The Authors of the OE
Kay Atwood graduated from Mills College in 1964 and has a master's degree from the University of California, Davis. For thirty years, she as worked independently as a local historian and consultant in southwest Oregon. She is the author of several books and reports on Oregon history, including Illahe, the Story of Settlement in the Rogue River Canyon, Mill Creek Journal, and Chaining Oregon: Surveying the Public Lands of the Pacific Northwest, 1851-1855.
George Azumano is a second generation Japanese American, born in Portland in 1918. He earned a BS from the University of Oregon in 1940. After internment during WWII he established an insurance agency and soon expanded into the travel business. He has been an active member of the Epworth Methodist Church since 1935. He has served on the General Board of Pensions for the United Methodist Church, as a Willamette University trustee, and on the Japanese American National Museum's Board of Trustees. In 1982, the Japanese government awarded him the Emperor's Medal of the 4th Order of the Rising Sun.
Dr. Raymond E. Balcomb is a native of California and recieved his undergraduate degree there. His theological education was from Boston University where he received the STB degree Magn Cum Laude and a Ph.D. in Biblical Literature. He is the author of several books and has been published in a wide range of periodicals. His lifelong professional career as an ordained minister was in Oregon where he served local churches and served as a district Superintendent. The last twenty-five years he had direct ministerial responsibility for First United Methodist Church, Portland, Oregon. On the occasion of First Churches Sesquicentennial celebration, Dr. Balcomb authored the official history for the church.
Peggy Baldwin lives in Portland, and is a librarian and professional genealogist doing research for clients via her business Family Passages (www.family-passages.com). She is a descendent of four lines of Oregon Trail pioneers and an Oregon history enthusiast. She graduated from Portland State University with a degree in Business Administration and has a Master's Degree in Library Science from the University of Oregon. She also attends annually the Institute of Historical and Genealogical Research at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, taking courses in advanced genealogical research methods.
Val Ballestrem is an independent historian and the education manager for the Bosco-Milligan Foundation/Architectural Heritage Center in Portland. A life-long Oregonian, he has a master’s degree in western U.S. history and public history from Portland State University.
Katrine Barber is associate professor of history at Portland State University. She teaches Pacific Northwest, western U.S. history, and public history. She is a member of the Native American Studies faculty and is the director of the Center for Columbia River History (www.ccrh.org), a consortium of PSU, Washington State University Vancouver, and the Washington State Historical Society. She left her home town of Portland, Oregon, for graduate studies at Washington State University, where she earned her doctorate in American Studies in 1999. She is the author of Death of Celilo Falls (University of Washington Press, 2005).
John D. Barnes was born in Florence, Oregon, in 1951. After graduating from Oregon State University in 1977, his first career position in Idaho included efforts to protect two significant historical transportation routes that served early northwest pioneers: the Lewis and Clark Trail and the Oregon Trail. His interest in these types of historic resources continued when serving as the Cultural Resource Staff Specialist with the Oregon Department of Forestry. In this position he served as project leader for the development of policies and procedures for inventory, survey, and protection of cultural resources on state-owned forest lands.
Tim Barnes is a writer and poet who teaches English and writing at Portland Community College. He has published several essays on C.E.S. Wood and is the co-editor of Wood Works: The Life and Writings of Charles Erskine Scott Wood.
Connie Hopkins Battaile (pronounced battle), an Oregonian for most of her life, is a retired reference librarian and author of The Oregon Book: Information A to Z (1998). She has been a Chautauqua speaker on “Outside of Ordinary Oregon,” pursues interests in native plants and geology, is a Hospice volunteer, and teaches a course on Final Arrangements in Ashland.
Edwin Battistella is professor of English and writing at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, where he has served as dean of the School of Arts & Letters and as interim provost.
