Mark your calendar, free up your Saturday. This Saturday (September 7th) the WWII-era OSC “Yank” Collection will be featured at the Adair History Day Mini Conference.  And guess what? There is a fabulous new Flickr set of Stock US Army Signal Corp photographs of Camp Adair 1943-44.

During the war, many OSC alumni served in all theaters, all over the globe. The OSC Yank was a quarterly newspaper sent to OSC servicemen from 1943 through 1945. Graduate students Mike Jager and Mike Dicianna will highlight this collection in a presentation about the war effort on campus and in the Corvallis community during WWII. But in advance of the event, Mike D. wrote this blog post as a teaser…

MSS Yank is one of our most poignant collections from the war years. Every letter tells a story, and each Yank issue is a window into what was happening at home and with Beaver alumni in service to their country.

Elaine Kollins Sewell and Jane Steagall, OSC graduates, wanted to provide their fellow Beavers with a little taste of home to boost morale. They published the first Yank as a 4-page newspaper-style Christmas greeting with news and gossip about OSC men and women in the service. They received many letters praising the publication and asking for more. It was expanded to 16 pages and published quarterly through November 1945. The collection includes this correspondence consisting of letters, telegrams, postcards, and V-mail. V-mail was a popular way to correspond with those serving overseas.
Participants at the presentation this weekend will have the opportunity to send their own “V-Mail” message to today’s Beaver military personnel on authentic WWII style V-Mail stationary.

A very special debut of a collection of Camp Adair photographs will also be presented on Saturday. These previously unseen images of the Adair Cantonment are part of SCARC’s new Governor Douglas McKay Collection. Last month, OSU brought the extensive collection of one of their famous alumni home to OSU. Douglas McKay was a 1918 Graduate of Oregon Agricultural College (and Student Body President) and a veteran of WWI.

McKay petitioned to re-enter the US Army when WWII broke out. He was reinstated as a Captain and was put in charge of the artillery range at Camp Adair. The collection of US Army Signal Corps images of life at the base during WWII was part of this new accession. Over 150 photographs surfaced in this vast collection. The majority of these images have never been seen here in the Willamette Valley history community before. This is an epic find! Adair historians will have the opportunity to research this sub-group of the MSS McKay collection when the entire collection has been processed. A representative sample of the new Adair photographs will be available as a slide show to whet the appetites of WWII Adair researchers.

The Mini-Conference will be held from 1:00 – 4:00pm at the Santiam Christian School, Mario & Alma Pastega Room, Library Building, 7220 NE Arnold Ave, Adair Village, OR. The event is sponsored by Adair Living History, Inc.

Tacked to the end of a family road trip, I made a visit to the American Hop Museum in Toppenish, WA (which is just south of Yakima). It was a lovely museum and a fun trip through the hops production system!

American Hop Museum

The AHM has a mission to “preserve, protect & display the historical equipment, photos, and artifacts that have long been important in the raising and harvesting of this obscure perennial vine that is vital to the brewing industry.” The Yakima Valley is the heart of hop growing country, with a clear claim to being the nation’s largest hop producing area. The museum combines exhibits with artifacts and information displays with a fun and unique gift shop.

There is a small archives, around 30 cubic foot boxes (think paper boxes), with records pertaining to hops production in the area (pictures, correspondence, business records). From what the staff person said they haven’t had a lot of research traffic for the archival materials, but they do get a variety of visitors from all over the world. When we signed the guestbook I have to admit that people from England seemed to dominate!

You can learn more about the museum, including the history of the building, on their web page.

You can also find a new Flickr set “American Hop Museum in Toppenish — a field trip” with more pictures from my trip!

As we march forward towards our big 150 sesquicentennial at OSU, SCARC is ramping up efforts to highlight our collections and build new ones. A team of staff and students are working to collect approximately fifty in-depth videotaped interviews with prominent alumni, faculty, staff and supporters over the next two years to add to our already robust oral history collections. 

The project is being sponsored by the OSU Vice-Provost’s Office, OSU Relations and Marketing, OSU Libraries and Press, the OSU Foundation and the Oregon Stater alumni magazine.

Most recently, interviews have been conducted with Major General Julie Bentz, Robert Lundeen, and Andy Landforce. We’ll let you know when the interviews are processed and available, but in the meantime I tempt you with these short bio pieces! But you can find more alumni stories on OSU’s YouTube page.

Major General Julie Bentz

Born in rural Oregon, she is the daughter and sister of two Army National Guard veterans. She followed in their footsteps, and upon enrolling at OSU, joined the ROTC, and upon graduating in 1986 with a BA and BS in Nuclear Engineering, accepted a commission as a Lieutenant in the Oregon National Guard. Julie’s first posting was in Germany, where she dealt with the fallout from the Chernobyl disaster. She has served at various posts throughout the US and Europe, where she specialized in nuclear health and nuclear security. She received an MS and PhD from University of Missouri. She worked at the Pentagon during the 9-11 attacks, and helped train nuclear safety during the first Gulf War. As of 2013, Julie is an adviser to President Obama on nuclear security, and was also promoted in June, 2013 to the rank Major General. She is the first woman to reach the rank of General in the Oregon National Guard.

Robert Lundeen

Bob was born and raised in rural Oregon in 1921. His father was an OSU (though at the time called Oregon Agricultural College) graduate, and worked in the lumber industry. Bob graduated from OSU (called Oregon State College at the time) in 1942 with a BS in Chemical Engineering. His class was the first group of American university students sent off to World War II. He served in China as a weather forecasting officer for the US Army Air Corps, eventually attained the rank of Major, and won a Bronze Star. After returning from the war, Bob began working for Dow Chemical Company in 1946. He spent almost 12 years in Hong Kong in charge of Dow affairs in China, and also briefly as the director of their Latin America division. He eventually served as the company’s Vice-President and Chairman of the Board. After retiring from Dow in the ’80s, he became the CEO of Tektronix, and was responsible for saving the company. Bob and his late wife, Betty, had three children, and donated extensively to the construction of the Valley Library at OSU.

Andy Landforce

Andy was the Associated Student Body President in 1941-1942. He graduated from then Oregon State University (at the time Oregon State College) in 1942, and was amongst the first class of American university students to be shipped off to World War II, where he served in both the European and Pacific theaters as the white commanding officer of the otherwise entirely African-American 3533rd Quartermaster Truck Company. By the time he was discharged, he had achieved the rank of Major. Upon returning, he became the first extension agent in Wallowa County, a job he held for seven years. In 1957, Andy returned to Corvallis and became the first Extension Wildlife Management specialist at OSU. He retired in 1977. Andy and his late wife Evelyn had multiple children