A Tribute

Rick Harmon: August 30, 1952 – May 20, 2004

Rick Harmon, editor of the Oregon Historical Quarterly from 1987 to 1999, died on May 20, 2004. We are grateful to Steve Hallberg for allowing us to reprint part of the eulogy he wrote for Rick and to Rick's other colleagues for helping us remember his many contributions to the journal and the Oregon Historical Society.
Rick Harmon (left), Michael Munk, and Omar "Slug" Palmer (back to camera) at the Oregon Historical Society's annual meeting in 1997, where Munk received the Joel Palmer Award.
I met Rick for the first time in 1983 when he arrived at the Oregon Historical Society to take on the position of oral historian. Naturally, his hiring raised a few eyebrows among us northwesterners, who were not quite sure whether we could safely entrust Oregon history to a Californian. It took no time at all, however, to figure out that Rick was exactly the right person for the job. His intellect, work ethic, and integrity were evident right from the beginning, and they made a strong impression on me and his other colleagues.
Rick stepped into an oral history program with a strong foundation laid down by his two predecessors, Charles Digregorio and Linda Brody Dodds. His biggest innovation was a move toward longer, more in-depth interviews that explored all stages of a person's life; and over the next few years, Rick used this approach to conduct remarkable sessions with people as diverse as federal judge Gus Solomon, civil rights activist Kathryn Hall Bogle, and writer Clyde Rice. Excerpts from several of his oral histories, published in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, convey just how good an interviewer he was — able to draw people out and get them to think and speak about their lives in revealing ways.
In 1986, Rick was chosen to succeed Priscilla Knuth as editor of the Oregon Historical Quarterly, a post she had held for three decades. "PK" would have been a tough act for anyone to follow, and in some respects, the two of them could not have been more different. What they shared was a commitment to the work. Over the year that Rick spent working alongside Priscilla, the two formed a strong bond, and PK passed on stewardship of the Quarterly in 1987, confident that it was in good hands.
When I think of Rick as editor, I picture him seated in his office, shoes off, cross-legged with his feet tucked underneath him, his chair pushed far back from his desk, leaning across empty space with his red pen to edit copy at arm's length. I never figured out how he could work in that position, much less get in and out of it. It must have suited him, though, because he was remarkably productive. A quick browse through the Quarterly's table of contents for the years of his tenure reveals an astounding range of subject matter, from oil drilling in Harney County to an episode of McCarthyism at Reed College. In 1993, Rick added "The Journal of Record for Oregon History" to the title page of the Quarterly. He set the bar high and lived up to the standard.
In 1991, Rick added a feature that I used to look forward to almost as much as the articles themselves: the editor's introduction. It was typically a short piece intended to set the stage for the articles, but the thinking was original and the writing was pithy. It was the first indication some of us had that Rick was as good a writer as he was an editor. I think the experience of producing the editor's introduction whetted his appetite to spend more time on his own writing. Between 1995 and 1998, while attending to the million and one details involved in putting out a quarterly journal, Rick published two fine articles of his own in OHQ, one on the history of the Bull Run Watershed and another on Oregon geologist Thomas Condon. Eventually, the desire to make writing a full-time occupation won out, and in 1999 Rick resigned his position as editor.
By a fortunate circumstance, a project ideally suited to Rick's talents and interests came along a short time later when the Friends of Crater Lake National Park asked him to write the park's centennial history. He had been waiting for just this kind of opportunity — the chance to deal with complex environmental policy issues in a book-length work — and he made the most of it. Rick spent the better part of two years researching, writing, and revising his manuscript, seeing the publishing process from the other side of the fence. The result was a book that is almost certain to remain the definitive history of a place many Oregonians hold dear. Crater Lake National Park: A History (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2002) reveals Rick at the top of his form, combining keen analysis with graceful prose. The book received an Oregon Book Award nomination in 2003, an honor that he found gratifying. Having spent so much of his career helping others find their voices, Rick finally got the chance to let his own voice emerge, and it rang with unmistakable clarity.
Rick cared deeply about his work but also about the people he worked with and the place he worked in. Those convictions led him to take a leading role in organizing the OHS Employees Association in 1990 and then to serve as president of the organization. The idea of an employees union was uncharted territory for OHS at the time, and no one was certain how, or if, it would succeed. Everyone at OHS had to make adjustments — not always easy — in how we approached our work. The institution was stronger, however, for having dealt with the issues raised by the association, and current employees at OHS who never knew Rick continue to benefit from his determination to help create a workplace where everyone's contributions are respected.
One of the qualities that always impressed me most about Rick was his intellectual independence. He had little patience for conventional wisdom and a healthy confidence in his own powers of reasoning. Thinking for himself, reaching his own conclusions, and letting the chips fall where they may were deeply rooted habits of mind. Existing alongside that fierce intellect, though, was a warm and exceptionally generous nature. Over the years, Rick offered a steady flow of encouragement and advice to the Quarterly's many contributors. He also lent his time and expertise freely to a succession of interns, volunteers, and students on their way to careers in editing and related professions. Those of us who had the pleasure of working with him found his easy camaraderie, ready empathy, and irreverent wit to be everything we hoped for in a colleague and friend. Rick's loss leaves a gap that nothing can begin to fill, yet there is some comfort in knowing that he leaves behind so much good work and so many close friends — both signs of a life well lived.
Steve Hallberg Librarian, Oregon Historical Society
I met Rick Harmon in the winter of 1973, shortly after both of us had arrived at the University of California, San Diego. Rick was a wonderful student, who got A's in all my classes (mainly on European intellectual history), and over the next two or three years we became friends. I convinced him to go off to Columbia for his Ph.D. in European history, but after a week in New York he concluded that his moral reservations about the faculty and the program meant that he could not continue there. The next year he returned to our doctoral program, where he was one of the best of a very strong group of doctoral students in European history. When he decided to leave UCSD in the middle of his second year, my colleagues were shocked and disappointed to lose such a wonderful student.
But Rick seemed to be happier out in the world, and he believed he could contribute most not as a speaker in front of a classroom, but alone with individual manuscripts. He eventually found his way to Portland and to the Oregon Historical Society, but he and I continued to talk regularly by phone and to visit each other in Portland and San Diego. We talked about our work and politics, about emotions and religion and literature. We laughed a lot and told the truth a lot. Rick was a very beautiful writer and a deeply moral person, and I will miss him.
David S. Luft Professor of History University of California, San Diego
The first time I met Rick — in the early 1980s — he had just become the Oregon Historical Society's oral historian. We hit it off immediately because he exuded a passion for history that invited personal engagement and sharply argued discussion, the kind of give-and-take that enlivens and fuels the profession; and in every way Rick was a professional historian. His solid grounding in historical methodology and his commitment to meaningful scholarship infused his work in oral history and shone brilliantly when he took on the editorship of the Oregon Historical Quarterly. It is not an exaggeration to mark his tenure at OHQ as the beginning of the journal's modern professional era, when publishing new scholarship became a hallmark and it became a true Journal of Record. He had the foresight to create the journal's first advisory board of editors, and as a member of that board I saw his talent at work firsthand.
My fondest memories are the wide-ranging conversations we had about political history, one of Rick's great passions, along with his love of animals, major-league sports, and the foibles of American politics. His intellectual interests knew few horizons, so a conversation could hopscotch meaningfully from nineteenth-century Europe to Portland history to American foreign policy. Rick also understood better than most that humor is the grease that makes our lives workable. I will remember him most for the easy mingling of his passions, his commitment to social justice, and his quick repartees that always left me a little smarter and smiling.
William L. Lang Professor of History Portland State University
Press on, regardless." Those wordswere emblazoned on a memento my colleague and friend, Rick Harmon, gave me when I faced potential layoff from OHS. The sentiment was both heartfelt and indicative of the concern he had for his coworkers — concern backed with action. I came to know Rick after the office of the OHQ was merged with those of the OHS Press. In addition to respect for his exceptional skills as an editor and writer, I admired his forthright and compassionate nature. Rick personified integrity and fostered it in everything he did, from his work to his relationships both professional and personal. His profound sense of justice and his concern for the well-being of his colleagues were most publicly and passionately seen in the key role he played in establishing the OHS Employees Association (OHSEA). Though not without trepidation, Rick walked through those difficult times with resolve and certainty of purpose and often lightened the mood with his wry wit. He remained ardent and steadfast as he helped galvanize a significant majority of staff to successfully organize. OHSEA gave voice to the concerns of OHS staff and rectified many inequities in the workplace. Just as Rick's outstanding professional work serves as a legacy, so, too, does his service to OHSEA still reverberate through OHS, a tribute to his belief in standing up and being counted. His colleagues past, present, and future owe him gratitude.
Lori Root (McEldowney) Former Editor, OHS Press Past President, OHSEA
How do you get the most out of people?" I asked Rick in our interview in November 2001. His answer, with all its wider implication, is the tribute I wish to present in remembering the greatness of my mentor and friend.
"It's a combination of impersonal research skills, knowing your subject as best you can, ... and then that more personal willingness to show some concern about the person you're dealing with, and to encourage them in the process of narrating their life, give them confirmation in the legitimacy of their life experiences. ... It's like in teaching: I think teachers who ... expose some of themselves, [who] share some of their authentic humanity, are more effective than teachers who don't. The purpose of your being there is not to display your plumage, but, in terms of your relationship with the person you're interviewing, to show some of your humanity and to expose yourself a little bit. [That] I think is really key to getting the most out of the oral history experience....
"I just try to ... connect with the person in as authentic a way as I can, to just not pretend that I am anything or anybody but who I am, and in doing that, give them the confidence that they are in a human encounter. And some people want to be in human encounters and some people don't. I've found in doing oral histories that ... most often the person on the other end wants to be there — it's not just something they're getting through."
Jim Strassmaier Oral Historian (retired) Oregon Historical Society
Rick Harmon's enormous talent and courage as a writer was evident in Crater Lake National Park: A History. Rick's book, which was completed in time to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Crater Lake National Park, was nominated for an Oregon Book Award.
The story of Crater Lake encompasses a wide array of topics, ranging from the lake's spectacular volcanic origin and incomparable geology to the anthropology of Indian tribes and their prehistoric ancestors who inhabited the Crater Lake region. The story continues with the discovery of Crater Lake by Euro-Americans, followed by the complex history of Crater Lake National Park with all of its political, social, and scientific ramifications. Based on numerous oral history interviews, documentary evidence, and his own wealth of acquired knowledge, Rick skillfully integrated these topics into a comprehensive, factual understanding of Oregon's only national park and what is perhaps the most remarkable lake on earth.
Finally, while some writers were glamorizing the park's centennial history, Rick told Oregonians and all other readers of his book how bureaucratic policies and mismanagement had in recent years threatened the lake's majestic beauty. Rick never wavered from telling the hard truth, even though it resulted in his book being unfairly questioned by some critics as an authentic or the "official" history of the park. Rick's book now stands as the definitive history of Crater Lake National Park and a superb legacy for which we are enduringly grateful.
Douglas W. Larson Crater Lake Research Scientist, 1967–1986
Rick was the most challenging editor I ever had. He refused to accept my work unless it was my finest, he gave me fits over both content and commas, and he forced me to take my critics more seriously. So, while he was my most challenging editor, he also turned out to be my very best.
Rick's talents as an editor flowed from his deep love of history. He was particularly talented at nurturing younger scholars who possessed an iconoclastic perspective on Oregon's past. David Peterson del Mar, with his intensely personal concerns about the influence of violence on Oregon and western history, and Peter Boag, with his innovative work on the gay worlds of the twentieth-century Northwest, are just two of the talented scholars to benefit from Rick's encouragement. Indeed, I was never prouder of Rick than when he stood up to those at the Oregon Historical Society who questioned whether Peter's kind of history should be represented in the pages of the Oregon Historical Quarterly. The same courage and love for a full humanity also came through loud and clear in Rick's successful struggle to unionize the employees at OHS.
While Rick loved Oregon history, he did not love pioneers. As Rick eloquently argued in his wonderful article about Thomas Condon in the OHQ, Oregonians' fixation on The Pioneers ultimately served the undemocratic purposes of the state's past and present-day elite. Yet, in playing a key role in opening up our state's history, Rick himself became a trail-blazing pioneer.
Robert D. Johnston Associate Professor of History University of Illinois at Chicago
Everyone who ever met Rick remembers something special about him, including his abiding good sense and good humor and his often slightly shag-dog windy-day growth of hair and beard. His appearance, perhaps, was precisely because he possessed an abiding love for animals, especially dogs. There was Oba, Maggie, The Cardinal, and Ruby — all Chow-Chow, which Rick seemed to prefer. But he enjoyed dogs of all breeds, all sizes and shapes and colors.
While researching and writing his Crater Lake book, Rick struggled with both cancer and depression but, triumphantly, he produced a thoughtful, thorough, very fine history. In it he included a reference to bear-dogs, he said especially for me. Rick often enjoyed "pulling my leash," as he put it.
Long ago, behind Crater Lake, there were legends and stories, mostly about bears. In the fall, on moonlit nights, the bears would search for a butte or piece of high rocky ground, where they would stand on their hind legs and paw at the stars. Sometimes one of these bears would be lucky and strike a star — sending a blue and silver and green streak across the sky.
Pawing the night sky like that, those autumn Crater Lake bears were letting go. Rick stood up, too. He did his pawing, and then he let go. We remember these little things about Rick. His Chow dogs, of course, remember and understand a lot more.
Lou Flannery Librarian (retired) Oregon Historical Society
In 1996 and 1997, I worked with Rick Harmon as a Rose Tucker Editorial Fellow for the Quarterly. It was a watershed event in my life. Professionally, Rick introduced me to historical editing, gave me my first public history experience, and inspired me to pursue a career as a historian. Personally, Rick's matchless integrity as a writer, a historian, and an individual became the yardstick against which I measure my own actions.
Integrity. That word surfaced repeatedly at Rick's memorial service, as those who knew him spoke about his life. Certainly, Rick's integrity was evident in every area of his work. As an editor, he managed simplicity without sacrificing at any point the complexity of a well-crafted argument — a feat that was beloved by Quarterly authors but is most purely realized in Rick's own writing. His respect for his authors' individual voices and his readers' intelligence was unshakeable. He held himself to exacting standards of fairness, clinging fast to the conviction that to be true to one's word, both literally and figuratively, is to live an honorable life.
Rick was funny, opinionated, a kind and patient teacher, an irascible, curmudgeonly presence, and an abiding example of the powerful effect of caring deeply about one's work. Whenever I sit down to write, it is Rick's example that I call on, both as a standard to uphold and because it helps me to know that achieving such a standard is possible. I am forever grateful to have known him.
Rachael Vorberg-Rugh Oregon Historical Society
I met Rick Harmon during a visit to Portland in 1992. A friend had suggested that the Oregon Historical Quarterly might be interested in an event that was not only controversial but also reflected the "present as history" — the 1954 firing of Reed College Professor Stanley Moore. I had left Oregon in 1959, and my memory of the Quarterly was that it published heroic pioneer memoirs and kept a polite distance from political debate. Rick soon set me straight. He told me that nothing was sacred except a strict adherence to high scholarly standards for "The Journal of Record for Oregon History."
When the article appeared four years later, I had become familiar with Rick's rigor in demanding documentation. I also had grown to appreciate his toning down of my occasionally polemical language and had learned why he sent me off to re-interview some surviving principals of the affair. Shortly after the article appeared in OHQ, the Society's director told me that the Board of Directors had mentioned the article approvingly and additional copies had to be printed. At Reed, Rick chaired a public discussion and interviewed Professor Moore on closed-circuit television. I considered how different my experience with the Oregon Historical Society and the Quarterly was from my youthful memories.
It was not until the attention had subsided that Rick confided to me that before the article went to press he had been asked if he would reconsider publishing it. By then, of course, his answer was history, but the editorial courage and integrity that Rick demonstrated is my most precious and enduring memory of him.
Michael Munk Portland, Oregon

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