B Y A N I TA J O H N S O N
LOTTE STREISINGER
Artist, arts supporter and advocate for peace
otte Streisinger was a fierce advocate, a force for the arts, for the crafts and for this community for
more than half a century. She died peacefully at home surrounded by her family on Dec. 6 at age 90. A
memorial service will be held 5:30 pm Jan. 6 at Temple Beth Israel.
She and her husband, George, and two daughters, Cory and Lisa, came to Eugene in 1960, drawn
by scientists at the University of Oregon, where he helped found the famed Institute of Molecular
Biology. Already an accomplished potter, Lotte was also deeply involved in the peace movement; she found
a way to combine those two passions in the Eugene Peace Information Center sale, the EPIC holiday sale of
local crafts started in 1961 and directed by her for about 10 years.
Peace advocacy was especially important to this woman who grew up a Jewish child in Nazi Germany,
the hostile home her family left just before the Holocaust, when she was 10 years old. The Seilmans came to
America from Munich in 1937.
The EPIC sale in Eugene grew so successful that Lotte and others saw the need for the Saturday Market,
a once-a-week event from spring until Christmas outdoors on public property. The market has become a pub-
lic institution and a powerful outlet for the crafts community she championed. She also was a regular at the
Farmers Market, shopping there long after she needed a walker to maneuver the stands.
Yet another of her legacies is the art in public buildings in Eugene and beyond. Lotte administered the
program that decided what art would grace the Hult Center, the 1970s group of science buildings on the UO
campus, the Eugene airport and the Knight library. Some of her work has a place in the UO’s Streisinger
Hall, named for her husband, who died in 1984, and she is one of the wonderful “flying people” in the airport.
For years she discussed local art on the popular KLCC radio program Viz City. She frequently fired off
controversial letters to the editor of the Register-Guard.
Her primary craft, her pottery, will continue to be appreciated for years by so many households in this
community who display and use it daily both for its beauty and its functionality.
Lotte Streisinger asked that donations in her name be made to NCAP (Northwest Center for Alternatives
to Pesticides), P.O. Box 1393, Eugene OR 97440. ■
P H O T O C O U R T E S Y T H E S T R E I S I N G E R FA M I LY
L
HAPPENING
PEOPLE
B Y PA U L N E E V E L
LOTTE STREISINGER
6
AARON ORTON
Born in Palmer, Alaska, Aaron Orton moved with his parents to Lane County, Oregon, when he was
eight. “My dad met my mother here in the ’70s,” he says, “in Gowdyville, beyond Lorane. We came
back and lived on Spencer Creek Road.” Orton went to high school in Crow through junior year, then fin-
ished at Churchill High in Eugene. “I joined the Marines Infantry two weeks after graduation,” he says.
“I was in Iraq from July 2004 to February 2005. I saw things in combat that a 19-year-old shouldn’t
see.” After two more deployments on standby in Kuwait and a “West Pacific float,” Orton retired from
the Marines as a corporal in 2007 and entered the Exercise and Movement Science Program at Lane
Community College. “My mom was into bodybuilding,” he explains. “She brought me into the gym in
Alaska and here.” He worked part-time as a trainer at OZ Fitness during his second year at Lane, got
hooked on competitive bodybuilding and, after graduation, opened a gym along with two friends. “My
buddies got into CrossFit,” he says, “and I kept doing personal training, mostly one-on-one. I trained
people for bodybuilding.” He built a reputation and, in 2011, opened Genuine Fitness at 1369 W. 6th
Avenue in Eugene. Since then, GF has grown from two trainers to nine and twice knocked down walls
to expand. “We serve all kinds of clients, young to old,” he says. “Our goal is education, trying to as-
sure that everyone pursues realistic goals in a healthy way.” In 2015, he married a fellow trainer and
bodybuilder, known since as Lyndsi Orton. Their twins Maddox and Nevaeh are one year old.
December 21, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com