William Maris Maris

I've been asked (outside of the school web-site) to share some details. Theresa and I lived on the big island (Hawai'i) where, for a time I was COO for Parker Ranch. We went through a major earthquake, some minor ones, and a couple of tidal wave scares. We paddled regularly with Kawaehai Canoe Club, and were blessed to share the ocean with Humpback Whales, their offspring, dolphins, and Honu (turtles). We sold our ocean capable Hans Christian and relocated from Portland to the LA area, close the ocean, since that has always been a major part of our life. Illness and age made sailing the Hans difficult, but memories of taking her from Portland up to BC will always be with us. Once in CA I joined the Hollywood Master Chorale for a time and wrote some choral music for a local Episcopal Church. Illness started to catch up with me before we left for CA to be with our grandson and his mom and dad.
Our older daughter who lived with her husband on Oahu for many years was recently and tragically taken from us. They loved wind-surfing on Kailua Bay, and she loved playing polo and taking care of her horse.
Health and other considerations keep us away from the reunion.
Best to All who will be there, and thanks to all who have shared their stories and stories of others. We were fortunate to be where we were and when we were. I've still left the philosophical side of the Statue story in the comments below... Bill...

Embrace – The School Story "STATUE" ...Continued
Better to read the below with a bit of wry caution; so check out the School Story first! :)

51 or so years later, Dr. Flynn’s connecting the word “Embrace” to the Statue in front of SHS might take on a different meaning. I’m not sure. But, somehow both the Statue and a bit of the word “Embrace” seem to maybe reflect the class that occupied the school at the time, to include the very few of us, faculty and miscreants like myself, who planted that concrete monolith, unceremoniously, in front of our “Alma Mammy” -- as Mr. John the band teacher used to call SHS.

An advantage of age is we often(?) do what we darn well please, and get away with it. Generally, though, it seems that “getting away with it” is more in the sense of spoiling grand-kids and not tempting fate. In this case, I want to get away with using just one word attached to the definition of Embrace… and that word is Accept. I’m going to drop the “Willingly” part for those of you headed to the internet. (If you head to a paper dictionary… Yay!) Regardless, if you’re in the SHS blog, you’ve pretty much accepted things the way they are. You might not like much of it, but you’re still alive and kicking, more or less, and being here is pretty much the same as Accepting…. or Embracing… which gets me thinking about what the Statue has Embraced.

… The Statue certainly embraces a time span which, for at least some of you may include grade school, through Cal Young, SHS, and beyond. For me it’s from 7th at Cal Young up to the present. I for one, am not sure when the Statue was created, so I don’t know where it went to school while I was in 7th grade. I do know that by 1966/7 it had graduated from the UofO to assume a position at SHS.

In its position at SHS the statue embraced fundamental changes. Many of these both bless us and haunt us … and our generation includes many of the architects of change.

On the positive side for Eugene, Nike was one fundamental (now global) change, and it originated somewhat within sight of SHS. To wit, Bill Bowerman, whose waffle sole transformed generations, lived above the McKenzie with SHS off in the near distance, ergo, the embrace.

On the negative side of the Statue’s embrace, and for too many of us, very far over the horizon to the West, a terrible and useless war pulled many of us out of the safety of Eugene, some never to return. The war also brought what now seems to be an end to an era of cordiality, basic respect and politeness, the lessons of WWII and Korea now largely being lost in the passing of the generation before us.

On the “What comes next?” side of the Statue’s embrace, our generation was the tip of today’s information/digital age. This seems to have both good and bad sides: In the simple case, there are benefits in things like health care and a cell phone is handy in many good ways. Yet, there seem to be significant off-setting detriments in information itself: In the binary world of digital information the SHS statue’s life now seems to embrace an era of binary on/off, light/dark, good/bad divisions with educators turn to on-line information which does not often carry with it learning how to separate fact, fiction, and the degree of in-between.

On the even more philosophical side, which most of us don’t want to get into, someone famous once said something about examining our lives: Along this line, and acknowledging that as the class of 1967 we have Collectively experienced Everything, Good and Bad, that life can throw at us (short of things like a World War III) how many of our class can say that Collectively, as a generation, we are leaving the world a better place and in better condition than it was given to us in the pristine surroundings of Eugene?

They say that those who do not study and understand history are sure to repeat it. I’m not a very good student of history, so I don’t know. I do know that many in our class have done some amazing, marvelous and wonderful things for the earth and for humanity And it’s worth saying that amazing, marvelous and wonderful do not necessarily mean huge, spectacular, or extravagant. Sometimes simple and microscopic fit the bill.

The above blarney maybe contains some things to think about if you drive to SHS and wonder if the old statue is looking at you. I think the old statue has embraced it all, and so have we.

STATUE – (The one in the web header…)
Mr. Flynn closed his office door, walked behind his desk, and said “Bill, what do you know about the statue you found at the University?”
Sheeesh! For the umpteenth time I was (deservedly) under the interrogation lamp.
“Uh, it’s an abstract person.” I was guessing, but Flynn had my gears spinning as other possibilities came to mind.
“Are you sure about that?”
“I asked my brother who’s in the same building as the Art School.” I didn’t say exactly What I had asked my brother, but with 800? pounds of concrete firmly planted in front of the school, what was a guy going to do?
Flynn eyed me “Does it has something to do with an Embrace?” He was not smiling. I was trying not to.
“No. It’s just a person.” Now my gears were on over-load. Sure, I’d broken just about every rule they’d laid down, including coming down the rescue rope from the ceiling above the stage and lacerating a finger in the process, not to mention being accused of stealing an expensive electronic flash from South Eugene…. But, a statue in an “Embrace”? Come on, Wayne.
It was the ultimate irony. The one time I thought I was not going out of bounds, here was Mr. Flynn putting ideas in my head. Yet, he knew, as well as a few (nameless) others did, that getting that statue out of the ground was going to be, er, difficult… And expensive.
It’s fuzzy now, but I still remember talking someone into donating (the U would say disposing of) the statue, then talking someone else (Pape Bros.?) into donating a forklift and driver, and someone else into a good sized flatbed truck. The load (barely) cleared the cross beam on the Ferry Street Bridge. But, luckily the forklift could only put the darn thing on the front left corner of the truck bed, providing a precarious out of balance tilt so the statue could complete its journey. Mr. Flynn, at the wheel of the rig, must have been white knuckled as the fork lift, and my counterparts in crime followed him ever so slowly up Coburg Road.
Did I say removal would be difficult? Yeah, I think so. My main concern was someone putting a rope around the thing, tying the rope to a truck axle, and pulling it over. Nice. So I decided to get even. I’m pretty sure we used a post hole digger and some old re-bar to put “legs” on the pre-laid foundation so that if the statue went down it’d take a bunch of grass and a truck axle along with it. The foundation is below ground level, and so is the real base of the statue. Maybe.
I’m going to bet the Mr. Flynn called the UO Art department and got the Real story, but he never told me. I’m also going to bet that the Real story was shared among those in our class who later frequented the sanctum sanctorum of the Faculty Lounge.
Me? On this topic the gears have not stopped spinning. Maybe I’ll comment on the word “Embrace” if anyone’s interested.