| Notes |
- The Dalles Chronicle
June 16, 2003
Dr. Larry J. Blake, 73, died in The Dalles June 11, 2003.
He was born April 25, 1930 in Kalispell, Montana, the eldest of four sons of Morris E. Blake and Leah V. Blake.
After graduating from Flathead High School in 1948, he attended Montana State University, graduating from the University of Washington with a bachelors degree in 1957 and a Masters in 1960, and a Ph.D from the University of Arizona in 1966.
In 1952, he married H. Jeane Trippet, who graduated with him from Flathead; they raised five children.
He worked as a registered civil engineer at various firms, joining the founding faculty of Highline College in Washington in 1962 and becoming founding president of Flathead Valley Community College in 1967 in Kalispell, where he was elected to the board of directors of the National Association of Community and Junior Colleges.
From there, he was selected founding president of Fraser Valley College in British Columbia in 1974, state president of the 58-collecge North Carolina System in 1979, president of Oregon Institute of Technology in 1983 and president of Lassen College in California in 1990, where he retired in 1994.
Since then he and wife, Jeane, wintered in Mesa, Arizona and summered in Oregon where he was employed by the Center for Medical Research in Klamath Falls.
Although Dr. Blake was educated as an engineer and spent his career as a College president, two vocational interests followed him through his life. One was music. He was a member of the high school symphonic bands where he played a baritone, and in orchestra he played French horn. He continued with the French horn in college and in the Highline Symphony.
In high school, he was an original member of the Don Lawrence band where he played valve trombone. In Bozeman (Montana) he was a member of the MSU symphonic and marching bands. He was also a member of the National Guard Band where he played the tuba. In 1951 he was accepted for the National Intercollegiate band where he joined 104 other college musicians throughout the country.
After college he was drafted and joined the San Luis Obispo (California)Camp band. In addition he was also a member of the Kalispell and Klamath Falls, city bands.
The other interest he followed was journalism. Starting in high school, where he was sports editor of the Arrow, he went on to be editor of the MSU Exponent. On the way to and from Korea, he was editor of the ship's newspaper. In Korea he wrote a weekly column for the Kalispell News-Farm Journal, which won first place in the nation as determined by the National Editorial Association.
Following retirement in 1994, he took a consulting job with the Association of European Universities and he and Jeane traveled to Bratislava, Slovakia, where he tested a university evaluation system at Slovakia Technical University. At the end of the test he suffered a stroke and returned home. In 2000, the Blakes moved to The Dalles where he became a resident of the Oregon Veterans' Home. In 2002, they were joined by friends and family in celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary.
He is survived by his wife, Jeane, children Howard, Kathleen, and Larry Jr., Portland; Fred, Klamath Falls; and Richard, Sammamish, Washington; and 14 Grandchildren.
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1930 - 2003 (73 years)
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