I decided early in high school (Stillwater) that I enjoyed drafting and design and thought that I‘d pursue a career in Architecture.  I took all the drafting courses I could to try to prepare for college, but decided to get my military obligation out of the way before entering college.  In those days we had the draft and an obligation to do a minimum of 2 years, so I joined the Navy Reserve and completed my obligation. 

 Being from Stillwater, my family knew Dwight Stevens pretty well, and he talked to me about attending OSU.  I looked into OU’s program, but didn’t like Bruce Goff’s influence and so I enrolled in OSU in 1958.  During our first week in school, Frank Lloyd Wright came to visit all dressed up in his black trench coat and black hat.  I remember him as resembling Darth Vader (although Darth hadn’t been created yet), but the resemblance was very close.  He gave a lecture to the students in Architecture on the 3^rd floor of Gunderson and the most striking thing I remember, other than his appearance, was his comment that, to paraphrase,” none of us (meaning all us students) would be worth a damn as Architects”. 

 My favorite instructors were Alec Notorus, Dwight Stevens and George Chamberlin’s history class where the slide shows offered some much needed sleep!  Alec was an incredible designer and we all gravitated to him like a patron saint. During basketball season, Alec would attend the games and sit up high in the stands.  You could hear him above everyone else yelling “geet de ball, geet de ball”.   In my sophomore year I bought an Austin Healy “bug eyed” Sprite.  The car had great gas mileage and I was able to park anywhere.  One night while working in the studio some of the seniors carried it up to the 3^rd floor of Gunderson.  No way was I going to get it down by myself, so I walked home that night figuring they would carry it down before the Prof’s came the next morning.  Sure enough they did.  That was quite a scene.  Another incident with that car was during a winter day.  We had our 539 class in the basement of the Engineering building and I had left the top down when I went in that morning. After working all day on my project without leaving the basement, I came out late that night to find it had snowed and the car was naturally full of snow.  I was so tired; I just got in and drove home. 

Like all OSU architecture students experience, we were in a perpetual charrette.  We started as freshman with 55 in our class and graduated about 15.  During my recent visit to the School of Architecture the memories flooded back.  Life was a bit harsher since we didn’t have refrigerators or microwaves.  Our salvation was the Student Union which was just across the street from Gunderson and was a welcome break from the long hours.

 When I graduated in 1963, I felt I needed to work in the big city so I moved to Dallas Texas to start my life in Architecture.  I worked in a high rise downtown and was on the street with all the other Texans when JFK came by that fateful day.  After working for the firm “Broad and Nelson” and another firm for a total of 4 years, I moved to Portland Oregon.  This was due to the fact that I wanted to be nearer the mountains and the ocean and to experience another part of our country.  Portland was a small city and just beginning to really develop.  I got a job in a small office which needed help in production so I found my niche there and was a production draftsman.  Everyone wants to be a designer but sometimes it just doesn’t work out that way.  I was a natural in organizing the office, my work and had a keen eye for quality control.  (In my 31 plus years, we never had a lawsuit over any of my documents).  I became a partner in the firm in the early 1970’s and over the years obtained licenses in 9 western states and my NCARB certificate.  The firm changed its name to JKS Architects, PC. (Reflecting the initials of the 3 partners).  Over the years, we prospered and grew and I became the President of the firm.  Five years before I retired we moved to downtown Portland and changed the company’s name to “Sienna Architecture Company”.  All the original owners were either retired or about to, so the staff felt the initials were a thing of the past and desired a change.  During my 31 years at the firm (1967 to 1998) we grew from a 4 person office to 65 total people when I retired.  We were the 4^th largest firm in Oregon.  Our work in the early years was mainly retail and industrial, but we gradually added institutional (hospital additions and remodels), mid rise office buildings and in later years mixed use (housing over retail).  Our reach was from Alaska to California, and all of the Rockies west (Montana, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Washington, Arizona and of course Oregon).  Like most firms we had a “bread and butter” client.  Ours was a retail company called “Fred Meyer” and they kept the doors open during the lean years.  They were bought out by Kroger in recent years.  I can truthfully say that no two days were alike during my career. Since retiring, the firm has gone international, doing master planning in China along with retaining all the fields we were pursuing in the past. 

Over the years our firm went from manual drafting to working on computers.  That was a hard transition for us old guys and I never did get the hang of drawing on a computer.  In the transition years to computer design and drafting, it was difficult to make a profit and teach recent graduates and current employees the use of computers.  Those early days with 8 MHz IBM computers took forever to crunch the numbers.  It seems to me that most of our young architects do not have the ability in freehand drawing or lettering because of the training in only computers, and I think this is rather sad.  Line quality and lettering is a good skill to have.

I was blessed by having gone to an excellent school, had great instructors who not only taught us architecture skills but how to deal with people and situations and how to work!!! 

Wishing to once again escape the big city, I retired to central Oregon in a town called Bend.  It’s in the high desert of Oregon and has many (27) golf courses in the area.  My wife and I built a second home in Borrego Springs California to have a place to escape to during the winter.  We chase the sun year round enjoying our golf and traveling domestically and to foreign countries.  I would say Italy is our favorite foreign country.  No rocking chair for us.