The Not Ordinary Life of Wilson Slater, Part Two

A Christmas Holiday card from Wilson and June Slater. My wife's big sister, Carol, is one the left and Shirley herself is seatedon her daddy's lap.

Although he started out at Stanford University to become a history teacher or college professor in Greek or Roman studies in 1941, Wilson Slater's life changed course when he came to Medford Oregon to work as a foreman at the Rouge River Fish Cannery in Medford.

I think he decided he'd done a good enough deal of teaching of his fellow Air Corps men during the war, and an old interest and talent for taking care of finances emerged. Wilson Slater opted to follow a business career. (Although he remained an avid history reader all his life.) He left the cannery after a few years and got was hired in the Administration Office or the Medford (Oregon ) School Board. By the late fifties, he was the Business Manager for the district.


In a clear and important way, however, Wilson did stay in public education. Handing the stresses and "blood, tears, toil and sweat" of a budget for a large Kindergarten through High School district entailed a great deal of work. Along with the various Superintendents, he was called up on in public forums to convince sometimes skeptical organized groups that new education and athletic facilities and expansions were needed to give young students the opportunities that existed in other districts in the nation.

Although a lifelong Republican--he once bet a fellow administrator a small sum of money in 1974 that President Nixon would not step down before his Impeachment--I'd say Wilson was of a more moderate and true "maverick" part of the Grand Old Party (of which Oregon has a long tradition with its elected officials like Senators Wayne Morse and Mark Hatfield, the former of whom was bold enough to be one of only two Senators to vote against Lyndon Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin Bill in 1964, the knell that escalated the long war in Vietnam.) My father in law was a firm promoter of giving every public school student, advantaged or not, as good an education as he or she could receive, making the best of what state and local funds were available. In that sense, he never forgot his own troubled start in life and the way school activities gave him a way out of despair and poverty.

In private life, he was I should add, a very funny guy. The first time I ever met him--I was rather nervous since I was dating his daughter--we were at a pizza restaurant when his wife said "You look nice this evening, Wilson". He looked at her and shook his head. "Well, dear, I don't feel so nice, and th last time I was in the bathroom I realized I've developed a face like old Nikita Khrushchev!"

He never told a dirty story, focusing instead on the events of the day, Roman and American history and, like my father as well, big-time sporting events, especially any sports havingto do with Stanford Football and Basketball.

He and his wife attended a lot of home and away games for Stanford. (After retirement, he frequently went down to the Bay Area to see the new sportsmen and women of his alma mater do battle with all comers, especially the big rivals from UC-Berkeley across the San Francisco Bay.) He and June once went all the way back East to upper New York State, West Point to be exact, to see Stanford play the Army Team and I have the ticket stubs to prove it. It wasn't entirely for the game--they also went up to Montreal and Quebec City to see the old French/Canadian parts of those metropolises--but that gives you some idea of how dedicated he was to Cardinal Sports.

While as an official in the school district, he also was a supporter of the high school teams and he and June were chaperone at some of the social events between young ladies and gentlemen. (Shirley probably could have done without having her father and mother right there with her and her date for the Medford High dances and The Proms, but that's a story I'll let her tell on her own blog. :-)