LINFIELDER WALT VALENTINE: FROM THE PLAINS OF NEBRASKA TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN (FIRST IN HIS HEART, BUT SECOND IN HIS OCEAN VISITS BOOK) OF OREGON

Before transferring to Linfield College in 1970 from McCook (Nebraska) Junior College, the farthest trip Walt Valentine (Linfield Class of 1972) made from his native Nebraska (hometown Arthur, Neb.) was some 275 miles to Boulder, Colorado, on a high school band trip. (Walt says, "I played the trombone, poorly.") Or, northwest Iowa (about an hour from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where his mother’s brother lived). "I had traveled through southeast South Dakota and gone to northwest Kansas to drink 3.2 beer,” says Walt. (It was beer with 3.2% alcohol … 18-year-olds could legally drink in Kansas as long as they were drinking 3.2 beer.). But, where ever Walt went, it was “nowhere close to any ocean” until he got to Linfield College which, as you know, is about 50 miles from the ocean. “Oops I forgot,” confessed Walt, who lives in Omaha, Nebraska, with his wife, Linda Murray Valentine, Class of 1974. “The summer before Linfield I flew with a church group and snorkeled off a wonderful warm beach in Haiti. I guess the Pacific was second (ocean I enjoyed).”