The Vanport Idea

In not much more time than it takes to lay a keel, war-born Vanport City became Oregon's second largest city (pop. 39,000). When V-J day came and its Kaiser shipyard workers left, the city--midway between Vancouver, Wash, and Portland, Ore.--began to die. Last week the joint was jumping again.

The man who juked it up was Dr. Stephen E. Epler, first heard from as the inventor of six-man football.* An energetic young (36) Navy veteran, he had been made counselor on veterans' education in Oregon. He found a home for himself at Vanport, began mulling how to get all the applicants into Oregon's overcrowded colleges. Vanport City gave him the idea: "Why try to take housing centers to the colleges? Let's bring colleges to the housing centers."

Last month "Vanport Center College" opened for business in the half-deserted city's junior high school. Ideaman Epler had talked 17 vacationing Oregon professors into teaching the first session. It was a cinch to sign up 221 students, all but 14 of them veterans. In Vanport City, the students and their families found cheap apartments ($30 to $47.50 a month), nursery schools, stores, theaters, a hospital and library.

Oregon's board of education quickly approved the Epler summer school, just as quickly approved Epler's bid to keep Vanport Center College open next fall--as an accredited junior college. Last week Epler had 577 applications for the new term, and more were coming in every mail. And the idea was catching. Just across the way--on the Washington side of the Columbia River--another new college was in the works. Seattle's overcrowded University of Washington was eyeing the Army's abandoned Vancouver Barracks.

*Football on a smaller field, with more passing, less rushing. Some 3,500 little high schools play it.

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