PSU Magazine Winter 1993

had originally interested Koehler in the work the ociety was doing, and she says she'd been an admirer of Tom Vaughn for year . Volunteer oppor– tunities at the Historical Society ranged from docent to researcher. But K ehler had no problem deciding where he belonged. "I took one look at the manuscript ro m, and knew that wa for me," she ays. Koehler started with family collec– tions-the paper trail of old or prominent Oregon families. The creativity and relative autonomy of the work appealed to her. Within a tand– ardized system for organizing archives, each volunteer had the leeway of deciding whether a specific collection shou ld be organized topically or chrono– logically. "The purpose of archives is fairly straight-forward," Koehler says. "You sort and collect, put things away, and then have to be able to retrieve it." The volunteer's function was to make the material research-ready. The work fulfilled Koehler's criterium for volunteering: do some– thing extra; give to the community. And although she had given previous volunteer time as a teacher of English as second language classes, as a juvenile court monitor, and a member of a Parent's Anonymous hotline, the per– sonal drama of the archives grabbed her in a way that none of her previous commitments had. When the Pioneer Diary project was announced, Koehler says, "I don't even remember being asked; right away, I volunteered to work on them." Days of reading small, cramped writ– ing, with strange spellings, and often no punctuation were in store for Koeh– ler. At times, she was surprised at what people recorded. Mostly, the pioneers were concerned about the amount of miles they'd covered each day and the location of water. And, sometimes, startling, vivid, images leapt from the pages. A trail marked with grave . A young woman who lost first her in- fant daughter, then her husband, on the trail. During the 40-year migration of Oregon Trail pioneers-from 1843 to 1883-over half a million people traveled the trail. Only one in 250 left a written rec rd, Koehler says. Sometimes poignant, ometimes p etic, the Storie began to weave themselves into Koehler' conscious– ness, until she felt she knew these people: the man writing movingly of how hard it was for women to leave their comfortable homes and friends, heading out into an unknown wilder– ness; the man who turned his cow loose because the feed was gone, fearing it would starve on the meager forage of prairie grass-only to burst into tears of relief upon discovering the cow had been "rescued" and brought to Oregon by another party. The diarie project has reinforced Koehler's belief in the power of other generations' written memories. "It's a way to touch base with people who came before-people who were different, yet not so different, from us. "Like Scheherazade, who told a dif– ferent story for 1001 nights, it' some– thing that is left behind to explain yourself," Koehler says. "And like cheherazade, it's a way not to die." D p u 21