Dr. Sam, Soldier, Educator, Advocate, Friend: An Autobiography by Samuel E. Kelly with Quintard Taylor

Abstract

 OHQ vol. 112, no. 2 interested in memorabilia from the 1905 Portland Lewis and Clark Exposition. He made the transition to book collecting in 1984, and by 1995, Wendlick had grown so worldly in the field that he possessed most of the main Lewis and Clark titles listed in standard bibliographies . Part of the excitement in following Wendlick as he travels a circuit from bookstores to auction houses to book fairs and to the homes of private collectors is being introduced to the people he meets. Seattle book collector George Tweney is one such person. Preston “Mac” McMann, the proprietor of Portland’s Old Oregon Bookstore is another, and Doug Erickson, Head of Special Collections and Archives at Lewis & Clark College, is a third. One could mention at least another half-dozen mentors in places as distant as New Haven, Connecticut,Princeton,New Jersey,and Blaine, Washington. Equally fascinating are insights into the legendary collectors of Americana whoWendlick never met but whose catalogues and techniques became guides to him: Thomas Streeter,HenryWagner,Charles Camp,Everett D. Graff, and others. Book selling, like book collecting, operates in a little-known and often-misunderstood world. Wendlick is an excellent teacher for the uninitiated. He was himself completely unfamiliar with the book collecting business when he began,having been employed most of his life in the construction trades around Portland. His public-highschool diploma is his Ph.D., claims Wendlick, and his story is one of hard work,perseverance, and the American Dream. It is all true. By the timeWendlick decided to transfer his bookstoalibrarywherethepublic—especially students — could use them,he had assembled, in the opinion of Doug Erickson, not just a large collection, as Wendlick had promised George Tweney, but “the world’s finest private collection of Lewis and Clark materials”(p.12). Today, that collection resides in the Aubrey R. Watzek Library on the Palatine Hill campus of Lewis & Clark College. Wendlick’s asking price was $800,000, the appraised value came in at $730,000, and the agreed-on final price in November of 1998 was a very generous half-donation, half purchase agreement of $750,000. Appendix B is a very useful listing of the multi-hundred print materials collected by Roger Wendlick: newspapers, maps, books, pamphlets, and articles all arranged by date of publication. Shotgun on My Chest is the first book published under the imprint of 12-Gauge Press, a team assembled for just this task. The first edition is limited to fewer than one thousand copies.Could it be that with such a limited run the author intends for Shotgun to become a rare book in the marketplace? Robert Carriker Gonzaga University Dr. Sam, Soldier, Educator, Advocate, Friend: An Autobiography by Samuel E. Kelly with Quintard Taylor University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 2010. Photographs, notes. 240 pages. $30.00 cloth. On May 18,1970,the University of Washington (UW) closed to acknowledge the shooting of two black students who died at the hands of police at Jackson State College in Mississippi. This gesture resulted from activist students’ demands, since UW had closed to acknowledge the student deaths at Kent State a few weeks earlier.The administrator who brokered this act was Samuel E. Kelly, whose memoir recounts his rise to prominence in academia and the U.S. military. As vice president of minority affairs at UW, Kelly transformed the campus and put the Pacific Northwest on the map as a model of success of desegregation and curriculum development. Kelly knew what he needed to succeed at UW: power to act as a full-fledged vice presi-  Reviews dent, a staff to deliver the financial and academic support, a regular budget — including bricks and mortar — to build a dignified presence on campus,and community involvement. His memoir describes an alignment of historical forces, including a flush state budget, that allowed him to almost double the population of underrepresented students graduating from UW in the early 1970s. But his story is also an account of uncommon bravery and leadership: the courage to stand firm against the racism he faced throughout his adult life. Kelly’s story highlights his ability to defend the ideal of equality in settings of...