Fifty years ago during the summer of 1969 human-space flight reached, and humans walked on, the surface of the moon. The next year we scored the SECOND person to walk the lunar trail as UP commencement speaker. Not Neil Armstrong, but Buzz Aldrin spoke to the 1970 graduation class, commissioned the new AFROTC cadets, and left us inspired. Astronaut Edwin Aldrin served as Mission Specialist on the Apollo Eleven craft that landed on the moon 20 July 1969.
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
Congratulations to the Gonzaga Bulldogs, West Coast Conference Champions, for their appearance in the Championship Game of the 2017 NCAA Basketball Tournament. UP and Gonzaga were founding members of the WCC in 1952, two Catholic colleges competing before and since.
A not always polite rivalry. Although the last Men’s Conference game held in venerable Howard Hall occurred in spring 1981, earlier in December 1978, the Portland – Gonzaga game in Howard so rocked the court, stands, and the building itself that Fire Marshalls and student fans feared the worse (but no worries, the Pilots were off to a 5-0 start that season, defeating the Bulldogs 91-76). All later appearances in rivalry against Gonzaga have commanded a larger, sturdier venue. In recent years Gonzaga sells out the Chiles Center as visitors meeting us on our home court.
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
The last of our early Olympians is Rudolph (Rudy) Scholz, the first of our University-connected competitors to win gold in two Olympic games.
Rudolph Scholz attended Columbia Preparatory School for one year, 1911-1912, moving to California to complete his studies. He made his mark here in basketball and baseball. Small in size but quick to react on the court and field. As a forward on the basketball team, “Rudy was the best scrapper on the team. What he lacked in inches he made up in cleverness. Very fast and good on tossing baskets.” (Columbiad, April 1912) As short stop for the baseball team, he was a “fielding star.” (Columbiad, May 1912).
Rudy must have hit a growth spurt before attending Stanford University where he joined the school’s rugby squad, beginning of a lifetime career in rugby. In 1920, at the age of 24, he competed with the United States rugby team to win a gold medal at the Summer Olympic games in Antwerp, Belgium. He returned with the team for the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, France to win his second gold.
Rugby was part of the Olympics in 1900, 1908, 1920 and 1924 and then it disappeared from the Olympic scene. It is one of two sports returning to the Olympics in the 2016 games.
The University boasts many alumni Olympic athletes who once trained and competed on the Bluff. Proud Pilots instantly recall our recent University soccer stars returning as Olympic medalists in 2008, 2012 for the USA and Canada teams. But the honorable title of First University Olympian reaches back to the very, very, very early years of the University when we had barely three buildings on campus and were still called Columbia University. Student-athlete Daniel Kelly attended Columbia University for just one year, 1904-1905. And Daniel Kelly excelled in track and field.
At a 1905 Columbia University indoor track and field meet held inside the Columbia Colosseum (a sports’ facility here on-campus, 1903-1929; replaced by Howard Hall, but back then spilling across Shipstad quad), Mr. Kelly set a new world record for long jump by shattering the previous world record of 21 feet, 10 inches with a jump of 22 feet, 1 1/4 inches.
Daniel Kelly went on to the University of Oregon from the Bluff. In 1908 Kelly represented the United States at the Summer Olympic Games held that year London, winning a silver medal for Team USA in Long Jump, his best competition jump covering a distance of 7.09 metres (23 feet, 3 1/4 inches).
The Long Jump event is one of the original Olympic Track and Field sports (from 1896). The Women’s Long Jump was added in 1948.
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).
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Catalogues and Bulletins reaching back to the beginning of the University list at least ten general usage phone numbers and exchanges for the outside caller seeking to reach someone on campus. Though the very first phone number was not even a number at all. In 1901-1902 callers would simply pick up a telephone and ask an operator to be connected with “Columbia University”. There was likely just one phone in West Hall (the only building then, now Waldschmidt Hall) and by the mid-1920s (with two campus buildings!) there were two or three phone lines serving the campus, including a pay telephone in Christie Hall.
From two or three phones in the mid-1920s, campus telephone service added stations on individual wires in the 1930s. These moved back to a switchboard exchange passing through West Hall in 1938. Christie Hall had a private pay telephone on each floor for student use; the student residents were responsible for answering the phone for an entire floor or wing. An arrangement recalled by Fr. Barry Hagan, C.S.C., ’53, former University Archivist, in an oral history conducted by Archivist Brother David Martin, C.S.C, in 1968: “The telephones; there was one telephone per floor; it was located right next to the steam pipe. You walked into a room lined with a kind of iron or steel sheeting and pulled shut behind this heavy fire door; … you stood inside and absolutely sweat profusely while you made your telephone calls.”
A switchboard operator fielded calls placed to the University at UNiversity2626, UN1641, TWinoaks 8841, TW5541 from the 1930s through the mid-50s. The expanding demand for telephone service in the 1950s ushered in a 7-digit number-system nationwide and the university’s number changed to BUtler 9-5541; the West Hall UP switchboard then successively becomes 289-5541, 286-7911, 283-7911 through the 1960s. Today, cell-phone demand has created a ten-digit system, and we are 503-943-8000.
The first private telephone in a dorm room was installed in 1957 in Christie Hall by sophomore student, Don Gorger. In 1966, The Beacon notices that phones were installed in all rooms in Mehling Hall. The University provided phones for student rooms until about 1985.
Portland Magazine reports 1,415 telephones on campus in 1993: 800 for faculty and staff; 600 for students; and 15 pay phones. Today (January 2016) Information Services reports there are 956 VoIP telephones running on the University’s network: 946 for faculty and staff; 10 for students. There are no pay phones operating on campus. And no count at all accounting for wireless mobile devices, which seem to be issued in multiples far in excess of one per-person.
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Additional photographs and artifacts about telephones are on display on the first floor of Buckley Center (across from the Studies Abroad Office) until the end of February 2016.
Other than our Good-Attendance record and being all-round good-sports, have Portland Pilots teams earned National Titles and Distinction?
The Jewel in the Crown has been Women’s Soccer, twice NCAA national champions.
Women’s soccer began in UP in 1980 under coach Ken Robinette. Soccer on the Bluff became dominant under former Timber’s player, Clive Charles’ leadership (1988-2002), resulting in Pilots appearances at national tournaments starting in 1992. The pinnacle of Clive Charles’ Pilot career was coaching the 2002 Women’s Soccer team to achieve for UP our first ever national championship; which was also the last collegiate game he coached. Garrett Smith picked up the reins as head coach and led the team to its second national championship in 2005.
Pilot women’s soccer – Best in the Field = 2 national championships; 3 national title appearances; 21 playoff berths.
Plus, our alumnae are World Cup playmakers: 3 first place; 1 second place; 3 third place; 1 fourth place, and Olympic medalists: 4 gold, 3 silver, 2 bronze!
We can also go back a century to brag over the Men’s Soccer Interscholastic League title in 1914!
Celebrate Pilot Women’s Soccer with a visit to the University Museum where displays include: Rachael Rapinoe’s national championship jersey (2005); President George W. Bush’s letter of praise for our National champions (2002); National championship ring (2002); Soccer ball signed by members of the national championship team (2005); Cameron Cup Soccer Trophy (1914!) . For museum hours and information: https://library.up.edu/museum
After ending the fall 1949 football season with a win against Lewis and Clark College, Pilot football players and fans were stunned in early February when University President, Rev. Theodore Mehling, C.S.C., announced the end of football on the Bluff. Financial resources were increasing but strained, and directed first toward meeting the extraordinary challenges of the enrollment bubble of World War II vets. Fr. Mehling’s letter cites limited funds and inadequate stadium facilities as prime reasons for not being able to support a first-class football program. An alumni group, “Pilot Booster Club”, with former football player, Emmett Barrett, ’41, as president, led a failed attempt to reverse the administration’s decision. The image of former football players at a football burial summed up the somber mood on campus.
More football trivia & history:
https://sites.up.edu/museum/up-trivia-bar-bets-football/
https://sites.up.edu/museum/exhibits/football/
(Gallery from the University Archives, click on image or text to enlarge)
