A Tribute

Gordon Barlow Dodds: March 12, 1932–August 29, 2003

The passing of Gordon Barlow Dodds, Professor Emeritus of History at Portland State University (PSU), on August 29, 2003, was a profound loss, not only to his family, friends, and colleagues but also to all those who value the scholarship of Pacific Northwest history, humanism, and rich character.
Gordon Dodds was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on March 12, 1932. He received an A.B. in 1954 from Harvard University, an M.A. in 1955 from the University of Illinois, and a Ph.D. in 1958 from the University of Wisconsin. Inspired by an undergraduate class on the trans-Mississippi West given by Frederick Merck, the great historian of the fur trade, he became a foremost scholar of the westward movement, the Pacific Northwest, and the state of Oregon. Following an initial appointment at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, he came to PSU in 1966, retiring in 1999.
Gordon was the author, co-author, or editor of ten books, including The Salmon King of Oregon (1959), Autobiography of a Pygmy Monopolist (1961), and Oregon (1977), the state history published by the U.S. Bicentennial Commission. In Oregon he outlined his thesis that Oregon's deeply ambivalent political culture of progressivism at the margins and conservatism at the core was the mainspring of the state's historical development. The College That Would Not Die: The First Fifty Years of Portland State University (2000) became the university's official history. His text The American Northwest: A History of Oregon and Washington (1986) remains a standard reference. His articles and reviews appeared in the Journal of American History, Western Political Quarterly, Western Historical Quarterly, American Historical Review, Agricultural History, Western Historical Quarterly, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Oregon Historical Quarterly, Arizona Historical Review, and Forest History. He sat on the council of the Pacific Coast branch of the American Historical Association and the editorial boards of Arizona and the West, Pacific Historical Review, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Oregon Historical Quarterly, Western Historical Quarterly, and the Oregon State University Press.
Gordon was completely dedicated to the PSU History Department, which he referred to as the best between Berkeley and Baffin Bay, serving as chair and in other key administrative capacities over the years. He founded and was a board member of the Friends of History, a History Department support group. He was the driving force in raising a substantial endowment for the organization's yearly free lecture by a renowned historian. The university and the community recognized his accomplishments. In 1979, PSU bestowed on him the first Branford P. Millar Award for Faculty Excellence. He also won the PSU Alumni Association Distinguished Faculty Service Award for 1997–1998.
These are the bare facts of an exemplary life and career. A miniscule sampling of the depths of affection and respect for this remarkable man are eloquently recorded below by a small cross-section of those who were touched by Gordon's grace and intelligence. Before moving on to them, let me add a few of my own thoughts about a wise mentor, valued colleague, and steadfast friend.
Gordon's superficial presentation was as the reserved, slightly eccentric, placid academic. It wasn't an act. Closeted in his cluttered office in intense discussion, he might pull out the bottom drawer of his metal desk, prop a foot on it, reach in, grab a brush, and, without missing a conversational beat, buff his shoe. With friends, he used a quirky private language, a smattering of it non-PC, all of it gentle. When appropriate, he laced it through his lectures, to the delight of students. Harvard was "the old school." When he was forgetful, he became "Professor Alzheimer." To have a beer with friends was to "revel." Such talk mirrored the complexity of the detached observer who uttered it, in that each word had an ironic edge, sometimes humorously self-deprecating, occasionally acerbically highlighting the pretensions of others, often betraying the urge of the lifelong intellectual to remark on the world's folly.
Gordon's loyalty and generosity to students, young faculty, PSU, and the community were legendary. For students, he advised cheerfully, wrote recommendations tirelessly, and supervised M.A. theses ceaselessly. Young scholars were passed speaking engagements, consulting opportunities, extra classes. He hung out with new faculty and nudged them along with subtle mentoring on the ways of the academy. He organized lunches at favorite haunts, inviting faculty, staff, and students. An avid supporter of PSU athletics, he was rarely absent from football and basketball games. He spoke to community groups whenever requested. With his wife, Linda, he served meals to the homeless at his church and worked at the Oregon Food Bank.
Gordon cast a long shadow over the study of history in and of this region, and he knew it, but he was neither falsely humble nor overbearingly proud of his position. His stature was the product of hard, meticulous work that was animated not by careerism but by habituation to the pursuit of excellence in every endeavor. Success, in his view, was merely the residue of that drive. He coupled it with a serene devotion to virtues and values — duty, honor, justice, community, democracy, egalitarianism, loyalty, friendship — so old fashioned they seem scarcely credible today. Still, this was the recipe for character and conduct that, baked with his off-kilter charm, drew people to him in life and make him so achingly missed in death. We shall not look upon his like again. Craig Wollner Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies Portland State University
Gordon Dodds in his office in Cramer Hall, probably in the late 1970s Courtesy of Linda Dodds
In late summer 1958, a lanky young man drove to Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, in a Volkswagen Bug. His head bounced perilously close to the roof, and bony knees and elbows threatened at any moment to escape the narrow confines of his chosen mode of conveyance. Gordon Dodds arrived in the Land of Lincoln perhaps not uncoincidentally looking rather Lincolnesque in appearance and with a demeanor that by turns reflected a serious nature and enormous intellectual capacity combined with a bent for wry humor. He was there to assume his first academic position after a precocious stint at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he completed a rigorous Ph.D. program under Vernon Carstensen that consisted of exams in two foreign languages, two "minor fields," comprehensive exams over all areas of United States history, and a dissertation in an unprecedented three years.
By chance, I enrolled in the first class Gordon taught at Knox, oddly enough one on Latin American history that he never offered again. In keeping with Gordon's penchant for applying pithy descriptive phrases to friends that they found difficult, if not impossible, to shed, I was at some point dubbed his "first student" and forty years later was still invariably introduced as such. At Knox he became a friend and advisor, influencing the first of many career decisions by steering me to his former mentor at Wisconsin. What I came to understand only at a later date was the extent to which his low-key, often imperceptible, but always forthright counsel equally influenced so many of his students from the first to the last.
Gordon's exemplary scholarship became apparent early on. His dissertation on R.D. Hume, the "Salmon King" of Oregon, quickly transformed into not one but two books. Although not touted as such, they represented a foray into environmental history ahead of its time. He followed with a parallel work on Hiram Martin Chittenden and the fur trade. Transplanting himself firmly in the Pacific Northwest, Gordon became the foremost interpreter of Oregon from early settlement down through the ascendancy of the high-tech industry. His history of Oregon published in the bicentennial series is a model of readability and interpretation that managed to cover the major facets of the state's history within the confines of a slender volume. In this book and his later text on Oregon and Washington, he led the drive to tell the story of all the varied peoples who comprised the fabric of the Oregon and Northwest experience. And finally, he ably documented the changes wrought to Oregon by the growth of dominant urban centers and the universities and industries that served them. It is a remarkable scholarly legacy. Kent Richards Emeritus Professor of History Central Washington University
I first met Gordon Dodds in Portland, Oregon, in 1989. We rapidly became friends. My wife and I enjoyed the hospitality of Gordon and his wife, Linda, while both were introducing us to the Northwest, its landscape, culture, history, and literature. Gordon gave me priceless information, generous gifts of books, introductions to Northwest writers and historians. Through him I met Ivan Doig, Craig Lesley, Molly Gloss, and Bill Lang. Gordon's generosity in time and kind cannot be estimated. For me he was and is a precious, irreplaceable resource. Already an Americanist, I knew nothing of the Northwest and its writers. Gordon helped me to become a visiting instructor at Portland State University, of which he was a distinguished member. He gave me a whole new field and renewed my work for me. He had nothing to gain from any of this. It was pure kindness and enthusiasm for his subject and mine. That some Northwest literature is now taught and read in Lincoln, England, is almost entirely his doing.
In this class picture from the Pomfret School, taken in 1950 or 1951, Gordon sits in the center, fifth from the left. Courtesy of Linda Dodds
As a teacher, Gordon was both inspiring and meticulous. I attended several of his lectures and teaching sessions. The timing was perfect; he had a total command of his materials, which enabled him to observe his audience and its rate of comprehension. All this was spiced by a rapid, dry wit. He never paused for laughs, and sometimes one caught up a minute or two later. Many of his students will attest also to his kindness and concern for individuals. Only injustice, rudeness, and lack of integrity angered him.
Playing a slightly old-fashioned, even eccentric social role, Gordon tended to conceal the razor-sharp power of his intellect. He wrote extremely well and was of the opinion that history had something of great importance to tell each generation. Fair and open-minded, he was nevertheless a moralist. He believed profoundly in democracy and in its ultimate triumph. Behind Gordon's teasing and banter and the fun and even, at times, the chaos he generated, his friends glimpsed a deeply serious and complex man who cared for people and did practical good. He saw history as an ethical calling of high importance, and this was the way he wrote and taught it. John Davies Department of English Bishop Grosseteste College Lincoln, England
Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gordon eschewed "cheap grace." Despite years of attending Lutheran churches, he was as much a Calvinist as Jonathan Edwards. What Norman Maclean said of his Presbyterian minister father could also be said of Gordon: "My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him all good things — trout as well as eternal salvation — come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy."
A number of years ago, Gordon delivered a paper in which he took his fellow Oregonians to task for pursuing individual ambition at the expense of the common good. He cautioned against "cheap history" (an allusion to Bonhoeffer) in confronting the expensive challenges that faced the region, "expensive not only in terms of money but also in terms of commitment to public service." As students, he expected us to think clearly and learn from the past in order to face present challenges in a spirit of critical engagement. He expected no less from his fellow citizens. Oregonians, he wrote, must aspire to become more than what a cynic once called "Idaho with a coastline . . . a place where nobody is willing to make hard sacrifices, where everyone thinks this is the best of all possible worlds, and where there is little concern for the welfare of future generations."
A woman wrote him a letter taking him to task for his pessimistic attitude. (Perhaps she was from Idaho!) But Gordon, editor of an anthology of Oregon prose entitled Varieties of Hope, was no pessimist. Like Wallace Stegner, he was simply expressing a hope that Northwesterners might someday "create a civilization to match our scenery." And who can read his words now, written almost twenty years ago, without hearing the ring of prophecy? John Rosenberg Oregon Synod Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
We first spoke extensively about Oregon history over pulled pork sandwiches and ice tea. Gordon had stacked beside his plate a pile of materials from when he taught the Oregon history course at Portland State University, and our conversation was to prepare me to take up the job of teaching it now that he had retired. I listened. He listed off the topics he covered in chronological order and suggested books, films, and approaches that seemed to work in the past all from memory. Later he would call me into his office to tell me that he had neglected to mention one film he thought I might like to preview. It was at that time that he asked me to call him Gordon rather than the more formal Dr. Dodds that I was not quite ready to give up. At the time I admired Gordon greatly for his breadth of knowledge but even more so for his generosity and kindness to me. After getting to know him better, I came to understand that this was his approach to life generally. I was lucky to have known Gordon and to have been included in the lunches and get-togethers he organized for friends and colleagues. He was a good friend and a remarkable model of the citizen-scholar that I aspire to become. I miss him greatly. Katrine Barber Assistant Professor of History Portland State University
He was the ultimate gentleman scholar: erudite, fervent about his discipline, collegial, and enormously kind. An award-winning teacher and prolific author who was fastidious about historical details, he was just as earnest about the time he dedicated to supporting others.
I was among the fortunate. Though I'd never enrolled in a class from the renowned Professor Dodds, I, too, was his student. Gordon agreed to read the manuscript for my book; and his comments were pointed, useful, and always encouraging. He kept in touch, inviting me to participate in programs and introducing me to colleagues. When Gordon called, I knew an interesting project lay ahead.
Gordon Dodds made every day of his life count, continuing to research and write well beyond his retirement. Somehow it's easy to imagine Gordon still hard at work pursuing his earthly passions from above. By the time the rest of us reach those pearly gates, it's just possible that Professor Dodds will already have our heavenly records neatly archived. Thank you, Gordon, for inspiring and teaching us. Linda Tamura Professor of Education Wilamette University, Salem
Gordon Dodds's passing was a painful loss, but remembering my long association with him is a distinct pleasure. Gordon was a young history teacher when I arrived at Knox College in a large class of green faculty re-cruits. People at the college were quite friendly, but Gordon was enthusiastic about having so many new colleagues and he treated our arrival as an important event. It soon became clear that Gordon was a person of many enthusiasms and that they were infectious.
Gordon's colleagues got interested in things because Gordon was excited about them, and interestingly enough, it also worked the other way around. That is, he was always keen to know what your enthusiasms were, and he often stoked the fires by joining in. Discovering, for example, that I was fascinated by the curious chemistry that existed between Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman, Gordon suggested that we offer a voluntary seminar for the purpose of reading the writings of the politician and the poet in tandem. I was in English, and while interdisciplinary courses were not unheard of, there was, frankly, no room in either the curriculum or our teaching schedules for such a course. So when I recall that we actually carried it off — attracting some of our best students into a non-credit venture, and on top of a regular teaching load of four heavily enrolled courses — I am reminded of what Gordon's enthusiasms were capable of. With almost any other colleague, such an enterprise would not have gone beyond the stage of wishful thinking. With Gordon, characteristically, it became a reality. Douglas L. Wilson Emeritus Professor of English Knox College

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