george rives and oral history and 2005 and united states district court of oregon historical society

I signed up late in July of this year to conduct an oral history of Portland attorney George Rives for the United States District Court of Oregon Historical Society. I never had conducted an oral history previously but a professional oral historian, Donna Sinclair, urged me to learn some techniques of interview and research, and I decided to take on the task. Over the course of four interviews from Sept. 23 until Nov. 6 I spoke with George about his long and fruitful life. The first interview tape actually didn't work well (due to equipment malfunction, an issue that I was instructed to be aware of in the July training even I attended), and so George and I had to repeat session 1. Nevertheless, I eventually mastered the method and learned a great deal about oral history, as well as George, through the process. In this essay I want to relate two things that didn't make it into the tapes because they came out informally through our conversation (i.e., when the tapes were "off") but which give an insight into George that, I think, will be helpful to have and which he would not mind communicating.

Philosophical Reading

When I arrived at George's home yesterday to complete our interview, I noted that he was reading two massive volumes, strategically placed next to his chair. They were Richard Tarnas' The Passion of the Western Mind and Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. I told him it was unusual, I thought, for a 90 year-old to be reading histories of philosophy and ideas, but he smiled and said in his laconic and courtly Kentucky style, "Well, it goes back to Dr. Adler's seminar." That was all he said, but of course, I had to probe. 'When,' I thought, 'had he run across Mortimer Adler?' I knew that Adler had been at Columbia and Chicago, but I also knew that George had never spent any significant time either place. Thus I asked him about his remark. George explained, 'When I was an attorney with Brobeck, Pfleger in San Francisco (1945-63), I attended a seminar given by Dr. Adler at a mansion in Pacific Heights.' As the story unfolded, I learned that George had been selected to attend a weekly gathering on the "great ideas" (the idea that consumed Adler in the 1950s, as well as before) taught by Adler in Socratic fasion in San Francisco, where he was living in the mid-1950s. This was not a huge class; George said they sat around a seminar table to talk and listen once a week after work.

He had to drop out after a while because of he press of his work duties, but this experience led George to buy the Great Books (all of which are displayed on his library shelves at home and into which he occasionally dips) and long for the day when he would be able to do the really "important" things of life (read great ideas) rather than simply the "necessary" things--serve the interests of clients. It happened that George became one of the more successful experts on private utility law during his day (i.e., doing the "necessary things"). Now, in his 10th decade, he finds time for philosophy.

The Return of a Book

If philosophy is one of George's great interests today, another is his family. He told with great precision and obvious delight in the (repeated) first session the story of his Kentucky/Tennessee forebears, and I got the impression he would easily and eagerly have told me about all the Rives "cousins" had I given him the chance. But one event happened this week that he mentioned to me regarding family that he wanted to mention to me.

He told me that he received in the mail this week a book from a niece. This niece was the grandaughter of the youngest son of the Civil War soldier, George's grandfather (see earlier essay). Thus, George and the niece were one generation apart (she was born about 1940). After George's grandfather died, the youngest son inherited the house, and then the next two generations of that family grew up in the same farmhouse. It burned in the late 1940s, but a new house was erected on the same spot. Thus, George's niece spent the first few years of her life on the same homestead where George's grandfather spent the last years of his life.

All of this is important to know to understand the book that George received from his niece. It was a book entitled English Words by Charles Frederick Johnson (published in 1891). On the inside cover was George's father's name (also George Rives) in his own hand and then the word "Centre." When George said these things to me it immediately became clear what this book was. It was George's father's college textbook, probably for an English class. George Rives Sr. had grown up in KY and attended Centre College in Danville, KY for a year from 1892-93 but then was called back to the farm after his first year because of poor economic conditions (what we now know as the Depression of 1893). He no doubt returned to the farm, bringing his few books with him. Unlike today, there was no market for used textbooks, where they give you $5 for a book you bought three months earlier for $50 and then turn around and resell it to the next generation of students for $40.

And then the book English Words simply sat in the attic of the old homestead for 50 years, probably untouched, until the fire in the 1940s destroyed the home. No one knows why the book didn't go up in flames with the rest of the house, but for some reason it survived. Then, 60 years after the fire it showed up in George's mail, the very week we were finishing our oral history. I think it is a fitting sign from the gods that we have made a complete circle in our conversation--from the days of George's father (and before) through all of George's days and now, at the end, with a memory of George's father. Our lives return to the same streams which long ago merged into great rivers. We thought the streams had disappeared but we learn, at the very end of life, that all there really is are those streams. The great rivers are just water.

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