Obituary of Stephen Wilhelmi

Stephen Wilhelmi was born outside of Des Moines on November 13, 1943, to a non-union carpenter who loved to fish and a waitress who loved him anyway. They raised him in Marshalltown, Iowa, lived on a small farm with his grandparents, along with a dog (Spot), a cow, pigs, chickens, meager soil and bills that ended their farming ways. His parents and grandparents lived through the depression, managed with little and taught him to be frugal but courteous. He remained both. His start on a farm stayed with him. He became a forester and then a biologist and a teacher. He left Iowa at 18 to study Forestry at Oregon State University. He loved Corvallis – Three Sisters, The Farmhouse Fraternity, Newport, Mo’s, Yachats, the coast, dunes. He got his degree. Vietnam was the current war. He joined the Peace Corps and spent two years, 1966-1968, in Concepcion, Chile, working with other volunteers and Chilenos on reforestation. During that time, he mastered Spanish and travelled to Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru. Also, during that time Bobby Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King were assassinated here. When he came back, he decided the US forestry industry was too environmentally destructive and added a teaching degree. He was hired to teach Biology at Clackamas Highschool, outside Portland. He lived and taught there for 25 years, then returned to Corvallis. He next spent ten years teaching in the OSU Math and Science College of Education supervising student teachers, something he greatly enjoyed. He was always a hiker, camper, canoeist, fisherman. He always had a Golden Retriever who could find a ball left on an island in the Willamette he had visited the year before or in a park he had stayed in on a road trip. As a kid he hunted for dinner. He stopped shooting things when he grew up. For most of his life he was happy to catch and throw back. He read extensively, loved poetry– Yeats, Williams, Roethke, Stafford, Bishop, Neruda– and shared Izaak Walton’s meditative calm. He loved to drive on back roads and every summer headed into the US in his camper via one network or other that connected rural routes to lakes and streams. His constant pleasure, however, was Gold Lake, nearby. He had a midwestern honorableness and respect for others which shaped all his dealings and relationships, with students, strangers, and friends. He didn’t judge anyone or leap to conclusions. He left his backdoor unlocked in midwestern fashion for neighbors to use. He lived well, took excellent photographs, loved coffee, music, grillwork, as did Borges, a writer he read and reread. Steve died at 79 of Lewy Body disease. It took him fully and quickly. He didn’t manage to tell everyone he loved that he was being undone, but he told the few who were always close and asked them to let others know.