Monday, December 23, 2019

ON DEC. 10, 2019, PULLMAN CHAMBER PRESENTS AWARDS TO COMMUNITY MEMBERS


Photo: Left to right, Mike and Sue Hinz, Pullman Chamber 'Member of the Year,' and Rick Wayenberg, a volunteer including at Pullman Regional Hospital. Wayenberg is brother of Sue.  Photo taken 12/22/2019 by Pullman :: Cup of the Palouse .

PULLMAN C of C PRESENTS AWARDS FOR 102nd YEAR
Dec 19, 2019 Whitman County (Colfax) Gazette

Pullman Chamber of Commerce hosted its 102nd annual awards luncheon Dec. 10, 2019.

New chamber board president Andrew Flabetich thanked outgoing president Jill Bielenberg for her service to the chamber.

Ginger Flynn, new board member, was introduced and long-term member Tom Handy received a farewell.

Community awards winners honored were Mike Rydbom (Hall of Fame Historical) for his longtime Chamber support and committee participation; Community Band of the Palouse (Hall of Fame Modern) for numerous community events and Pullman’s Fourth of July Celebrations; Pullman Schools Food Pantry Program (Civic Improvement) which serves more 200 students weekly in all public schools; Stephen and Sharon Hall (Marshall A. Neill Community Service Award) who founded the Palouse Free Clinic and have volunteered numerous hours.

Mike and Sue Hinz received the ‘Member of the Year’ honor for their multiple service projects and countless hours making cotton candy at Pullman’s Fourth of July celebration.

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NEW PRESIDENT INTRODUCED AT PULLMAN CHAMBER MEETING, AWARDS LUNCHEON
Dec 17, 2019 Moscow Pullman Daily News


The Pullman Chamber and Visitor Center hosted its 102nd Annual Meeting and Awards luncheon Dec. 10, 2019, at Courtyard by Marriott in Pullman.


The event focused on Chamber initiatives and accomplishments over the past year, and introduced new Chamber Board President Andrew Flabetich, and new board member, Ginger Flynn.


Meeting attendees thanked Jill Bielenber, outgoing board president, for her services, and bade farewell to departing long-term member Tom Handy.

The organization also honored Mike Rydbom with the Hall of Fame Historical award for his longtime Chamber support and committee participation; Community Band of the Palouse received the Hall of Fame Modern award for numerous community events and Pullman’s Fourth of July Celebrations; Pullman Schools Food Pantry Program, which serves more than 200 students weekly in all public schools was awarded for Civic Improvement; Stephen and Sharon Hall, founders and volunteers at the Palouse Free Clinic, received the Marshall A. Neill Community Service Award; and Mike and Sue Hinz were awarded Chamber Member of the Year for service projects and making cotton candy at Pullman’s Fourth of July Celebration.



Monday, December 2, 2019

ROBERT REDFORD BASEBALL MOVIE 'THE NATURAL' WILL USE PALOUSE SCENES (story from 1983, movie released 1984)

REDFORD MOVIE WILL
USE PALOUSE SCENES

Saturday, Sept 10, 1983, Lewiston Morning Tribune

PULLMAN (AP) -- A film crew for Robert Redford's new movie spent four days in the Palouse this week gathering footage for "The Natural," in which the veteran actor appears as a baseball player.

However, Redford's fans struck out trying to see him because he did not make the trip.

The movie's location manager, Bruce Lawhead, said the crew filmed scenery to be used as Redford rides a train through Nebraska in the 1920s and 1930s. The Palouse footage will be on a backdrop on a scene filmed on a stage that resembles a 1920s railroad car.

"It's hardly likely anyone will ever notice," said Washington Motion Picture Bureau director Art Kuhlman.

Wednesday, July 3, 2019

'PERSONA' wind-activitate sound sculpture at Washington State University

















PERSONA


Washington State University

Pullman



'Persona' wind-activated sound sculpture by internationally recognized artist Doug Hollis. At Washington State University in Pullman, it's atop Terrell Library on the library plaza with a beautiful Palouse view. Created in 1999, the sculpture was installed in 2000. Photos and video clips from PULLMAN :: Cup of the Palouse blog on May 8, 2019. 


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WSU sculpture singing again



September 28, 2009, WSU Today 


https://news.wsu.edu/2009/09/28/wsu-sculpture-singing-again



The wind sings



Following is a guest essay by Richard H. Miller,

Center for Distance and Professional Education



The wind sings when I’m trying to work.



It’s given voice by Doug Hollis’ kinetic sculpture “Persona,” four sound-generating weather vanes that spin outside my window at WSU’s Van Doren Hall. The vanes are mounted in a circle, held together by a mesh ring showing the points of the compass.



The sound shifts with the wind. Sometimes it’s a person blowing into a bottle, or the call of a whale. Sometimes, a man plays a saw. The vanes move. A ghost moans. I imagine a gauze-clad woman come to avenge her death.



Why “Persona”? Is Hollis saying we’re weather vanes, our beliefs changing with the wind? Or is the sculpture the persona, inhaling wind and exhaling sound? Perhaps the sound is the persona, spun into life from metal and air.



I check out Hollis on the Internet. He has made rain fall through the center of a building, turned beach chairs into harps, planted 950 wind vanes at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. He created a foggy beach, complete with boulders and 486 “fog nozzles” in front of the San Jose Civic Center. In other words, he turns civic landscapes into works of art that send people into a reverie. He makes us wonder when we should be working.



“Persona” is mounted on top of Terrell Library. It’s named after Glenn Terrell, the University president from 1967 to 1985. By all accounts, he was an excellent president, sometimes called the “Students’ President,” partly because he stopped to chat with everyone as he walked to work from his home on the west side of campus to his office on the east side. A scholarship is named for him, as is the Terrell Friendship Mall. The records from Terrell’s presidential years take 39 feet of shelf space in the WSU archives, a long shadow to cast, even if it is made of paper.



My own Van Doren Hall is named after Nancy Van Doren, college librarian and English professor here from 1892 from 1905. The hall turned 100 last year. It shares its centennial with the Model T, and the last time that the Chicago Cubs won the World Series.



A century can seem like forever especially to Cubs fans but it’s a blip in time compared to wind music, which dates to 6 B.C. Back then, ancient Greeks lay around on the lawn and grooved to the sound of Aeolian wind harps, much like the WSU students who sometimes loaf in the sun near “Persona.”



Clearly, the wind is to blame for this lassitude. We try to stay on-task, but the wind shifts, the vanes turn, and the archaic song continues afresh.



“Persona,” WSU’s metal kinetic wind sculpture, is singing again.



Since its installation on Terrell Library plaza in 2000, the slightest breeze or the strongest wind has caused the sculpture to “sing” by capturing wind and sending it through metal tubes.



This summer, however, the sculpture lost its voice. Severe wind storms in June left two of the sculpture’s metal fins “hanging by a thread and they were deemed dangerous” to those on the plaza and those on Rogers Field outside next to the library, said Keith Wells, WSU Museum of Art curator of exhibitions/collections manager. A fence was put around the sculpture and it sat silent.



Fabrication Specialties Limited spent about four weeks repairing the damaged fins in its Seattle shop. On Sept. 9, Trace Taft and Bill Hicks of the firm reinstalled the fins, said Terry Baxter-Potter, a WSU Capital Planning & Development project manager.


“Persona” is one of several sculptures on the university’s campus commissioned by the WSU Campus Arts Committee through the Washington State Arts Commission’s Art in Public Places program. Funds from the commission paid for the repairs.



Nationally known sculptor Doug Hollis of the San Francisco Bay Area created “Persona.” His works include at least three others in the state, A Sound Garden and Water Works, both in Seattle, and A Tidal Park in Port Townsend.



Wells and Baxter-Potter say they are happy the sculpture is back in action.



“Thanks to all who were concerned and told us the sculpture needed repairs and those who called with concerns as it was being repaired to check on its progress,” Wells said. “People being attached to the sculpture enough to get involved, illustrates the importance of campus art.”



Also pleased is Richard H. Miller, WSU Center for Distance and Professional Education senior marketing communications coordinator. Miller can see Persona through his Van Doren Hall office window. He can hear it, too. “The wind sings when I’m trying to work,” said Miller.



Note: The following which accompanied article no longer available … Photos above: Sunset (Oct. 2002) and blue sky (June 2006) photos by Shelly Hanks, WSU Photo Services. Fence (Sept. 2009) photo by Tim Marsh, University Relations. Persona audio (Aug. 2008) recorded by Brian Maki, Center for Distance and Professional Education.







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Rolls of sod ready to brighten roof



August 21, 2008, WSU Today




(Note: Photos which accompanied this story no longer available.)



PULLMAN – After a two-year drought during the renovation of the Compton Union Building, the Terrell Library Roof will once again be sporting green grass.



According to James Stone, construction engineer with Capital Planning and Development, soil preparation began Thursday morning for placing sod in the area. Large rolls of turf waiting in Terrell Mall will be placed as soon as an area of soil is workable and compost has been applied.



“Once the sod is placed it will receive a watering schedule that will hit the area three times a day in order to keep it healthy and encourage root growth,” said Stone. ” It will take anywhere from one to two weeks for the sod to be substantially  established.”



The sod was purchased and delivered from IDEAL SOD in the Tri-Cities area and the work is being performed by Clearwater Summit Landscaping out of Spokane. 



The completion date for project is Aug. 24, 2008.



Cutline for no longer available accompanied photos:



--Rolls of sod can wait 4 or 5 days to be planted.

--Construction crew preparing soil for sod.

--North side of Terrell Library roof.

--Sculpture “Persona”  singing in the wind.

--Crew member lifts rolls of sod for placement.

--Crew members roll out sod over soil covered with compost. The turf is then trimmed to fit the edges – like carpet.



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Sounds of the Palouse emanate from 'Persona'

By Heather Frye, 
Moscow Pullman Daily News, April 6, 2000

The wind shifted slightly to the east and "Persona" began to sing.

The notes emanating from the new wind sculpture above the Holland Library at Washington State University were gentle, like the first whispers of a Native American flute melody. Then the wind blew harder across the organ pipes and the music crescendoed, rising like a wolf song over the hills.

A crosswind caught the metal flags a moment later and the music ended until the structure creaked, swayed and found a new song in the western wind.

"Persona" is the brainchild of San Francisco artist Doug Hollis. He was commissioned three years ago to create the kinetic wind organ for WSU by the Washington State Arts Commission. The project is one of many bringing art to the "Terrell Mall," which is the route former WSU President Glenn Terrell used to take to work every morning.

Constructed on the lid of Holland Library, the structure sits at the crest of a small grassy hill. A low 115-foot ramp leads out to the 20-foot metal sculpture that overlooks the rolling prairie north of WSU.

"It's designed to be processional," said Marcia Garrett, Campus Arts Committee director.

The idea behind the sculpture was to create a place people could go to feel at peace and in tune with the landscape of the Palouse. Each of the four wind organs is configured to the four primary compass points. Metal flags rotate the pipes according to the whims of the wind.

"It's an observatory," Hollis said. "It lifts you into the air."

The sculpture has been in place since October, Garrett said, but the grass surrounding the hill needed time to grow. At 4 p.m. Friday, the fence around the sculpture will be taken away and a dedication ceremony will take place. The artist will join WSU President Samuel Smith and his wife at attend the ceremony. An informal reception will follow, with the artist answering questions from the public.

Hollis was chosen for the project because of his previous work creating art that incorporates sound and place. Among other projects, he has created "Sound Garden" for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration building in Seattle.

At 7:30 p.m. tonight in the Fine Arts Auditorium, Hollis will give a lecture about his work. The talk is part of the WSU Museum of Art Spring 2000 lecture series, "Redefining Landscape."



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Dedication Ceremony for ‘Persona’ Art Structure


March 27, 2000, WSU Today



PULLMAN, Wash. — Washington State University President and Mrs. Samuel H. Smith will host a dedication ceremony for WSU’s newest sculpture, “Persona,” on the Holland Library Plaza at 4 p.m. April 7, 2000



“Persona” is wind-activated sound sculpture by internationally recognized artist Doug Hollis of San Francisco.



The sculpture, located on the Holland Library Plaza, encompasses four kinetic “wind organs” configured to the four primary compass points. The setting is intended to amplify the sweeping views of the Palouse and heighten one’s

awareness of the natural world through the creation of sound and its interaction with the setting.



Hollis’ work has been described as creating an oasis-like quality, where people can pause to catch their spiritual breath and focus attention on the world around them.



In addition to the dedication ceremony, Hollis will present an overview of his past work in a lecture at 7:30 p.m. April 6 in the Fine Arts Auditorium. The artist will also attend the dedication ceremony.



The lecture is sponsored by the WSU Museum of Art as part of its spring 2000 “Redefining Landscape” lecture series.



The Washington State Arts Commission’s Art in Public Places Program supports “Persona” as a part of its goal to maintain a state art collection that represents the work of regional, national and international artists.



Shcl138-00



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Sculptor Doug Hollis to Speak April 6, 2000



March 10, 2000, WSU Today



PULLMAN, Wash. — Nationally known sculptor Doug Hollis will present an overview of his past work in an April 6 lecture at Washington State University.



The 7:30 p.m. talk is sponsored by the WSU Museum of Art as part of its spring 2000 “Redefining Landscape” lecture series. The talk will be held in the Fine Arts Auditorium.



The free lecture and a dedication ceremony for his sculpture “Persona” were originally scheduled for March 23. The dedication ceremony has also been rescheduled, and will take place at 4 p.m. April 7 at the sculpture site.



Hollis is best known for his wind- and water- activated sound sculptures.


Many of his pieces have been publicly selected, site-specific works such as “Persona,” which was commissioned by the WSU Campus Arts Committee through the Washington State Arts Commission’s Art in Public Places program. Some of his other recent public artworks include “Mountain Mirage”

at the Denver airport and “Watersongs,” commissioned for the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif.



Hollis was born in Ann Arbor, Mich. He received a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the University of Michigan. 

He credits his interest in Native American culture and the time he spent visiting and living with Native American families in his youth as having a strong influence on his life and his art.



In the late 1960s, he began working with natural phenomena and responsive environmental structures. His collaborations with musicians, dancers, film makers, engineers and physicists resulted in projects such as the performance - installation “Laser, Sound and Air” at the Cranbrook Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.



Hollis began his current work with wind- and water- activated sound in the 1970s. These early works include his development of the first “Aeolian Harp” for the San Francisco Exploratorium in 1975-76.



In 1983, Hollis worked with four other artists in the creation of “A Sound Garden,” a 2000-foot shoreline walk commissioned for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle. He frequently

works with other artists, landscape architects and architects on projects such as “Tidal Park” in Port Townsend and “A Garden of Voices,” a collaboration with artist Richard Turner, for Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park.



“These and other projects are indicative of my growing involvement with public art and with making places which have an oasis-like quality, where people can pause to catch their spiritual breath in the midst of their everyday

lives,” Hollis said.



The Hollis lecture is the last event of the museum’s spring lecture series, “Redefining Landscape.”



Funding for museum exhibitions and programs is provided by WSU, the Friends of the Museum of Art and private donors. A portion of the museum’s general operating funds for the fiscal year has been provided through a grant

from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency providing general operating support to the nation’s museums. Additional support has been provided by the Kenneth and Marleen Alhadeff Foundation; the Delta

Air Lines Foundation; the Washington State Arts Commission; the National Endowment for the Arts; the WSU Visual, Performing and Literary Arts Committee; the Pullman Kiwanis Club; Tri-State Distributors; and private

donors.



Sh126-00



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Visually stark, the Doug Hollis' wind sculpture "Persona" on the top of the library comes to life when the wind blows, with marvelous chords sounding out in response. People like to just lounge around underneath it and listen to the concert that results.  Note: This page is part of the Paul Brians tour of WSU and the Palouse and is no longer being updated.




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Persona, 1999



Douglas Hollis

(American, born 1948)

Location: Washington State University, Pullman



http://www.artswa.org/mwebcgi/mweb?request=record;id=3529;type=101



ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Persona is a kinetic sound sculpture by artist Douglas Hollis that "sings" when wind passes through four spinning weather vanes. Richard H. Miller, WSU's Director of the Office of Student Media, described the sculpture's variations of sound in a 2009 essay, noting "sometimes it's a person blowing into a bottle, or the call of a whale. Sometimes, a man plays a saw. The vanes move. A ghost moans... Perhaps the sound is the persona, spun into life from metal and air."



This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Washington State University.



ABOUT THE ARTIST

Artist Douglas Hollis creates sound-based sculptures and installations that are activated by wind and water. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan.



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Wind sculpture "Persona" on the top of Holland Library. 
From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository






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WSU's Persona wind sculpture in Pullman, Washington. This photo is taken on top of the library (which has a lawn and seating, overlooking part of the north Pullman valley, the football practice facilities, and formerly Martin Stadium. Late fall harvests (of the Palouse's hundreds of miles of rolling wheat fields) cause thick dust in the sky, creating some truly breathtaking sunsets as the sun dips down towards the coast, cascading across eastern Washington.






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'Persona' wind-activated sound sculpture by internationally recognized artist Doug Hollis. At Washington State University in Pullman, it's atop Terrell Library on the library plaza with a beautiful Palouse view. Created in 1999, the sculpture was installed in 2000. Photos and video clips from PULLMAN :: Cup of the Palouse blog on May 8, 2019.




Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Old Franklin School in May 2019

Exterior photo of old Franklin School (Pioneer Center) on Pioneer Hill at 240 SE Dexter St by Laura Emerson Via posted May 19, 2019, at 8:27 PM at 'Remember Pullman when.....' Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/114434761988311

Thursday, May 16, 2019

WHEAT COUNTRY TRAINS and GRAIN SHIPS




=Book: Wheat Country Railroad: The Northern Pacific’s Spokane & Palouse and Competitors (WSU Press, Dec. 1, 2018) by Philip F. Beach

For more info:




According to WSU Press:

“Vying for economic supremacy on the Palouse, the Oregon Railway & Navigation Co., Union Pacific, and Northern Pacific Railroad laid rail, invested capital, speculated, and built a remarkable infrastructure that included the Columbia and Palouse Railroad and the competing Spokane & Palouse Railway. Their intense rivalry played a critical role in eastern Washington and northwest Idaho’s agricultural and population growth. Based on internal railroad correspondence and documents, and contemporary publications and newspapers, Wheat Country Railroad offers the most comprehensive and detailed study ever compiled of the area’s late 19th and early 20th century railroading.

“Railroad development and competition played a critical role in eastern Washington and northwest Idaho’s agricultural and population growth. Sweeping opportunity lured transportation moguls into the fertile Palouse country—one of the world’s most productive grain-growing landscapes. Recognizing the potential for profit, East Coast financial interests, as well as powerful Portland and Puget Sound players battled for regional economic supremacy in an intense rivalry. Meanwhile, settlers and farmers arriving in the 1870s and ’80s courted competition between railroad companies in order to reduce freight rates.

“Initially as partners and later as opponents, the Oregon Railway & Navigation Co., Union Pacific, and Northern Pacific Railroad laid rail, invested capital, speculated, and built a remarkable infrastructure that included the Columbia and Palouse Railroad and its rival, the Spokane & Palouse Railway. Wheat Country Railroad offers the most comprehensive and detailed study ever compiled of the area’s late 19th and early 20th century railroading—evaluating the personalities and actions of Henry Villard, Charles Frances Adams, Elijah Smith, James J. Hill, Edward H. Harriman, Charles Mellen, and other railroad barons who vied for wealth and empire. Based on internal railroad correspondence and documents, contemporary publications and newspapers, this new study presents a unique reference work on railroads in the West and nation during the Gilded Age and beyond.”

AUTHOR: Now retired, Philip F. Beach was a political science professor for35. He left the WSU political science faculty in 1964 and joined the Fesno State University faculty in 1964 until retiring in 1997. He’s a former chair of that university’s political science department. He has published multiple articles on Washington and Idaho railroad history, said WSU Press and other sources.



=Info: The “Grain Fleet” 1900




I have always considered this photograph of the 1900 “Grain Fleet” at anchor in Portland the most beautiful scene at the Portland waterfront. The following is an article from the November 4, 1900 Oregonian that echoes the romance and poetry I see in this photo. Although not about Clackamas County, a large portion of the wheat being shipped out through the “Grain Fleet” grew in our county, says a posting at the website of the Clackamas County Historical Society in Oregon.



Also from Clackamas County Historical Society website:



Leading with Grain

Few people, perhaps, when they mention it realize the magnitude of a shipload of grain. The capacity of the graceful three and four-masted vessels that yearly visit this port is something to surprise and unreflecting person. Ten freight trains of 25 cars each, or one train over a mile and a half long, would be required to carry the wheat that goes into the hold of a single ship. The manner in which the cargo is taken on depends upon the stage of the water. When the river is at its lowest point, or somewhere near it, the grain (in sacks) is sent from the warehouse down a zigzag chute, into the hold. In its descent, the sack turns over at each angle of the chute, and when it reaches the bottom is seized and securely stowed where it is to remain during the long voyage around the Horn. As the sacks are piled in place, the interstices between them are filled with loose grain, in order to prevent any slightest shifting about of the cargo. The loose grain is packed in, trampled by the feet of the laborers.

When the water is so high that there is not sufficient fall from the dock to the hold for the grain to move by gravity, elevators, operated by electricity, are employed, and the work proceeds uninterruptedly until the ship has received her full cargo. The facilities for loading are constantly being improved, and keep pace with the increase of tonnage. It is by no means unusual for a ship to begin discharging ballast Monday morning and have her cargo stowed by Saturday night of the same week. The discharging of hundreds of tons of ballast is in itself a task that involved no small amount of labor.
But to go back: The British ship Lady Wentworth recently took on 25,900 sacks of wheat during a period of nine hours, and in the same length of time, the Dumeraig, as was reported in the Oregonian of Tuesday last, received 23,525 sacks. The Conway, also English, and of 1776 tons register, which cleared from Portland October 30, was only 12 days in the Willamette River, while the Osterbeck, a German, was ready for sea exactly 15 days after crossing the bar. The last-mentioned craft loaded over 3,000 tons of wheat and was in Portland not quite 12 days.

The grain for shipment is delivered at the vessel’s rail by the exporters who supply the laborers or “dockmen” to handle it. The longshoremen then take charge of it and put it aboard.

While nature has done much for this inland harbor, making it one of the safest in the world, man has not neglected to add improvements that have contributed to make it one of the most accessible as well. Systematic and combined effort on the part of the Commission of the Port of Portland has within the past few years so deepened the channel from the city to the sea that it is now not only possible, but perfectly safe, for laden vessels drawing 22 feet of water to pass out at any stage of the tide and with the river at zero.

The Incoming Fleet 

In addition to the vessels already cleared since the opening of the season and those now loading, no less than 62 sailing craft are on the way to this port to receive cargoes of wheat. These, of course, do not include the steamships that are here, or due soon to arrive from the other side of the Pacific and which will, in many instances, load with wheat and flour.

Taking all things into consideration, Portland may well be proud of her grain fleet. There are but four ports in the United States that, in the nine months closing with October 1, exceeded this on the Willamette in the amount and value of wheat shipments. And for this last month, Portland has led both San Francisco and Puget Sound.

Commerce is not without its aesthetic features, in spite of Ruskin’s notion to the contrary. And its commercial utility in no way detracts from the romance and the poetry that are the inalienable characteristics of the grain fleet of the Willamette. Any ship that sails the high seas embodies this romance, this poetry. In every mast and spar and straining timber she is thrilled with the hidden meaning of the deep.



PHOTOS:

…Book cover – WSU Press.

…Ships - Clackamas County Historical Society

Saturday, April 20, 2019

Schweitzer Center at LCSC in Lewiston begins (April 2019)


Note: Schweitzers are Pullman residents. Corporate headquarters and main campus of SEL/Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories is Pullman. 

The Schweitzer center begins
LCSC’s regional facility projected to benefit local industry and allow more people to stay in the valley
By Justyna Tomtas, Lewiston (Idaho) Tribune, April 12, 2019

Photo cutlines:

--Former LCSC President Tony Fernandez leads the ceremonial on-site dig at the groundbreaking for the school’s new technical education center.

--Among many gathered at the groundbreaking for the Schweitzer Career and Technical Education Center in the Lewiston Orchards Friday were (from left) former Lewis-Clark State College President Tony Fernandez, Beatriz and Edmund O. Schweitzer III, LCSC President Cynthia Pemberton and Idaho Gov. Brad Little.

-- Idaho Gov. Brad Little toured the new Lewiston High School building site with Jake Hinson, project engineer for Beniton Construction Co.

Story text:

A project more than 100 years in the making reached a significant milestone Friday as supporters and officials of Lewis-Clark State College broke ground on the college’s new Schweitzer Career and Technical Education Center in the Lewiston Orchards.
In a brief ceremony, LCSC President Cynthia Pemberton said the roots of career and technical education in Lewiston can be traced back to April 1901, when a women’s services organization discussed “manual training” in public schools.
From that time on, career and technical education remained a focal point in the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley, culminating in a partnership that will provide more educational access and opportunities for students in the region.
“This is an important education project,” Pemberton said. “It’s a project that will not only serve, facilitate and support career technical education, pathways and opportunities, but it will also serve to meet broader educational industry needs in the region to the benefit of our students and the community.”
The 75,000-square-foot facility will be situated north of the the Lewiston School District’s new high school and the district’s A. Neil DeAtley Career Technical Education Center.
Once the three facilities open in fall of 2020, the new campus will provide students with a central location to pursue career technical jobs in what Pemberton said is an effort that “paves the way for even better tomorrows.”
Edmund O. Schweitzer III, and his wife, Beatriz, received praise for their contributions that helped streamline the project. The Schweitzers donated $1 million, while their company, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, gave $2 million toward the project.
Since that time, LCSC raised an additional $5.2 million in grants and support for the $24.5 million project, which also will get $10 million from the Idaho Legislature.
“We are very happy to be a little part of this very important project,” Beatriz Schweitzer said. “We very much believe in education and opportunity. I think this project is precisely that.”
The facility will produce more skilled workers to benefit SEL — and other industries in the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley and the local economy as a whole — while providing people with an opportunity to work where they want to live, the Schweitzers said.
“Family is so important to us, and as parents what is more important than seeing our kids grow up and live happy and productive lives?” she said. “It allows people to stay local so we can enjoy our children and hopefully some grandchildren, building a stronger and happier community.”
Giving students a place to hone their skills in their hometown, or within their region, will have significant benefits for them and their families, Edmund Schweitzer said.
“With internships, summer employment, studying while living at home, I bet more folks can graduate from LCSC without any student debt,” he said, a remark that was met with applause. “This project brings education closer to home and accessibility to many more families and students.”
Idaho Gov. Brad Little said the project and partnership is “the crown jewel in the state of Idaho.”
“This facility was, A, a logical move and, B, it was a bold move,” Little said.
Little called the marriage between LCSC and the Lewiston School District to provide seamless educational opportunities a “big, hairy, audacious goal,” that “was the right thing” to do.
It’ll help the state of Idaho fill the estimated 105,000 new jobs expected to open by 2026 that will require a higher skill level than ever before, Little said.
It’ll also help continue the history of production and manufacturing businesses in the valley, he said.
Former LCSC President Tony Fernandez, who served as master of ceremonies, and Lewiston School District Superintendent Bob Donaldson were credited for their vision to bring the project to fruition.
As the walls of the new Lewiston High School loomed within eyesight of the groundbreaking ceremony, those who contributed to LCSC’s new center donned hard hats and wielded gold shovels for the ceremonial overturning of dirt, marking the start of the college’s construction project.
Donaldson said the projects were always seen as a “package deal,” something both he and Fernandez considered important.
“Our kids can go to school in this high school, be in our career technical programs and come over and take classes at LC to end up with an associate’s or even a baccalaureate degree and never leave this campus,” Donaldson said.
The center will house many of LCSC’s technical and industrial division programs like information technology, industrial electronics and auto mechanics.
The new space will shorten waitlists for programs at LCSC and eliminate some of the constraints imposed by the programs’ current location on the main LC campus, Sen. Dan Johnson said, to provide a highly skilled trained labor source.
Other speakers at the ceremony included Idaho State Board of Education member Linda Clark, and Kyle Neal, who represented Rogers Motors, a company that donated $150,000 for the naming rights of the auto shop at the new center.
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