Harris Dusenbery, who fought in the mountains of Italy during World War II and still enjoyed strolling through downtown after entering his second century, died Sunday at age 101.
Dusenbery had a stroke on Sept. 27 and died in Portland following a week of hospitalization, said his daughter, Diane Waggoner.
Dusenbery and his wife, Evelyn, who died in 2008, were generous community contributors. He was a co-winner in 2012 of the Community Foundation’s first Lifetime of Giving Award, which honored years of philanthropic generosity by the Dusenberys.
“One thing my dad talked about: In retirement, he said he and mother lived on a third of their income, traveled on a third and gave a third away,” Waggoner said. “They cared a great deal about the community.”
The Columbian published a profile of Dusenbery in January, focusing on his time with the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division in Italy.
“The lowest-ranking person in the 10th Mountain Division had more freedom and less regimentation” than any other soldier in the Army, Dusenbery told The Columbian. He figured he was going to get drafted eventually; to get his preferred slot, Dusenbery enlisted.
He certainly had other options. Born in 1914, Dusenbery graduated from Portland’s Reed College in 1936 with a degree in political science. He went to work as a Social Security official in 1940 in Portland, where Harris and Evelyn started their family. Their son, David, was already on the way when the U.S. entered the war.
“They were famously called ‘pre-Pearl Harbor babies,’ ” Dusenbery said.
(Fathers with children born before Sept. 15, 1942, were deferred from the draft pool, until the policy was changed on Oct. 1, 1943.)
“At Fort Lewis, a sergeant who decided assignments said, ‘With your education, I can do great things for you in the Army,’ ” said Dusenbery, who got his first skis as an 8-year-old in Montana.
When Dusenbery told the sergeant he wanted to be a rifleman on skis, “he was a little surprised.”
Dusenbery wound up winning a Bronze Star during the Po Valley campaign.
After the war, he returned to his civilian job, then retired at 55.
“They started traveling after they paid for our college educations,” said Waggoner, a 1964 graduate of Fort Vancouver. (David Dusenbery was a 1960 Fort grad.)
Their parents enjoyed spur-of-the-moment travel, including some adventures Waggoner said she was glad she didn’t know about at the time.
“Probably the most dangerous thing was a four-masted schooner voyage across the Atlantic Ocean,” Waggoner said.
“They didn’t have a functioning radio, and it wasn’t in the regular shipping lanes,” she said. “I was totally unaware. They could have gone down and we’d never have known what happened.”
“It wasn’t licensed for passengers, so they were officially listed as crew members — even though they had to pay,” David Dusenbery recalled.
On the philanthropy side, “His biggest passion was probably the arts, including the Vancouver Symphony,” said Anne Digenis, senior philanthropic adviser at the Community Foundation.
Waggoner said she and her dad actually had had a date for the symphony’s season opener: “The plan had been to go to the Saturday afternoon concert.”
