Page 12 - Voices.June.2016final

JOURNEYS

Harvey Schowe, Historian
Extraordinaire

by Brinn Hemmingson, ACG, CL

If you have been fortunate enough to attend Harvey is a mechanical engineer and research
a District 7 Toastmasters’ Conference or a TLI comes naturally to him. But he enjoys this – it is
near Portland in recent years, you may have seen in his words “like solving a puzzle or panning for
the District 7 Historian Harvey Schowe’s display gold.” And one never knows what may turn up.
boards. Covered with print outs of articles and He has found a letter to one public speaker from
photos gleaned from magazines and microfilm, President Theodore Roosevelt; and to another,
these are Harvey’s labor of love. one from Albert Einstein.

Harvey Schowe joined Toastmasters Blue Ox He says, “I think the best way to preserve the
club #1235 in October, 1980. This club had records district history is to make it available through
dating back to 1952, and Harvey wrote several displays, web history, and presentations to clubs.”
hundred pages of history for his HPL project. His invaluable gift to us all continues to grow.
In 2006 he became the District 7 Historian. In
2007, Glenn Meek, the former historian passed Brinn Hemmingson joined Toastmasters in
away and Harvey, together with Brian Barkman, 2004 and is a member of Portland Progres-
a past District 7 Governor, put together the first sives. She is a past district and club leader. She
display as a tribute to Glenn. is joining Voices! as a staff writer with the July
issue.
Harvey’s display boards represent hundreds
of hours of research. With Microsoft Publisher
he can print and mount display sheets taking 20
minutes per board. The scope of his project has
expanded, too. He includes early public speakers,
individuals predating Toastmasters who contrib-
uted to its development. He had notebooks and
binders chock full of his research.

This morning he is in his element, looking
through microfilm from 1946 as he researches
the early years of Oregon City Toastmasters
for an article for Voices. He shows me several
photographs and articles he has accumulated. An
important woman, Helen Miller-Senn, (1927) was
a teacher at the University of Oregon Extension
School who taught a speaking course with topics
similar to those of our manuals. There are photos
of some of the earliest individuals who started
clubs; some of them attended Helen’s class. Some
articles surprise and delight – Arthur Ward started
the Elucidator club in 1938 and he had women
members long before the official permission was
given for female members. I see articles about
the Public Forum (1905) which was very popular
long before Toastmasters was begun.

12 Volume 2 Issue 12 - JUNE 2016