Woodrow Wilson High School Alumni Update - March, 2020
http://www.wilsonalumni.com
edited by Linda Doyle

CURRENT SCHOOL NEWS
Scroll down the page to read current school news.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW

FAILED ... KEPT TRYING ... AND THE LEATHERMAN TOOL WAS BORN.

Tim Leatherman '66 graduated from Wilson and then headed to Oregon State University where he received a B.S. Degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1970.  He then worked for a year as a mechanical engineer in Los Angeles.  Tim returned to Portland and worked as a construction laborer while his girlfriend finished her studies at Portland State University.  They then traveled to Vietnam in 1972, and Tim says he was, "probably the only American of my generation to pay his own way to get there."  He married his girlfriend in Vietnam and lived in Vietnam for the next 2½ years.  While in Vietnam Tim became very interested in the way things work.  Tim left Vietnam with his wife and her family just before the communists took over South Vietnam in 1975 and got his wife’s family settled in America.  In 1975 Tim and his wife went on a nine month budget travel trip to Europe.  While there (a “what are we going to do with the rest of our lives” trip) and based on need, Tim thought of the idea of adding pliers to a Boy Scout type knife.  So, he came home and while his wife went to work to support us, spent the next three years in the garage developing a prototype he liked and getting a patent.  Tim tried to sell the patent rights.  Failed.  Kept trying.  Kept failing and after seven years in the garage he was about to give up.  A friend from university days suggested to Tim that they should co-found a business to make and sell the tool he had developed.  Tim agreed, but before starting the business, they wanted to get an order large enough to justify the investment.  During the course of seeking the order, and with the advice of a prospective customer, Tim modified the tool to what became marketable.  Finally, after eight years in the garage, Tim got an order for 500 tools from a mail order catalog company called Cabela’s.  They started on a shoestring, manufacturing the tools in his partner’s father’s metal working business and later in our own factory in Northeast Portland.  Tim says, "Business became very good very quickly and in 1993, within ten years of our founding in 1983, we made and sold more than 1,000,000 of our LEATHERMAN Pocket Survival Tool".  Today, they employee more than 400 employees, make about 8,000 tools per day, in twenty different models, and sell them in more than 70 countries.  Tim retired as president of Leatherman Tool Group, Inc. in 2005, but is still the majority owner, chairman, and a highly engaged part-time employee.  A year ago Tim says he, "became a proud first-time grandfather to the cutest little baby boy ever born in the history of mankind."  Tim is still an avid tennis player and recently took up the sport of pickleball.  Tim tells us that he has now been married for 47 years to the girlfriend he married in Vietnam.  They live in Portland, Oregon, and our son, daughter-in-law, and grandson live nearby.  Tim occasionally catches a trout on a fly and says, "for every thirty hours my lure is in the water, I catch a spring chinook salmon from the Willamette River." Tim remembers several influential teachers at Wilson. Mr. Gene Stallings in geometry.  Caroline Miller in English.  A student teacher in social studies whose name he can’t remember and whose lessons he says he has forgotten, but whose passion for the subject he'll always remember.  Tim also says, "and, I guess you could say by using reverse psychology, Jack Dalby, the band instructor, who motivated me to try to get better by telling me I had no future as a trombone player.  Unfortunately, he was correct!" Tim's advice to his younger self, “Hey kid. Set goals. Persevere through all obstacles. Stay the course. Things will work out.”


JUST A LITTLE WILSON SPORTS HISTORY
Gerry Williams, Class of 1976 and member of the 1975 City Champion Boys Gymnastics Team would like us to all remember some very important stats!

1. WWHS boys and girls swim teams owned the PIL in the 70s.
2. Marion Hara’s girls gymnasts won five or six consecutive crowns at least through 1976.
3. Mike Anderson’s 1975 boys gymnastics team knocked off perennial champion, Grant High School for the first time!
4. In 1975 George Crandall’s boys basketball team beat back a Grant team which boasted future OSU standout Mark Redford, for the city title.
5. In 1972 Stan Stanton’s Varsity football team beat Marshall High School in a rematch of the 1971 game then went on the defeat Astoria and South Eugene before falling to Centennial in the State title game.
6. Wilson’s boys basketball teams in the early to mid 1980s won several city and state titles and sent one guard to the NBA!
7. In the 1970s Jack Dunn’s baseball teams traded PIL championships with Madison High School on a near yearly basis.  
8. When Title 9 forced the OSAA and PIL to expand girls sports from just Swimming, Gymnastics, Tennis and Track - to include Cross County, Basketball, Volleyball, Softball and Soccer, WWHS’s Volleyball, Basketball, and Softball teams were dominant winning several PIL and at least one OSAA title.
9. In addition to team championships, there were several individual champions in Wrestling, Gymnastics, and Tennis.  Lindsey Berman, won some 72 straight matches, never losing a single set, winning four straight city and four straight state girls singles titles. That is a feat which has rarely been equaled in any sport.
10. There have been more than a few city and state champion swimmers, cross country and track and field athletes.  
11. WWHS’s boys and girls soccer teams have been competitive from the sanctioning of the sport in 1975 and probably also one a title or two over the years!
12. In 1976 Wilson placed first in 9 of 19 sanctioned sports.  And over the four year period from fall of 1972 to spring of 1976 Wilson won more city titles than any other school in the PIL.

Do you have any stats you would like us to remember and document on the alumni website? Send your details to Linda Doyle.


RECALLING GREAT MEMORIES AT WILSON THROUGH STORIES AND PHOTOGRAPHS

OLD PHOTOS OLD STORIES
Richard Small '62 was going over old Wilson alumni newsletters and realized he has some great memories from his time at Wilson. Click here to read more about Richard's memories.

Richard also suggests, "we start a new part of the alumni newsletter and publish photos from the past. It would be great if you could call for a few photos from the Wilson scrapbooks of alumni and print them by year. That way we could enjoy what other people’s cameras saw and perhaps trigger some terrific memories for ourselves."

If you would like to share stories and/or photographs with names, places/events, and the year, please send them to Linda Doyle: Lsdoyle@earthlink.net. So, make sure to look for RECALLING GREAT MEMORIES AT WILSON THROUGH STORIES AND PHOTOGRAPHS in every alumni e-newsletter.

FACING YOUR FEARS
Richard Small '62 was looking through the Wilson Alumni "In Memory Of" webpage and happened upon the entry for Mary Ellen Anderson ’62. He didn’t realize until he read the entry about how much she impacted his life. Click here to read more about Richard facing his fears.


A SMALL TOWN RISES BY LEE ANNA SHERMAN

Bill Gellatly ’61 is proud to announce the arrival of a new book (“A Small Town Rises”) written by his wife, Lee Anna Sherman.  ”A Small Town Rises chronicles two civil rights activists who met in the tiny cotton town of Shaw at the end of the 1964 voting-rights campaign known as Freedom Summer.  Sharecropper Eddie Short and recent college grad Mary Sue Gellatly '60 joined forces with courageous townspeople to disrupt the status quo in the Mississippi Delta.” Lee Anna Sherman is a retired journalist, who has spent the last ten years as an Associate Editor of Terra Magazine, a journal of science research at Oregon State University. Previously, her work has appeared in many Oregon publications, including The Oregonian, the Portland Business Journal, Northwest Magazine, Oregon Magazine and Northwest Education magazine. If you would like to get on the mailing list to obtain a copy of the book, contact Bill Gellatly ’62 at: bgellatly@msn.com(503) 867-6514; 2923 NW 13th Place, Corvallis OR 97330.

Note: Mary Sue Gellatly Short (1960) was in the first class to have all four years at the new Wilson High.  She was always interested in piano and vocal music, and was a member of the Senior Choir and the Ensemble.  She prided herself in studying well, and was rewarded with membership in the National Honor Society. She went to Willamette University and majored in performance music.  In 2015, she was given a prestigious award by the university for her role in Freedom Summer, the voter registration project that is the basis of the book.  She had also spent a summer in South Korea during her years at Willamette, and she worked on community development there. After leaving Mississippi, she returned to Portland and heard from her co-worker in Mississippi, and moved to Waukesha, Wisconsin where they were married in 1966.  They have three boys and several grandchildren who all live in that area.  She spent ten years a a project leader for the Comprehensive Education and Training Act (CETA), and then went into professional placement, eventually forming her own business which she sold in 2012. She and Eddie love to travel, most often as a getaway from the cold winters of Wisconsin.

SEND YOUR UPDATES
Send us the details on where/what you have been doing since graduation from Wilson, and we'll post in an upcoming WWHS Alumni Update e-newsletter. Send details to Linda Doyle.


KNOWN CLASSMATES/TEACHERS NO LONGER WITH US
Please send an email with details to Linda Doyle if you have an obituary that should be posted here. Below is a list of classmates who have just been added to the list:

CARL ENLOW YOUNG '57
NORMAN ALLEN RICKLES '69
LILA LINDA DAX CLEARWATER '65
CHARLES EDWARD 'CHUCK' CORRIGAN '66
MICHAEL PATRICK MEDICI '81
MARK ALAN STRAUCH '73
JOHN BULLOCK 'JAY' FEWEL '73
DWIGHT ALAN WORTHINGTON '73
GRETCHEN A. (WAGNER) LaRIVIERE ’73
OTTO FREUND ’73
JANET ROSLYN STEWART SNEDECOR '65
WILLIAM 'KELLY' WIPPERT '73
DOUGLAS LYNN DAVIDSON '71
JOANNE ELLEN YEAGER '64
JACKIE MORTON HULTINE '77
KATHY MOELLER DUZAN '62
JAN PETER NEWMAN '62

Click on this link to read more about classmates, teachers, community members who have passed away...  Once on the page, scroll down to find the class year.

REUNIONS
Lots of reunions are being planned, so reach out to your classmates for the dates/details. Please send those details to us and we will post on the alumni website. Send details to: Lsdoyle@earthlink.net.

CLASS OF 1960 ... 60th reunion in 2020
Plans for a reunion? Please let us know all the details.

CLASS OF 1965 ... reunion in 2020
The Class of 1965 will be having our 55th at Elephants on SW Corbett September 12th, 2020.

CLASS OF 1970 ... 50th reunion in 2020
New date for the class of 1970 50 year reunion ... September 11, 2020 to be held at Tualatin Country Club. Reunion starts at happy hour time 4 pm with event winding down at 9 pm. No-host bar, complete dinner buffet. $75 per person. Spouse and guests welcome. Registration link coming soon. Spread the word. Questions or want to get on the mailing list, contact Sally Rudnick '70.

CLASS OF 1975 ... 45th reunion in 2020
The class of 1975 will hold a 45th reunion at The Stockpot at Redtail Golf Course on July 18, 2020! Planning group is meeting two times between now and the end of April, so keep checking back for additional details. Go to 1975 Facebook
page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Wilsonhs75/.

CLASS OF 1980 ... 40th reunion in 2020
Plans for a reunion? Please let us know all the details.

CLASS OF 1990 ... 30th reunion in 2020
Save the Date: August 7-9, 2020. Plans for the 30th reunion coming up summer 2020. We have a reunion committee and Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/194097653756/. Friday, August 7, 2020 at FlyBoy Brewery & Pub (Class of '90 Alumni Only). Saturday, August 8, 2020 is a Family Day (more details to come) plus Dan and Louis Oyster Bar Saturday night. Sunday, August 9, 2020 at Chili & Give Back Day and volunteer at Portland Mission. Click here for the flyer. Here is the Eventbrite link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/donate-save-the-date-1990-wilson-high-school-30th-reunion-august-7-92020-tickets-84074074821?aff=eand.

CLASS OF 2000 ... 20th reunion in 2020
Classmates are starting to plan your reunion. Stay tuned for all the details.

CLASS OF 2010 ... 10th reunion in 2020
Classmates are starting to plan your 10-year reunion. Date and Location TBD. Stay tuned for all the details. Questions, reach out to Miriam Goldman (Senior Class President) and/or Alex Gatewood (Senior Vice President).

GET ALL THE DETAILS ... updates to reunions are happening all the time, so make sure to check out upcoming reunions at: http://www.wilsonalumni.com/reunions.htm.


MILITARY SERVICE

WILSON GRADUATES WHO HAVE SERVED OR ARE SERVING IN THE MILITARY
Please check out the WWHS Military Alumni page and read all about our amazing military graduates. To add your name and information to the WWHS Military page, Send your information to Linda Doyle at LSDOYLE@EARTHLINK.NET.

Name:
Year graduated from Wilson:
Military branch:
Years of service:
Service description:
Photo (optional):
Do you give permission to post this information on our website (required):


CURRENT SCHOOL NEWS

WILSON TEACHER AWARDED PRESIDENTIAL AWARD
FOR EXCELLENCE IN MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE

On October 15, 2019, the White House announced the most recent recipients of the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. Wilson High School's Computer Science Teacher, Chris Bartlo, is one of the recipients. Christopher Bartlo has taught 9-12th-grade computer science (CS) at Wilson High School for the past ten years, where he developed a comprehensive, four-year CS program for which students receive college credit. The program focuses on student-generated projects such as the development of an application to detect Melanoma. In addition to his CS program, Chris has taught foundational and advanced mathematics courses, serves as the instructional leader for Career and Technical Education (CTE) at his school, and is a member of the CTE Advisory Council for the district. He also works with local, state, and national groups to regularly offer professional development for K-12 teachers who want to bring coding into their classrooms or who want to improve their practice. He is a past board member of the Oregon Computer Science Teachers Association; a Paul Allen Distinguished Educator; and has been recognized with several statewide teaching awards. He also helps organize a free, project-based summer workshop for high school students. Chris earned a B.A in mathematics and science, technology and society from Pomona College and a M.S. in systems science, a M.Ed. in education, and a M.S in mathematics for teaching, as well as graduate certificates in simulation and artificial intelligence—all from Portland State University. He is certified to teach advanced mathematics and CTE – computer science. Chris Bartlo says, " It is wonderful to be acknowledged and ultimately this award reflects the hard work students have put into the program over the past 10 years. Awards are an opportunity to reflect upon past success and dream big about the future. I hope this award will bring new opportunities for students to create amazing things with technology.”

THIS IS WHAT A NEW WILSON HIGH SCHOOL COULD LOOK LIKE
Portland Public Schools is in the early stages of figuring out what a massive construction bond slated for the November ballot might look like. More than two-thirds of the proposed $1.4 billion outlay could be earmarked for extensive renovations to three high schools: Cleveland, Jefferson and Wilson. Click here to read more: https://www.oregonlive.com/education/2020/01/this-is-what-a-new-wilson-high-school-could-look-like.html.

ALUMNI ... DONATE TO THE MERLE AND PAT LOTZ MUSIC SCHOLARSHIP
Wilson High School has just advertised a Scholarship for WHS music students in the name of music teacher, Merle Lotz. The Lotz children asked for donations to this fund in lieu flowers. Wilson collected $8000 in the Lotz name and we will be offering scholarships over the next couple of years. To view the scholarship application: https://forms.gle/zrs5Jt9G8C1pnhqC8. Merle and Pat Lotz were active music teachers and in Portland from 1951-1995. Merle spent 32 years in public school choral teaching (at Jefferson, Wilson, and Benson High Schools); as well as serving as church music director, performing as pianist with the Oregon Symphony Pops orchestra, and running his own dance band for 45 years. Pat was a public school music teacher, accompanist for the Portland Chorale, and a private piano teacher for 45 years. She and Merle took the Wilson high school choir on a trip to Europe in 1971, creating the memories of a lifetime for 70 young singers. This music scholarship is a powerful way to honor and celebrate their many years of dedication to music education, as well as their love of students and people, and their understanding of the positive impact of music in the hearts and lives of all people. To donate to the Merle and Pat Lotz Music Scholarship, https://www.schoolpay.com/…/Merle-Lotz-Scholarship-F…/S6HPeu.

WILSON SCHOLARSHIP INITIATIVE ... Did you know…
• One in four college students graduate with student debt.
• Tuition and fees to attend a public four-year university have jumped 275% since 2000.
• Over 1.48 trillion in loan debt is collectively owed which is about 790 billion more than the total U.S. credit card debt.
• Oregon has fallen to the bottom tier nationally of states providing financial support for its neediest students.

All of this might be bad news for new high school graduates except that Wilson High School is unique. Wilson has a community that supports our commitment to helping our most deserving seniors succeed after high school. They first appealed to alumni in 2015 to join the Scholarship Initiative and your response was overwhelming. Your generosity has enabled them to provide two $1000 scholarships annually. 

Wilson is asking once again for your support as they begin a drive to raise $50,000 to endow perpetual scholarships for Wilson students through the Oregon Community Fund program.

Benefits include:
• Donations are tax-deductible.
• For local businesses, you will receive a Wilson Student Supporter sticker, and the opportunity to advertise on Wilson's website.
• For donations of $1000 or more you can name your scholarship and attend the June awards ceremony to present your gift in person.
• Changing the lives of deserving Wilson students!

How to Donate:
• Checks can be mailed to: Wilson Scholarship Initiative, 1151 SW Vermont, Portland, OR  97219, ATTN: Erica Meyers. Please include your graduation year.
• Credit card contributions can be phoned to: Ana Curtis, Wilson bookkeeper, 503-916- 5280, ext. 75266.
• Donations can be made online through the Schoolpay link below: https://www.schoolpay.com/pay/for/Scholarship/Id7CX Please support Wilson's future leaders! No amount is too small. They thank you. Questions? Contact Tina-Marie Baskin, scholarship coordinator (tmbaskinwriting@gmail.com).

WWHS ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
Alumni and community members are continuing to move forward to establish the WWHS Alumni Association.  Application process for tax-exempt status of association is progressing (with special thanks to Jack Bertell '58).  If you would like to join them, contact Jack Bertell '58.

STAY IN TOUCH

WWHS ALUMNI - WEBSITE
Check out the WWHS Alumni website and don't forget to complete the simple online form to join the WWHS Alumni database. To help us reach as many graduates as possible, please consider adding the link to our website (http://www.wilsonalumni.com/) from your website. Pass the word along to your Wilson High School classmates about the Wilson High School Alumni website and the opportunity to register. Tell your friends.

UNSUBSCRIBE
If you are receiving the WWHS Alumni Update, please make sure to add the following email address to your address book (lsdoyle@earthlink.net). This way your internet/email provider will not view the e-newsletter as spam. Thanks! If you would like to be removed from the list, just send an email to Linda Doyle.