Eugene Weekly

“I always loved drawing,” says Ken O’Connell, a San Francisco Bay Area kid who arrived in Eugene in the 1950s to attend Woodrow Wilson Junior High School and South Eugene High School. “I had an amazing art teacher, Larry Goldade. He got me on a pathway to study art.” After graduating from the UO, O’Connell served two years in the Navy off Vietnam, married Gwyneth, a fellow South Eugene grad, and spent a year in Eastern Oregon, teaching art at five different high schools. He returned to Eugene for an MFA and got a job at Treasure Valley Community College in Ontario. Continue reading →

The son of a doctor and a nurse, Peter Ogura grew up in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. “It was a Leave it to Beaver kind of childhood,” he says. “We were big patrons of the St. Louis County Library.” After high school, he headed west to Colorado College, where he changed his major from English to political science. “I came out to Eugene for a couple of weeks in 1975,” he says, “to visit friends from home.” He continued westward to San Francisco for law school at USF. “It was there that I got into reading fiction,” he says. Continue reading →

“I was always a tomboy, building forts and riding horses,” says Angela Andre, who focused on theater and dance at Rolling Hills High School in Southern California. “I went to performing arts college for a year, but didn’t like the lifestyle, staying up late.” She began to study physical therapy, but then in 1974 met a guy who had a small farm in the Oregon Coast Range. “We were in the first wave of hippie back-to-landers,” she says. Continue reading →

“I knew I wanted to work with animals,” says Ashley Olson, who grew up near Sacramento with only a cat and the occasional newt or frog, until she got her first dog on her 18th birthday. Continue reading →

“I got tired of rain,” says Ron Buss, who grew up in the Seattle/Tacoma area, but spent high school summer vacations with his older brother in Modesto, California, moving furniture for Beacon Van Lines. “I started when I was 14.” After graduation, Buss moved south to work for his brother, then spent a decade at warehouse work. He eventually got a truck and a PUC license and returned to household moving. “I made  $100,000 a year,” says Buss, who was supporting a house, a wife and three kids. Continue reading →

“New York didn’t resonate with me,” says Nancy-Diane Mannelli Brewer, who grew up in Northport, on Long Island. “It’s too fast-paced and competitive. I left when I was 18.” Mannelli studied for a year at West Virginia University in Morgantown, where she discovered Transcendental Meditation, and spent three years of quiet spiritual practice at an ashram in the Catskills, where she met her husband-to-be Bill Brewer, an artist. She taught TM for a while in Annapolis and in Bermuda, until she and Brewer got married, moved to Seattle and had a daughter, Rhice. Continue reading →

The daughter of a military man, Amy Red Feather was born in California and “moved all over” prior to her high school years in Slidell, La. “I got interested in permaculture and gardening,” says Red Feather, who completed a degree in animal science and conservation at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Fla., then worked in ecotourism with conservation groups in Maui. “We showed them hidden waterfalls and talked environmental education.” On Maui, she met people from Eugene. “It’s like our sister city,” they told her. Continue reading →

The son of a natural science museum director, Glen Johnson taught natural science, archery and riflery at a summer camp while in high school in Angleton, Texas. “They loaned me out to other camps,” says Johnson, who became a traveling summer camp counselor while attending six colleges in eight years. He completed a science teaching degree at OSU in 1987, then spent 11 years in Eugene as a substitute teacher and a River House recreation guide. A photographer since age 6, he launched a new career in destination-wedding photography after his son Jade was born in 2000. Continue reading →

“I would like to be a useful person and bring a good change to people’s lives,” says Win Min, who grew up in Sin Tae, a farming village in western Myanmar. An avid learner in primary school, he was shocked, at age 11, when his parents told him they couldn’t afford tuition. A year of hard work on the family farm earned him permission to travel to Mandalay, where he learned that tuition was free at the Buddhist monastery’s high school. “I started learning English,” says Win Min, who memorized Myanmar history and became a tourist guide. Continue reading →