PSU Magazine Winter 1998

'77 Terry Prager is a sales special– ist with Quaker State, an auto– motive products firm. Prager lives in Vancouver, Wash. Susan Purpura is a physician network executive at LifeWise, a health care plan in Portland. Purpura i past-president of the PSU Alumni Board of Directors. Mabel Schaack MS is a retired elementary and junior high school teacher. Schaack taught in the Woodburn School District. She writes that she is "Mom, Mrs. and Grandma" (she has eleven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren) . Ronald Schmidt is senior vice president of post-production at Green Communications Inc., a motion picture production and distribution company in Burbank, Calif. '78 Howard Ben Tre is a sculptor li ving in Providence, R.l. His sculpture are abstract, but many have an industrial texture. Ben Tre is a pioneer in the use of cast glass, a technique he began developing while an art student at PSU. He and his wife, Gay, designed the fountain at Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence. Delrae Lammers MS '8 l is a special education teacher at St. Helens Junior H igh School. Lammers formerly was with the Multnomah Ed ucation Service District for 11 years, working with emotionally disturbed students. David Widen MBA is director of pharmacy at Safeway's food and drug fac ility in C lackamas. Maureen Zehendner MA '9 1 is project archaeologist and laboratory director with Archaeological Inve tigations Northwest in Portland. '79 Jeff Johnston MFA is an art professor at College of the Ozarks in Point Lookout, Mo. Johnston' artwork, princi– pally clay sculp– tures and ceramic vessels, is on displayed at a bank in Branson and at an art museum and a gallery in Springfield. In September, he had a one-person exhi bition of his artwork at Oklahoma State Uni versity. Linda LaBash is a probation and parole officer with the C lackamas County Corrections Women's Team. LaBash is responsible for ensuring that more than 120 women on proba– tion remain drug free. She also is a runner and in April partici– pated in the London Marathon. Richard Mathews is president of Inland Software Solutions Inc., a computer consulting firm in Moreno Valley, Calif. Carol McAlister is a staff accountant at Flavorland Foods, a food processing plant in f orest Grove. Edward Trompke is an attorney with Tarlow, Jordan & Schrader in Portland. Trompke specialize in corporate and business law, encompassing all aspects of business. '80 Rev. Fred Kane is pastor of the Hillsboro United Method ist Church. Kane has been in the ministry I5 years. He and his wife, Barbara, have three children. In his spare time, Kane enjoys reading, building computers, and flower garden– ing. Dr. Bradford Rabe is a dentist and owns a family dentistry practice in Hillsboro. Rabe and his wife, Trisha (Warren) '90, have a 15-month-old son and expect their second child in March. Gloria Strand MBA is a sales representative for Cordage Papers, a printing papers distrib– utor in Knowville, Tenn. '81 Michael Batori is president of Batorico, a company which des igns and builds homes. Batori lives in La]olla, Calif. Patricia Jorgensen-Todd is president of Maggi Ne lson Company Inc., a firm that handles recruitment in the securities industry. Jorgensen– Todd lives in La C rescenta, Calif. Jennifer Lenway MSW is assis– tant to the dean for the College of Health and Human Services at Eastern Michigan Uni versity. Lenway also teaches an intro– duction to social work services and professional roles course in the BSW program. She lives in Ann Arbor, Mich. DeAnn Liska is the associate director of research with Health Comm International Inc., a medical foods and clinical education firm in G ig Harbor, Wash. T o historian Ann Fulton '76, small Oregon towns like Vernonia and Banks– ob cure dots on the map to most people– are places rich in history, with the drama of individual lives and the remarkable staying power of community traditions and institutions. Fulton finds that the most rewarding part of her work is meeting with local Fulton's interest in such places inspired her to write two books. Her most recent, Vernonia: A Pocket in the Woods , highlights such events as the town's founding in 1874 by pioneers, its boom times in the 1920s, and its struggle through the Great Depression. Banks : A Dam Good Little Town , published in 1996, chronicles this commu– nity's history from its native American origins and first white settlers through its founding as a town in 1921 and its devel– opment on into the 1960s. Fulton, an adjunct professor of history at PSU, got interested in her subject about 10 years ago when she noticed how rapidly the area around Portland was changing. "It was a question of getting the information on these places then or having it lost," she says. people who have lovingly kept records of ancestors and town documents and photographs through the decades. "Many of them are third or fourth generation, with deep roots in their communities," she says. "They're our building blocks for writing history." Fulton's writing has been sponsored by grants from the Oregon Council for the Humanities and the Oregon Community Foundation. Recently, she received spon– sorship from the Lake Oswego Heritage Council to write a history of that city. "It's going to be a massive project," she says. "I'm gearing up for it." WINTER 1998 PSU MAGAZINE 23