Meet our board of Education Continued
Ralph Yates grew up outside Chicago in Wheaten, Illinois, but said he used to dream about what it would be like to really mountaineer. From the “time I was 13, the only place I wanted to live was Oregon,” he said. He said it may have been due to reading about Lewis and Clark, and Oregon’s mountains, firs and coast. But he also dreamed of being a naval officer, so when he got ready to go to college, he applied to Annapolis, the Coast Guard Academy as well as University of Oregon, just in case, but ended up taking the appointment to the Coast Guard Academy, and when he graduated he ended up on an icebreaker in the Arctic, not a desirable appointment to his classmates because the first year is spent at sea in both the Arctic and antarctic. He met his wife from the University of Washington while he was in port, and was eventually asked to take an assignment in Portland as a favor to his superior officer who didn’t know about his Oregon-wish. He told his officer, “Anything for the good of the service,” got married and moved to Portland. That’s where he realized he should get out of the Coast Guard. He said he did some soul searching and decided he wanted to be a physician. After going to medical school, he set up a solo practice in 1980 and it grew to the small medical group he is now a partner in. He also is the physician for the Portland winter Hawks and also works with University of Portland athletes and Willamette University track and cross country athletes. But he says 60 percent of what he does is family medicine. “I love primary care,” he said, adding that he has third generation patients. He said there are few other things in life where you attend the birth of patients children, go to weddings, celebrate graduations and then say goodbye to them at their funerals. He’s the only member on the Mt. Hood district board who had to run a political campaign for his position. He had to run against the incumbent board member, an Oregon House and Senate veteran of 30 years. He said he was recruited to run along with Bob Morris and the late Ron Russell by a group of community leaders who were determined to change the makeup of the old board. He said usually, when people retire from the board, they find replacements for themselves, but “that process had broken down. For now, he’s focused on the bond. “There’s only one thing we have to do this year, and that’s pass this bond,” he said. He said the college is beyond the nice ties “we’re into necessities .” “Without passage of this bond, the school will continue its slow decline physically.” He said the last bond was passed to complete the school over 30 years ago. It was the one and only bond passed since the school was built. He said the largest amount of the bond will be literally taking everything from the ceiling up, and replacing it, and then there is also the facia, and some wiring to be done. “I hope people on campus have a sort of urgency about how serious it is that we pass this,” Yates said. Looking to the next decades, he said Mt. Hood’s job is “preparing students for the 21st century, which means they have to be technically savvy and educationally broad.” He said he wasn’t to see more things like the nursing program, where students can get their entire degree through OHSU by attending Mt. Hood. He said he sees institutions of higher learning working together, where they go from competition to cooperation.
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