee Wells passed away on October 12, 2013, of complications from a stroke. Stuart worked as a history teacher in Bellevue, Wash., then moved on to a deputy sheriff position for Multnomah County from 1961 to 1990, including time in traffic and uniform patrols as well as youth services. As a detective, he worked in burglary, robbery, and homicide.

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Chertrude in your prayers, please, on the death of her mother, Darlene Painter-Tutmark, on November 25, 2013.

She leaves behind her husband, Peter; brother, Bob Stai; five children; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Don’t forget that the Class of 1984 is an honored year at this summer’s Reunion, June 2629, here on The Bluff. Come celebrate the 30th year since graduation with fellow alumni from all years. Visit the Reunion web page at up.edu/ alumni to keep up to date on our plans, and make sure to join us back on campus for Reunion 2014. You can always find out more from the alumni relations office at 888-8725867 (888-UP ALUMS) or alumni@up.edu.

Suvendrini Christopher-Schuhmann ’95 writes: “Greetings from Klamath Falls! We have an alumni group of four here in K-Falls, and all of us are parishioners at Sacred Heart Catholic Church. Here we are preparing for Religious Education class with our junior high students. Lady in Pink: Cheri Jespersen Monteith ’97; Lady in Green Scarf: Katie Beaubien ’10; Gentleman: Craig Robert Schuhmann ’96; Asian Lady: Suvendrini Christopher-Schuhmann, otherwise known as me.” Thanks Suvendrini, how’s the fishing this time of year in Klamath Falls?

As a sergeant, he attended the FBI Academy as well as participating in drug task forces, and spent the last years of his public service as the head of River Patrol. Survivors include his wife, Diane; three sons; four grandchildren; five greatgrandchildren; and one sister.

He was preceded in death by a daughter. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

’79 LET’S HEAR FROM THE CLASS OF 1979!

Much to our chagrin, we have no class notes to offer for the Class of 1979, a situation that can be easily remedied by the time we compile Class Notes for Summer 2014 by sending any and all Class of ’79 news to mcovert@up.edu. This is your honored year at this summer’s Reunion, you know.

We’d love to have as many of you as possible come back to The Bluff to celebrate 35 years since graduating. You can always find out more from the alumni relations office at 888872-5867 (888-UP ALUMS) or alumni@up.edu.

’81 A NURSING LEADER Richard Keegan writes: “I received my DNP from University of San Francisco in 2011.

After two years as a full-time lecturer, I received a tenure track full-time position starting as assistant professor. I

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’85 MORE MYSTERY GUESSES!

teach in first and second semester medical surgical nursing. I am also a family nurse practitioner (FNP) for a community clinic which serves homeless clients in transitional housing units here in Sacramento.”

Norman Eko passed away on December 21, 2010, at Suburban Hospital in Virginia. Formerly of Pearl City, Norman was an RLM Communications information assurance manager. He is survived by his mother, Janet. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

’83 PRAYERS, PLEASE Please remember Julie (Hollcraft) Bride in your prayers as she mourns the death of her father, Thomas Hollcraft ’59, on November 18, 2013, at his home in Portland, Ore. See more about his life at www.gate waylittlechapel.com. Our prayers and condolences to the Hollcraft family.

’84 PRAYERS, PLEASE Please remember Michael Hollcraft in your prayers as he mourns the death of his father, Thomas Hollcraft ’59, on November 18, 2013, at home in Portland, Ore. See more about Thomas’ life at www.gateway littlechapel.com. Our prayers and condolences to the Hollcraft family.

Also remember Tamera

We’re still getting guesses from the autumn 2013 mystery faculty member, this time from Diana (Curammeng) Seppelfrick: “Dr. Asarnow is my guess. I remember analyzing a story by Edith Wharton (‘Roman Fever’) in his class.”

That’s right, Diane, you join a long list of former students who find Herman to be unforgettable. Thanks for writing.

’88 REMEMBERING KRISTINE Kristine Maneely passed away on November 28, 2013, on Thanksgiving morning, at her home in Beaverton with her family around her after a three-year battle with ovarian cancer. Between 1970 and 1984, Kris taught high school mathematics and science in Arizona, Colorado, and Oregon. After earning her master’s in electrical engineering at UP, she began her career at Mentor Graphics. She capped her career with pioneering work in usability of electronic medical records at MedicaLogic/Medscape and GE Medical Systems. Survivors include her husband of 44 years, John; son, Mark; daughter, Patrice Siravo; five grandchildren; one great-granddaughter; sister, Nancy Allison; brother, Joe Jarvis; and close friend, Cindy Katopodis. Memorial contributions may be made to the Holy Trinity Parish Food Pantry.

Our prayers and condolences.

’89 LET’S HEAR FROM THE CLASS OF 1989!

Much to our chagrin, we have no class notes to offer for the

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Class of 1989, a situation that can be easily remedied by the time we compile Class Notes for Summer 2014 by sending any and all Class of ’89 news to mcovert@up.edu. This is your honored year at this summer’s Reunion, you know.

’90 REMEMBERING “MANG” Michael G. Tangvald passed away on December 19, 2013, at home in his sleep. Affectionately known to his family and friends as, “Mang,” Mike ran cross country at the University of Portland and graduated from the University of Oregon in 1990 with a B.A. in rhetoric and communications. Survivors include his mother, Julie; brothers, David James, Ryan, and Matthew; sister, Shawn; nieces, Claire, Tatem and Paige; nephew, Mason; uncle, Jim; and aunt, Claire.

He was preceded in death by his father, David George; and niece, Hannah. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

’95 WHO KNEW WHAT WHEN? Pat Casey has been putting his graduate history degree to good use in the years since he left The Bluff, teaching history for many years now at Mount Hood Community College in Gresham, Ore. During those years he has become an expert on the John F. Kenney assassination and the Warren Commission’s report, as evidenced by his Historians’ Roundtable presentation at MHCC on November 22, 2013. See the good professor Casey and an article about his presentation at http://tiny url.com/msalzna.

’97 FLEET OF FOOT Matt Roe led his Butler women’s cross-country team to a third place finish at the NCAA championships, according to the ever-alert Andy Sherwood ’03.

’98 PRAYERS FOR LAURIE Laurie Anne Hoover-Atwood passed away on October 31, 2011. She was an exemplary student and a gifted artist, musician, and writer. Employed by the Salem-Keizer School District for 26 years, she was loved by many and mentored countless children into adulthood, keeping in touch with

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C L A S S many who now have children of their own. Her works of art raised money to provide for the needs of abused and neglected children in her community and abroad. She was featured in Cambridge Who’s Who Honors Edition 2006-2007 as well as The International Library of Poetry Editor's Choice Series. Among her published works is The Reading Toolbox, Useful Tools for Parents and Professionals. Laurie retired in 2007 and continued her artistic endeavors until her degenerative neuromuscular disease made it nearly impossible. Using voice recognition software, she continued writing until the night before her passing, and had the joy of keeping in touch with many former students and parents up until the end via Facebook.

Survivors include her father, Melvin Hoover Jr.; brother, Monte Hoover; sister, Jenny Kissinger; half-brother Jerry Hoover; stepsister Laurie Ann Wingate, stepbrother Joe Fredenburg; Sheridan Atwood and her dear little service dog, Bella, who were her faithful companions and attendants to the end; numerous nieces and nephews; her maternal grandmother, Joyce Stockton; aunt, Nancy Taft; and adopted sister, Ellen Ray. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

’99 CLASS OF 1999, WHERE ARE YOU? Much to our chagrin, we have no class notes to offer for the Class of 1999, a situation that can be easily remedied by the time we compile Class Notes for Summer 2014 by sending any and all Class of ’99 news to mcovert@up.edu. This is your honored year at this summer’s Reunion, you know.

’01 LIVING THE DREAM Julie Cortez writes: “I heard Brian Doyle on OPB radio the other day and it made me want to reach out and say hello. I was a journalism and Spanish student at UP, and up until mid-October 2013 I was working as a journalist in Portland (as editor of El Hispanic News and PQ Monthly), and am now living in Ashland and loving my new job with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where I work as a public relations and social media associate.”

The guesses for our autumn

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2013 mystery professor are still trickling in, and this might be our favorite. Holly Ellis writes: “Oh my, oh, that must be Asarnow.

I'd know that wing’ed hair ev’n if I were a rhino.”

Thanks Holly, and you’re right of course, ev’n if thou wereth a horse.

’03 MARRIED WITH CHILDREN

We heard recently from Dave Basaraba, who writes: “It is with great pride and excitement that I announce: I, David Basaraba, class of 2003, am now a married man... with children!! Woohoo!! Amanda Crawford of Spokane, Washington (thankfully, and luckily!) married me on October 12, 2013, at McMenamins Edgefield in Troutdale with a hundred or so of our closest friends and family there to support us. It was a magical day that went long into the night, and the most wonderful of my life as I not only welcomed a beautiful, smart, hilarious wife, but also two

amazing children: Ethan, 11, and Claire, 8, into my life. We are one amazingly happy family living on Spokane’s South Hill. I’ll admit it’s a little close to Gonzaga for my comfort (ha!), but it sure is nice to be in this beautiful city with real seasons after more than eight years of living in Los Angeles.

Amanda is an RN with Providence here in Spokane. Meanwhile, I’ll still be writing, recording, and playing music, but I’ll be commuting to LA on a very part-time basis, doing some touring, and looking forward to the next movement in my opus. This all makes me so happy, I just had to share!”

We’re glad you did, Dave, sounds like you have some real blessings in your life.

Amarantha (Amy) Byer married Cal Margulis in December 2013 in Phoenix, Ariz., according to Rev. Jim Connelly, C.S.C., who presided. “Cal is in graduate school at UCLA and the couple will live in Los Angeles,” writes Fr. Jim. “The wedding took place at the Brophy Prep School chapel.”

Save the Date for Reunion 2014 Mark your calendar for June 26 to 29, as we welcome alumni and friends back to The Bluff for a weekend of celebration and fun at the 2014 Reunion. We’ll cheer the 50th anniversary of the Salzburg Program, milestones for the Classes of 1964 and 1989, all classes that end in “4” and “9,” and the big Villa Reunion!

So what activites do we have in store for alumni this year, you ask? How about Thursday’s Farm to Fork Dinner, featuring the culinary wizards at Bon Appetit as they transform our Reunion Tent into an outdoor kitchen extravaganza? Or Friday’s NAB Golf Tournament at Pumpkin Ridge? Registration cost includes greens fees, golf cart, continental breakfast, tee prizes, awards, buffet lunch, and a donation to the NAB student scholarship. Of course there will also be the Willamette Valley Wine Tour, the Opening Mass, the Reunion Lounge, Bierstube on The Bluff, and much more. Saturday will feature The Old Stomping Grounds 5K fun run, a tour of the River Campus, 50-Year Club Mass and Luncheon, the Villa Alumni Vanquet, the Upsilon Omega Pi Fraternity social, the “Sound of Music” movie sing-along, the Sigma Tau Omega Fraternity social, a raucous session of stories, poems, and songs with Brian Doyle, Kiddie Funland, an All Salzburger reception, and of course, the always popular Welcome Home Barbecue and Dance in the Bauccio Commons. Sunday will wind down with the All-Alumni Mass and Brunch, with lots of time for farewells and planning for next year’s trip back to The Bluff.

Visit the Reunion web page at up.edu/alumni/ to keep up to date on our plans, and make sure to join us back on campus for Reunion 2014. You can always find out more from the alumni relations office at 888-8725867 (888-UP ALUMS) or alumni@up.edu.

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C L A S S With the beginning of a new year comes the first mystery faculty/staff photo of 2014. This young lady came to The Bluff and joined the staff in 2002 after years of working as a legal secretary. It didn’t take her long to become the face, heart, and soul of one of the most vital offices on campus, one that speaks to the very essence of who we are as a Holy Cross institution. Her vocation as a mother of three and doting, head-overheels-in-love grandmother of one prepared her well for a career that involves care and feeding and nurturing of any number of students, faculty, staff, and Holy Cross priests and brothers, not to mention lay and religious members of the surrounding Catholic community. Her willingness to devote countless hours to annual fundraising for the Moreau Center for Service and Leadership has raised thousands of dollars for the annual Nicaragua Service Learning trip. That and she knits some of the coolest hats and scarves and sweaters you’ll ever see, is a super quilter, and, according to one of her best friends on campus, “is a little short and wears funny shoes.” Best guesses to mcovert@up.edu.

Emily (Hatten) Harrington has been added to the board of Portland’s Blanchet House of Hospitality, a 61-year-old organization which feeds the hungry and provides shelter to Portlanders who are homeless.

Harrington, a nurse practitioner, has worked in the local Providence medical centers as well as at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.

after three years working with special needs students she founded Puget Sound Occupational Therapy. Being diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer while pregnant never stopped her love for life.

’04 A SHINING LIGHT

Among her accomplishments was completing the Susan G Komen 3-day (60 miles) two days after a chemotherapy session. While battling cancer she was a dedicated mother of

Jill Marie (Dullum) Alvord passed away on Monday, October 14, after a brave battle with breast cancer. Jill was an occupational therapist, and

N O T E S a 3-year-old, a wife, a sister, a daughter, and a business owner. Her love for family was next to none and she adored her daughter. Survivors include husband Alex Alvord, daughter Ricah Grace Alvord, sister Annie Dullum, and brother Brett Dullum. In lieu of flowers, she would like donations to her child, Ricah Alvord. See more at tinyurl. com/l23qgb5. Our prayers and condolences to the family. We have Ashley O’Connor, one of Jill’s many heartbroken friends, to thank for notifying us of her passing.

We heard from Emma Maruska, who writes: “I recently returned from teaching English to middle school students in rural Japan for two years. It was a great experience, and one that led me to a wonderful partner, Dane Nightingale. We have relocated to Southern California and are just getting settled into our awesome Hillcrest apartment. Now, we are looking for friends!” Thanks for writing, Emma, we’re sure you’ll have friends a-plenty.

Nicole Ricci and Thomas (Tom) Spooner ’03 were married on November 2, 2013, at Saint Patrick’s Church in Portland, according to the ever-informative Fr. Art Wheeler, C.S.C., who presided. “Many UP people were at the wedding,” he writes, “including Melissa Ward ’96 (nee Spooner), sister of the groom. Melissa is married to Eric Ward, who also attended the University of Portland.”

Lauren Orlandos Hanson, winner of two NCAA Women’s College Cup championships as a coach and player, has accepted the position as San José State University women’s soccer head coach. She won both of her NCAA Women’s Cup championships on The Bluff: in 2005, she was an assistant coach with the Pilots, and in 2002, Lauren served as captain of Portland’s championship team under Clive Charles. She and her husband, Travis, have two children, Cole and Taylor.

Congratulations, Lauren!

Jessi Van Der Volgen writes: “I have a photo of a little reunion held recently in Beaverton, Ore., to share. Pictured left to right: Andy Li ’02, ’05, Colleen Li, Christine (Muir) Li, Jessi Van Der Volgen, Leilani Nussman, Kayleen (Carnahan) Welbourn, Daman Oberoi, Sarah Tobin,

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and Khivan (Singh) Oberoi ’06, in August 2013.”

Don’t forget that the Class of 2004 is an honored year at this summer’s Reunion, June 2629, here on The Bluff. Come celebrate the 10th year since graduation with fellow alumni from all years. Visit the Reunion web page at up.edu/ alumni to keep up to date on our plans, and make sure to join us back on campus for Reunion 2014. You can always find out more from the alumni relations office at 888-8725867 (888-UP ALUMS) or alumni@up.edu.

’06 PALS FOR LIFE Patrick Gregg and his wife Jill welcomed their second child,

Kevin Martin Gregg, on October 3, 2013, in Pendleton, Ore. Big brother Jack seems to enjoy his new little brother.

Their beaming, proud grandpa just so happens to be Gerald Gregg ’81, who serves as the University’s public safety director.

James “Jimmy” Todd has been named as chief executive office and general manager of Next-Tech, one of the largest and most diversified integrators of computer and communication technologies in the state of Kansas. Todd, who until recently was CEO at Little-River-based Mutual Telephone Co., joined the organization after January 1.

Annette (DeVille) Collins writes: “My husband, Captain James E. Collins II, USAF, and I both graduated from the University of Portland in 2006. We welcomed our third child, James “Jameson” Michael Collins II on September 7, 2013, at Brian Allgood Army Community Hospital in Seoul, South Korea. He joins our two beautiful girls, Olivia (age 3) and Zoie (age 2). We are sta-

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C L A S S tioned at Osan AB in South Korea where James flies F-16s.

Living in South Korea has

been an interesting experience that we will never forget.

We have been following the Pilot Women on their road to a championship and we are cheering for them all the way from Korea. We were there in 2002 and 2005 when they won the championship. Purple Pride!”

AnneMarie (Ashburn) Horowitz writes: “This former Beacon editor-in-chief got married in Washington, DC this past October, to a UNCChapel Hill grad and fellow Obama for America (’08) campaign worker. We happily hosted many Salzburgers at our wedding and I’m working with the UP alumni team to get an even bigger group together by throwing an East Coast version of the Salzburg Program 50th Anniversary here this fall. Tell the alumni office if you want in! Here’s a wedding day photo of me and my new husband, Roger Horowitz, who owns Pleasant Pops in Washington, DC.”

’08 UP FRIENDS BY THE NUMBERS We heard from Jenna Finney Murphy, who writes: “Attached is a photo from a recent gathering of UP friends (from left to right: Amy VanderZanden, Rachel Morenz, Emily Bradvica, Allison (Murphy) Williams, Jenna (Finney) Murphy, and Beth (Watje) Elliott (unfortunately not pictured). We brainstormed on how to describe the picture and came up with this: Six friends, five years out of UP, four days on the Oregon Coast. Among us there are three married (two to fellow UP graduates), two expecting, one engaged and two flying free, four international volunteers (Peace Corps, Fulbright, Maryknoll, Dominicans), two

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masters degrees (education and public health), one doctor, one nurse, two teachers, two sisters, four languages (English, Spanish, French, Quechua), and a lot of laughs.

I also wanted to add that I was touched by the comments by Allison McGillivray ’07 in the summer 2013 magazine. I am inspired by her search for good work and community.

She, her husband, and their RV are welcome to stop by our home in Montana while they are on their quest!”

’09 A CORRADO COUPLE Christine (Pedroza) Salzbrenner writes: “I married a fellow UP alumnus whom I met during my freshman year in Corrado Hall, Jeff Salzbrenner. Our wedding was on July 28, 2012, in San Francisco. We moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico promptly after getting married. For a year now I have been an operating room nurse for a Level 1 trauma center at University of New Mexico Hospital, and I’m working on a master’s degree and becoming a physician’s assistant.”

More wedding news: Allison Frazeur married Jeff Soukup on September 28, 2013. Allison works as a nurse and Jeff is a construction management engineer. “Jeff and Allison are a match.com success story,” according to their wedding webpage. “They hung out as friends for a while, but realized that there was something more, so they began dating in March of 2012.

They played Arkham Horror, watched Timbers football, and enjoyed good food and drink.

While pursuing their individual passions, they fell in love with each other.” Now that’s a happy ending.

Don’t forget that the Class of 2009 is an honored year at this summer’s Reunion, June 2629, here on The Bluff. Come celebrate the 5th year since graduation with fellow alumni from all years. Visit the Reunion web page at up.edu/ alumni to keep up to date on our plans, and make sure to

We have wonderful news from our ever-peppy director of foundation development, Kathy Kendall Johnston, mom of Philip Johnston II ’06: “Here’s a great photo of my son Philip and his new wife, Ana Stojanovic Johnston, at their wedding in Serbia. They married in her hometown of Jagodina on September 14, 2013. (Jagodina, by the way, means ‘strawberry.’) Philip graduated from the School of Engineering as a computer science major, and was an Entrepreneurship Scholar. He continues to work with the Franz Center for Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation by hosting student meetings when they travel to the Bay Area. He is also a member of the Pamplin School of Business Advisory Board in San Francisco. I could not possibly be more proud of my son!” We know, Kathy, and we couldn’t be happier for you and Philip and his new bride. join us back on campus for Reunion 2014. You can always find out more from the alumni relations office at 888-8725867 (888-UP ALUMS) or alumni@up.edu.

’10 CONGRATULATIONS! Emily Sitton writes: “I earned my J.D. from the University of Oregon School of Law in May 2013. I recently passed the Oregon Bar Exam and am currently an employment law attorney with Schuck Law, LLC.” Christopher Graves has been hired by Gevurtz Menashe Attorneys, where he practices family law in Oregon.

Elizabeth (Beth) Northup writes: “I married my best friend, Mike Northup, on August 3, 2013, in West Linn, Oregon.”

More wedding news from Rev. Jim Connelly, C.S.C., who writes: “I presided at the wedding of Emily Sorenson and Zachary Klute-Reinig on June 21, 2013, at Saint Mary’s Church in Boise, Idaho. Among UP alumni who gathered for the

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event were Sarah Bernert and her fiancé, Kevin Eldrige, Sarah Wendler, Caitlyn McCartney, and Sarah Ringold. Emily adds: “We’re now living in Benicia, California. I’m attending my first year of medical school in the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Touro University in Vallejo, Calf. Zach is

teaching 9th grade English at Pittsburg High School in Pittsburg, Calif. Thank you! Love your magazine!” Thank you, Emily, and congratulations to the happy couple.

Liza Poehlmann and Ryan Knight were married on June 29, 2013, in their home town

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N O T E S Aundrea and Patrick, he sure looks like he’s ready to take the field.

Laura Eager writes: “I currently work for the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) as a substitute teacher, a position I took in February 2013. I moved to Washington, D.C. in August 2012 because I was placed there through the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. My substitute teaching license expires in 2015, and that fall I plan to begin graduate school for a master’s in social work in hopes of pursuing a career as a school social worker.”

’13 HEY, WHAT’S HAPPENING? Much to our chagrin, we have no class notes to offer for the Class of 2013, (other than a feature on Colin Sherrill on page 47), a situation that can be easily remedied by the time we compile Class Notes for Summer 2014 by sending any and all Class of ’13 news to mcovert@up.edu. We know it hasn’t been long since you left The Bluff but we also know a lot of wonderful things can happen in two years.

It’s amazing what you can see by just getting out of your office or car and strolling along The Bluff. Here we see Michael Dente’s statue commemorating the first celebration of Halloween in the Portland area, circa 1805, thanks to Capt. William Clark, his slave, York, and their Chinook guide. of Mount Shasta, California.

They went to Maui for their honeymoon.

Ryan is an ICU nurse at Enloe Hospital in Chico, California, and Liza is a labor and delivery nurse at the same hospital.

’11 AMANDA’S UPDATE Amanda Tillman writes: “I have a new job: I’ve been working as an IT data analyst and support engineer at ExtraHop Networks for the past year. I'll also be starting a graduate school program in computer science in 2014.”

Aaron Davis has embarked on a year of full-time service as an AmeriCorps member with College Possible Portland, a nonprofit dedicated to helping low-income students earn college degrees. He serves as a junior coach, helping low-income high school juniors from David Douglas and Sam Barlow high schools prepare for the college application process and improve their ACT scores. After his year of service, Davis hopes to work with college athletes, helping them reach their academic potential.

Erickson Marble tells us he recently moved to Anchorage, Alaska. Hopefully spring has

sprung by the time he reads this.

’12 ANTONIO’S HOME BASE Antonio DeVilbiss writes: “In July 2013, I began working at Nike in Beaverton. I hope to make this my long-time employment home!”

Megan (Mena) Farrell writes: “I married the most amazing man, Brendan Farrell, on October 5th, 2013 at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in

Colusa, Calif. It was one of the happiest days of my life! Brendan’s a Notre Dame alum, so now I’m a Pilots fan and an Irish fan!”

Aundrea (Roberts) and Patrick Mitchell have wonderful news to share: “On August 1, 2013, we welcomed our first child, Elijah Patrick Mitchell, into the world and he is very excited to be a Pilot one day! Class of 2035!” Thanks

’14 A TRUE TESTI-MENT Not even graduated yet and UP sophomore student Nicholas Ost has established Sacks of Love, a non-profit organization that aims to spread awareness for male health issues, specifically testicular cancer. He and his friend and classmate Christopher Utter-

back started Sacks of Love while they were still in high school. While Chris is no longer involved with the organization, Nick and his colleagues have a board of directors run purely by volunteer college students. “It is their belief that bringing humor to a delicate situation can help rally people around a cause,” according to their website.

“They aimed to create an environment where victims can more easily talk about their experiences without any embarrassment.” Find out more at http://sacksoflove.org.

CHECK OUT THE UP HIVE! Created by alumni for alumni, the UP HIVE is an open forum for University of Portland alumni of all ages and degrees.

Our select group of proud

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alumni thrives on connecting with fellow Pilots who share similar values to better themselves and their communities.

The HIVE organizes events focused on connecting each other through networking and interactive educational events. For more information on upcoming events visit: http://uphive.weebly.com/.

PILOTS GUIDING PILOTS The University’s career services office has launched Pilots Guiding Pilots, an online tool that connects current students with UP graduates for career advice, networking, and support. They are seeking alumni who might be interested in providing career guidance through informational interviews and job shadows, or providing internship or graduate and professional school advice. Questions can be directed to Amy Cavanaugh at cavanaug @up.edu or Amanda Wheaton at wheaton@up.edu.

You can also get more information at http://tinyurl.com/ kaw5xan, or by contacting alumni relations at 503-9437328, 888-UP-ALUMS, or alumni@up.edu.

FACULTY, STAFF, FRIENDS Thea Linnaea Pyle, beloved wife of biologist and writer Robert Michael Pyle, died on November 20, 2013, at Columbia Memorial Hospital in Astoria, Ore., after 10 well-lived years of courageous, challenging, and graceful co-existence with ovarian cancer. She was married to attorney David Hellyer of Chelan, Wash., in 1968, and later to Robert Pyle, of rural Gray’s River, Wash., in 1985. Thea was an accomplished artist, whose wildflower prints and cards are well known and loved throughout the region. A life

long conservationist, she volunteered to protect natural habitats and served in many other roles around the Lower Columbia. Survivors include her husband, Bob; her Hellyer family, including son, Thomas M. Hellyer; daughter, Dory A. VanBockel; grandchildren, David, Cristina, Edward, and Francis; sister, Anne Martin; nephew, Aaron, niece,

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C L A S S Phoebe, and their children; beloved in-laws; and many dear friends. Her ashes will be returned to her favorite places, to mingle with the flowers, butterflies and chanterelles.

Memorial contributions may be made in her name to the Washington Native Plant Society, of which she was a life member, Columbia Land Trust, the Xerces Society, or any other charity of choice.

Her unforgettable smile, strength, spirit, and whole dear self are deeply missed by her husband, family, and friends all over this world she loved so much. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Our very own Shaun Shepherd from the University’s physical plant team was featured in a story on Oregon Field Guide on Thursday, November 7, and is now available on the OPB website at www.op b.org/ofg. The name of the segment is “Apples and the Home Orchard Society.”

Shaun is a local authority on apple and other fruit trees, not to mention Oregon’s native Mason bees, and is in a leadership position with the Home Orchard Society.

We lost beloved physics professor Paul Edward Wack on the morning of November 19, 2013, at the age of 94. After a brief stint at Creighton University from 1947 to 1949, Paul moved to Portland, Oregon to join the physics department at the University of Portland in fall of 1949. His various duties included serving as chair of

the Department of Physical and Life Sciences from 1966 to 1973; membership on the Academic Senate from 1978 to 1983, and chairing the Rank & Tenure Committee from 1977 to 1979. He won the Culligan Award, the University’s highest faculty honor, in 1961. Paul retired officially in May of 1986, but continued to teach until 1999, and those 50 years

make him the longest-serving active faculty member in University of Portland history.

Paul is survived by his son Edwin Wack ’82; daughters Mary Brandenburg and Ellen Wack; grandchildren Lauren Wack, Kelly, Kendall, and Bobby Brandenburg, and Paul Alan Wack; and his sister, Elizabeth Doyle. His wife of 56 years, Mary Ellen, passed away in 2009, as did his eldest son, Paul, in 2010. Through all of life’s trials Paul Wack was unfailingly positive and upbeat; a devoted father, husband, grandfather, and teacher; and a devout and humble member of the Catholic Church. Our prayers and condolences to the family.

Hard as it is to believe, Pilot women’s head basketball coach Jim Sollars has announced that he will retire after a stellar 28-year career

on The Bluff. His final game took place on March 1 versus Saint Mary’s in the Chiles Center. At the time of his announcement Sollars had compiled nearly 400 wins with the Pilots and had won 560 games overall as a collegiate head coach. Sollars ranks second all-time in West Coast Conference wins (166) and he’s been named league coach of the year five times. Under his leadership at Portland, 39 players have earned All-West Coast Conference honors, four players have been named the WCC Player of the Year, and he has coached two Pilots (Laura Sale and Deana Lansing) to honorable mention All-America status. His players have also shown excellence in the classroom as he has guided 40 WCC All-Academic Team selections, 14 CoSIDA Academic All-Region Team picks, and one WCC Scholar Athlete of the Year, while two athletes earned first team CoSIDA Academic All-America honors.

Suffice it to say that we will miss him greatly, and it has been a blessing to have him here on The Bluff for so long.

DEATHS Deacon John Ries ’41, ’52, November 22, 2013.

Gloria Clarice Ann Jones ’44,

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N O T E S

We heard recently from Colin Sherrill ’13, who writes: “I graduated in May 2013 as a civil engineer and I am currently in Honduras volunteering with a non-profit called Water For People. I am designing water systems that will bring clean water to rural farmers here in Honduras, including one for a community of 288 people. This involves doing the engineering analysis, creating the project construction drawing, and preparing the project budget. There is also a UP senior civil engineering project done through Water For People and I am one of the technical advisers for the project.

“The picture I attached was taken for World Hand Washing Day 2013 (I’m the tall white guy in the back).

I do have a blog; it has some pictures and videos and other info on what I am doing (http://colinhonduras.wordpress.com/). On my site there is a link to a donation site I set up. My experience here has been made possible by kind donations from many people.”

October 11, 2013.

Richard “Dick” Carney ’44, November 28, 2013.

William Franklin Thomas ’44, November 11, 2013.

Lois M. Compton ’44, December 11, 2013, Vancouver, Wash.

George Matsuda ’52, December 30, 2013.

Donald Frazier Hering ’53, October 4, 2013.

Doug Penner ’53, November 25, 2013, Portland, Ore. Gerald D. Williams ’57, October 28, 2013.

Thomas James Hollcraft ’59, father of Julie ’83 and Michael ’84, November 18, 2013, Portland, Ore. Claudia Ditter ’59, January 10, 2014.

Valery Kay (Thomas) Steckel ’60, Kent, Wash.

Ruta Jurisons ’60, December 30, 2013.

John Cach ’62, November 29, 2013.

Gloria Eleanor Wollam ’63, December 9, 2013, Lebanon, Ore.

Spring 2014 47

Robert I. Downey II ’64, September 2, 2013, Bend, Ore. Fannie Chatman ’67, November 13, 2013.

Donald McMullan ’74, October 8, 2013, Billings, Mont.

Margaret Bitar Raies, mother of Melanie Raies ’76, November 23, 2013.

Stuart Lee Wells ’78, October 12, 2013.

Norman Eko ’81, December 21, 2010.

Darlene Painter-Tutmark, mother of Tamera Chertrude ’84, November 25, 2013.

Kristine Maneely ’88, November 28, 2013, Beaverton, Ore. Michael G. Tangvald ’90, December 19, 2013.

Laurie Anne Hoover-Atwood ’98, October 31, 2011.

Jill Marie (Dullum) Alvord ’04, October 14, 2013.

Thea Linnaea Pyle, wife of Robert Michael Pyle, November 20, 2013, Astoria, Ore. Paul E. Wack, November 19, 2013, Portland, Ore.

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FREYA At 3:37 in the morning on a Thursday my baby girl was born. She was handed to me and I held her in my arms and met my daughter, my Freya—a name I have never shared with anyone until now. Then I handed her over to her mother and she became her daughter, her Greta.

Eight months before Freya was born, I was a college graduate, unemployed, unexpectedly pregnant, and faced with the most serious situation and decision of my life; a situation and a decision I had never really imagined. We talk idly about pregnancy and adoption and raising children but we do not talk seriously about it until we must.

I was not ready to be a parent. Nor was I ready to end my pregnancy. I was ready for adoption. I was not ready for the next eight months, during which I experienced the most love and joy I’ve ever felt, coupled with the most defeat and pain I could imagine.

I had no help from Freya’s father. But I miraculously found the right family for Freya. They were gentle and joyful and kind and genuine and right. We laughed about the way family is a huge word; we cried about it too.

Freya came fast—determined to enter the world and take it by storm. It’s impossible to explain what it felt like to see a girl who spent 36 weeks inside me lying on my chest. Something I’d spent 36 weeks preparing for was over in an hour. As I held my Freya, completely in awe of the fact that people make people, I knew she was the most important and best accomplishment of my life, better than all my bests—and I knew she didn’t belong with me. She

belonged with her parents.

From the moment I chose adoption I have not regretted it. I regret that I was not ready to be a mother but after all is said and done I am proud I was able to give Greta not only the best parents but the

right parents. I found Greta’s parents and that charming little girl with my eyes brought us all together. And we will be bound by the complex thread of her adoption, always. I stay in touch with her and her parents. What

Portland 48

amazes and inspires me most of all is the love that surrounds her; not only mine, but the love of her parents. A child cannot receive too much love, and my daughter, their daughter, is loved.

Sydney Syverson ’11

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Here’s a Campaign story. The urbane brilliant gentle friendly meticulous creative equanimity named Paul Wack by his parents, when he emerged into the sweet air of Iowa in 1919, first arrived on The Bluff in 1949, to teach physics. He would go on to be the longest-serving professor in the history of the University, teaching his last class in 1999, and long after that continuing to visit campus, happily chat with students, writing paper and electric letters to faculty and students and staff, conducting all sorts of physics experiments in his home, and never, as far as we can tell, saying anything mean or cutting or snide or dismissive to anyone. You never met a man with more cheerful curiosity coursing through him like a wild river. In fifty years he taught thousands of students about science and physics, but he surely taught them more about grace and kindness and humor and attentiveness and reverence, which are far greater lessons.

Those are the lessons the University wants to teach most. That’s why we ask for your gifts. In a real sense we want to suggest to our students that ought to try to be like Paul Edward Wack, who died in November, at age 94, a man esteemed by everyone who met him until the day he died, as devout and humble and cheerful and curious at the end as he was in the beginning. All gifts celebrating Paul, and celebrating the chance to spark thousands more students’ heads and hearts, are welcome with our most sincere thanks. Call Diane Dickey at 503.943.8130, dickey@up.edu.

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HO’OLAULE’A!!

THE ANNUAL HAWAI’IAN CLUB LU’AU Will light up the Chiles Center on Saturday, March 22, from five in the afternoon deep into the evening. Singing, dancing, unbelievable food from the islands, laughter, guitars, ukuleles, storytelling, leis, legends, and the sonorous gentle undulating ancient language of the archipelago from which more than 1,000 University alumni, one regent (the urbane Darryl Wong ’77), and 230 current students hail — you don’t want to miss it. Hosted by the student Hawai’ian Club, the lu’au is a bolt of light in the moist and murk of spring — as legendary physics professor Brother Godfrey Vassallo knew. For tickets and details, call the student activities office at 503.943.7470.