1979 President William MacRitchie Freer

William MacRitchie Freer was born at the foot of Mt. Mayon, (pronounced 'My own'), on the Bicol Peninsula of Luzon in the Philippine Islands on February 26, 1907.  Mt. Mayon is a favorite text book example of a perfect cinder cone, and most of the membership have seen pictures of it in texts they have perused.  It rises 8,000 feet above sea level at Legaspy, and being, I believe, the highest point of land in Luzon, it is a favorite landfall for mariners in that part of the globe.  It is an active volcano.

1979 - William Freer

Reason for my being born at this improbable spot was that my father was one of the first American educators to go to the Islands after the war - the Spanish American War, that is - to organize the American school system there.

Subsequently I Lived in Arizona, Oklahoma, Kansas, Ohio, and Michigan, but mostly in Oregon. I went to Lincoln High School here in Portland, and then to the Oregon Agricultural College - now Oregon State university.  But before I could graduate, high adventure lured me to the Oregon woods scene where I lived in logging camps and built the railroads for sundry logging companies.  In the summer of 1926 I helped locate the road around the rim of Crater Lake; in 1928 the Lewis River was my playground when the first aerial topographic map, in the Northwest was made there preliminary to the building of the dams.

Later, I attached myself to the Portland District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, for whom I made hydrographic surveys on the Columbia and Snake Rivers, some for navigation and others for studies for dam locations.  These adventures were interrupted by World War II, when I found myself in the 29th Engineer Mapping Battalion, then stationed right here in Portland.  The next four years found me field checking 15 minute quadrangles from Cape Flattery to the Mexican border.  Back with the Portland District after the war I designed and produced the District's navigation and dredging charts, to which I added rectified photography. From 1962 to 1969 I was the President of Local No. 7 of the National Federation of Federal Employees.  Consistent with the syndrome of my retarded childhood, I was married in 1965 to Kathryn Sins, Treasurer of Local No.7, who graciously pretended that I was quite normal.

I joined the Geological Society in I960, impressed by the enthusiasm of Stilly Moltzner and Dwight and Daisy Henderson.  Daisy was an old friend from Oklahoma Days.

I retired from the Corps in 1972, and since then my principal interest has been trying to keep out of trouble — at which I am not very successful.