Happening People: Page 19

Carlos Barrera

Happening People

A native of Mission, Texas, Carlos Barrera traces his family history back to Spanish colonial times in the mid-1600s. “Half the town is related to me,” he says. “The Rio Grande River is three miles away.” After earning a bachelor’s in fine arts from Pan American University in nearby Edinburg, Barrera became an electrician and an electrical contractor. He worked three years in Austin, then 21 years in the San Francisco Bay Area. “I was the go-to person for historical renovation,” he says. Continue reading →

Allen Hancock

Happening People

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. Continue reading →

Christine Menager

Happening People

Born in France, Christine Menager had a chaotic childhood. Her mom died when she was 2 and her father, a rural veterinarian, sent his two kids to his parents’ farm in Normandy. “I was a high school dropout, a pregnant teenager,” says Menager, who got married at 17 and had two kids before she divorced her abusive husband. “He had a lawyer and got the children.” She went to nursing school in Paris, worked at a psychiatric hospital, and began to study psychology, then ran off to Berkeley with a guy she met in Greece. Continue reading →

Sister Margret Graziano (revisited)

Happening People

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. Continue reading →

Harper Keeler

Happening People

When his father, an Air Force pilot, died in Vietnam, and his mother remarried, Harper Keeler went from grade school at the Air Force Academy to middle and high school in Pleasantville, N.Y. After two years of college at SUNY Potsdam, he worked for five years at a plant nursery in Bedford, N.Y. “That got me interested in plants and designing with plants,” says Keeler, who spent two years living the “hippie life” off the grid in Vermont before he moved west in 1990 to study landscape architecture at the UO. Continue reading →

Fran Calciano

Happening People

“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. Continue reading →

Shelley Bowerman

Happening People

“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. Continue reading →