Former Oregon governors Barbara Roberts and Ted Kulongoski will be on hand Tuesday for the Oregon Historical Society’s celebration of the late Mark O. Hatfield’s 100th birthday.
The special event – featuring root-beer floats, Hatfield’s favorite treat, for attendees – will take place at the downtown Portland historical society starting at 11 a.m. Admission to the museum is free all day.
Hatfield, who died in 2011 at 89, served two terms as Oregon governor in the 1950s and ‘60s, and he was a U.S. senator from 1967 to 1997. He and the late Tom McCall, a fellow maverick Republican and Hatfield’s successor as governor, are widely considered the most influential Oregon political leaders of the 20th century.
“In these often-polarizing times,” OHS executive director Kerry Tymchuk said in announcing the centennial celebration, “let us all remember these words of Sen. Hatfield: ‘All of us need each other; all of us must lift and pull others as we rise; all of us must rise together – powerful, free, one self-determined people.’”
As part of the centennial celebration, the museum is featuring the traveling exhibit, “The Call of Public Service: The Life and Legacy of Mark O. Hatfield.”
The centennial celebration also will mark the public release of Hatfield’s official oral history, part of the wide-ranging Mark O. Hatfield Oral History Project.
— Douglas Perry
