Objects

These four figures are found around campus – inside or outside, for better or for worse.  No judgement here.   Just the question, can anyone identify them?  Sort of a trivia / treasure hunt tour of campus.  Location anyone?  Take a look, each tells a (forgotten) story from UP history.

A. Figure Striding, The Beacon October 12, 1962, p. 1

B.  Urban League, Equal Opportunity Award, Education.  For special efforts to increase success for local black students at UP.  Alumni Bulletin, July 1977, p. 3.

C.  Papa Sierra, The Beacon April 24, 1980, p. 2

D.  ‘Le Petit Feu’, The Beacon October 28, 1982, p. 3

Summers in the city of Portland have temperate temperatures and sporadic spats of rain, or not.  Yet regardless of the weather, for over a century June in the City of Portland means the Rose Festival, highlighted by the Grand Floral Parade.  For the 50th anniversary, the 1958 Rose Parade called for the featured floats to express the Rose Festival theme of “50 Golden Years”, with each float representing a different year.   The University of Portland entry “Golden Jubilee” remembered our own 50th anniversary in 1951, a year which marked the beginnings of our AFROTC program and the opening of campus to women students in all educational programs and (surprise!) as on-campus residents.

The Engineering Club constructed a boat-float as our entry; at the helm rode an AFROTC cadet standing sentry and Doreen Voeller, ’61, Military Ball princess.  (The University was ahead of the AFROTC by twenty years, it is not until 1971 that women were accepted into the AFROTC program on-campus.)

Video footage of the 1958 Rose Festival Parade is found at this link, with UP’s Float entry at the 4:25 mark.
(video used with permission by Thomas Matlock, owner)

The president of the Alumni Association reports that a ‘treasure box of papers and relics’ was sealed into the cornerstone and foundation of Howard Hall in 1927.  And in fact during the 2017 demolition of Howard, a time capsule was recovered.

Unfortunately, the ‘capsule’ was neither a capsule nor airtight, nor much of a success as a preservation-device and carrier of news across the divide of years.   The box measures  6.5″ H x 7.5″ W x 5.5″ D.  Adorned with a patina of mold when recovered.

The content of the box is two identifiable items, and also a pile of mush-like paper pulp.  The two intact survivors are (1) a copy of the Thursday, November 17, 1927 The Catholic Sentinel.  This seems appropriate, as Archbishop Howard presided at the cornerstone ceremony for his namesake building on Sunday the 20th at the University’s Homecoming Football Game.  Second (2), the roster of enrolled students typed on Registrar stationery.  Item three is a matter of conjecture, but the fragments (3) that remain do suggest a candidate:  the University monthly magazine of student and alumni news, The Columbiad.

There is an additional puzzle beyond the identity of the pulped pages.  The box is very much bigger than the physical exhibits; that is, the papers don’t fill the available space, leaving room to expand as if anticipating a larger history to come.

The three time capsule exhibits, and Howard Hall itself, are messages of faith, promise, and commitment.  The Sentinel newspaper represents the University’s catholic mission and identity, the Registrar’s list specifies the school’s current vitality, and the Homecoming Day dedication ceremony brings together the continuing community of students and alumni.   The exhibits don’t quite fill the interior of the box; and that was the point of constructing Howard Hall in the first place. 

The University built Howard expressing a determination to grow.  The promise and hopes of those sealing the time-capsule in cement in 1927 have come out more than true within these ninety years of life on The Bluff.

Notes: The Catholic Sentinel is still in publication, and back-issues (even to 1927) can be found in a digital archive.  The roster of enrolled students is reprinted in the University Catalogue for the year 1927-28, and also in the big book of the University of Portland Alumni Directory 1901-1912 (with both alphabetical and class year lists).  And as to the pulped Columbiad: the Archives has the complete series of the university magazine, and several well-preserved individual copies of the November 1927 issue.

And Also:  The metal time capsule box has been displayed in The Clark Library Gallery in conjunction with the Remembering Howard Hall photo exhibit.

Sources: The Columbiad Christmas, 1927, for the expansion of campus, pp.86-87 (included here, below); for the Alumni Association letter, pp. 90-92; the Homecoming Banquet, p. 94; and an account of the rainy Sunday football game and cornerstone ceremony, p. 117.  See also, University of Portland Alumni Directory 1901-2012, and The Catholic Sentinel Archives, www.catholicsentinel.org

A volunteer army of alumni and friends worked together to create the University of Portland’s entry “Becoming” for the 79th Annual Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade.  Volunteers labored around the clock from May 31 until Parade Day June 6 to produce an award winner, the 1987 UP float earning the prized Queen’s Trophy.

So what does it take to create a float?

• One float skeleton
• Over 300 dozen colorful flowers
• Over 1,700 hours of labor from over 200 alumni and friends
• Ironing corn husks
• Scraping bark (so the glue will stick)
• Plucking flower petals
• Gluing petal by petal
• Shaking seeds from bulbs
• Gluing seeds
• and many, many more tedious tasks

A beautiful, colorful float viewed by a crowd of over 350,000 on the parade route in Portland and by many, many more on television.

(Gallery of Photos from the University Archives, click to enlarge image)

Positioned above the interior doorway of the University Museum is a large-scale yellow Pickett N4-ES Vector Hyperbolic Log Log Dual-Base Slide Rule.  With moving parts.  Somewhat easier to use than a Rubik’s Cube.  The moving parts were the point, allowing classroom demonstrations.

Slide rules are the trombones of scientific equipment (the abacus = the xylophone?), an early improvement on the humble pencil, and a short-cut saving pages of parchment in calculating large equations.  The invention of the slide rule arriving in the seventeenth century, having to wait for the discovery of logarithms (1614), which had to wait for Copernicus to give us large-distances — planetary orbits in a heliocentric dynamic — to measure.  (But before Newton & Leibniz and the discovery of calculus.)

Aristarchus of Samos [fl. 250 BCE] according to the report of Archimedes (trans, Thom. Heath, 1897), considered the distances of the heliocentric system to be too incomprehensible to measure (like the interior angles of a chiliagon or the enumeration of the sand-grains on all the beaches of all the oceans).  John Napier in 1614 in Mirifici Logarithmorum Cannois Descriptio found a way to fold complex equations answering the problems of scale and celestial magnitudes.

Slide rules were used by Engineering and Physics students at UP through the 70s.   The slide rule was a useful tool for solving equations in analytics and trigonometry.   Once a required school supply, the microchip revolution doomed this plastic analog technology.  The introduction of the (affordable) pocket calculator in the mid to late 1970s eliminated the slide rule from shirt-pockets and belt-holsters, leading to a different aesthetic in geek chic.   Even so, the slide rule is a tool requiring neither batteries nor electricity for those who appreciate (or enjoy) manual computations in case of power-outages.

(Researched by the University Archivist)

Photo gallery, click on images to enlarge

Slide rules with deluxe leather pocket protectors (University Museum)

Slide rule sold in UP bookstore (University Museum)

Large slide rule close up, ca1959 (University Museum)

Large slide rule, ca 1959 (University Museum)

The Limit y = f(x), retired after many years on display in the Math department

During March Madness and the bowl season contests leading up to the National Football Championship it sometimes appears that the NCAA is the sum and summit of collegiate sports.  In highlighting the achievements of Pilot Athletics we tend to focus on our brushes-with-greatness in terms of NCAA honors.  But before UP hooked-up with the NCAA, we used to go steady with the NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics).

And while the NCAA National Championship Women’s Soccer teams (2002 & 2005) won trips to Washington, D.C. and the White House, and a parade in downtown Portland….

https://sites.up.edu/museum/up-trivia-bar-bets-medal-of-the-year/

The University of Portland’s first National Championship athletic title was earned at the NAIA by the women of the 1985 Cross Country Team.  A rapid and amazing development, as related in the 1983 Track Media Guide, “In 1980 the University of Portland women’s track team consisted of two women –  Teresa Holmes and Diana Brink.  Three years later the track team has 19 athletes and the foundation of a solid program” (p. 17).  A confidence well-founded.  The Women’s Cross Country team entered NAIA competition in 1982 winning the District II title, and repeating as District II champs in 1983, 1984, 1985.  In 1985 going on to take national honors and emerge as the team to bring the University of Portland its first national title.  The pioneering achievements of the 1985 squad were recognized in 2010 when the National Championship Cross Country Team was inducted into the University of Portland Athletic Hall of Fame (see Hall of Fame Citation, below).

(Click on image to enlarge)

In the Winter 1982 issue of the alumni bulletin there is a small promotional announcement: “A new U-Portland tie has been designed and is now available to alumni and friends in the campus bookstore.”  The tie is a stately navy blue, bearing the University crest, selling for a modest $9.95 — plus shipping and handling for mailing orders!  That first University of Portland tie was designed by Dr. James Covert, Professor of History and energetic herald of institutional Pilot-hood through his authorship of A Point of Pride, the authorized 75th anniversary history of the University of Portland.

Classing up residence hall life today in 2014, the men of Schoenfeldt Hall –  Scholars, Leaders, Bothers – are coming forward with fashionable frame and masculine sinew to champion personal pride and smart-appearance with the Schoenfeldt Bro-Tie.  Established in 2009, Padre residents strive to bring class to their class sessions, and so while eyes and shoulders may droop from weary toil by the end of the week, on Fridays the Schoenfeldt men’s outward appearance contrives to be spruce and bright as they head to classes (see top of page).  Behold how bow-tie and sweater-vests approximate outward signs of inner character!

Included in our slideshows below are images from the first weeks of the semester.   The smiling faces and easy comraderie also bring to mind an even older UP tradition – the much less stylish freshmen beanies.  (The 1969 LOG documents the last evidence of the practice; a selection of “preserved” canvas beanies is on display in the University Museum.)  In a practice dating back to the early 1950s, all UP freshmen – women and men – were required to retain their beanie head-wear from the beginning of term until the Sophomore-Freshmen tug-of-war in early October.  The Schoenfeldt bow-tie is advertised as sophisticated and stylish, completely voluntary; cool — and not at all socially awkward.  As the legendary Padre, Fr. Art Schoenfeldt, C.S.C., often said, Brotherhood, like family, is when no one else will have you!

Current Schoenfeldt student photos, courtesy Brock Vasconcellos, Assistant Hall Director; historical photos from the Log, courtesy University Archives and Museum

One resident of the University of Portland’s History Museum in Shipstad Hall is a life-size, half-a-manikin in a trunk named Resusci Anne.   With resilient rib-cage and sturdy pipes, Anne has survived hundreds of nursing student trials toward cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).   Resusci Anne was manufactured in the 1960s by a Norwegian toymaker, Asmund Laerdal, and acquired by the UP School of Nursing in 1969. Current nursing students receive hands-on and real-life situation training in the School of Nursing’s Dean Terry Misener Learning Resource Center, a five-bed, state-of-the-art, model hospital and clinic dedicated on April 8, 2008.  Anne, fully recovered and honorably retired, receives visitors in the University of Portland History Museum each semester, in particular, students in Introduction to Nursing and Healthcare 101.   Today the new hard-to-injure interactive patients in the Misener Learning Resource Center include multiple male and female manikins, a pediatric manikin, 3 infants and a newborn, plus a top of the line high-fidelity sim man 3G, all computer controlled to simulate symptoms and behaviors in the Nursing environment.

The following was written by Doug Edwards, class of ’67, with recollections from his fellow Upsilon Omega Pi brothers, and using some photographs from the University Archives.   Upsilon Omega Pi was a social fraternity for men at University of Portland from 1950-1992.

In the run-up to our reunion later this month I’ve heard from quite a few Upsilon Brothers from the late 50’s and 60’s asking, “What happened to the hearse?”   In response to the question I began a dialogue with some of our brothers from that era.  Sadly, but not unexpectedly, none had a full memory of the sequence of events that lead to its sale, but collectively we were able to establish a timeline of events beginning with 1958 and ending in 1970.

The Upsilon Omega Pi Hearse was a 1940 La Salle that was purchased from a UO (University of Oregon) fraternity in 1958 and initially painted white.  No one can quite pinpoint what it year it was painted purple with white woodwork, but it was probably in 1960.

(Note: a 1940 La Salle hearse (but without the running boards or carved wood windows) was used for Rosa Parks’ funeral in Detroit in 2005 ….although it’s very unlikely that this was the Upsilon Hearse, I would like to believe that parts from our fraternity hearse were used to restore this beautiful former symbol of Upsilon Omega Pi).

Over the years it became increasingly difficult for UP to allow some very “normal” Upsilon/student activity as society became more and more litigious whenever student hijinks results in injury.  Several “relatively minor” incidents occurred during the ’60’s…..but then in 1968 a female freshman fell from the back of the hearse while it was being driven from campus onto Willamette Boulevard.  That episode resulted in her spending at least four days in the hospital with a concussion and other injuries.   Although there was no apparent lawsuit filed in this incident, it would appear the accumulation of incidents and the potential for lawsuits caused the UP administration to take an even dimmer view of the Upsilon Hearse…..probably marking the beginning of the end for the fraternity’s best known symbol.

(Note: the female student that fell from the hearse not only recovered from her fall, she graduated from UP with a Bachelor of Arts in 1971, a Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 1972, and a Master of Science in Nursing in 1999 before earning her Doctor of Science from Johns Hopkins University.)

Although the cost of licensing the hearse was relatively inexpensive, even for college students, the expense of maintaining the antique hearse and purchasing liability insurance that had sky rocketed in price over the years became an entirely different matter.  It would seem that sometime between 1968 or 1969 the UP administrators banned the hearse from campus and the economic reality of upkeep and the potential liability it presented to both the university and Upsilon Omega Pi forced the sale of the hearse in 1970.

No one has reported who the hearse was sold to or for how much it was sold, but there have been unsubstantiated reports that it was seen in major disrepair in a field somewhere in the Medford area (or was it Roseburg?) at some point in the last 30 years.

Most of the favorite memories shared by the Upsilon Brothers over the last few weeks center around the UP Homecoming parades in downtown Portland, the Speakeasy Dances, partying in and around the hearse during the always raucous Barn Dance, and parking the hearse sideways in a drive-in movie…..with two speakers, two heaters, a pony key and a couch, it was the ultimate in college-age entertainment.

There were 1,032 La Salle hearses and ambulances built in 1940, the last year the La Salle was produced, but the Upsilon Hearse was rather unique and was actually quite unusual because of its running boards and wood sides carved in the “cathedral” style.  A 1940 La Salle hearse such as that once owned by Upsilon Omega Pi is now so rare that there may be only one or two remaining in the world in restored condition.  In today’s market the hearse could apparently sell for between $250,000 and $300,000, but for those of us who enjoyed the hearse for its 12 years as the symbol of Upsilon Omega Pi it was a great source of fun and entertainment….and you can’t put a price tag on that!!

Below is the last KNOWN picture of the Upsilon Hearse…..note the sign on the door no longer reads University of Portland below the Greek letters ΥΩΠ.

Written by: Doug Edwards, Class of 1967