Happening People

An Army brat and the eighth of 11 kids, Denise Thomas-Morrow was born in England and raised in Baker City, Ore., where her dad retired after serving at a nearby radar post. A four-year three-sport letterman athlete at Baker HS, she spent two years as a PE major at Oregon College of Education in Monmouth. Inspired by a jazz dance class, she transfered to the UO dance program, earned a BS in 1985, and moved to New York City for further study.

A descendent of Oregon pioneers who built the first wagon road to Triangle Lake in Lane County, Mark Roberts grew up in San Francisco suburbs. His older brother Ed got polio at 13 and afterwards relied on an iron lung, yet became a pioneering advocate for disability rights, a professor and director of the state’s Office of Vocational Rehabilitation Services. “Mom insisted he go to high school in person,” Roberts says.

“My life has been a journey across the U.S.,” says choreographer Peggy Soomil, who grew up in a five-story tenement a mile from the Empire State Building. She took her first ballet class at age 5, studied modern dance in her teens and auditioned for Julliard at the suggestion of her gym teacher. “It was a tough place to be,” she says. “Out of 100 who started, only five of us graduated.” She spent four years as a member and soloist in the Anna Sokolow Company, and six years with her own Peggy Cicierska Dance Company.

Growing up in small-town Portola Valley, Calif., Allen Hancock had time to spend with nature. “My fourth-grade teacher took us to a meadow and pond near the school,” he recalls. “A couple years later, I watched as bulldozers arrived. It broke my heart.” Always an avid cyclist, he biked eight miles to high school in Redwood City.

May 1996: Although she works 40 hours a week as a counselor at Willamette Family Treatment Services, 79-year-old Sister Margaret Graziano finds time to volunteer at the Lane County Jail, continuing a prison ministry she began in the early 1970s. A former school teacher and Catholic chaplain, Sister Margaret conducts classes in art and “leisure wellness,” helping prisoners find a healthy balance of work and play to reduce dependence on drugs and alcohol once they leave jail.

“Middle-school kids are an exciting age-group to work with,” says Fran Calciano of Roosevelt Middle School. She was named Oregon School Counselor of the Year for 2012-13 by the Oregon School Counselor Association. “They come in looking and acting like children. They leave looking like young adults.” Calciano grew up on Long Island, N.Y., studied at Boston University, then moved to Eugene for her final two undergrad years. She graduated in 1979 and taught at Spring Creek, Bailey Hill and Roosevelt schools, while enrolled in a UO counseling psychology masters program.

“When I was 12, my grandmother got me hooked on treasure hunting in antique shops and garage sales,” says Eugene native Jane Donahue, owner of Merry Jane Clothiers at 1670 Willamette. “I learned to value older things, to appreciate recycling and reusing.” After graduation from Sheldon High, Donahue studied music, photography and art at LCC. “I dabbled in the arts,” she says.

“My parents have an interior plant company,” says Shelley Bowerman, who planted a garden at her rental house when she moved from the Napa Valley to Eugene after high school. “I got involved with people who grow food for FOOD for Lane County in the Whiteaker Community Garden.” Bowerman started out in journalism at the UO, but switched to international studies. “I focused on food and farming,” she says.

“Dad was looking for a job, and California was the place to go,” says Julia Mooney, who left Rockford, Illinois, in a car and trailer with her parents and three siblings, when she was 5. Her dad trained as a typewriter repairman in San Bernardino, bought a house after two years and had three more kids. “We all went to Catholic school,” says Mooney, who entered a convent. She worked as a home health aide, but left her order after eight years and joined Stephen Gaskin and his caravan of hippies on their way to The Farm in Tennessee.

The son of a phone company manager, Jim Waldon grew up in a number of Northern California cities. “I went to first grade in three different schools,” he recalls. After two years at Sacramento State, he transferred to UC Santa Cruz, where he took a degree in psychology and where he met Siri Kirpal Kaur Khalsa, known then as Katie Sykes, who was a recent valedictorian at San Diego High. “We married each other for our sense of humor,” she says. He worked as a probation officer in San Diego until 1978 when they escaped to Salem.

“Wellness is possible for everyone,” says Tina Larson, coordinator of the Pathways Learning Center (PLC), a program of the non-profit Laurel Hill Center, helping Lane County adults recover from severe mental illness. “They come here for some tools to put in their toolbox.” Larson considered a nursing career when she was a student at the Lankenau Girls School in Philadelphia, but after graduation she found work as a flight attendant, and eventually moved to the West Coast. “I mostly flew to Japan the last five years,” she says.

Growing up in Glendale, Calif., just outside Hollywood, Kory Weimer first auditioned for a commercial when he was 4 years old. “From that moment on,” he says, “I knew I wanted to be an actor.” At age 8, he moved, along with his mom, sister, uncle and grandparents, to an ostrich farm 2 miles from Junction City. “I had a lot of time to watch old movies and memorize monologues,” he says. “One of the first was Iago’s monologue from Othello. I recited them for my mother and grandma.” In eighth grade, he and a friend performed stand-up comedy in a high school talent contest.