The last-born of 16 children, Jason Lee was a robust man with broad shoulders. Six foot three, he had long hair pushed back above penetrating blue-gray eyes, and although he had the poetic soul of a spiritual visionary, he was athletic enough to herd “horned cattle” across raging rivers or fell trees for the log cabin schoolhouse that was Willamette University’s first incarnation.
Born in 1803, Lee was left fatherless at 13 and survived by working the logging camps. In spite of the boy’s rough upbringing, or perhaps because of it, he became inclined toward prayer. When the Methodist Episcopalian Church called him to establish a mission in the Oregon country among the Native Americans, Lee responded with a fierce and enthusiastic determination. The Mission Board thought him the only man fitted for the task.
By Nadene Steinhoff
At age 30, Lee loaded up his wagon with flour, molasses and meat for the long trek into unbroken expanse. Although Oregon wasn’t even part of United States territory, Lee imagined possibility in that green tangle of wilderness; he embarked on the quest that would define his life, one that would demand every sacrifice a man could make, even his life.
In 1834 he joined an expedition of bawdy fur traders who threatened to “give them Missionaries hell,” and became a favorite, even as he gently reproached them for cussing. It helped that he brought in more than his share of game and maintained a cheerful, kind-hearted dignity — even in the worst of times. Cows were lost to rivers, marauding tribes ran off horses, and when the camp descended into chaos during a furious thunderstorm, the dogs ate 50 pounds of bacon. By the time he and his four missionary companions arrived, they were down to rags.
Conditions didn’t get much better. The missionaries built a log mission in rich bottomlands; it flooded. In the incessant rain and damp, Lee’s teacher contracted tuberculosis, lost his leg and, after a few weeks of driving pain, went to his peace. The candle of hope that was Lee’s marriage to Anna Maria Pittman was soon extinguished. Lee’s child, the first white child born in Oregon, died a mere two days old. Anna Maria followed him a day later.
Lee could have caught the first wagon train East, but he didn’t. He persuaded the Mission Board to send more settlers, along with 80 pairs of window shutters for a school and $40,000. The second party included a doctor, a handful of farmers and four teachers. It also included Lee’s second wife, Lucy, and a missionary, Alvan F. Waller, who would play an instrumental role in the new school. Lee selected a new spot for the mission and school, and the settlers built on Willamette University’s present-day site.
His wife gave birth to a daughter, and although Lee’s second wife was soon lying in the cemetery, the girl flourished. She grew up among Native American children, whom the missionaries fed, housed, clothed and instructed, but the Native Americans were not as receptive to the Christian message as the Mission Board had been led to believe. Their wariness increased as a tuberculosis outbreak swept through the mission.
From the first, the school had served settlement children as well, and as disinterest on the part of the Native Americans became more apparent, its founders envisioned another kind of school. At the time, few settlers had the means to attend Eastern schools. In the mid-1800s on the Pacific Coast, career choices were farmer, miner or tradesperson. The missionaries wanted to open more doors.
In 1842 Lee called a meeting in his home and organized a formal board of directors for the Oregon Institute (later named Willamette University). The three-story frame building was situated on a prairie whose slight rise checked future floods. The town was platted around it.
A subscription of $50, a princely sum at the time, gave one “a voice” in the humble society that governed the institution. Other settlers pitched in with donated wheat, lumber, labor and “tame meat cattle.” But the school still struggled to survive, and so Jason Lee set sail on the Columbia River, heading east to solicit funds from the Methodist Church. He never made it back.
By the summer of 1844, the Institute opened its doors; five university students walked through. Although the building was not finished, it was heralded as “the morning star of this country.”
Lee never lived to see the dream he gave his life for. His travels took him to New England and then into Canada, where a stiff northern winter caught up with him. A severe cold took hold of his travel-worn body, and he died in the spring of 1845. He was 42 years old.
Like all visionaries, Lee saw some dreams fail. The biggest heartbreak of his life was the failure of his Indian school. When he died shortly after its collapse, some speculated that he had died, in part, of a broken heart. But the great triumph of his life was what remained in its place, the first university carved out of the vast frontier, a school established against all odds, in defiance of its remote place in unmapped territory. Jason Lee dreamed large dreams, and laid the mud and wood and stone foundations on which to build even greater ones.
Venison for Dinner, Poetry for Breakfast: EMILY YORK
Instruction was a little rough around the edges when Willamette’s first graduate attended. Classrooms were cramped, science displays consisted primarily of rocks, crude maps were treasured. News from the United States of America, a continent away, arrived late when it arrived at all.
Emily York’s classmates ate boiled wheat and jerked venison, and attendance was on and off — as students gathered crops, hauled wood or worked the mill for tuition money. Daily study hours were enforced with a strict hand.
And yet York thrived. At the end of her life, she was still nostalgic about her “old Willamette days.” She and Lucy Lee spent hours reciting poetry in an empty classroom. “We do have glorious times at school,” a classmate wrote, “and the only drawback to our happiness is we know this can’t last forever.”
It didn’t. In 1859 the “Mistress of English Literature” donned her best dress and rode to the chapel. “As I was the only graduate, I was the valedictorian,” she said. “The young men made the chapel a perfect bower of flowers.”
York would carry the lessons she learned at Willamette the rest of her life. When she learned that her male counterpart at the Portland Academy was being paid $1,000 to her $600, she asked for a fairer wage. When it was refused, she found work elsewhere. “I was an ardent believer in women’s rights,” she said. York married Yankee A.W. Moore, who served as secretary to the governor of Washington state.
Though York got her start in a small pioneer schoolhouse, her teachers instilled in her the rhythms of poetry. Her journey to college took her across a continent, and there, in an isolated hamlet, she became a citizen of the world.
As the Civil War raged in the 1860s, Reverend Alvan F. Waller was fighting his own battle: the clash of persistent poverty against altruistic aspirations. “Father Waller” had been appointed University agent — a position that heaped the responsibilities of fund-raiser, financial officer and business manager onto one set of shoulders. He raised money, collected bills, managed fence construction and supervised building repairs, down to the last nail.
Rutted roads still disappeared into rainy mist-filled forests just beyond the last cabin, but the small frontier village already saw itself as a proud capital city. Steamboats churned the silver waters of the Willamette River, laden with dry goods and dresses from the East, the town had its first handful of lawyers and physicians and, if you were patient, mail eventually arrived over the treacherous mountain roads.
The University was the centerpiece of the small town. Classes were held in a plain three-story wooden building in the middle of a grain field, while a rail fence along State Street kept cows from wandering onto campus. Dappled sunlight fell through the nearby orchard, poppies and buttercups embroidered the grasses, and cottonwood trees laced the sky, almost hiding the bell tower.
The setting was serene, but the Institute, almost two decades old, had been weakened by age and decay. Its shingles were worn through to the sheeting, winter winds shook the dilapidated building from bell tower to foundation, and with 300 students, the structure was cramped at best. But what made the whole rickety enterprise most vulnerable was the ever-present danger of fire. One fire could leave the wooden building in ashes overnight.
The school desperately needed an infusion of money — it needed a strong, solidly built brick building — but the close-to-the-bone pioneers had already emptied their pocketbooks and scraped the bottom of their wheat barrels for donations, and early presidents were unable to take on the task of asking for more; they were buried in teaching duties. In addition to running the school, President Gatch taught 12 classes in 1861. University leaders discussed the idea of abandoning the school altogether.
Alvan Waller had another idea. He offered to raise the funds for the building. The indefatigable reverend hitched up his horse and buggy and began four years of scouring the countryside. The roads were largely impassable, each journey took a month, and he supported himself by performing marriages and selling books, so that every donation would result in brick and stone. He sold off his land, piece by piece, and donated his meager annual salary of $700 two years in a row, saying, “I am working for future generations.”
The man knew no failure. The editor of The Pacific Christian Advocate, who received countless visits from the tenacious University agent, wrote a tongue-in-cheek editorial, advising all who “meet Bro. W. ... to give him something for the College at once, as it is the cheapest method of getting clear of him.” While those looking for donations are sometimes avoided, Waller’s enthusiasm and congeniality drew people to him. According to those who knew him, “No man was more widely known and thoroughly respected.”
Professors and students dug clay from the earth underneath the new building’s planned foundation, and the summers of 1863–64 saw them constructing a kiln and shaping bricks — by the thousands. One year after the Battle of Gettysburg, the cornerstone was laid, but it was still only a beginning. Settlers reached into their pockets again and again, giving countless small gifts, and the walls inched upward, brick by brick, on a massive stone foundation.
Half a million bricks later, a solid, cross-shaped building reached to the sky. Five stories high, it held classrooms, a chapel, a book-lined library, medical and surgical departments, a lab, two elegant halls, a parlor complete with piano, and dormitory and dining rooms. Father Waller had raised almost every dollar and supervised the placement of every brick.
The new building opened its doors in 1867. Settlers gathered round in awe of their own achievement, while students and professors stood in their Sundaybest, waiting in line for the grand procession across campus. Women smoothed hooped dresses, their hair twined at the nape of their neck or hanging in loose curls. Men chatted in long solemn topcoats.
Many tried out the circular stairs that wound up through the building. The Salem Daily Record reported that “the uppermost flight of stairs may almost be called a flight of fancy,” for visitors could look out over the “beautiful town, with the circling landscapes of unrivaled beauty.” A town, with a university at its center, was beginning to take shape.
And the good reverend? He was already thinking it sure would be nice to have a spired, Gothic-style Methodist Church down on State Street ...
Alvan F. Waller lived 32 years in Salem, and after his death it was written, “There was with him an individuality of person and life that easily lifted him out of the common multitude. For more than thirty years he wrought among the foundations of Oregon society and life with a zeal and a wisdom that made his name a proverb.”
Willamette, the small pioneer university, was the “child of his affections. For many years he put his time and toil and money into it with the generosity of a father’s hand.” The hall he built burned to a shell twice, but withstood the flames; he had planned well. In 1912 the grand old building was renamed Waller Hall.
A Soft Spot for Willamette: ROBERT A. BOOTH
Senator and entrepreneur R.A. Booth had unexpected soft spots. He once interrupted a business conference in Chicago to keep an appointment with a Boy Scout council in Oregon. And because he worked as a janitor at age nine to pay for his schooling, he valued education as his greatest asset — which may be why his other soft spot was Willamette.
In 1905 the school was in such desperate financial straits that one trustee advised liquidation and argued for turning students loose in the Cascade Mountains to take up mining. A University supporter wrote Booth, apologizing for his impertinence, explaining, “I fear you may not understand the gravity of the situation ... It makes me heart-sick to think of the peril we are ... in.”
A trustee of one year, Booth went into action. He solicited donations from strangers and friends — including E.S. Collins — and soon Booth, Collins, Charles P. Bishop and others were managing a major campaign. Donations poured in, with notes: “I want to do my mite for Willamette.” The mites added up, and the school once again found solid ground. Along the way, Booth, along with Collins, became the largest benefactor in the school’s 100-year history.
G. Herbert Smith first saw the outlines of Waller and Eaton Halls under a full moon. The Midwestern dean was passing time, waiting for a train, and as he peered into the silvery darkness, he couldn’t find the name of the stately school. He mused, “If I ever get to be a college president, the campus will certainly show its name.”
Six years later, in 1942, the tall, dark-haired man was named Willamette’s new president. His first act was to install wooden signs at the edge of campus. His next, to initiate a weeding and watering program on the dandelion-infested lawns. “To become prosperous, one must look prosperous,” he said.
Smith offered a simple greeting in the Collegian: “My thanks for including me in the Willamette family.” The youthful president traded places with the student body president for a day, beginning his morning with a cross-examination in geometry; the evening was given over to placing bets with students on the outcome of Freshman Glee.
But the beginning of his administration was anything but light-hearted. A heavy gloom hung over the world, and civilization seemed to be on the verge of collapse as bombs burst over Paris, nightly raids strafed the streets of London and thousands of American troops disappeared into the ocean or into Japanese POW camps.
As the effects of the Depression lingered and the draft cleaned out college campuses, hundreds of schools began to fail. It was Willamette’s centennial year, but there was little to celebrate: It was uncertain whether the school would be open the following year. Morale was low, anxiety was high, budgets were decimated.
Most presidents have the luxury of absorbing facts before implementing change. Smith didn’t. With the University on the edge of disaster, the new president moved forcefully. He prepared the trustees for a serious deficit due to dropping enrollment and then sped to Washington, D.C., where he knocked on countless doors in endless departments, presenting a powerful argument that Willamette would be the perfect training grounds for Navy men. “I presented as forcibly as possible the advantages ... which Willamette could render,” he said.
A Classic: BUZZ YOCOM
Take a slather of Belgian chocolate, a dab of peanut butter, a handful of oats and some brown sugar, and you have what’s known on campus as a “Buzz Bar.” The student-run Bistro keeps the recipe a closely guarded secret. The bar was created in honor of Richard “Buzz” Yocom ’49, one of the most beloved teachers and administrators ever to walk the campus, and the bar isn’t unlike the man himself.
A Bit Indulgent: Many students compared Buzz to a much-loved father, or the father they never had. Larry Houle ’79 said, “He was a teacher of the rarest kind. Buzz taught from the heart.” Short on cash, Houle told Buzz he might go work in Alaska for a year. “I carefully laid out the entire proposal before him. After a long moment of silence, Buzz leaned in to me and asked, ‘Can you get me a job too?’” Every two or three weeks, Houle received letters from Buzz. They always ended with a reminder that school started in September.
Multi-Layered: Buzz had many roles in his 45-year career at Willamette: registrar, teacher, administrator and executive vice president of Tokyo International University of America, which came to Willamette largely because of his efforts. He took students around the world, establishing one of the country’s best study abroad programs.
Legendary: From a 1986 Scene article, “It is rumored that Buzz, along with Jason Lee, founded the institution in 1842.”
Gone Too Soon: Alzheimer’s took this talented man in 2003. Hundreds attended his memorial, and Shunichi Daido ’80 wrote, “He was a saint. We will all miss his gentle voice and humor.”
Smith’s unrelenting passion persuaded the top brass, and Naval officers soon arrived in Salem, where they would undergo one of the toughest physical courses in the West. Many female students were trained as nurses, and they sacrificed their beloved Lausanne Hall to the newcomers; military uniforms changed places in closets with dresses and formal gowns. The curriculum was revamped and, according to a Collegian writer, descended into “absolute havoc.” Martial music blared across the greens. But Willamette survived.
At the war’s conclusion, the energetic president didn’t slow down. The hot war had ended, the Cold War had begun. Smith believed that education was the best defense. His goal: to provide leadership in solving the problems of peace through a top-tier liberal arts program.
Smith turned his attention to faculty. It was shameful, he said, that Willamette teachers brought home “$1,000 less per year than a Greyhound bus driver.” During his tenure he returned again and again to the theme of fair compensation, and worked to pour every nickel and dime into benefits and salaries, which rose from $2,500 to $10,500. Smith took personal, methodical care in hand picking faculty. “Only the best” became the standard. The size of the faculty more than doubled during his tenure.
Nor did he neglect students. Between 1942 and 1969, enrollment more than doubled as students began to arrive at the once-parochial school. They came from the Pacific Northwest and California; they also came from Alaska, Asia, the Middle East, the South Pacific and Europe. The president believed in students and inspired them to excel. He sought to make education available to diverse students from a wide variety of backgrounds. Student aid — a mere $13,500 in 1942 — kept pace with his altruism. By the time he retired, Willamette was helping students with almost half a million dollars each year.
The College of Liberal Arts was transformed. Regional music performances, a casualty of wartime gasoline rationing, were resurrected and Willamette’s reconstituted a cappela choir was broadcast coast-to-coast. Forensics students repeatedly took national honors. The Student International Travel Association sent students abroad to gain a global perspective; those who couldn’t afford to go abroad piled in station wagons for trips to Mexico. Students became aware of wider social issues, and volunteered to help local migrant children learn to read. They reached out to the sick, the disabled and the economically stressed.
The once-ailing College of Law prospered, as carefully selected professors developed legal handbooks and formed the Legal Aid Clinic, training would-be lawyers while providing legal advice to Salem’s most vulnerable citizens. Four years after Smith’s arrival, the college gained membership in the Association of American Law Schools.
A Different Drummer: SENATOR MARK O. HATFIELD
Senator Mark Hatfield ’43 was shaped by a single image that stayed with him through 46 years of service in Oregon state politics. As a young naval officer in World War II, Hatfield was one of the first to walk Hiroshima’s moonscape after the bomb was dropped in 1945. Charred bodies and utter destruction lay in every direction. Silence was overlaid with the stench of death.
“I committed myself to the proposition that I would ... do everything in my power to prevent that from ever happening again.” And so began his career as a rebel Republican, one whose inner spiritual vision guided his political instincts.
The Willamette alumnus understands the need for military strength; he just sees a different way to achieve that goal. “I would say send in the troops, but send in scientists, agriculturalists, teachers, nurses.” Hatfield, the son of a railroad blacksmith father and schoolteacher mother, believes that national security comes from providing education, housing and job opportunities. His passion is peace, and he was frequently called “the conscience of the Senate,” working across party lines for the common good.
In 1997 Senator Hatfield retired from a life of political service in Oregon, including five terms as a U.S. senator. Beloved by his constituents, he never lost an election.
Willamette’s post-war buildings were shabby and run down, having foregone even simple maintenance for years. (A 1954 Freshman Glee ditty proclaimed, “Steps are creaky, roofs are leaky, but we’ve been trained to say that it’s antique!”) Under Smith’s direction, maintenance was reinstated and new buildings were planned, with great attention to aesthetics and balance. Many viewed his construction plans as “delusional,” but the reality far outstripped his original vision. The once-cramped campus grew from 18 to 52 acres, and 11 buildings became 30. His method was simple: He started with an idea, built a plan around it, developed a sensible budget, recruited converts to the idea and nurtured leaders to carry it forth.
The foundation for Smith’s idealism was a rising endowment and a multitude of gifts, large and small. By 1942 the school had lost track of alumni. Smith found them again, reinstating the alumni magazine. He helped cultivate a spirit of giving; major gifts came from the Collins family, George and Mildred Atkinson, George Putnam, the Clarence Bishop family and others. The $2 million endowment swelled to $10 million. The National Science Foundation even got in the act in 1968, awarding a quarter of a million dollars for Willamette’s first “I.B.M. computing system.” Through it all, Smith guided the University to live within its means. He had a larger vision than any previous president, but his dreams were shaped by pragmatism and common sense.
Giving Back: THE COLLINS FAMILY
While he could have passed all his good fortune along to his children, Everell Stanton Collins chose instead to establish a family tradition of giving back. Willamette was the recipient of his goodwill when he donated funds for the Collins Science Hall in 1941.
In 1947 his son Truman Wesley Collins ’22 followed in his father’s footsteps, creating the Collins Foundation, one of the most generous philanthropic organizations in the state. Oregon would be a different place without the Collins family, and Willamette would be an entirely different campus. Truman contributed financially; he also volunteered his time, serving on Willamette’s board of trustees from 1926–64. He chaired the board from 1957–64.
His wife, Maribeth, shared his generous nature. After Truman’s death in 1964, Maribeth stepped into his role, heading the family’s philanthropic efforts and serving as a trustee for the past 40 years. The Collins family honored her husband’s memory by helping to establish the Truman Wesley Collins Legal Center for the College of Law in 1967. One of the endeavors closest to Maribeth’s heart is the Hallie Ford Museum of Art. She worked behind the scenes to help the University acquire a first-class art collection, and endowed the director and curator’s positions. “It gives her tremendous pleasure to be part of the Hallie Ford Museum,” says her daughter Cherida Collins Smith ’72.
Everell’s daughter Grace Collins Goudy ’22 also became an ardent supporter of Willamette’s mission, serving as a trustee for 50 years. Her generosity included support for scholarships and the Distinguished Artists Series, and led to the construction of Goudy Commons. As Maribeth’s daughter Cherida says, “There’s a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction in supporting something you really believe in.”
The University began to experience a groundswell of national recognition. CBS News broadcast a program from Waller Hall, linking University history with comments about the day’s news. A 1948 Good Housekeeping article asked, “Is the Small College Your Answer?” Apparently, it was if it was Willamette, which was ranked one of the top small colleges in the United States. Smith was elected to national advisory groups, including the board of directors of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. He set a new pace. He expected excellence of others, and gave it himself.
The 1960s brought tumult and restlessness to campuses around the nation. Students at Willamette responded with a boycott of mandatory chapel attendance, and chapel sessions soon gave way to theological dialogues and speakers, and voluntary attendance. The University welcomed a dozen black students and sought to recruit black professors. Students deepened their social outreach, helping repair the homes of tribal elders in Washington state and traveling to the South to help with voter registration. Smith was forced to walk a tight rope between traditional leaders and restless students; he demonstrated a blend of openness and courage, inspiring students to find their way through the turmoil with clear vision.
As the years went by, the president’s hectic schedule caught up with him, and he slowed his pace but never wavered in his deep and abiding love for Willamette. When he retired in 1969, he was sent off with great fanfare and a sense of reverence. G. Herbert Smith had given the University a name on the signposts at the edge of campus, in the national consciousness, and in the hearts of the Willamette community.
“A university is more than one man,” Willamette historian Robert Gregg wrote. “It is a collection of the many, with numerous voices ... framed by different backgrounds. Leadership is the ability to bring all the voices to the table ... to listen carefully to each idea ... to find the collective vision and shepherd it on its way.” G. Herbert Smith, he said, possessed that unswerving instinct.
This once small pioneer school didn’t survive by accident. It was born when a young missionary dreamed a dream that was preposterous in its boldness. It survived because a persevering university agent refused to give up in the face of overwhelming challenges. It prospered because a long succession of able women and men devoted themselves, heart and soul, to a vision that grew into a reality. The idealism that gave birth to Willamette is in evidence everywhere today. Students volunteer around the world. Professors respond with thoughtfulness to world events. Supporters continue the tradition of engagement. And able presidents like Jerry Hudson and Lee Pelton lead the school into the future.
After all, we’re standing on the shoulders of giants.