Almanac: June

June 1

• The University Archives were officially established on this date in 1966 under the direction of Brother David Martin, C.S.C., the newly retired director of the University library and the University's first archivist.
  
  
• The first draft of the Articles of Administration appeared on this date in 1969.
  
  
• On this date in 1952 John Dewey died at age 92.  An American philosopher and educator, he helped to found the philosophical school of pragmatism; he was especially noted as a leader in the progressive movement in education in the United States.
   
• This is also the anniversary of the death, in 1971 at the age of 80, of Reinhold Niebuhr, the American theologian and critic of theological liberalism who greatly influenced the direction of theological discourse during and after the Second World War.
   
• The Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition opened in Portland on this date in 1905.
   
• On this date in 1975 the celebrated distance runner Steve Prefontaine was killed in an automobile accident at the age of 25.

June 2

• On this date in 2008 Dr. Philip Cansler died.  He had been Professor of Music at the University.  He came to UP in 1980 and quickly became well known for his trumpet playing.  He was particularly remembered for his performances at Pilot basketball games as he came to costume himself in a purple wig and play along with a small instrumental group.  In addition to directing the University's concert band he also taught courses in the fundamentals of music and the core offering in the introduction to the fine arts.
  
  
• Thomas Hardy was born on this date in 1840 in Dorchester, England.  He would gain his reputation first in his novels which provided heroic portrayals of characters whose provincial lives were confined to an area of southwestern England for which he invented the name Wessex. Later he would become well-known and equally admired for his poetry.

June 3

• The first provincial chapter of the Congregation of Holy Cross to be held in Portland opened on this date in 1973.  Representatives from the Indiana Province gathered under the presidency of Father Howard J. Kenna, C.S.C., Provincial Superior and former president of the University.  This chapter was to elect Father William J. Lewers, C.S.C., a member of the law faculty at Notre Dame, as the new provincial, the first superior of the province to be elected directly by a chapter.
   
• Columbia Prep, for many years the high-school division of the University, officially closed its doors on this date in 1955.  It had retained its name, Columbia Preparatory School, when the name University of Portland was adopted for the institution as a whole.  It remained, however, on the campus until 1948 when it was moved to the Wilcox Estate in the West Hills.
   
• At its annual commencement exercises on this date in 1951 the University conferred honorary degrees on the Most Reverend Edward D. Howard, Archbishop of Portland, on the Very Reverend Christopher J. O'Toole, C.S.C., Superior General of the Congregation of Holy Cross, and on the Reverend Theodore J. Mehling, C.S.C., Provincial Superior of the Indiana Province of the Congregation and former president of the University.
   
• Allen Ginsberg was born on this date in 1926 in Newark, New Jersey. He would become known as the poet of the Beat Generation.  His most well-known work, Howl, was published in 1956.

June 4

• On this date in 1989 a pro-democracy student-led demonstration in Tienamen Square in Beijing, China, was put down with military force.  Estimates of the number of demonstrators killed range from 300 to 3000.  Many of the leaders were arrested and imprisoned.

June 5

• At the commencement exercises on this day in 1955 the University bestowed an honorary degree on Owen Patrick McNulty, better known as actor and singer Dennis Day.

June 6

• Father Glenn Boarman, C.S.C., died on this date, in Oakland, California, in 1987 at the age of 64. He had served at the University from 1962 to 1968, first as University chaplain and later as director of development.

June 7

• This was the birthday in Bologna in 1502 of Ugo Buoncompagni, known to history as Pope Gregory XIII, from whom the Gregorian calendar takes its name.  Shortly after becoming pope in 1572, he formed a commission to study and reform the calendar, especially with a view to restoring the coincidence of the spring equinox with March 21 as established by the Council of Nicea in 325 as an aid in calculating the proper date of Easter.  In 1582 he implemented the recommended corrections of the commission and decreed that ten days be omitted from the calendar in October of that year and that the "leap day" be omitted in years divisible by 100 unless the year were also divisible by 400.  These changes created the calendar we use today, the most widely accepted calendar in history.

June 8

• This date in 1911 saw the groundbreaking for Christie Hall.  When the property on which the University stands was purchased in 1901 from the University Land Company, the terms called for the construction within ten years of a major building.  The athletic coliseum had been built in 1903, but Christie Hall would be the first building that would survive, since the coliseum collapsed during a storm in 1927.

June 9

• This is the feast of St. Ephrem, fourth century deacon and doctor of the Church.  He is regarded as one of the four great Fathers of the Eastern Church.

June 10

• The University of Portland Almanac presently offers no specific entry for this date. If you wish to suggest material that would appropriately be listed under this date, please contact the editor.

June 11

• And there is no specific entry for the Almanac for this date. If you wish to suggest material that would appropriately be listed under this date, please contact the editor.

June 12

• This date in 1949 marked the dedication of the engineering building. It was the first building on the campus after West (now Waldschmidt) Hall that was to be used exclusively for academic purposes.  It also implied a commitment to the field of engineering as an important academic offering.
  
  
• On this date in 1929 Anne Frank was born in Frankfort, Germany, and on her birthday in 1942 she received the booklet that became her journal.  Her family moved to Amsterdam a few weeks after her birthday to escape the Nazi persecution of Jews.  There they lived in an attic, supported by friends.  Anne died of typhus in a concentration camp in 1944.  Her diary was published in Germany in 1947.

June 13

• This is the feast of St. Anthony of Padua (1195-1231), a Franciscan preacher, whose writings won him the title, Doctor of the Church.
  
  
• This date in 1931 marked the opening of the St. John's Bridge across the Willamette River.  The dedication was one of the events of the Rose Festival that year.  The entire bridge is 3833 feet long.  Its main span extends 2067 feet between the supporting piers and rises to a clearance of 205 feet above the river at low water.
   
• This was the birthday in 1865 in Dublin, Ireland, of William Butler Yeats.  The son of an artist and the grandson of a clergyman of the Church of Ireland, Yeats dedicated his life to producing poetry reflective of Ireland and its people. With Lady Gregory, a founder of the Abbey Theatre, he was also a patron and encourager of writers like John Millington Synge and James Joyce. A member of what was known as the Protestant Ascendancy because of its privileged place within the social fabric of Ireland, he found himself and his class rebuffed by the revolutionaries of the 1920's.  He was, however, elected to the Senate of the new Irish Free State and in 1923 received the Nobel Prize for literature, the first Irishman to be so honored.  Other Irish writers to receive the Nobel Prize have been George Bernard Shaw (1925), Samuel Becket (1969), and Seamus Heaney (1996).

June 14

• Father Robert H. Sweeney, C.S.C., died on this date in 1967 at the age of 58 at Notre Dame, Indiana. A native of Oregon, he served at the University from 1949 to 1959, as twelfth president from 1950 to 1952.
   
• This date in 1905 saw the graduation of the first class of (ten) students. 
  
  
• On this date in 1936 ground was broken for the construction of Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood.  The design and construction of the lodge was a project of the WPA (Works Progress Administration) that had been inaugurated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt just a year earlier as part of his effort to offer employment to craftsmen during the Great Depression of the 1930s.  The construction brought together experienced workers in the crafts of stone cutting and masonry, woodworking and carpentry, iron workers and others to produce the lodge, much as it is seen today.  President Roosevelt personally dedicated the building in September 1937.
   
• This was the birthday in 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut, of Harriet Beecher, to become known to the world as Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, one of the most widely read and influential novels in literary history.

June 15

• At Dujarie House, Notre Dame, Indiana, Bro. Frank (Francisco) Drury, C.S.C., died on this date in 2000 at the age of 73. From 1979 to 1989 he was special collections librarian at the Wilson Clark Library.
   
• This date also saw the death, in 1990, of Father William Coughlan, C.S.C., at the age of 85.  He taught mathematics at Portland from 1936 to 1974, when he retired.  He continued in residence at the University, however, until ill health led to his move to the community infirmary at Notre Dame in 1987.
   
• In 1947 the University of Portland Press published its first book.  The volume, Catholic Library Practice, was authored by Brother David Martin, C.S.C., University librarian.  The Press was revived in 1986 to publish The Precipice Garden, a book of verse by the Oregon Symphony's director, James DePreist.

June 16

• The University of Portland Almanac presently offers no specific entry for this date. If you wish to suggest material that would appropriately be listed under this date, please contact the editor.

June 17

• Father Thomas G. LaPine, C.S.C., died on this date in 1994 at Notre Dame, Indiana. He was 73.   He had served in a number of positions at the University from 1952 to 1964, in the later years as University registrar.

June 18

• In 1935 this date marked the opening of the first summer school under the University's auspices.  For several years prior to 1935, the University had hosted summer classes sponsored by the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

June 19

• The University of Portland Almanac presently offers no specific entry for this date. If you wish to suggest material that would appropriately be listed under this date, or corrections, please contact the editor.

June 20

• On this date in 2003 the Reverend David T. Tyson, C.S.C., eighteenth President of the University, was elected Provincial Superior of the Indiana Province of the Congregation of Holy Cross by the province chapter then in session on the campus.  Father Tyson had been appointed president by the Board of Regents in 1990.  Upon his election as provincial he announced that he would leave the University in August to take up his new duties and that Brother Donald Stabrowski, C.S.C., provost of the University, would serve as acting president until a new president could be selected and take office.  Father Tyson was the third sitting president of the University to become provincial; in 1950 Father Theodore Mehling was appointed provincial and in 1962 Father Howard Kenna became provincial.  Others elected to the office of provincial by chapters in session on the University of Portland campus include Father William Lewers in 1973 and Father Richard Warner, who was re-elected to that office in Portland in 1985.
  
  
• This date in 1901 marked the completion of the terms of sale of a parcel of land of 28 acres on Waud's Bluff including West Hall by the University Land Co. to the Most Reverend Alexander Christie, D. D., Archbishop of Oregon City, to be used as a school and to be improved with construction of a major building within ten years.
   
• In 2001, this date saw the publication of 100 Years of Teaching, Faith, and Service, the centennial history of the University authored by James T. Connelly, C.S.C., Ph. D., associate professor of history.
  
  
• Brother Charles Borromeo Harding, C.S.C., died on this date in 1922 at age 84. He was one of the first religious of the Congregation of Holy Cross to come to Portland in 1902.

June 21

• This date by tradition marks the summer solstice, and the solstice in fact occurs on this date (at least as calculated in Universal Time--once known as Greenwich Mean Time) in most years.  While the solstice occurred on a different date in the calendar used by Edmund Spenser in the late sixteenth century, his poem "Epithalamion" follows the events, real and imaginary, of his wedding day which took place on the summer solstice.

June 22

• This date marks the feast of St. Thomas More, an eminent civil lawyer, the first layman to become Chancellor of England.  He was beheaded by order of King Henry VIII for his refusal to subscribe to the Oath of Supremacy acknowledging Henry as "head of the Church in England."
  
  
• Father Cornelius A. Hooyboer, C.S.C., died on this date in 1977 at age 73.  From 1946 until his death he served as a faculty and staff member at the University.  He was especially well known as the assistant and companion of his brother, Father John Hooyboer, C.S.C., whom he accompanied on trips along the west coast recruiting students for the University.
   
• Brother John Berchmans Barrett, C.S.C., who had served at the University since 1904, died on this date in 1912 at the age of 64.

June 23

• On this date in 1993 Andrew Wiles announced that he had proven Fermat's Last Theorem (if n is at least 3, no nth power is the sum of two other nth powers).  There was a flaw in his proof that he corrected in a proof published in Annals in Mathematics in May, 1995.

June 24

• This is the solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist.  The date obviously parallels the calendar date for the Nativity of the Lord (Christmas Day) as indicated in the Gospel of Luke 1:36.  Observers of the Roman Calendar will recognize this date as the seventh of the Kalends of July (as Christmas is the seventh of the Kalends of January) and therefore exactly six months prior to December 25 (rather than one day early as modern readers might suspect). 
  
  
• From 1930 until 1943 Holy Cross seminarians who were candidates for the priesthood were ordained on this date.  The custom was interrupted during World War II and resumed in 1946.  The custom was abandoned after 1946 apparently due to difficulties in scheduling. 

June 25

• This was the birthday in 1903 in Motihari, Bengal, India, of Eric Arthur Blair, later known as George Orwell, under which pseudonym he published a number of highly regarded works including Animal Farm and 1984.
   
• On this day in 1876 a contingent of the U. S. Cavalry led by Lt. Col. George A. Custer was wiped out by Cheyenne and Sioux Indians at the Battle of Little Bighorn in Montana.
   
• And on this day in 1950, forces from North Korea invaded South Korea.  While the United States, assisted by allies from other members of the United Nations, came to the defense of the south, the support of the Soviet Union and China was given to the north and the cease-fire of 1952 provided no resolution to the ideological hostilities.

June 26

• Father Arthur Near, C.S.C., died on this date in 1981 in Mexico at the age of 66.  He served at the University from 1948 to 1959 and is remembered as the coach of the University's tennis team during those years.

June 27

• This is the feast of St. Cyril of Alexandria, doctor of the Church.  He was the leader of the anti-Nestorian party in the Council of Ephesus in 431.

June 28

• The University of Portland Almanac presently offers no specific entry for this date. If you wish to suggest material that would appropriately be listed under this date, please contact the editor.

June 29

• This is the solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul, Apostles.

June 30

• This date in 1938 saw the death of Father Edward Patrick Murphy, first president of the University, at age 71.  He had been a member of the Congregation of Holy Cross before his incardination into the Archdiocese of Oregon City (Portland) in 1901, when he was appointed by Archbishop Christie as president of the new institution.  When Holy Cross religious arrived a year later, Father Murphy gave up his position and returned to pastoral work.