When I started the Distinguished Alumnus Award program at Centralia College in 1978 and got Dave White to help with it, we had no hesitation in picking the first two recipients.
The first, of course, would be the quiet Boistfort lad who climbed the ladder at Safeco Insurance to become the chief executive of one of the nation’s largest insurance agencies: Gordon Sweany.
The second? Petite Patti Morton, the shy blonde lass from Napavine, who came to the college in the early 1950s to prepare to be a meek secretary in some undistinguished office and became, instead, the first female special agent in the U.S. Department of State. At the time we chose her, she was in charge of the security in all our missions in Africa. Despite her frail appearance, wherever she traveled on the job, in Asia or in Africa, she found some mountain to climb (both literally and figuratively) or other dangerous challenges.
At one time in her career she taught big city cops how to use handguns.
Now, a woman of her vivacity and ability to open long-closed doors must have had many highly prestigious honors given her, but Patti acted as if the award from her alma mater were the only one she had received. She was delighted and participated in all associated activities with enthusiasm. At that time she was traveling yearly from her apartment in Washington, D.C., to her mother’s home south of Napavine, always by train, and she would stop on campus to visit staff members and attend campus activities, such as commencement exercises.
The Aadland home is included in her visits. She is always carrying a plastic grocery bag filled with mementos she has scrounged in stops at D.C. activities — printed tee shirts, autographs, souvenir pens, programmes, etc. dealing with the arts or government functions. We refer to her as “the Bag Lady of the Nation’s Capital.”
She has given many things to Centralia College, including antique lamp posts that once fronted the old Centralia High School building, but now light the Aadland Esplanade. She has also created an endowment that provides for an annual scholarship in her name, and she has donated many books to the college’s library.
Upon retirement she chose to remain in the city that she had come to know so well during her career. In contrast to little rural Napavine, it’s where the action is, and with her experience with the city’s comprehensive public transportation, she makes her life full with concerts, exhibits and world-moving events. Especially she has become a part of the Kennedy Center, where she helps beautify the grounds. During the practice for the televising of the Kennedy Center Awards (Merce Cunningham was one of the early winners) she is sometimes a stand-in for one of the honorees. An article in a recent Kennedy Center publication tells of the career of the amazing Patti.
She has visited the Newseum, now on the National Mall, several times, partly because its traveling extension, Newscapade, once appeared on the Centralia College campus.
But time catches up even to mountain climbers and since the death of her mother and other relatives in this area, her cross-country train trips with bags filled with goodies have become less frequent. Yet she keeps an interest in the happenings at Centralia College, and she reports on her activities in the nation’s capital to me on her typewriter with the red ribbon.
Presently she is enthusiastic about the Norman Rockwell exhibit in the Smithsonian, because it includes the painting for which Jim Stafford, Adna sculptor and a friend of hers, posed as a window washer.
She is awaiting, with even more enthusiasm, the Feb. 14 concert by Charlie Albright at the Kennedy Center and the accompanying visit by Charlie and his mother, Hyesoo.
As the saying goes, “you can take the girl out of rural Lewis County, but ... .”
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Gordon Aadland, Centralia, was a longtime Centralia College faculty member and publicist.
