I moved to Oregon in 1976 after elementary and high school in Georgia and college in Tennessee. I was born in New Jersey and my mother was a native New Yorker with two Welsh immigrant parents.
Work in politics, government, non-profits and organized labor has filled most of the years since then and I am particularly proud of having had the privilege to work with movements and organizations for progressive social change.
In 1976, I moved to 1118 SE 20th just a few blocks north of Hawthorne. My first job was with the social-service agency, FISH Emergency Service, which moved from the Centenary Wilbur Methodist Church to 1335 SE Hawthorne after a suspicious fire. Thus, I had a 12-block commute on Hawthorne. The house on 20th was a collective, our neighbors had a collective house, and collectively we were known as Commie Corners, the site of large parties. The parties drew folks from the New American Movement, the Trojan Decommissioning Alliance and from a broad community of left activism that was churning in Portland in the late 1970’s.
Later, in 1993, Beverly Stein was elected Multnomah County Chair and I joined her staff. In 1994 Barbara Head (my spouse) and I purchased a home that was a few blocks south of Hawthorne near 37th and not far from where she grew up, a few blocks south of Hawthorne on 43rd. In 2000 , Multnomah County moved its headquarters to 501 SE Hawthorne (formerly Ben Franklin, formerly Francis Ford). Thus, I had a 31-block commute on Hawthorne and a daily window on its evolution.
In 2020, my first book is about Hawthorne because I have known it well in a few of its eras. My next book will tell stories of Oregonians, since the 1840’s, figuring out how to pay for the public services they wanted.