Portland State Magazine Fall 2021

28 // PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE I joined the Marines three weeks after my 18th birthday in 1943 and served in the Pacific. When I came back, I enrolled in the Vanport Extension Center—which later became PSU—soon after it opened in 1946. I moved in with my parents in Southeast Portland and bought a 1933 Ford Model A sedan for the commute. My dad wouldn’t ride in it, because he didn’t want to be seen in my old, rickety car. The extension center was created for returning veterans like me in Vanport, a city built for wartime shipyard workers on the Columbia River. I went there because it was the easiest option. It had the business administration classes I wanted, and I didn’t have to move to Corvallis or Eugene. Our classes were in a group of converted buildings, sometimes blocks apart. Many students and faculty members lived in the former shipyard housing with their families. We formed clubs and started co-op stores. It was easy to make friends. Many faculty members also were veterans, and they were just a few years older than we were. So 26-year-old faculty members were teaching 21-year-old students. The day the dike broke and Vanport flooded, I drove to the edge of the water on Denver Avenue. Some people had time to drive out in cars; others had to wade through the flood water. For the next few days, we helped people whose homes had been wiped out to find food, clothing and shelter. I remember seeing my literature professor out in the street looking through tables of clothing trying to find something to wear, because her home had washed away.There was also an administrator who left his unfinished doctoral dissertation on the second floor of his apartment when he fled with his wife, so he rowed back in a boat and climbed through a second-story window to rescue it. I finished my bachelor’s degree at the University of Oregon and then returned to Vanport to be the assistant business manager. My former teachers became fast friends. I continued to work in higher education in Oregon for 41 years. After the surge of World War II veterans subsided, some people wanted to close Vanport. But we worked very hard to keep it open and help it grow into a full university. Now PSU is 75, and I’m 96. I’m blessed to still be here. U.S. MARINE CORPS, 1943-1946 Bill Lemman Bill Lemman HD ’04 at his home in McMinnville, Oregon. An original Vanport student, he served as an administrator at the college during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, eventually becoming PSU’s chief fiscal officer. PORTRAITS OF PSU VETERANS