December 12, 2014 from old age
Dudley was born in Stockett, Montana on March 13th, 1921, to Pearl Beatrice Mann and Ray Lloyd Lapham. His dad, Ray, was a Reed graduate, class of 1919.
The family moved before his first birthday to the wilds of Eastern Oregon to a very small place called Crane where Ray taught English, history and athletics. He used to take his Model T. out to the outlying farms to scoop up the students and bring them back from their sheep farms to board nearby so they could attend school. Crane still has the only public boarding high school in the United States. In 1925, his sister Rosemary was born in the middle of a blustery January night. Dudley, 4 at the time, helped get the car started so his mother could be driven into Burns, where the nearest doctor resided. She became a Reedie as well, taking classes there, even after the birth of her first child, up until 1949.
After Ray earned his Master's degree from U. of Oregon, the family moved to Walla Walla, where he taught at Whitman. The two kids, Dudley and Rosemary, were best buds, making it through the Depression years resilient as children can be. Rosie tells stories of Dudley delivering telegrams to the penitentiary, picking berries, pulling weeds and selling newspapers to help out the family income. Next was Eugene, where Ray worked on his doctorate at the University of Oregon. In the summer months, he took his son up into the Oregon hills, where they lived for weeks on end: camping, fishing, panning for gold, swimming in the Blue River. Sometimes they didn’t bother to wear anything but socks and boots, since they were the only humans around. They’d get dressed and go down to trade their gold for more lard, sugar and coffee only when their stash of clean socks ran out. Then they’d head back up, cleansed and sustained by soft river waters.
Portland was their next port of call, where Six attended high school, and played football, acquiring a jersey with a big yellow “6” on it. This he wore up into the Mt. Jefferson wilderness on a camping trip with fellow freshmen Reedies, and thereby earned the nickname that would stick to him for the rest of his life.
Six went to Reed as a day dodger, earning his tuition with a paper route and various campus chores. He stashed his lunch in one of the window seats in Winch each day. Favorite professors included F.L. Griffin and Lloyd Reynolds, both of whom he later observed “could have taught those Pomona professors a thing or two.”
WWII interrupted his and everyone else’s time at Reed. Along with many fellow students, he enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, becoming a second Army lieutenant by the end of his service. He and Constance Sumner (’43) married during one of his leaves at the little white Episcopal church on Woodstock Blvd. and then traveled back from Georgia to Portland with Fishy the cat whom they had adopted in Georgia where he was stationed. Connie and his frequent asthma attacks persuaded him to try California weather over the Pacific Northwest and he went back to college, getting his BA from Pomona College in 1947 in Political Science.
He went into city administration, helping to run many California municipalities, and always making sure their libraries were in better shape than when he had arrived.
Along the way, he and Connie had a couple of kids and every summer, he would pack the whole family up and head north for the mountains and the rivers and the trees. He made sure everyone knew how to handle a gold pan and a fishing pole. Quoting a poem he penned for a writer’s group he formed in his eighties, “Raised a son and daughter as proper card-carrying Greenies.”
After his last city manager job in Seaside, CA, he worked part-time for the federal government helping to clean up Monterey Bay. During this time he participated in an innovative program for irrigating the extensive artichoke fields near Castroville with treated sewage. He enjoyed this job, as instead of being under the supervision of city councils, he was now in a position to bring about change by mandating to the cities what was expected of them from the federal laws governing environmental clean up. Six gleefully observed that "after all the years of s...t I took from elected city officials, now I get to tell them how to deal with it." He took a lot of satisfaction out of the way his career wrapped up.
He also loved his volunteer work at the newly opened Monterey Bay Aquarium where he trained to be a docent and led schoolchildren on tours. He often rode his bike there, down Cannery Row with its memories of Doc Ricketts and Steinbeck. Both he and Connie relished living in this area, steeped in California arts and literature as well as the beauty of the Big Sur coastline. They were involved in gardening and writing garden articles for the local paper. They corresponded with gardeners in Europe as well, comparing rose and fuchsia varieties. They tore out every inch of grassy lawn on their property and replaced it with roses, succulents and other native flowers. Six would volunteer as campground host for a different state park each season so he could continue to get his hit of the outdoors.
After Connie suffered from a series of strokes in 1990, they returned to the Pacific Northwest, living in Marysville, Friday Harbor and Stanwood, wherever the nursing homes seemed best suited to Connie’s needs. Six was a tireless companion during those years, foregoing his beloved camping trips but taking Connie out on long car rambles every day. She pre-deceased him in June of 2001, they had been happily married for 58 years. Despite Connie’s decline, their marriage had that quality of an ongoing fascinating conversation, interrupted occasionally by life’s events, but always picked up again as soon as they were reunited. The beginning of that lively exchange started at Reed College.
Six continued to give life all he could, starting writing groups wherever he lived, meeting and enjoying new friends, endearing himself by his sweet kindness and intelligent wit. He was always willing to listen and think about whatever issues were of importance to those around him. Getting out into the woods was a continuing joy. He would have friendly competitions as to who could pick the best and most beautiful place to have a picnic. He discovered yoga in his last decade. He moved to his last home, an adult family home on Lopez Island in 2009. There he rapidly became part of the community, getting out every day he could to take a walk, where he would run into others and make friends. He inspired people with his spunk and willingness, his readiness always to get the joke, to see the other side, to find the grain of truth and beauty in all situations. He loved the young people, many of whom would visit the Hamlet where he lived, to play music, do interviews for school, or do chores for community service. He wanted to know what they were interested in, “what made them tick” and he was never so happy as when exchanging ideas with others. He wanted to know where they’d been, what they’d done there and what they were thinking of doing next.
His last vacation off island was to visit his beloved Reed campus during its gala centennial celebration. He gamely walked all over campus, attending as many events as possible, despite needing a walker and an oxygen tank to do it. For those of you who were there, you will recall that Commons was out of commission that year, and meals were served in the gym, upstairs. Six was game, starting out early from his room in MacNaughton, and winding his way toward the gym in his signature tan Dockers with striped suspenders, a ball cap on his head, looking for Reedies to visit and share with. In the evenings, there were quite a few cocktail hours with old and new friends in his tiny dorm room, ringing with laughter as topics were bandied about in time honored Reed tradition.
Six’s room on Lopez Island boasted the framed Centennial Reed poster and an old black and white photo of downtown Portland, circa 1928. He died peacefully, with the look of a man well content with life, despite its vagaries and imperfections. He loved his life, he was well loved by his family and community.
Dudley Nelson Lapham (Six) passed away on the morning of December 12, 2014. He was three months shy of his ninety-fourth birthday.
He is survived by a daughter, Roseamber Sumner of Lopez Island (’73), a son, Roger Lapham, of Dalian, China, three grandchildren: Andrew Murphy, Madrona Murphy (’02) and Kiba Murphy and one great-granddaughter: Manhattan Leia Blue Murphy.
Memorial donations may be made to Reed College, for whatever purpose one may find fitting. Suggestions would be incoming scholarship monies or canyon restoration.
A favorite quote from Pogo: “Don’t take life so serious, son. It ain’t nohow permanent.”
