news
Farewell
to Sleuth
and Mole
EUGENE EDUCATOR AND EW
WINE WRITER LANCE SPARKS
REMEMBERED
By Camilla Mortensen
A
fter longtime Eugene Weekly wine
columnist Lance Sparks retired, the
paper briefly searched for another
wine writer.
Then EW stopped the search,
because it wasn’t so much about the
wine as it was about the way Sparks
blended his encyclopedic wine knowledge with quirky
characters and, from time to time, politics.
Sparks’ final column in September 2017 is emblematic
of his style. He says a sad goodbye to his fictional partner in
wine sleuthing, Mole, and to his readers, and somehow also
writes about rosés, one of his favorite topics over the years.
In answer to Mole’s question of why Sleuth (Sparks) and
Mole are closing their “Wine Investigations,” Sparks writes:
“‘You’re right, pal,’ I answered, my own voice hoarse,
‘and I couldn’t have done any of this without you, but I feel
like I’m knocking on Heaven’s door, having trouble seeing
or even staying on my feet. I can still taste pretty well.’”
Sparks, a writer and teacher, and a beloved family and
community member, died March 1 at age 75 of progressive
supranuclear palsy.
Sparks taught at Lane and Linn-Benton community
colleges as well as the University of Oregon and University
of Portland. His wife, Kat Chinn, says Sparks had a
“profound effect on students and people he coached and
mentored all these years.” She said students routinely
commented on how he made a difference in their lives.
She adds, “I know he did mine.”
Sparks earned a BA at the University of Nevada and
a Ph.D. in psycholinguistics at the University of Oregon.
In addition to teaching and his 20-year tenure at EW
writing about wine and other topics, he wrote for Eugene
Magazine, was a headwaiter at Excelsior Inn Ristorante
and managed Ambrosia.
The latter is where Sparks and Chinn met 30 years
ago, she says.
Sparks was born in Pensacola, Florida, but grew up all
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E U G E N E W E E K LY . C O M
over the world with his mother and stepfather, who was in
the Navy. Sparks went to 14 different high schools, lived
three years in Africa, and learned Arabic and French.
He wrote sometimes of his youth in his columns,
remembering in a 2013 piece on wine growlers how while
living in Morocco he and his friend Pierrot would run to
the neighborhood grocery store with bottles to be filled
with red and rosé wines. “No questions about our ages, no
issues about whether we intended to get drunk.”
He finishes, “Someday soon I’d like to send my
grandson to the local little store, toting a couple of vacant
growlers, doing the essential work of garnering our lunch
vins. He’d dig it. And nobody can run like that boy.”
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From elegant wines to screw caps and wine labels,
there was no wine topic Sparks couldn’t delve into, with
or without his whimsical sidekick Mole, formerly of
Flatbush, Brooklyn, more recently found in a downtown
Eugene high rise in Sparks’ fictional realm.
“He was such an interesting man with his life,” Chinn
remembers. “So damn smart about everything; there
wasn’t anything he didn’t read or have knowledge about.”
Besides Chinn, Sparks is survived by his two
stepdaughters, Shana Molnar and Dana Cooley; his
previous wife, Judith Sparks; his daughter Sulwyn Sparks;
and previous wife Evelyn Conroy, daughter Paloma
Sparks and four grandchildren.
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M A R C H
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