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Jane Claire Dirks-Edmunds, 1912-2003Read more about her: https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/jcde
A memorial program for Dr. Jane Claire Dirks-Edmunds was Jan. 8, 2004, in McMinnville at the Hillside retirement community where she lived. Two hymns were sung during the service and Charles Walker, Linfield president emeritus read a poem.
She died at age 91 at Hillside on Dec. 29, 2003.
A 1937 Linfield graduate, she taught in the Linfield Biology Dept., 1941-1974.
The youngest of 10 children, she was born June 9, 1912, in
Baxter County in the Arkansas Ozarks, daughter of Peter B. and Lydia Gates
Dirks.
At about six months old, she and the Dirks family moved to
Kansas and lived in several areas of the state. In 1924, the family moved to
the Puget Sound area in Washington, then to the Umpqua Valley in Oregon the
following year.
She had attended at least eight primarily one-room schools
before entering Oregon’s Roseburg High School (Umpqua Valley, Douglas County) and
graduating in 1930.
Then, she worked two years in the Douglas National Bank in
Roseburg before enrolling at Linfield College in McMinnville in 1932. She
graduated magna cum laude from Linfield in 1937 with a bachelor's degree in
biology.
She enrolled as a graduate assistant in zoology at the
University of Illinois and four years later completed studies for a doctorate
in the department of zoology, with a specialization in ecology.
With that, she became in 1941 one of Linfield's first two women
graduates to receive doctoral degrees. That fall, at registration time, she
responded to a request from Linfield to join the faculty as an instructor in
biology and assistant to the registrar, thus becoming the first woman to hold a
doctorate on the faculty. It remained that way for 33 years until she retired
in 1974 as professor of biology, emerita.
She married Milton Ray Edmunds on Aug. 11, 1944, in Salem while on
a leave of absence from Linfield to teach at Whitworth College in Spokane.
He was born in Bandon, Coos County, in 1895, and graduated
in 1925 in forestry from Oregon Agricultural College (now Oregon State University)
and was a forester in the McMinnville area. During World War I he served in the
US Navy.
She returned to McMinnville, and after a leave of a year,
started teaching again at Linfield in 1946 as an assistant professor in the
biology department.
Dr. Dirks-Edmunds said of her husband: "His knowledge of
forestry and interest in ecology was of invaluable assistance in my research
and teaching. We shared many delightful experiences, as well as trials and
tribulations."
They lived their entire married life in McMinnville. He preceded
her in death in 1983, dying at age 88.
A love of nature began in childhood for Dirks-Edmunds. She became
fascinated by the majestic ancient forests she found in the Northwest after
moving west in 1924. She studied in the Sonora Desert in Arizona in 1967 and
again in 1972, and also had a brief introduction to the ecology of Guatemala's
Lake Atitlan and tropical forest.
After retiring, she traveled to the Swiss Alps and other places
in Europe; New York City and Shelter Island, N.Y.; Bar Harbor, Belfast and
Orono, Maine; the Tall Grass Prairie of the Midwest as well as other sites,
including many in Oregon.
She found writing, aside from teaching, her most cherished
activity. She wrote a variety of short essays and poems, scientific papers and
lectures.
"Not Just Trees," the story of her research and life
experiences in forest ecology” was published in 1999 by Washington State
University Press. Promotional text for the book said, “This gracefully written
story—revealed through a meticulous sixty-year study of the flora and fauna in
a small parcel of the majestic Oregon Coast Range forest that is selectively
logged and finally clear-cut—reveals all that is lost when ancient stands of
trees are destroyed.”
In its review, January Magazine said, “Once in a while you
encounter a book so special, so steeped in love and integrity that—regardless
of the subject—it’s impossible not to be drawn in. Not Just Trees is that sort
of book.”
In 1992 she wrote "Roots, Visions and Mission," the
125-year history of the First Baptist Church of McMinnville of which she was a
member since 1944.
Her doctoral thesis, "A Comparison of Biotic Communities of
the Cedar-Hemlock and Oak-Hickory Associations" was published in
Ecological Monographs for July 1947.
She was a member of the scientific honorary, Sigma XI; a charter
member of the Oregon Academy of Science; and an emeritus member of the
Ecological Society of Conservancy, the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, Save-the-Redwoods
League and Defenders of Wildlife. She was listed in "American Men and
Women of Science."
Dr. Dirks-Edmunds was survived by sisters Myrtle Hartley of
McMinnville, Dorothy Voodell of Ashland and Alice Beck of El Dorado Springs,
Mo.; 11 nieces and nephews and numerous grand- and great-grandnieces and
nephews, as well as numerous friends and loyal former students.
Memorial contributions may be sent to the Jane Claire
Dirks-Edmunds Lectureship at Linfield College, the McMinnville Baptist Church,
The Ocean Conservancy and The Wilderness Society. Disposition was by cremation
at Little Chapel of the Chimes, Portland.
Photos:
Dr. Jane-Clarie Dirks Edmunds (Photo date: 1940). A tree and plaque honoring
her planted outside on campus, behind Melrose Hall (Photo dates: Jan. 16, 2023).
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