Sitting on the sidelines guarantees that those who created the problems will have the playing field to themselves. So, yes, I am hopeful, and I also acknowledge that the odds of success can seem stacked against us - all the more reason for us to both hope and act. It’s to understand that, even if you fail, to attempt to improve the world is to declare who you are. It’s trying your hardest to make the world better, even if you know you may fail. So, I used to explain to my college students that optimism is not prediction, it’s orientation. Does this make you feel hopeful? Despairing?Ī: I think of hope as the oxygen of civic life. To paraphrase my hero, Vaclav Havel, poet, playwright, political dissident, and first elected president of the Czech Republic, “Hope is not the same as feeling the joy that things are going well, or a willingness to invest in work that is heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because of its inherent truth.” Q: When you survey your career in Congress, it's clear you were an important voice on many things, from reproductive rights to the environment to Russia to gun control.īut today we seem to be in crisis in each one of those areas: climate catastrophes the repeal of Roe v Wade the war in Ukraine the proliferation of guns. I hope the collection will give students and researchers reason to hope even at time when our modern political life is so fraught. With the campus across the street, our home was perfect for Sue and me and our two children.Ĭonsidering my deep roots at Pacific, I can’t think of a more appropriate place as a home for documents from my public career. Ritchie became the father I never had our personal correspondence continued though my years in Congress until the end of his life. Compensation included tuition-free classes I needed to complete my BA and affordable rent of the house across College Way, which now houses university departments. When I resumed my studies at Pacific in 1964 after a three-year hitch in the army, former university president Miller Richie hired me as the school’s public information director and editor of the magazine, Pacific Today. The experience launched me as a writer and I’ve never forgotten it. There, that following summer, the blustery executive editor, Don McLeod, kept me on full-time as vacation relief for some of the Northwest’s most iconic sportswriters. He also got me placed in a Friday and Saturday night job in the sports department of the state’s largest paper, The Oregonian. Rowe, chair of the then-Journalism Department, recruited me in 1960 as a high school graduate who had been, in my high school senior year, acting sports editor of my hometown weekly, the Redmond (Oregon) Spokesman. Professor Clifford Rowe helped launch my career as a writer, and former president Miller Ritchie became a surrogate father to me. Q: Why did you decide to turn your records and papers over to Pacific? What do you hope the records will teach the public about your life of public service?Ī: It’s a bit of a story, but did it because my alma mater helped form my life in several remarkable ways. He responded by email to a set of questions from Pacific magazine’s Mike Francis about his choice to do so, issues of politics and the tenor of the political climate, as well as some personal reflections.Īn essential read for anyone seeking to better understand AuCoin’s consequential public service is his memoir “Catch and Release: An Oregon Life in Politics,” published in 2019. ’78, has turned over to Pacific University an extensive collection of papers documenting his life in public service.
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