Stories from our last reunion in 2007

Melaney Welch Moisan
1676 Church St. SE
Salem, OR 97302
503-851-8462
melaneymoisan@gmail.com

My bags were packed, and I left for Portland right after graduation. I spent a few months at Western College of Business – or something like that – one of those very expensive proprietary schools I’ve come to dislike after 20 years in higher education public relations. By 1970 I was married with two little boys, Gary and Travis Rutz. I had some very exciting jobs: elevator operator, movie theater usherette, file clerk. For awhile I followed in my mother’s footsteps and ran a floral shop in John Day until my divorce in 1976. In 1977 I was just packing that in when I came to our 10th reunion and ran into Don Moisan. After Don and I got married, I had one more exciting job: medical records at the State Hospital. Then, as the family grew, I stayed home for a few years and raised more babies, Ted and Faith.

One summer – the summer I was 35 -- when the house was filled with my four kids, Don’s three boys, Kirk, Kraig, and Kevin, and two Japanese agricultural trainees, I decided that college might be a good idea. A friend talked me into taking one class with her, and I considered the slow path to a degree. That idea lasted one term. My 40th birthday present to myself was a bachelor’s degree from Linfield College. I then went to work for two years as a newspaper reporter, then to Willamette University and Chemeketa Community College, doing mostly public relations, writing and editing. Somewhere in there, I earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction so I could teach, and for six years I taught writing as a second job at Chemeketa. Now I work at SAIF Corporation as a communications coordinator. This will definitely be my last job.

Don and I have eight grandchildren: Lane and Jordan Rutz, Cole Lysgaard, Asa Rutz, Kimberly and Ashley Moisan, Cameron and Zachary Moisan. Three of our children aren’t married yet, so we haven’t stopped counting.

When I’m not working I enjoy traveling, and I have been fortunate enough to be able to go to China, Spain, France, Switzerland, Italy, Costa Rica, Germany (where I followed my dad’s route in World War II with my youngest son), and 42 of the 50 states. When Don and I had been married three months, we took seven kids (our five and a niece and nephew, ages 4-12) on a cross-country drive. That’s when we hit quite a few of those states. And “hit” is probably the right word.

I’m learning to create websites – it’s hard – and trying to write a book about my dad’s unit in World War II. I also enjoy binding books, so when I get stressed I start ripping paper. Very therapeutic. I pretend to like gardening, but the reality is, I like having a nice garden, but I’m not sure I like working in it. Nancy and I walked a half-marathon last year, so my goal for next year is to walk the Portland Marathon. I’ll report here if I do it and survive.

Mary Yocom
709 NW 9th St.
Redmond, OR 97756-1524
541-58-2930
myocom6689@aol.com

Occupation: Retired maybe! I worked in food service in Seattle for many years.
Hobbies: flying (in an airplane), mountain climbing, back country skiing

I attended Oregon State University and studied English Education. After graduation I did some teaching. In 1978 I moved to Seattle and worked in the food service industry there, including restaurants, banquets, and catering. And I owned a small wholesale bakery for awhile. By working part time, I earned a degree in restaurant management.

In 2002 I moved to Redmond to take care of my mom – she has Alzheimer’s – and will likely stay in Redmond until she passes.

I am still active in a Seattle-based mountain climbing group, and they inspire me to get out often and enjoy outdoor sports.

Update from Cindy Rhodes Trainor

Please add my e-mail to my contact information. I'd love to hear from any of my classmates: cing@bendbroadband.com.

Also, I'd like to add Norma Rhodes Marshall's contact information: 1532 SW Juniper Redmond, Oregon 97756. Her phone number is 541-923-2884. I know that she'd love to hear from you.

Cindy Rhodes Trainor

Class Update

Lynn Vogt Barclay
20722 Snowpeak Dr.
Bend, OR 97701

541-389-8550

lynnpyne@aol.com

Lynn is self-employed in her own retail store. She has three children and three grandchildren.

Greg Westendorf
PO Box 760
Redmond, OR 97756
541-548-2007
scarlet@henstooth.com
www.henstooth.com

Gregg is self-employed. He and his wife, Debbie, have two daughters, 19 and 25, and one 2-year-old grandson, Kalvin. His hobbies are travel to England and Scotland, Hawaii, and the southwest U.S.

He writes:

I worked for eight years at Whittier Moulding, then went to COCC and OCE, where I studied business. I’ve been self-employed for 19 years, and my wife and I own The Hen’s Tooth, a Victorian gift shop offering specialty gifts for your home décor. I also enjoy Bible studies and remodeling houses. We’ve been married for 32 years.

Karyl Yancey Cain

2032 Summit Av NW
Salem, OR 97304503

364-6915 or 503 871-9312

kcain001@aol.com

Karyl is a real estate broker, senior clerical specialist with the Salem-Keizer School District, co-owner of Top Gun of Salem, and team member of Oregon Beverage Services. (Every once in awhile I get to sleep!)
She and her husband, David Cain, will celebrate 38 years on November 15 Children: David Cain Jr. (DJ), 27, and Melissa (Missy), 25

Soon-to-be daughter-in-law: Amber and soon-to-be son-in-law: Bobby

Hobbies include sleep! And lots of reading, RVing when we can, computer games

She writes:

I worked for the State of Oregon for 10 years (Dept of Motor Vehicles and Employment Division). Dave and I were married in 1969. We enjoyed membership and activities through the Salem Jeep club, square danced and generally had a lot of fun for about 10 years. DJ and Missy were born in 1980 and 1982. We did a lot of camping and kid stuff and ran our business of A to Z Rental Centers during next lots of years. Kept pretty busy with kids, camping, etc. until the year 2000. We sold our business and we each took about six months to figure out what we wanted to do. I went to real estate school and became a licensed agent in 2002, and Dave took a job with a company in Portland. He has since bought a new business called Top Gun of Salem (paint metal finishing). I'm involved in real estate, working for school district and helping Dave at his business when I can. Life is wonderful. We are happy. DJ is a war veteran. He spent nine years in the Army (overseas duty in Afghanistan and Iraq). He is a National Guardsman and currently working full time for the National Guard here in Salem. Missy works for OHSU (Dornbecher in the Oncology Dept.)

Update from Dan Cordell

Dan Cordell
87 E Waipuilani RdKihei, HI 96753
cordell@maui.net

40 years, where have they gone? It doesn’t seem possible that so much time has passed yet here you all are and with all those grand kids! I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to join you but I was already committed to a trip to Boulder Colorado when I heard about the reunion. I have enjoyed reading about your lives through Melaney’s blog, she has asked me to contribute as well.

During high school I worked at Cent Wise Bargain Barn selling sporting goods and hardware. Twenty years later I'm running a similar operation in Juneau Alaska in a historic building constructed in 1885 to sell lumber and hardware to the gold miners. I arrived here after a period of self-employment in Berkeley California. It was during this time that I met my wife, Irene. I was a street vendor on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley having submitted my work to and been accepted by the craft committee and then duly licensed by the City. This was the late 70s, didn’t everyone have long hair, beards and earrings? My attendance at my one and only reunion, the 10th, was pure happenstance as I was in transit to Berkeley from Eugene with my first wife Norma Owen, class of 69, and our 3-year-old daughter Amie. Norma and I split up after a year in Berkeley and she returned to Eugene. The following winter Irene convinced me to come to Alaska where she had moved earlier. So in January of 79 I sold my current dwelling, an old Ford Pickup with a little cedar house that I had built on it, and struck out for new adventures.

The Alaska thing went well for several years with lots of hiking and salmon so plentiful you could literally walk across the streams on their backs. It was during this time I decided to become a boat owner. Having purchased a boat of dubious character and spent an entire summer rebuilding the engine I was caught by the early winter, which soon erased all my progress on the engine. Time to sell. Along comes a typical Alaskan type guy, long hair, beard, wool jacket and rubber boots. Likes my boat and wants to buy it. Something fishy about this guy though. His voice somehow seems familiar. Turns out to be Danny Meyers, class of 69 RUHS! Go figure. He at least gets the boat in the water but eventually has bad experiences with it as well.

Apparently I wasn’t destined to be Admiral of the Seas so thought maybe I could become Captain of the Skies and decided to try flying since the only way in or out of Juneau was by plane or boat. Eventually I got my license and one fine Saturday 2 friends and I decided to fly down to this little town in British Columbia to pick up one of the guy’s plane and ferry it back to Juneau (it was there due to engine trouble while in route from Seattle). Everything was going well, I’m flying the plane, a 4 seat Cessna. There is one guy in the back with our bag of snacks for the trip, which was planned as a 1-day down and back. We are flying at about 10,000 feet lost in our thoughts, our little plane dwarfed by the vastness of the rugged but beautiful snow capped mountain wilderness below. Suddenly a loud BANG shakes us from our reverie. Our hearts leap into our throats and are racing a mile a minute. I’m looking for a place to land and see nothing but mountain peaks. The other guys are scrambling around in the plane trying to find out what happened. After what seems like an eternity the guy in the back exclaims. “It was the chips!” Turns out a large family size bag of potato chips had exploded from the lack of pressure at that altitude. We all breathed a little easier thinking our troubles were over. Wrong! We continued on to our destination only to find that the other plane still wasn’t repaired and the weather closed in forcing us to spend the night. Next morning’s weather was marginal but we took off and followed a river north staying under the clouds eventually getting back to the Inside Passage and the ocean. After skimming the waves under the cloud cover for a few more hours (in a plane with wheels!) we ran out of daylight and had to spend the night at Petersburg. Finally on Monday morning we awoke to a beautiful day and continued on to Juneau and work. What started out as a pleasant 1-day adventure turned into a 3-day odyssey.

Alaska’s boom bust economy finally caught up to me in the late 80s. I knew there was trouble ahead when my employee at the hardware store came back from the bank with the morning deposit saying, “The bank is closed!” Well so it was and remained that way for a couple of days until a larger bank could take it over. Eventually the old downtown hardware business became untenable and I moved on as the old building was remodeled to house several smaller shops and a Taco Bell.

With my new-found leisure I decided to complete my college degree having somehow misplaced my enthusiasm for that sort of thing. Soon I was a college graduate with a degree in Business Administration, Management. Perfect, now after a career in business I have a degree and no business, so I became a Retirement Specialist for the State of Alaska.

After suffering through 14 years of freezing winters and almost nonexistent summers we decided to trade Alaska for Hawaii, equally as beautiful but infinitely warmer. I soon rediscovered my passion for cycling by riding my old 10-speed that I had kept around since the early 70’s. The continuous summer weather on Maui and the beautiful countryside encouraged me to seek out new territories to explore on a bike. This led me back to the Mainland in 2000 to join Mike Patrick, class of 66, and 2,000 other riders on Cycle Oregon. Starting at Silver Lake we had a week of riding that took us through La Pine and up into the Cascades and then down through Redmond, Maupin and ending at Hood River. I have upgraded from that old 10 speed a couple of times and then last year I spent more money on a bike than a lot of folks do on a car. I figured if I couldn’t ride the Tour de France with Lance I could at least ride his bike. I ride a lot, normally between 120 and 150 miles per week, which includes 2-3 days of commuting to work and then a long weekend ride of 40-60 miles with like-minded friends. I normally do 4 cycling events per year on Maui that includes a fall and spring Century Ride (100 miles) with around 100 riders, followed by The Kings Trail Triathlon in June (you haven’t lived until you’ve jumped in the ocean with 400 swimmers with 800 arms and legs churning away, thought I was going to drown the first time). I use the triathlon to start my training for the main event in August, Cycle to the Sun. This is a 36-mile extreme road race from sea level to the 10,000 ft summit of the dormant volcano Haleakala.

I have been fortunate to have made it to Europe a few times and cycled around Tuscany, Provence and Bavaria. My high school French class came in handy on more than one occasion as I found very little English spoken in the French countryside. I regret however that I didn’t also take Italian and German. My college Spanish did help in Mexico but that’s another story. We are currently planning our next trip in 09 to join friends either in the French Pyrenees or Italy and then once again to Bavaria. I loved cycling between the beer gartens.
We own a modest 3-bedroom house with a rental cottage a few blocks from the ocean in South Maui. Though it’s not my hobby I seem to continually be repairing or adding on to it. The cottage is rented full time but we do occasional house exchanges with the main house or sometimes just the guest room. We’ve made several new friends from this process.

Amie’s mother Norma, died of cancer in November 1999 just after her 48th birthday. The following June Amie was married and is now settled in Seattle with her husband Christian and their 2 beautiful daughters, Remy Tallulah 3 ½ years and Lena Lucia 3 months. We are all very close but I should have bought stock in the phone company because of the long weekly conversations. Irene and I make at least 2 trips a year and sometimes 3 to see them, usually tied to a larger trip some place where we can hike, bike and visit with friends.

I have worked part-time the past 14 years for Maui’s oldest nonprofit and largest employer of the disabled, Ka Lima O Maui. I wear many hats there including managing Personnel/Payroll, IT, Safety, and assisting with Fund Raising. I also work part-time providing computer services to small businesses. The bottom line is that I haven’t worked a regular full-time job since I left Alaska. Irene is not really happy about this, as she has been working full time for the County of Maui as a Recycling Specialist during the same period. She has been developing recycling on Maui through education programs, writing legislation and building recycling centers. She has had at least one success story however, me. I am much more cognoscente about the environment particularly living on Maui and have recently installed solar voltaic panels on our roof which produces two thirds of our electric needs. Maui’s electric power is generated by oil-fired generators and is some of the most expensive in the country. The tallest man-made structure on the island is our landfill, a testament to the need for more recycling.

We are just beginning to think about what retirement may look like. I don’t think either one of us wants to quit working completely but are looking at new careers that will allow us to spend summers on the Mainland and winters on Maui. This vision involves our grand kids, a camper van with bikes on the back, a kayak on the roof, and unknown territories.

Well that’s my story so far, it continues to be an exciting adventure and every day I think how lucky and blessed I have been. I was sorry to have missed the faces of those of you that I am sure I would still recognize and others of whom I probably wouldn't have a clue. But while I wasn’t able to be there with you and toast the old days I was thinking of all of you and wish you well. Here's to the 50th!