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RUSSELSTAR

HUMANRIS INGWINNER

P E R S P E C T I V E UN I V ERS I T Y

,

XQ^P I to/*U N I V E R S I T Y O F O R E G O N

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O L D O R E G O N

COUPLE GIVES $1 MILL!FOR SCHOLARSHIPSRemem bering the financial strugglesthey faced in their college years, Joeland Colleen McCloud of Torrance,California, have dedicated a $1 million pledge to scholarships for needyUO students. "We believe that everykid deserves the opportunity to get agood education," says Joel McCloudMBA '67. He and Colleen '67 both hailfrom working-class Oregon families thatmade sacrifices to help their childrenobtain a university education.'AMAZING' VICTORYUchenna Agu '87, 1986 Pac-10 triple-jump champion and a former UOcheerleader (who gained nationalnotoriety in an infamous gum-throwing incident with OSU's Gary Payton),and his wife, Joyce, have won the CBSreality-TV program The Amazing Race.The Ag us' luck has changed dramatically: from losing jobs in the debacles atEnron and WorldCom to winning $1 million in Amazing Race prize m oney. Lastyear, UO student Karli French and hertwin sister Kami (featured in OQ Spring2005) took fifth place in the competition.JUNE EVENT MINGLES ALUMNIAND RECRUITERSOn the heels of the successful JanuaryCareer Networking Event, the PortlandCenter, Career Center, and the UOAlumni Association will be among thesponsors hosting a UO alumni careernetworking opportunity on Tuesday,June 28, at the Portland Center inDowntown Portland. The UO AlumniNetworking and Career Connectionevent will be held from 5:30 P.M. until8:00 P.M. and will provide an exclusiveopportunity for alumni to meet recruiters from top companies and to networkwith fellow Ducks. More information atuoalumni.com.FOOTBALL FESTIVITIESWhile the team finishes up spring football practices, the Alumni Associationis gearing up for the fall's footballpregame parties. Look for the A lumniAssociation tent at Stanford (October1), Arizona State (October 8), andArizona (October 22). Join the Duckspirit and party with your fellow alumniand friends.

Warren Spady

Civ i l War gamesengraved, leavingroom for the next108."

B u t a d o p t i n gany Civi l War t rophy requires agreemen t be tween thetwo univers i ty a thl e t i c depa r tmen ts ,says a circumspectU O Ath le t i c Di rec tor Bill Moos. Yet headmi t s T he P la ty pus "has a his tory now that i t has beenrediscovered," and "could definitely bean opt ion." He hopes for a decis ionbefore next fall .

Spady hopes he can finally sign hiswork. And Wil l iams, who re t i res thisJune but has agreed to cont inue a thle t icdepartment overs ight respons ibi l i t ies fortwo more years, may play a role in re establishing The Platypus as part of thegreat Civi l War t radi t ion.He'd like that: "Most of the rivalryis ve ry good na tu red . . . . It generates alot of conversat ion between people ; i tbrings a t tent ion to the two schools . Andit 's kind of fun." But he'd like it evenbette r if nex t fall the U O could reclaimbragging r ights to the Civi l War andThe Pla typus .

PETE PETERSON '68 MS '77

MEMORYG O I N G , G O I N G , G O N Z OSIX-THIRTY CAME AND GAVE WAY TO 7o'clock as I anxiously paced the hallwayof the Univers i ty 's Sweetser dormitory.Five friends were coming down to Eugenefrom Corvallis , and they were appallinglyla te . The date was February 28, 1991,and we had to get to the bal l room atthe Eugene Hil ton by 7:30 in order toget seats at a lecture given by the outlawjourna l i s t Hun te r S . T homps on .

I shouldn ' t have worried about running late. Just as we sat down, a woman,presumably with the U O Cultura l Forum,which had inv i t ed T homps on , tookthe microphone and apologized for thespeaker's tardiness. Last seen at the hotelbar, he had disappeared.Thompson was governed by his own

twis ted vers ion of the c ircadian rhythm.If his daily routine, as described by hisbiographer E . Jean Carrol l is accurate ,Thompson would typical ly lunch around7 P.M. on cheeseburg ers a nd fries, severalbottles of Heineken, followed by carrotcake or ice cream, a snort of cocaine, anda "snow cone" a glass of shaved iceflavored with a generous pour of ChivasRegal . No wonder he was la te .A n ho ur la te . Ken Kesey '57 and K enBabbs made a brief and disastrous effort to

Hunter S. Thompson, at a card game on the Kesey Farm, February 28, 1991

40 OREGON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2005

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sate the increas ingly impatient audienceby telling a fewchoice anecdotes abouttheir friend. The effort was cut shor t by asurly heckler . Right about then Thompson emerged from wherever he had beenhid ing and sat d o w n at the table fromw h i c h he'd speak. Inhish a n d , he held ayellow plastic cup f i l led with Chivas andic e perhaps the r e m n a n t s of a "snowcone . " He opened by m um bl ing incom prehens ibly into the m i c r o p h o n e .

D r u n k and likely stoned, and with noprepared remarks , he rambled for aboutten m inu tes . Th i s changed when som eo n e in theaudienc e cal led out a ques t ion .T h o m p s o n p e r k e d up. His voice becam eclearer. He seemed to draw s trength fromtwo-way dia logue.

T h e r e was m u c h in the news tota lk about . Operat ion Desert S torm waswinding down, Kuwait having jus t beenrecaptured byU .S. forces the day before."I have the t ape m achine runn ing backhom e record ing the whole war," he said.I piped inwith a s trangely prescient quest ion of my own: S hould we go in andget Saddam? Answer: "I d o n ' t see w h a tdifference tha t would make ." Ever thepoli t ical junkie , hedescribed then-Pres iden t George H. W. Bush as "the m eanes tyuppie who ever lived." He predictedt h a t the 1990s would be "like the 80s butw i t h o u t the m oney . "

So much for ObjectiveJournalism. Don't botherto look for it here notunder any byline ofmine; or anyone else Ican think of With thepossible exception ofthings like box scores,race results, and stockmarket tabulations,there is no such thing asObjective Journalism. Thephrase itself is a pompouscontradiction in terms.

H u n t e r S. T h o m p s o nFear and Loathing:On the Campaign Trail '72

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Hitt ing the Streets!Show your University of Oregon pride with the new "O" licenseplate! Funds from the plates support merit scholarships forUniversity of Oregon students. I J|Now available from the Department of Motor Vehicles. Applyusing Form 268 from the DMV office. Get rolling today, and makethe road a little smoother for the university's best students.

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U N I V E R S I T Y O F O R E G O N

O L D O R E G O N

At one point , one of my fr iendsapproached the s tage and casual ly tosseda small plastic bag of marijuana intoThompson's lap. This s tarted a s t ream ofother ever more interes t ing tossed gif ts :More grass, several sheets of LSD, and amysterious paperback book offered by anagita ted long-haired chap who ins is ted i twas "ex t rem ely im por tan t" tha t Thom pson read it.Later Thompson received a s t rangevis i t from a local homeless wo man kno wnpopularly around campus as Hatoon (sees idebar, p . 44). Enterta ined, Thompsonlet her t ry to make a speech on the peri lof water in campus drinking fountains ,but she s truggled and sput tered. Seemingly frustrated, she said, "If you couldpoin t a laser beam at my brain, you m ightunders tand . " Thom pson sm i rked , andpulled a laser sight the kind used onrifles from a pocket and pointed it ather as she had described. She d idn ' t l ikethis and fled the stage.Throughout the course of his various ly incoherent and eloquent ramblingsemerged the kernel of the message thatruns through his published work: thatthe Am er ican Dream i s no th in g i f no tambiguous, uncertain, and for far toom any e lus ive. Chron ic l ing " th e dea th o fthe American Dream" was his journal is t ic miss ion, despi te the inco nve nien t factthat through his own success he provedhis entire premise false.As Thompson's ta lk wrapped up, thecrowd inclu ding me rushed forwardin search of his autograph. Someones tanding next to me reached throughthe scrum and swiped Thompson's cupof Chivas, still about a third full. Whilehe wanted the cup as a memento, he waskind enough to le t me drain i ts remaining few oun ces of watery Scotch . Perha psI hoped it to be an elixir that might myst ically convey a touch of Thomp son's gif tfor powerful prose.

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I wasn't the least bit surprised to hearson had t u rned a gun on

A piece he wrote in 1964 for Theon the 1961 suicide ofKet chum, Idaho,

in the Thompson oeuvre to the k ind ofself-reflection his readers hungered for,particularly in his later years. And it 'salso easy to see it as a blueprint for theexi t Th om pson would choose for h imselfforty-one years later.It opens with a quote from a neighbordescribing Hemingway in his final daysas "That poor old man. . . . He was sofrail and thin and old-looking that i t wasembarrassing to see him.""Frail" was no adjective for Tho m pso n.

He knew the clock was running out .Ap proa chin g his sixty-eighth year, variousheal th problems had s tar ted to moun t . Hesometimes used a wheelchair after breaking a leg last year, had recently acquiredan artificial hip, and was at the time of hisdeath recovering from spinal surgery.He was far from the man who a l i t t leover three decades ear l ier had wri t te n hislast great book, the one Frank Mankie-wicz, George McGovern's c a m p a i g nmanager in the 1972 president ial race,

EVENTS

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4 EugeneHomecoming

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The Oregon College Savings Plan is administered by Oregon State Treasurer Randall Edwards.The Plan is managed by OppenheimerEunds. Inc., a registered investment advisor and distributedby OppenheimerFunds Distributor Inc.. a registered broker dealer. Somestatesoffer favorable tax treatment to their esidentsonly if they invest in the state's own plan. Ifyou are not a resident of Oregon, you should consider whether your staleoffers its residents a 529 plan w ith alternative tax advantages, t he tax bill exempting earnings on qualified withdrawals from Federal incom e taxes expires December 31,2010. requiring Congress to take further action to extend those provisions beyond that date. Not FD1C insured nor gua ra nte e d a nd may lose value . Prior to investing, read the Plan Description and Participation Agreement for more information, including objectives, fees, expenses and risks. / Oregon state tax deduction for contributions of up to $2000 per tax filing. 2 Tax-free withdrawals for qualified expenses. The Oregon College Savings Plan is distributed by OppenheimerFunds Distributor, inc.,Member NASD. SIPC Two World Financial Outer, 225 Liberty Street, New York.NT 10281-1008.

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O L D O R E G O N

of ten descr ibed as "the most accurateand least factual book" about the elect ion . Fear and Loathing: On the CampaignTrail '72 is a dazzling and dis turb ingi n d i c t m e n t of the dirty business of presidential poli t ics . In it, we see Th o mp so nat the h eig h t of his power, f lexing hiss trange muscles for the polemic andinventing f ict i t ious anecdotes that infal lacy contain more tru th than mostmeticulously fact-checked news reports.

T h i s m a d e the terse repor t ing thatfirst revealed his death that co ld Sunday n ight all the more unbearable toread . They unf l inchingly called it a"self-inflicted gunshot wound," roboti-cally recit ing the unforgiving clinicalfacts, with neither texture nor style. Howmig h t Hu n ter Th o m p so n h av e d escr ib edthe scene ofhis own last exit?

The indignit ies of h u m a n age hadlaunched their final, unshakable assault

u p o n hisbody, and he would deny themtheir prize. Seated at his kitchen "command post" before his typewriter thword "counselor" cryptically typed othe center of the page he paused midconversation to set d o wn the telephonreceiver, his wife Ani ta o n th e other e nd othe line. Then he wrapped his lips arounthe barrel of a .45 caliber pistol, and figured he 'd see what happen ed next.

ARIK HESSELDAHL '9

Books for all Oregonians

Oregon CoastalAccess Guide

Atlas of OregonSecon d Ed i t ionWILL IAM G. LOY, STUARTALLAN, AILEEN R. BUCKLEY,AND JAMES E.MEACH AMThe standard reference bookon the stateUO Press/hardcover

Oregon's PromiseAn In te rp re ti ve H i s to ryDAV ID PETERSON DEL MARA concise, compelling historyOSU Press / paperback

Oregon CoastalAccess GuideA M i le -by -Mi l e Gu ide to Scen i cand Recrea t i ona l A t t rac t i onsKENN OBERRECHTThe most comprehensive anduseful guide to the Oregon CoastOSU Press / paperback

TraskDON BERRYThe great O regon novelOSU Press / paperback

O R i