7 In memoriam: Clarence L. Hein, 1939-2023 CLARENCE HEIN, who represented Portland State to the media and served under five PSU presidents during more than 20 years at the University, died June 3 in San Diego. He was 83. Mr. Hein was born June 3, 1939, to Daniel and Mary Hein, joining two older brothers, Allan and Willard. He graduated from Jefferson High School in Portland, served in the Navy, and was a member of the Portland State class of 1965. He was editor of the Vanguard, the PSU student newspaper, his senior year. After completing a master’s degree in communication at the University of Washington, his career took him to WABC-TV in New York City and KOMO-TV in Seattle. He also worked for the Portland Reporter, a paper that grew out of a long and bitter newspaper strike in the early 1960s, and for Seattle Public Schools in the 1970s. Mr. Hein joined Portland State in 1978 as director of the Office of News and Information. His work for the University included media relations as well as researching and writing speeches, legislative testimony, and magazine articles. Just as important and valuable were his wit, his sound advice —both to colleagues and, most particularly, University presidents—and his institutional memory. His service to Portland State continued after retirement in 2001. As a volunteer for University Archives, he wrote three articles chronicling critical periods of Portland State’s history. “Portland State and the GE College Bowl” told the story of an upstart PSU team that made an undefeated run on the nationally televised GE College Bowl, which Mr. Hein described as “a sort of intellectual Olympics.” The team’s success was front-page news and prompted a story in Time magazine that asked, “What in tunket is Portland State College?” The stunning winning streak brought recognition to a young college and began to bring it out of the shadow cast by University of Oregon and Oregon State. In a 2005 Vanguard article, Mr. Hein recalled that the wins “gave everybody a sense of pride . . . It really was a little bit of legitimacy.” In “The Best Laid Schemes . . .” Mr. Hein recalled the period between October 1995 and December 1996, when Chancellor Joe Cox proposed a statewide realignment that might have altered PSU and stifled its development. One of the ideas suggested that Portland State might become “Oregon State University at Portland.” Mr. Hein detailed the University’s response, “a politically savvy resistance effort” that not only derailed the chancellor’s plans but helped solidify Portland State’s position as the region’s major university. In “Notes on the Sicuro Era at PSU, 1986-1988,” Mr. Hein offered his opinions and personal recollections of Natale Sicuro’s two years as president of Portland State. Mr. Hein, who had the unenviable task of dealing with the media during the Sicuro administration, detailed the controversies that overwhelmed Sicuro and led to his removal from office. Mr. Hein also conducted interviews for an oral history of the University. Among those he interviewed were W.T. “Bill” Lemman, a Vanport student who rose to become a senior administrator at Portland State and a vice chancellor and acting chancellor for the Oregon State System of Higher Education; Judith Ramaley, president of Portland State from 1990 to 1997; and Michael Reardon, who served Portland State as professor of history, director of the Honors Program, provost, and acting president. The articles and interviews can be found at pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu. Mr. Hein as also involved with RAPS, and served as the organization’s president in 2010-2011. Mr. Hein met his first wife, Jean Harvey, while working for the Jeffersonian, Jefferson High’s student newspaper. They married in 1961 and remained married until Jean died in 1984. He met his second wife, Rebecca (Becky) Wolcott, at Portland State in the late 1980s, when she was chief financial officer for the PSU Foundation. They were married in 1990; Becky died in 2018. Mr. Hein is survived by a daughter, Susan, a son, Matthew, and a daughter-in-law, Casey Quinlan. Remembrances may be made in his memory to the Deborah Murdock Endowed Scholarship /Fund for public service and the Wilma Morrison Scholarship for journalism at the PSU Foundation, www.psuf.org.
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