Louise "Klemperer" K. Sather

Both Louise and I were students at Reed College and what appears below I wrote originally for the Reed College magazine, where eventually a much condensed version will appear. The photos of Louise were taken at a various times and places during our marriage. Finally, at the end of this memorial, I have attached a piece written by Louise herself following the 2015 “Walk to Defeat ALS.” Here she reflects on her experiences and the enormity of the disease that in less than a year from the time she was writing would take her life—Clifford Sather. My beloved wife Louise passed away at our home in Southwest Portland at 11:15 am on August 23, 2016. The cause of her death was ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Louise was born in Chicago on May 16, 1939, the only child of Leo and Helen (Sternberg) Klemperer. While still quite young, her parents moved to Winnetka, on the North Shore. Here she attended New Trier high school. Upon graduating, she came to Reed in the fall of 1957. Majoring in literature, she wrote her senior thesis on the Joseph novels of Thomas Mann, and graduated with the class of 1961. Louise and I first met in an 8 o’clock German class during our first semester at Reed. We seem not to have noticed each other at first, for by the time we did, Louise, full of life and strikingly beautiful, had already acquired several boyfriends (three, I believe!). But, one morning we did notice and after class, we began to talk as we walked through the Reed canyon. And so we began a love affair that continued until our final year, when, sadly—and painfully—we parted—Louise to become a potter and artist, I for graduate school at Harvard, fieldwork in Borneo, and, eventually, an academic life as an anthropologist. Louise and Reed were never a perfect fit. By the end of her senior year, she felt, as she wrote later, that she had reached “a cerebral dead end” and was keen to begin something entirely new, preferably involving her hands rather than her intellect. Remembering the pleasure of working with clay in grade school, she took a pottery class. The experience was a revelation: “Sitting at the pottery wheel trying to shape the soft, spinning clay, I felt I’d rather be right here, right now, doing this than anything else in the world.” From then on, her life took a new direction. After formal training in ceramics, and a Masters of Fine Arts from Alfred University in New York, she began a career as a potter. In the late 1960s Louise moved to South Haven, Michigan, across the lake from Winnetka where her parents still lived. There she joined a community of artists and craftspeople and married a Dutch-born potter named Heiko Boer. Full of what she described as “60s idealism,” the community was part of a “back to the land” movement. Here, craftspeople sought to lead simpler lives, producing beautiful objects like handmade pottery which people would buy and use in their everyday lives, thereby making the world a better place for all. “Unfortunately,” she wrote, “it wasn’t that simple.” Making a living as a potter was difficult and winters on Lake Michigan were often brutal. Nevertheless, in showing and selling her work, Louise developed her own distinctive style as a potter, one that incorporated the shapes and textures of natural objects, such as rocks and melting ice, so as to express the processes in nature that had created these objects. After she and Heiko were divorced, Louise moved back to Portland in 1979 with her son Tom, who was then 6 years old. In Portland she taught art and creativity classes at what was then the Oregon School of Arts and Crafts, continued to make pottery part-time, and worked as free-lance writer, writing art columns, reviews and interviews for American Ceramics, Willamette Week, and The Oregonian. She also co-authored a catalogue volume on twentieth century Japanese prints (Images of a Changing World) that was published by the Portland Art Museum in 1983 and conducted on-the-air interviews with artists and musicians for KBOO radio station. From her father she inherited a life-long love of classical music and in high school and at Reed played the string bass. Distantly related to the conductor Otto Klemperer, her father took her as a child to summer concerts at Ravinia whenever Klemperer was conducting there. Going backstage, she remembered with delight how the great man addressed her as his “little relative.” One of her early KBOO interviews was with David Shifrin, shortly before he became Musical Director of Chamber Music Northwest, and down until the last year of her life, the musical high-point of Louise’s year was always the CMNW concerts at Reed. At the end of the 1980s, Louise’s life again shifted direction. In her journals, she wrote: One rainy winter day, I was interviewing the ceramic sculptor, Patti Warashina, and we were looking at pictures of her artwork, spread out in chronological order. She was talking about them and then about her life and I suddenly realized what a profound interplay there is between one’s life and art. Louise was particularly struck by the therapeutic implications of this interplay. Going back to graduate school, this time to Lewis and Clark, she obtained a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology in 1990. To this she added art therapy training at Natalie Rogers’ Person-Centered Expressive Therapy Institute in California. During her training, Louise worked for three months in 1990 as a counselor in the Reed College Counseling Center. After certification, she opened her own practice, focused primarily on cognitive-behavioral and expressive art therapy. At the time, she described her counseling practice this way: My clients came for healing from depression or post-traumatic stress, for personal growth, breaking blocks to creativity, or to find their own voice. Other clients came wanting to use imagery and the expressive arts to work on issues around medical conditions, or as a therapy adjunct to medical treatments. Louise found great satisfaction working as a therapist and, at the same time was deeply involved in raising her son. Later, in 1996, with Tom now away at college, she wrote: I loved this work, as well as continuing with my artwork. My son had grown up and gone to college. I had a joyful, meaningful life,…and would have been happy to have continued, but then—I ran into my old college sweetheart (the one I should have married!). Louise and I unexpectedly met in the fall of 1996. After years in Southeast Asia and Australia, I had just returned to Portland to teach anthropology at Reed. My office in Eliot Hall was, in fact, just several floors above the old classroom where we had first met. The old love returned. I was scheduled, however, to take up a professorship at the University of Helsinki in 1998. As it turned out, Louise instantly fell in love with Finland just as I had, and in November 2001, Louise and I were married in Chicago, at the Cook County Courthouse, with her mother and Tom present. At last, we had the marriage we had always, it seemed to us, been meant to have. Describing what happened next, Louise wrote: We married in 2001. I closed my practice, sold my house,.. gave away my dog, then joined Cliff in Borneo. In January I had returned to Sarawak, in Malaysian Borneo, where I had been doing research since the mid-1960s. I was now chair of a university Dayak Studies program and as soon as we were married, Louise joined me. Here we lived and worked for the next two and a half incredibly happy and productive years. Shortly before leaving Sarawak in 2003, an opportunity arose to pursue a project I had long dreamed of, recording a Saribas Iban healing ritual called the Sugi Sakit. Once performed frequently, the ritual was now on the verge of disappearing. I had seen it performed in the late 70s and realized that it precisely fit Louise’s interests. At its heart was a narrative epic, composed in poetic language and sung for the patient by a priest bard. Aesthetic beauty, in this case the beauty of the narrative’s language and of the setting that symbolically identified the patient and others with the heroes and heroines of the epic, were seen as crucial to the ritual’s effectiveness as a work of healing. In August, 2003, we recorded in the field a complete version of the Sugi Sakit, together with extensive commentary from the last living priest bard able to perform it. The following year, we returned to Sarawak from Finland to record additional commentary and a second performance. Having now reached the age of retirement, Louise and I decided, rather than retire, to return to the University of Helsinki. The next two years and beyond were, in many ways, the happiest years of our lives. At the university, I resumed teaching and supervising graduate students, most of whom I had worked with before, while Louise conducted a popular series of thesis-writing workshops. She also counseled students with writing blocks. At the end of the 2005 academic year, I retired and Louise and I returned to Portland. Here we bought a house and Louise made the lower level into an art studio. We continued to supervise graduate students, write and edit, and, a number of times, returned to Sarawak to continue work on the Sugi Sakit. "For Louise, one of the great pleasures of retirement was being able to spend time with her son Tom, his wife Whitney, and her three grandchildren: Hanora, Heiko, and Nathaniel." In 2013, Louise’s doctors found signs of breast cancer. These were confirmed early the next year and in 2014 Louise underwent surgery followed by chemotherapy. In December her doctors pronounced her completely cancer free. However, new symptoms appeared, notably speech difficulties and weakness in her right arm and leg. For a time her neurologist was encouraging, but in May 2015, after a multitude of tests, he delivered the devastating diagnosis of ALS. We knew at once that we had only a limited time left together. Tragically, she suffered from a particularly aggressive form of the disease, and the time we had proved to be far shortly than we had imagined. Although she soon lost her ability to speak, her mind was unaffected. She never lost her courage or sense of humor, nor, mercifully, the use of her writing hand. Down to the last minutes of her life, she continued to communicate by writing. Following her earlier diagnosis with breast cancer, Louise began to write a journal, as a remembrance for Tom and me. Drawing on earlier writings, and reflecting her rich inner life, she described all that she had loved in life, her struggles with illness, and, in the end, to help us work through our own impending grief, her gradual coming to terms with dying. Completing her journal in June, Louise died peacefully at home two months later, surrounded by family and friends. Full of life, wise, compassionate, beautiful, humorous and caring, Louise reached out and touched many peoples’ lives, often profoundly. She clearly inspired love in others, a fact that came home to me after her death in writing to friends all over the world. Among the many replies I received was an email message from an old and very dear Iban friend, who told me something I hadn’t known, that several years earlier his family had named a newly-born granddaughter for Louise!! This is a signal honor in a society that places great store in names. Louise, I am sure, would have been thrilled and delighted to know that there was now a young Iban Louise growing up in Sarawak—Clifford Sather The following was written by Louise in September 2015. ALS Walk (to defeat ALS)* I didn’t want to do it—got very anxious, with cold chills creeping over my body, the bottom of my stomach had dropped 50’ below the ground—what if, what if—what if I can’t do it, what if I won’t do it, what if there’s no toilet, what if I get sick, sob hysterically, make a spectacle of myself…people will stare at me… Jack was gracious, more like a generous host than a team captain for the walk. It was cool, but I had worn warm clothes and there was beautiful, bright sunshine. A band was playing loud wild cheerful music to dance to (what did that have to do with ALS?). The walk started. This is my “coming out”—being in a wheelchair—couldn’t walk more than 2 blocks without it, now. It was sweet knowing Cliff was behind me, pushing—otherwise I would have felt so alone, starting out. The walk began with going under a huge black inflated vinyl arch, “Defeat ALS,” but it may as well have said “Abandon all hope, oh ye who enter here.” Now the band music was reduced to drumbeats, beating out a walking rhythm. As I passed under the arch, I broke out in huge sobs—Oh, I don’t want to be here—in this wheelchair—I don’t want to have ALS—Oh—let me be one of the spectators there on the sideline. We kept moving and I tried to distract myself with memories of being outdoors on an early autumn day like this with Heiko at an art fair, selling our pots—how I loved that life. How sweet Cliff is to be pushing this chair—how wonderful to know I can completely count on him. I’ve never felt closer. Funny, all our years together, we never dreamed it would come to this. We are on a paved esplanade. On our right, the river, shining and sparkling, little ripples reflecting the glorious sunlight. On our left, a park. Trees of green, trees of gold, people sitting on benches watch us as we pass by. One woman catches my eye—pity on her face. UGH!! I am not prepared for that. I had hoped they would cheer me on, or ignore the procession, but pity? OK, Louise, don’t make eye contact—too painful. Now we are passing behind Saturday Market—How I would love to trade places with any of the potters there, or with my potter self, 40 years ago! No luck. Keep on going. Actually, this is beautiful! What a lovely walk. Now it feels like I am floating, silently passing over the river on the Steele Bridge walkway under the cars and trucks. Here it is close to the water, quiet, the air cold, coming up from the water. Bicyclists try to pass us on this narrow walkway and get caught up in our parade. Let them by, let them by—they belong to the Living, they don’t belong with us. I didn’t know there was a walkway along the east side of the river—parts are like the industrial side of the lahti in Helsinki where we stood on a bridge and threw our Passover breadcrumbs into the water: suddenly terns appeared, flying in to snatch them as they fell. Again, I feel like I am floating. Is this what it feels like to be dead? Will I come back in future years and float over a parade like this, raining down love and blessings on the new PALS**? Now I see our long line stretching behind us along the riverbank and extending forward, with some already crossing the Hawthorne Bridge—so many. That is moving—more tears, this time, of gratitude. Being part of this long line dissolves my sadness. Coming on this walk today, I acknowledged my new state—a PALS—having a life with a known fate—well, not exactly. The outcome is known—certain death—but the details—how I live the life that is left, what I do with that which has been given to me—that is up to me. I remember the old manual slide rule—you slid the tables back and forth to put in your numbers, and another table gave you an answer number—but you had to figure out where the decimal point went—which entirely changed the number’s meaning and its value. Walking to Defeat ALS—a drug has already been found, but the research necessary for an available pill—that will take too long to help me. Still, in my own life I defeat the despair surrounding ALS everytime I do something positive—write this vignette, come on this walk. That moves the decimal point—it gives my own ALS a different meaning, a different value. We stop and join Jack and the rest of the team at the end of the Hawthorne Bridge. I give back the borrowed wheelchair—soon enough, I’ll have my own. Good! I don’t have to go under that arch again. I carry some of the positive energy and enthusiasm of the morning as I slowly make my way back to our car.—Louise Klemperer Sather *Walk to Defeat ALS, sponsored by the ALS Association Oregon and SW Washington Chapter, was held in downtown Portland on September 27, 2015. My husband, Cliff, and I were on Jack Griffith’s team, Jack’s Tracks. **PALS: person with ALS. Service Information