Viking_Yearbook_49

JOYFUL CLIMAX TO AN EVENTFUL YEAR Highlight of a crowded year of crisis and strug-gle was passage by the 1949 Oregon State Legislahre of House Bill 213 providing for the purchase by the State of the old Lincoln High School building as a permanent home for Van­ port College and other units of the Extension Divi­ sion in Portland. This bill, co-sponsored by Repre­ sentatives John D. Logan and Rudie Wilhelm, Jr, of Multnomah County, for the first time gave Vanport some tangible, long-range guarantee of an assured future. For administration . stafL alumni, and students it signified the end of the "Gentlemen, we thank you!" Dr. Epler thanks experimental, emergency Representatives Wilhelm and Logan at assembly . phase of the junior college program that they strug­ gled so long and hard to build and its acceptance by the people of Oregon as an established and necessary part of the State System of Higher Education. The occasion was properly commemorated by a virtual holiday on April 20, marked by a special assembly and luncheon at which Representatives Lo-gan and Wilhelm were featured guests, along with Congressman Homer D. AngelL officials of various governmental agencies, and others who had shown a sympathetic interest in the college during the three years of its existence. Fifteen en-graved pens, which by special request Governor McKay had used in sign­ ing the bill, were presented as souvenir tokens of appreciation to those chiefly instrumental in pushing it through the legislature, including John Hakanson, former Vanport student now at Willamette University, who was its original author.