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.
:::::::::::::
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.
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.
'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.
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.
(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 substantiallyestablished.”
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.
::::
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."
:::
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
:::
Sculptor Doug Hollis to Speak April 6, 2000
March 10, 2000, WSU Today
PULLMAN, Wash. — Nationally known sculptor Doug Hollis will
present anoverview 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 beenrescheduled, 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
:::
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.
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.
:::
Wind sculpture "Persona" on the top of Holland Library.
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.
'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.
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
“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.
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.
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.
