“There was a sound like a railroad. So I looked outside, because there weren’t any railroads at Vanport, and I saw a whole section of the dike just collapse,” remembered Rill Walker, the son of the first student to enroll at Vanport College.
Anecdotes like this were on full display on Thursday in the Vanport Room at a gathering held by the Retirement Association of Portland State and Portland State Alumni Association called “Remembering PSU’s History.”
The centerpiece to the event was the dedication of the Vanport wall display by PSU President Wim Wiewel. The main poster for the display was made by student Jason Sparks, who is pursuing a master’s degree in graphic design.
The poster depicts the flooding of Vanport and its aftermath, and is an excellent addition to the wall displays and other pieces in Smith Memorial Student Union. Wiewel ended the event on a high note, after talking about many of the problems of the university currently faces.
“This ship was well launched, probably with more water than anyone wanted,” he said.
The message was clear: Portland State has been through worse.
Dozens of people crowded into the small room at the end of the Smith Memorial Student Union ballroom for the dedication, and the steady murmur and occasional guffaw didn’t cease until someone got the whistle out of the microphone.
With a panel of various people familiar and associated with Portland State’s history speaking about what life was like during the university’s formative years, moderated by Charlie White, professor emeritus of history, the sense of living history never left the room.
The event focused on the time around the school’s founding after World War II, up until the late 1950s. Walker spoke mostly about his remembrances of what it was like to be a little boy at Vanport College, especially when it flooded in May of 1948.
He was accompanied by a video made around that time—a happy, Technicolor movie describing college life at Vanport. Walker and his parents were featured prominently in the video, which proudly featured the various services around the school.
One important service was the Student Co-op, which sold diapers, milk, groceries and textbooks. Today the co-op is known as the Portland State Bookstore.
Cathy Williams reminisced about student life in those days, being an alumna of the Vanport class of 1956.
“I remember when we used to wear our school sweaters, with Vikings on the backs. Everyone thought we were from Salem High School!” said Williams, and the gathering erupted into laughter. “But I think now they’ve heard of us.”
Williams lived on Mount Tabor when she attended in the early 1950s, and she was lucky enough to catch a ride from a neighbor with a car who also attended Portland State College. But when she had to go home at night, she rode the streetcar all the way back, before they took the streetcar out.
Even some insight into how the college persevered was given, with special attention being paid to President Stephen Epler, who guided the school through the turbulent times of the 1940s and 1950s.
The school fought hard to become a four-year public university. Before Portland State was founded, Portland was the largest city in the nation without a four-year public university.
Bill Lemman, former chancellor of the Oregon University System, recounted when he met with other schools to discuss how to use the Urban Renewal Act to gain more land for the school. That eventually resulted in the acquisition of the land between Broadway and 12th Avenue, growing the campus in size from the four buildings it had occupied.
“When I told them we planned for Portland State to eventually enroll over 20,000 students, they laughed,” Lemman said. “Now we have 27,000. Who’s laughing now?”