Charter Member Louis Edward Oberson was born on a wheat ranch in the famous Palouse Country noted as the "Breadbasket of the nation" at Lancaster, Washington on April 25, 1904. His family later moved closer to Colfax where he and his brother, Henry, started their education. Early in his life, he became interested in the rich loess soil on their farm and took great pride in growing vegetables, flowers, and farm animals. As a 4-H Club member, he entered them in the county fairs at Colfax, Yakima, and Spokane and took many blue ribbon prizes. During the summers he and his brother worked with steam engine threshing crews and earned money to attend college.

**1970 - LOUIS EDWARD OBERSON (CHARTER MEMBER)**

In the fall of 1924, the boys left for Salem, Oregon, where they enrolled at Willamette University. They worked their way through college doing janitorial work, running the university bookstore, and working at the State Highway laboratory. After earning their B.A. degrees in 1928, the brothers went their separate ways: Henry to the Harvard Medical School and Louis to Stanford University. After receiving his M.A. degree in education and psychology in 1930, Louis began his teaching career at the Milwaukie Union High School. In 1936, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps where he served as educational advisor at Camp Sherman on the beautiful Metolius River near Sisters, Oregon.

His love of the out-of-doors led him to join the Mazamas, the Trails Club, and the Audubon Society for which he has served as a director for many years. He has also participated in the annual Christmas nation-wide bird census for about thirty years.

Louis first became acquainted with geology when he read an account in the Oregonian that Dr. Edwin T. Hodge was going to teach a course in geology at the Old Lincoln High School. Being a member of the Mazamas and having climbed both Mt, Hood and Mt. St. Helens each twice, he wanted to learn more about these mountains and their landscapes as well as the great Willamette Valley which had seemed such a contrast to him from the Horse Heaven hills of eastern Washington. He attended the class and was so impressed by the friendly learning atmosphere that he decided to become a charter member of the society that was formed to continue the post class studies. There was so much enthusiasm for this new activity that the students elected their popular teacher to become the first president of the organization that they voted to name the Geological Society of the Oregon Country.

While teaching biology at Roosevelt High school, Louis met and fell in love with Viola Lagasse who came to teach English and drama. They were married on December 18, 1938. After they established a home near Grant High School where Viola had been transferred and after Dr. John Cyprian Stevens had employed her to be his assistant in initiating a campaign to build a museum of science and industry for Oregon, their daughter, Mary Louise, was born on February 7, 1946.

Louis has held most of the chairs in the Portland Men's Garden Club from 1947 to the presidency in 1955; he was secretary then president of the Pacific Northwest Region from 1953 to 1960; and finally director of the National Men's Garden Clubs of America from 1961 to 1964. Besides earning two green thumb awards he has received a certificate in 1965 and a plaque in 1968 for outstanding service to the Men t s Garden Clubs of America. In 1948 he was awarded a Conservation scholarship to the University of California at Santa Barbara by the Portland Women’s Federated Garden Clubs, and in 1951 he was appointed by Governor Douglas McKay as Chairman of the State Liberty Garden Committee. In 1958 he received the Silver Trophy award from the Union Carbide Company for the "Oregon Gardener of the Year.“ In 1961 he was the biology and geology counselor for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry Youth Tour of Central Oregon. In the spring of that year he was selected to be the biology pilot teacher of his school for the following year and was awarded a scholarship to the American Institute of Biological Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

He was retired from teaching in the Portland Public Schools in June of 1969, and since that time he has been Soil Consultant for the Multnomah Intermediate Education District Outdoor School at the seven week sessions each fall and spring. He continues to serve as test counselor for Boy Scouts who are completing their studies for the Nature Merit Badge.

Recognizing Oregon's talented geologists seemed most important to the life of the Geological Society during Louis' year of presidency. He decided to hold his President’s Campout on Condon' s First Island in the Siskiyou Mountains, in honor Of Oregon's first state geologist. Dr. Paul W. Howell, professor of geology at Portland State University, assisted by Len Ramp, geologist of the State Department of Geology and Mineral Industries at Grants Pass, were the field trip leaders during the week-long session. Robert Gamer of Salem and Norman Peterson of Grants Pass, both able geologists and locally knowledgeable of the area, also assisted with their fine leadership in explaining the geology both on the field trips and at the Campfire briefings.

All of the speakers at the Friday night membership meetings during the 1970—1971 year have been Oregon men and women experts in their fields of science. The Library Night in-depth discussions and mini lectures have also been drawn from our own membership specialists. He chose Dr. John Eliot Allen, head of the earth science department at Portland State University, for his annual banquet speaker especially to challenge him to accept the mantle of his former teacher, Dr. Edwin Hodge, in the future leadership of the Society.

By using the talent of local earth scientists both amateur and professional, Louis feels he was helping to contribute to the good climate which is conducive to the study of geology in Oregon and to the fulfillment of the aims of the Society.

Please see The Geological Newsletter, Vol. 36, No. 9, Sept. 1970, for Campout story and pictures.

LEO/VLO

Portland, Oregon is my native birthplace and home. My early education began at the Rose City Park grade school and then at Washington high school. Before I was graduated from high school, my parents being of Belgian descent and religious background thought that I should attend a private school in order to add Christian training to my education. So I was enrolled at Seattle Pacific College (now University) where I obtained a Normal School certificate to teach in grade school. I continued in school there and obtained the Bachelor of Arts degree and added high school teaching certification. Since I had become enamored with the scholar's program, I decided to complete the Master of Arts requirements at the University of Washington in liberal education. My major was Literature with minors in history, speech, and education. Drama and communications were high in my choice of electives and extra-curricular activities.

My first teaching position was in 1932 at Cul de Sac, Idaho, where I not only taught English, Latin, and Home Economics, but also was Dean of Girls. I gained many friends with whom I have corresponded these many years. My next position was at Kent, Washington. Having come from a school where the student body was half Indian, I soon found myself teaching classes with fifty percent Japanese or Nisei young people who were extremely studious and not so sport minded as the young braves of the Nez Perce. I still treasure some of the meticulous pen and ink drawings made by the drama and Shakespeare class students. And can you imagine putting on the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, "Pirates of Penzance" with half the cast being Japanese? But we did, with aplomb and what the community said was great success.

While attending summer school at the University of Washington, I received a letter requesting that I apply for a position at the Canby Union High School. I did, and in the fall I was not only teaching English and dramatics but was assigned again to be Dean of Girls. Clerk Belton, later Senator Howard C. Belton, seemed adamant that that was where my niche was.

Several years before this, I had taken a two day test given for prospective Portland teachers. During the summer while vacationing in San Francisco, I received a letter from the Portland School Board stating that out of the 250 who took the test the nine that were ahead of me had been used up and that there was now a vacancy in the English department. Should I wish to accept this position, I was to report for work early in September at Roosevelt High School. I returned to Portland, resigned from the Canby Union High School, found an apartment in town, went to Roosevelt High School, met and later married my husband, Louis Oberson, and automatically became a member of the Geological Society of the Oregon Country of which he had become a charter member three years earlier.

We bought a home near Grant High School where I had been transferred because at that time a husband and wife were not allowed to teach in the same building. After teaching at Grant for several years, I was again transferred to Franklin High School without my willing consent or Principal Bitner's. Superintendent Jack Edwards said that I was to initiate a speech and drama department there. It seemed I had the qualifications and KBPS was in need of trained students and broadcasting was an attractive new job opportunity. We filled the bill with a number of students who have made the field of communications their life's work. A group of us keep in touch and meet for lunch in the summertime - still. They are my boys and girls even though they are in their fifties. I hear about their year's activities at Christmas time. I finished my public school career by teaching evening Veteran's refresher courses at Lincoln High School. However much I enjoy the classroom, it was time to think about having a family, but as usual, two things happened.

Going to a Geological Society Luncheon meeting at the Chamber of Commerce building, I met Dr. Courtland Booth, a close friend and member who escorted me up the long flight of stairs. He surprised me by revealing that he would be delivering a baby to be born soon and if we were interested in adoption to let him know; My attention was not on the speaker that day. Upon going home after the meeting, Dr. J.C. Stevens took my arm and as we walked down the stairs said, "Viola, I'm going to start a museum for the state of Oregon and I want to set up an office. Will you come and be my assistant?" What a dilemma this presented! We decided to do both. I hired a substitute mother for the hours I was away from home. We had the best of both worlds - a beautiful baby girl and I was able to help Oregon's Museum get started. After occupying an extra office space for one month, Aaron Frank asked where we were located. My response was not too enthusiastic as I told him we had no room to display any objects to the public to let them know we needed a museum. "You can have the writing room of the Portland Hotel for your office if you want it. We'll see about using the windows of the store to let Oregonians see all your displays." He gave me wings and sky both for that was the beginning of what the five civic organizations put together as an initial effort to make a Museum of History, Science, and Industry for the state of Oregon.

Dr. Stevens contributed the rest of his life and a fortune to make it a success. My booklet entitled, "One Man's Dream Becomes Community's Push Button Project," was written in his honor and it was distributed at the dedication of the present Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) building and later sold in the book store. Several of the science related organizations bought five hundred copies and gave them to their members.

After working full time for two years it was time for me to quit and become a full fledged mother. It was also time for OMSI to engage a museum specialist and fund raiser to try to take some of the burden from Dr. Stevens. The William T. Hornaday Foundation supplied John Ripley Forbes and again we thought we were off to a flying start. The Museum did take off but in an entirely new direction from the original dream of which Dr. Edwin T. Hodge spoke in his inaugural address to the Geological Society, "It is my dream that this Society establish a natural history museum that would become the Smithsonian of the West. "

Since we had known Alonzo Wesley Hancock for many years and I had assisted him in the making of his will for the assignment of his paleontological collection to OMSI upon his death, his wife, Berrie, asked me to write an account of their lives. Lon gave his first display of skeletal bones from the Clarno Mammal Beds as a promotional feature for a museum for Oregon while we were located in the Portland Hotel. My brief account of this important amateur paleontologist was published in the October 1979 issue of the OREGON GEOLOGY magazine by the State Department of Geology and Mineral Industries. Through the years, I have found time to cultivate many friends in different professions. Upon invitation, I was accepted as a member of the Professional Woman's League- a league of women active in their many various professions. In 1972, I became their 60th president. Again through the invitation of friends, I was invited to attend the meetings and later asked to join the Pi Omicron Sorority - a literature and fine arts study association of interested women. This group had its inception in 1929 through the University Guild. I have served twice as president - 1971 and 1981. Both of these fine organizations have enriched my life and I have gained many Close friendships.

It was also my privilege to be affiliated for many years with the Soroptimist Club and the University Women's Association. Presently I am associated with Ikebana International and am also enjoying my membership in the Japanese Gardens.

The Geological Society of the Oregon Country has been a family affair with us. Mary Lou attended most of the outdoor activities until she finished high school. Louis and I have taken many related classes. He has held a number of offices in the Society and was president in 1970. I have been in charge of the annual picnic, banquet, and have written articles for the newsletter, helped with the memorial book purchasing for the library, staged many of the programs at different events, participated in panel discussions, and lectured to the Society. I was appointed historian in 1969 and served through 1976, and was elected editor of the Geological Newsletter from March 1972 serving through February 1976. At the Society's Banquet in 1976 President John H. Bonebrake presented me with a certificate which stated that the Society designated me as "A Fellow of the Society." This was indeed an honor. Upon submitting two copies of The Geological Newsletter that I had edited to the Association of Earth Science Editors, I was accepted as a member in this national organization. In 1978, Laurette Kenney resigned as Luncheon Program chairwoman and recruited me to take her place. I served in this capacity until 1981 and was then appointed Luncheon Chairwoman. All the while it was my privilege to supply the luncheon members and guests with 140 speakers and have presided at that many luncheons to which 7,636 people have attended.

The members of the Society have now elected me to be their 50th President! Truly, it is my crowning achievement even though I never dreamed of it happening to me. I always have been happy in the work I was doing at the moment. The historical contributions of those who have served is as awesome to me as are the challenges to be accomplished in the future. Albert and Ruth Hopson Keen were the first couple, each of whom has served as President of the Society. Louis and I are now the second team to be so honored. We feel especially privileged in that we have personally known and count as our friends all 48 of the presidents and their mates who have preceded us!

Read articles written by Viola Oberson and her daughter, Mary Lou Oberson, in The Geological Newsletter and our website:

Charter GSOC member Lon Hancock was first to discover vertebrate fossils in the Oregon's Clarno Formation

Two Generations of "Geesockers"