The Authors of the OE
Ronald B. Lansing, emeritus professor at the Northwestern School of Law at Lewis & Clark College (1966-2008), is the founding editor-in-chief of the Willamette Law Journal (1959-1960). He was law clerk to Oregon Supreme Court Chief Justice William McAllister (1960-1061) and chair of the Torts Section of the American Association of Law Schools (1977). He is the author of Skylarks and Lecterns: A Law School Charter (1983), Juggernaut: The Whitman Massacre Trial (1993), and Nimrod: Courts, Claims, and Killing on the Oregon Frontier (2005). He is current writing the history of the Northwestern School of Law.
Adair Law worked as an editor and later director of publications for the Oregon Historical Society for fifteen years. She currently writes and edits Northwest history-based projects. She is the author of The Spark and the Light: The Leo Adler Story and Abundantly Blessed, The John Elorriaga Story.
William C. Lawrence III was born in Portland in 1933 and attended Ainsworth Elementary, Lincoln High, and Stanford University. He returned to Portland in 1957 to work in the George Lawrence Company, the family leather goods manufacturing and wholesale business, founded in 1857. While attending one of the Old Church’s free Wednesday sack lunch concerts in the early 1970s, he noticed the grass was overgrown. They accepted his offer to cut it and immediately put him on the board of directors, where he served as a most dedicated and hard-working member until his retirement in 2007.
Kathleen F. Leary, also known as Kit, was born into a family of journalists and writers who traveled the world and wrote about it, but loved returning to the old home town. She learned early on about history in her native Wisconsin when her father stopped the car at every historical marker along the way. She has degrees in History, Library Science, and Media Technology, and has worked in Wisconsin, Algeria, Ohio and Oregon in educational institutions, historical societies, and public libraries. She is about to embark on her 25th season at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and has been living in Ashland since 1985.
Sarah LeCompte has been associated with the Bureau of Land Management since 1993, as a historian at the National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center for ten years, and since 2003, as Center Director. Her background includes assessment and preservation of historic structures, and she is a curator of 19th century American material culture.
Jan Leininger is a sixth generation Oregonian and fourth generation Mosier, Oregon resident. In 2009, she and her family celebrated the 100th anniversary of the John E. and Matilda (Roos) Proctor family coming to Mosier from London, England. The Proctor family, guided by Harrison Porter Locke crossed the Oregon Trail in 1845, and homesteaded in Polk County. The Leiningers came later in 1886 to Wasco County. Jan is a retired educator.
David G. Lewis is the manager of the Cultural Resources Department for the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community. He earned a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Oregon with his dissertation, "The Termination of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon." An enrolled member at the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, his ancestral heritage is Clackamas Chinook, Takelma, and Santiam Kalapuya. While at the University of Oregon, Lewis was director of the Southwest Oregon Research Project. Lewis has taught throughout western Oregon, including Willamette, Linfield College, OSU, and the U of O. Lewis regularly travels throughout western Oregon and presents on topics of Grand Ronde History, Tribal Genealogy, and Oregon Tribal Termination.
Norman Leyden, associate conductor of the Oregon Symphony for twenty-nine seasons and music director for the symphony's Pops series for thirty-four, retired in 2004. A graduate of Yale University, he earned a doctoral degree at Columbia University. During World War II, he served with Major Glenn Miller's Army Air Force Band, and after the war he arranged and conducted for many radio, television, and recording artists. He has guest conducted more than forty American orchestras, including the Boston Pops, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and San Francisco symphonies. In 1991, he was a recipient of the Oregon Governor's Arts Award.
Brian Libby is a Portland-based freelance writer, photographer and award-winning filmmaker. His reportage and criticism of design, film, art and culture has been published in The New York Times, Metropolis, The Christian Science Monitor, Dwell, The Oregonian, Premiere and Architectural Record, among others. He is also the author of Tales From the Oregon Ducks Sideline, a history of University of Oregon football published in 2007. He writes and edits the blog Portland Architecture, covering local design. A native Oregonian born in Eugene and raised in McMinnville, Libby is a 1995 graduate of New York University.
Dan Linscheid, a native of Yamhill County, began his career for the county in 1971, employed as a engineering technician and surveyor for the Road Department. He received his surveying license in 1979 and was elected county surveyor in 1994. He assisted a local historian, Ruth Stoller, on some of her publications and research, and became active in the Yamhill County Historical Society in 1995. He served on the YCHS board of directors between 1997 and 2007. Dan authored "Yamhill County Road Name Origins" in 1994, and numerous historical articles for YCHS newsletters on a variety of subjects.
