Roots of Resilience
Written by Kurt Bedell
Portland State’s reputation for being student-centered, enterprising and resilient began with the personality of its founder, Stephen E. Epler. A Navy veteran with a doctorate in education, he saw the need for a higher education institution in Portland to serve veterans returning from World War II. He led the charge to create a new breed of school from scratch, despite natural disasters, political battles and many premature predictions of its early demise.
Born in 1909 to a Disciples of Christ minister and his wife, Epler grew up incorporating his parents’ strong sense of independence and responsibility into his “indefatigable” work ethic, according to former professor Gordon B. Dodds in his seminal history of PSU, “The College That Would Not Die.” Epler’s study of chemistry at tiny Cotner College in Nebraska and doctoral work at the Teacher’s College at Columbia University in New York taught him the value of taking a progressive approach to educating America’s future generations. After some teaching assignments and World War II service, he and his wife, Ferne Misner, landed in Portland with their children in January 1946.
At that time, few of Oregon’s colleges had enough housing—particularly family housing—for returning soldiers ready to take advantage of the GI Bill. Epler saw this as an opportunity. Why not open a program for veterans at Vanport, where many (including himself) already lived? Built as a temporary housing project for the Kaiser Shipyards in the lowlands near the Columbia River, Vanport offered affordable housing, public services and building space, with many facilities now vacant after the war. So Epler and his resourceful team did just that. In just 86 days, they took the idea of the Vanport Extension Center and turned it into a program serving more than 200 students its first summer term.
But then, not two years after Vanport Extension Center was founded, disaster struck. The memory of this turning point in PSU’s history—the great Vanport flood of May 1948—is forever etched in the minds of Epler’s two children, Charlotte Gezi and Stephen M. Epler.
Since the student and faculty apartments stood so close to the waterline, the younger Epler, now a retired college president living in Rocklin, California, remembers his dad and other staff were among the first to see the levy give way under the force of the Columbia River.
“I remember them moving typewriters into one of the big army surplus trucks that they got after the war,” he said. “Dad hopped in the truck and drove to the house where we were and warned the family. Dad went through the building and knocked on doors and warned people to leave.” Then it was off to Portland, with their mother, Ferne, driving their big, black ’38 Plymouth behind the fully-loaded truck.
“The government had put out a notice saying that dikes were safe at present,” remembered Charlotte, a retired teacher now living in Sacramento, California. “They said ‘You’ll be warned. You’ll have time to leave. Don’t get excited.’ Thankfully many of the students and teachers had left Vanport to visit other families because of the [Memorial Day] holiday weekend.”
Fifteen people perished in the flood, which hit the Black community particularly hard. “Many students carried on rescue work, traffic direction and first aid,” the elder Epler later recounted in a report. “The death toll would have been much higher had it not been for the valiant work of the college students.”
Within a few weeks, classes started up again, thanks to Ferne securing space in Grant High School where she taught. “I don’t know how my Dad could have done it,” Charlotte recalled. “As people were moving and gathering their lives back together, the school carried on.”
As historian Dodds put it, “overcoming obstacles was a way of life at Vanport.” And that drive, that commitment to persevere despite all odds that was born out of the hope and trauma of Vanport, has come to be a hallmark of Portland State.
“Education is a form of wealth that bankruptcy or depression cannot destroy. If you are more useful to the community and a better citizen after your sojourn here, then Vanport College has succeeded!”
Originally published in Portland State Magazine, Spring 2021. Reproduced with permission.