Portland State Magazine Fall 2013

26 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE FALL 2013 THE CAMPUS is so much bigger than the one building, Lincoln Hall, that best friends Peggy Shivers ’59 (left) and Barbara Comstock ’60 remember. Alumni Director Tom Bull (middle) met them on a recent visit, the first for Shivers since graduation. Elementary education majors, Comstock went on to teach for 29 years, mostly in the Reynolds School District. Shivers taught for a while in Portland and California. Today, she oversees the Shivers Fund, which hosts concerts and celebrations in Colorado Springs in support of African-American history and culture. Comstock continues her decades-long service to Oregon’s Democratic Party, which awarded her its Dick Celsi prize for volunteerism this summer. BRAD MERSEREAU ’73 and his wife, Janet, hosted their first house concert in June, featuring student musicians and debut compositions. Playing before a small, invited audience in the Mersereaus’ music room, were three PSU students who received the couple’s William Bradford Mersereau Jr. Endowed Scholarship: (left to right) Matt Hettwer, Mario Sandoval, and Nicole Glover posing with Janet and Brad. The concert “musically affirms all our reasons for establishing the scholarship. They were out of this world,” says Mersereau. The jazz students, whose senior year is funded by the scholarship, played compositions by George Colligan, international jazz artist and a PSU music faculty member. Colligan also accompanied them. Mersereau, a pianist, opened the concert playing a piece he composed for Sanya Grace, an audience member. Alumni Best friends visit New friends jazz it up