Friday, April 25, 2008

Advice Fully Circled: Tribute to Bill Drevdahl


Here are some remarks I have prepared for a memorial service to a family friend and, in a way, a colleague.

The Drevdahls were family friends. My brother Steve used to hang out with a group that included Dale. They took us on their boat. I would mow their yard when they were on vacation. Mom and Joan knew each other as elementary school teachers in the same district, but never taught in the same buildings.

I was over at the Drevdahl’s house one summer evening in 1975. I think Joan extended a dinner invitation. –that’s what kind of home it was. If you happened to be there near dinner time you ended up getting fed. In fact, that happened just a few months ago…

I digress. Anyway, Bill and I were talking about my plans to go to college in the fall. It was clear he didn’t think I was totally right in my plans. Those of you who knew Bill knew he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind if he didn’t agree with you. He thought it was fine I was going to go study communications but he thought I should probably consider going to Clark College and getting a certificate in some kind of trade skill that I could fall back on. He was hoping his kids were going to do that. I wasn’t offended, and I certainly knew better than to argue with Mr. Drevdahl, but I told him respectively, that that didn’t seem like the path for me.

Flash forward years later. I went to work in the service sector for several yars after the work I had done was curtailed by arts funding no longer being a priority of the Reagan administration. I came to Clark College to take classes at the time the personal computer became a formidable tool and ended up pursuing both an AAS degree in Scientific and Technical writing and a certificate in desktop publishing. During this time, I would bump into Bill Drevdahl having his morning coffee and fresh pastry at the Clark College bakery. One day I was talking to him and told him I had returned to Clark to get that second skill that he had advised me was a good idea a dozen years earlier. Bill got that twinkle in his eye and said something to the effect of "Well, you know its never too late." He wasn’t going to say I told you so…but you could sure see he approved. It was always pretty obvious when Bill Drevdahl agreed with the situation.


I see now that Bill was ahead of the curve. I think he clearly saw the "job for life" era was over and that people would have to have other foundational skills to fall back on. Certainly the eighties and nineties showed this to be the case at Clark College with waves of professional refugees coming back for retraining, first from Tektronix, then the timber industry, then Hewlett Packard, and again pulp and manufacturing.

Now its years later. I work at Clark as the division Chair for the vocational computer related-programs. I advise dozens of students each year in their career interests and intended paths. Tuition was practically free when Bill Drevdahl started at Clark College back in the 1960s, certainly when compared to the nearly $1000 per quarter that it costs now. I have given many students close to the same advice that Bill tried to give me back in 1975, with a bit of a variation – I suggest that they earn both their AA degree and pick up a certificate in a field (maybe web design, prepress,computer networking) and get their transfer degree as well. I even find myself quoting Bill Drevdahl from that summer post dinner conversation in 1975.

One more note: Bill’s retirement from Clark College came just about the time that I started getting hired for temporary staff and faculty assignments before my full time opportunity. He was having problems with his Macintosh computer and was trying to track me down across campus. I had three separate faculty members come find me and let me know that Elmer Drevdahl was looking for me. (As it turned out, I did nave the answer this time to the technological malady he was facing) Somehow I ended up in a conversation with one of these faculty members ---It was clear that Bill was very respected among his peers at Clark College and that he was doing his part in trying to find me to help him out. That was kind a nice moment with the sort of undefinable emotion that help make life matter.

I’ve wondered since if somehow my return to Clark to take some classes to try to find something else to do with my life was somehow linked to the advice this family friend was trying to get into my head years before.
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:42 PM
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