“Willamette University’s first archivist puts a face on history”

<<from the Statesman Journal>>

Amid the Wallulah yearbooks, the old senior theses, reel-to-reel tapes and the plastic seal balancing a gold dollar sign on its nose, Mary McKay is in her own kind of heaven.

“The most fun part of my job is you get sucked in,” said Willamette University’s first archivist.

“You just get to explore and learn.

“I get to work with history on the back end.”

The West’s oldest university, founded officially in 1842, is a treasure trove of history, but the Salem school only got serious about the past when it hired someone from the present, McKay, who joined Willamette a year and a half ago, as its first real historian.

<<full article at the SJ>>

A pioneering volunteer

<<from the Statesman Journal>>

Daraleen Wade of Keizer began her interest in history — and genealogy — with childhood curiosity about the Oregon Trail.

As a volunteer with the state Archives Division, which recently honored her and other volunteers, Wade is helping compile information on everyone who lived in Oregon before statehood on Feb. 14, 1859.

“I think it’s good for me, mentally and physically,” she said. “I enjoy the people I work with, the contacts — and the chance to have a laugh or two. I have no intention of quitting, until I cannot get here.”

With 15 years as a volunteer and still going strong, she has made history herself.

<<full article at the SJ>>