Linfield College becomes Linfield University on July 1, 2020

(Headline of this story in the newspaper: ‘U’ turn ahead: Linfield set to graduate ‘college’)

By Starla Pointer, McMinnville N-R/News-Register, June 30, 2020

After almost a century as Linfield College, McMinnville’s private school will be renamed Linfield University on July 1.

“With the new name, we’re not just staying the course, nor simply changing the sign on Founders Way,” said Miles Davis, Linfield’s 41^st president. “We’re transforming into an institution that will serve students in the comping decades with a new structure.”

Linfield has about 2,000 students enrolled on its McMinnville and Portland campuses, along with online and adult degree completing programs. 

The American Baptist denomination started what became Linfield in 1858. The Baptist College served secondary students as well as those pursing higher education in its early years. It became McMinnville College as it moved from downtown to its current site, where Pioneer Hall was built in 1882.

In 1922 the school received a major donation from the Linfield family and assumed its benefactor’s name. It grew in both enrollment and programs over the decades.

In the mid-1990s it expanded in size, as well, as the campus incorporated the former Hewlett-Packard site next door. The library, art department, theater and music departments, along with additional living quarters, fill the south part of the campus, with more academic buildings, dorms, the cafeteria and science and sports complexes on the original section, anchored by the belltower topped Pioneer Hall. 

Linfield paired with a nursing program in Portland in 1982 to create the Linfield-Good Samaritan School of Nursing. It will move to new quarters next year: the former University of Western States campus, a 20-acre site with buildings equipped for medical studies, which it purchased in 2018.

Nursing and business become schools in the new university format, along with a College of Arts and Sciences. Linfield plays to add master’s degrees to its undergraduate programs: it already has developed master’s tracks in the health care leadership and wine studies.

“We will continue to be a mission-driven institution that connects learning, life and community,” Davis said. “We will continue to focus on the student experience and maintain our emphasis on a high-quality interdisciplinary education.”

The goal is to ensure the Linfield name – and the values it represents – remains strong for at least another 162 years.

Farewell Wildcat Jess Thurman, Linfield football, Class of 1956

Story by John Gunther, Coos Bay World newspaper, June 23, 2020

COQUILLE, Oregon — Jess Thurman loved kids.

He made a career of educating and coaching them after his role as a successful football player for Coquille High School and Linfield College in the 1950s, with stints at Brookings, Winston and Glide.

It even prompted him to come out of retirement to coach the Red Devils for a stretch in the 1990s, after he had settled into life as a business owner.

“When (coach) John Van Burger left and went to Montana, there was no head coach,” John Christiansen recalled this week. “Nobody would do it.

“Ken Trathen talked (Jess) into coaching and then talked me into coaching with him.”

Christiansen, who was a teacher at the high school at the time, fondly remembered Thurman, who died Saturday.

“He truly liked kids,” Christiansen said.

Thurman had retired back to Coquille after his stints as a teacher and administrator in Douglas County, running a liquor store and restaurant in town. But he got right back into coaching, leading the Red Devils for several years and narrowly missing the state playoffs a few seasons.

“It was tough to get into the playoffs,” Christiansen said, adding the Red Devils were successful under Thurman.

And he had a good bond with his players.

“He would sit outside (the store) and talk to the kids,” Christiansen said, adding that Thurman also would feed the team dinner on game nights. “He thought it was important for the team to come down and have a decent meal.”

Christiansen didn’t know Thurman well before they started coaching together, but quickly grew to respect him as a head coach.

“He knew what he was doing,” Christiansen said.

That came decades after Thurman, himself, was a good athlete for Coquille and, somewhat remarkably, a successful player for Linfield College as well, after losing his left hand in an industrial accident during his junior year at Coquille.

Thurman played for legendary Coquille coach Spike Leslie — the high school field is named in his honor — and it was Leslie and Thurman’s teammates who gave him the belief he could still be a successful player after his accident.

“Without Spike Leslie, he wouldn’t have been able to continue,” Thurman’s daughter, Diana Lavender, recalled when Thurman was inducted into the Coquille Hall of Fame last fall. “Spike said, ‘Jess, it only takes one hand to center the ball.’”

Len Scolari, who graduated with Thurman in 1952, said Monday that the players weren’t about to let Thurman quit, either. Several of them went up to see him in the hospital a couple of days after the accident.

“He was crying and saying, ‘I won’t be able to play football,’” Scolari recalled. “I told him, ‘You’ve got all summer to practice snapping the ball.’ We weren’t going to let him off the hook.”

As a running back, Scolari depended some on Thurman’s blocking up front and said he was always a good blocker.

Scolari said Thurman had a strong senior season, earning all-district honors and helping the Red Devils make the playoffs, where they had to compete in the same division with the state’s biggest schools.

Coquille opened against University High School in Eugene on a muddy field in temperatures below freezing and won 20-6. Scolari, also the team’s kicker, remembered Thurman snapping the ball perfectly on the extra point attempts — the one Scolari missed was because the holder dropped the slippery and cold ball, he said.

Coquille lost the next week to Grants Pass, which also had beaten Marshfield in the first round of the playoffs, and Thurman went on to Linfield.

“He was a darn good player,” Scolari said. “He always had a positive attitude, especially after he lost his hand.

“He was good with everybody. Everybody liked him.”

Thurman was Linfield’s starting center his final three years and other players for the Wildcats recalled him as a great teammate.

“Jess was an equal,” recalled Linfield teammate John Prutsman in a 2015 story for Wildcatville, a blog mostly about Linfield football. “He really wasn’t handicapped, just inconvenienced.”

Prutsman noted that Thurman also played on the line or at linebacker on defense for Linfield and played intramural basketball, softball and volleyball, as well as golf.

Maybe his most memorable play for the Wildcats was a center eligible pass that Thurman caught from quarterback Ad Rutschman, who later coached Linfield.

“If you are going to throw a pass it is not normally going to a center and certainly not to a one handed guy,” Prutsman recalled.

Thurman almost scored on the play, too.

“Jess was not much for speed but great on determination,” Prutsman said. “He made it down to, I believe about the 10-yard line before he was tackled.”

Thurman enjoyed going back to Linfield and Christiansen will cherish a trip there in the 1990s.

“Ken Trathen came down with cancer,” he recalled. “He wanted one more trip to Linfield to watch a football game.”

As it turned out, both Linfield and Southern Oregon, that week’s opponent, had players from Coquille.

So Christiansen, Thurman and Trathen got in a pickup and drove to McMinnville, with Christiansen and Thurman providing play-by-play for Trathen, who couldn’t see anymore.

“We went up and had a wonderful time,” Christiansen said. “It was a highlight of knowing the old guys.”

Trathen died not long after that, but Thurman and Christiansen remained close.

“He loved to fish,” Christiansen said, adding that success on the Coquille River wasn’t important.

“He didn’t care if he caught anything,” Christiansen said.

“We’d go out and sit and cruise up and down the river for a while.”

And Thurman was well-known as a business owner in the community.

“He was very proud to be from Coquille,” Christiansen said.

Terry Miller, legendary R.A. Long High School athlete (Longview, Wash.), dies at 72 Linfield Class of 1970; played basketball for Ted Wilson-coached Wildcats

Terry Miller, legendary R.A. Long High School athlete (Longview, Wash.), dies at 72.
Linfield Class of 1970; played basketball for Ted Wilson-coached Wildcats

By Alex Bruell, Longview (Wash.,) Daily News 6/25/2020

Terry Miller, a fearless athlete, consummate competitor and soft-spoken friend to many died Monday after a nearly two-year battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 72.


Miller was competitive to the end, friends and family said: Three weeks before his death, he shot an 82 out on the golf course, thrashing the rest of his friends and family, R.A. Long P.E. teacher and retired coach Rally Wallace said.


After the game, Miller still “thought he could have shot better,” Wallace said.

It’s a small example of the indomitable spirit he showed against challenges, his loved ones said. Miller, a renowned Cowlitz County athlete, was diagnosed in September 2018 with cancer, and doctors originally estimated he had about six months to live, his daughter Robin Fisher said. He “fought and fought and fought” and beat the odds for almost two years.


“Dad hated to lose anything,” Fisher said, “and this challenge got the best of him, unfortunately. ... (But) he definitely won at being the best human.”


Friends, colleagues and acquaintances remember him as a friendly prankster and a focused worker who would use any family gathering as a chance to compete, whether in chess, corn-hole, cribbage or other sports. And they remember him for his infectious laugh, respect for the rules, gentle demeanor and unwavering support for his children.


Miller is “probably the most gifted natural athlete I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Bill Call, a friend since kindergarten and a teammate who played six years of basketball with Miller throughout their Monticello Junior High and R.A. Long careers.


When they were both 10 years old, Miller taught Call how to throw a curveball while the boys were playing Little League Baseball: “If you had to bat against him, you were in fear for your life, because you knew he was going to strike you out.”


“He’d beat you at playing horse, then he’d turn around and beat you at chess, then beat you at horseshoes,” Call said. “Any game, any competition, he could make the transition at the drop of a hat.”


While playing basketball at R.A. Long, they were coached by Miller’s father Russell E. “Tiz” Miller, who was a football star at Kelso High School in the 1930s and arguably one of the best all-around athletes in Cowlitz County history. Tiz Miller died in 2004.


Terry Miller was the Lumberjack’s starting point guard his junior and senior years, and he won all-conference honors after leading the conference in scoring in both campaigns. Miller and the rest of the 1966 Lumberjacks earned 16 wins and finished 13th at state that year.


By his senior year, Miller was averaging around 24 to 26 points per game, Call said, despite 8-minute quarters and no three-point line. The game was fast-paced and mobile back then, Call said, and Miller loved it.


“He could see the court, and he knew exactly what was going on with every player,” Call said. “He had a great outside shot, but he could also drive. He was probably 5’9”, 5’10” at the time, and he’d go in there against 6’5”s. He wouldn’t hesitate at all. He was fearless. He knew what he was doing at all times on the court.”


Miller also competed in track and golf at R.A. Long, and he was a safety and backup quarterback on the league champion football team in 1965.


After high school, Miller went on to Linfield college and was a three-year basketball starter who led the Wildcats into the national tournament during his junior and senior campaigns. 

He was named the Cowlitz County Athlete of the Year in 1968.


Miller was no slouch off the court, and he loved activities from fishing to clam digging to tennis.


Miller’s intuition let him win even in seemingly impossible situations, Fisher said: “He was just able to find a way.” And he never complained, no matter the circumstances, his daughter Lori Miller said.


His friends recall that whatever the game or sport, Miller would usually beat you. If he didn’t, he’d make you play to two-out-of-three. But he also wasn’t one to gloat about it, they said.


“He’s a quiet achiever, a guy that goes out and does his thing,” Wallace said. 

“He never talked a whole lot about his accomplishments.”


“He was one of those guys that everyone loves,” said Terry’s son Scott Miller. 

“He had the most amazing group of friends, and I think that shows that excellence attracts excellence.”


And whenever he laughed, “you couldn’t help but laugh,” Scott Miller said.


Miller married his first wife Penny Nichols in 1969, with whom he had three daughters. They later divorced.


He went into commercial carpentry in the late 1970s, several years after graduating from college. It was a career that let him travel to work on projects around the United States, his wife Polly Miller said. (They married in 1992 and had two more children.)


Wherever they went, Terry Miller would be able to point at buildings and say “I built that,” Polly Miller said.


He worked as a foreman in the industry for about 27 years, much of that time at contracting companies Howard S. Wright and Peter Kiewit, and retired around 2006. Along the way, the two built a couple of homes and Miller even constructed a log home for his wife’s father in Alaska, where Terry Miller loved to fish.


Wallace, then the head basketball coach at R.A. Long, hired Miller as an assistant basketball coach in 2007, a role Miller held for a decade. Miller was “a player’s coach,” Wallace said, patient and calm with the students.


“He’s a guy I’m always going to look up to and remember, forever,” Wallace said. “I’m really proud I was able to call him my friend.”


Daily News sportswriter Sam Barbee played varsity basketball at R.A. Long during the 2008-2009 season, and had Miller as an assistant coach that season. Like his father, Miller was a living legend, and old-timers would happily share stories from his days on the court, Barbee said.


“You would be somewhere, and some old timer would walk up and say ‘Terry Miller, that guy can play.’ And another guy would say something. And a week later, another guy would.”


On the court, Miller was soft spoken but knew what he was talking about, Barbee said: “When he did talk, it was important, and we listened.”


In 2009, Miller was among 150 former standout prep athletes from across Southwest Washington honored for their athletic exploits with induction to the Lower Columbia Area All-Century Team. In 2007 he was inducted to the R.A. Long High School Hall of Fame.


Miller suffered a stroke in 2010, so he took a year off from coaching to recover. While it slowed down some of his mental processing, Fisher said, he took it all in stride. He’d have to spend more time counting on a tape measurer, for instance, but he’d still do it right.


Miller and Wallace both retired from coaching after the 2017-2018 season.


Despite his declining health in his last two years, Miller fought to attend his kid’s competitions to cheer them on. 

His grandson Owen Enriquez, a Lumberjack wrestler, graduated in 2019, and “I think part of (Terry’s) fight to stay alive was to watch Owen at the state wrestling tournament,” Fisher said.


“When he first got the cancer, he said, ‘I’m not going to be able to see Owen wrestle for his senior year,’ “ Wallace said, fighting back tears as he recalled the conversation. “I said, ‘Aw heck. We’re gonna make it.’ “


And they did.


“He was so sick, but he was not going to miss watching him wrestle,” Fisher said.


That spirit will carry on with his children, his daughter Annie Miller said.


“Everyone will always hear his voice telling them that they can do whatever they put their mind to.”

Linfield’s 1965 football team and coach Paul Durham stood on principle and against racism

Photo caption: Leroy Fails (20) and his Linfield teammates celebrate a victory in the 1965 NAIA semifinals. (Linfield College)
 
By Ken Goe, Oregonian, June 6, 2020

Odis Avritt had concerns, which is why he went to Linfield College football coach Paul Durham’s office late in the fall of 1965.

Linfield had rallied to beat Sul Ross State and advance to the NAIA championship game against St. John’s of Minnesota. Avritt was a Linfield running back.

The title game was in Augusta, Georgia, home of the famed Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters Tournament. It was deep in what then was the segregated South. Avritt is black.

“I never had been that far south in my life,” Avritt says. “I’d read and heard about teams going down there, and teammates being split up. I wanted to know what was going to happen.”

Durham heard him out before answering.

“Coach Durham said we’re going there as a team and we will be staying together,” Avritt remembers. “That was the end of it.”

The Wildcats went to Augusta and all stayed in a hotel hosting the teams and NAIA officials. They lost the game and went back to get ready for an NAIA banquet and hall of fame induction ceremony in the hotel that night.

After Linfield’s traveling party filed into the banquet room, some players noticed Durham talking to a hotel official and then making several trips into the kitchen.

“I wondered what in the world he was doing?” defensive lineman Bob Ferguson says. “What’s coach doing in the kitchen?”

When the food came out, it was served to everyone but the Linfield players, coaches and boosters.

Linfield had a 33-player traveling squad that included several black and Hawaiian players. Everybody was hungry, and a little taken aback.

Ferguson, Avritt and other Linfield players pieced it together later from those who overheard some uncomfortable conversations between Durham and the hotel staff.

“As Coach Durham was escorting our team into the banquet hotel, he was approached by the manager of the banquet area,” Avritt says. “He said, ‘Your black and brown players will have to eat in the kitchen.’

“I can’t really say how that conversation transpired, other than Coach Durham’s response was: ‘Well, if those players have to eat in the kitchen, our whole team will eat in the kitchen.’ Coach was informed: No, they couldn’t serve the whole team in the kitchen. So, Coach Durham said, ‘Well, if you’re not going to serve our whole team in the banquet area, then don’t serve us.’”

The hungry players didn’t hear it from Durham. He simply gathered them together after the banquet, pulled out his wallet, handed each one $5 and told them to find something to eat.

People on the hotel staff told Linfield’s black and Hawaiian players of a restaurant that would allow them inside. Avritt went with mixed feelings.

“I felt bad,” says Avritt, who is retired and lives in Portland. “I guess I knew somewhere along the line something wasn’t going to work out. I had that feeling.

“But I think Coach Durham lived up to his word to me. We were there as a team. That was reflected in his actions.”

Ferguson, who is white, concedes he didn’t think much about it at the time. In his mind, that was the South. That was how things were there then.

Over time, he says he has come to a greater understanding about how dehumanizing the experience had been for some of his teammates. He has come to believe Durham not only was backing his non-white players, he was teaching something to the entire team by standing on principle and living up to his word.

“It was later in life, we realized how much guts that took for him to do something like that,” Ferguson says. “But it was so in his character.”

Durham coached football at Linfield from 1948 to 1967 and started a streak of consecutive winning seasons that now stands at 64 years. He left for the University of Hawaii to be athletic director. He died in 2007.

As the years passed, a number of his players wanted to ensure he didn’t fade into history. They organized and raised money to have a monument of Durham put up on the Linfield campus. Details of his 1965 stand against racism are inscribed on the monument.

“He was a great individual,” Avritt says. “He was early on in the Northwest Conference in bringing people of color to play on his team. He was always very forthright. He was a Christian. He lived to his morals.”

Avritt played for Linfield again in 1966 and remains an active supporter of the school and the athletic program.

“But I’ve never been back to Augusta,” Avritt says. “And I’m a golfer.”

On Sunday, June 7, 2020, 07:45:18 PM PDT, George Murdock:

I haven't missed too many meals in my life, but 55 years ago I missed a dinner in Augusta, Georgia. It was very likely one of the most remarkable experiences in my life and one I have come to appreciate every year since. And every time the memory of that amazing experience comes back, it is accompanied by one more measure of respect for Paul Durham -- if additional respect is even possible. As part of the Linfield Family, as Paul Durham envisioned it, we were taught valuable lessons of respect for every human being over half a century ago. 

On Sun, Jun 7, 7:56 PM, Bob Daggett:

Coach Durham got it right then and all of us are honored to have known a great coach and a greater man. PS   When the 1966 Wildcat baseball team was in Kansas City for the NAIA National championship. Our TEAM refused to go in to a KC restaurant because they would not serve one of our TEAMMATES because of his ethnicity. We did win that National Championship. We learned to respect all people at Linfield thanks to great coaches, teachers and team leaders…”

Source:

https://www.oregonlive.com/collegefootball/2020/06/linfields-1965-football-team-and-coach-paul-durham-stood-on-principle-and-against-racism.html

:::: Also see:

 https://www.instagram.com/p/CBGSJ1Hn82r/?igshid=el2ipwkwad6j