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Krs Frances Schoen-Newspaper Hooa
U n iv e r s it y o f Oregon L ib r a r y
t ’- re n o , Oresrnn 97433
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PORTLAND OBSERNER
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Volume XVII, Number 32
June 17, 1987
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Dr. Jacquelyn Belcher, Vice President
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She Did It Her Way
by Tiffany Kell
She loves work, people and living. If Jacquelyn Belcher, Vice President
for Instruction at Lane Community College, had to sum up the reason for
her success in a song, she would choose "M y Way by Frank Sinatra.
Born in 1934 in St. Joseph, MO., Belcher has since marched through
life on a pathway she has paved with drive, determination and enthusiasm.
She says that she owes her success to two "wonderful role models, her
mother and grandmother.
When Belcher was only two weeks old, her mother divorced her father
and set out to raise Belcher and her older sister and brother in the best way
she knew how. At a time when Black women had very few resources, Bel
cher's mother opened a restaurant. Years later, says Belcher, I realized
that this was a woman who was way ahead of her times. ’
Belcher's grandmother took care of the children and house while her
mother ran a business and made decisions most Black women weren t al
lowed to at that time. Belcher's mother also set the ground work for her
activities and accomplishments. An active member of the NAACP, she
encouraged all of her children to spend whatever spare time they had con
tributing to their community.
"It has a lot to do with self esteem and realizing that you are a person of
worth, that you can make a contribution, and that you are just as impor
tant as anyone else," says Belcher about how her mother directly influen
ced her.
Education also has played an important role in Belcher's life. "I was
never the kind of child that you had to tell to study," says Belcher who gra
duated valedictorian of her senior class. Belcher later went on to receive
degrees in both law and nursing.
Belcher loves to get involved in as many activities as possible. Not only
was she a good student and active in community services, but she also
participated in a variety of sports ranging from softball to basketball and
was a ROTC cadet. Belcher describes herself as "positively competitive",
that is, she competes with herself.
In her younger years, Belcher says that she encountered no real obsta
cles. "M y growing-up years were very positive in terms of racism. I m not
saying that racism wasn't present," says Belcher, but that she wasn't "con
taminated'.^ with the negative feelings that chilled most Blacks hearts
during that time.
The community that Belcher grew up in had very few Blacks and a pre
dominant number of Polish people. Belcher remembers nothing but posi
tive reinforcement from her teachers and peers.
After high school, Belcher thought that she would like to get married,
thinking that she could do anything that she wanted without going to col
lege. However, her stepfather suggested that she at least try one semester.
Belcher agreed and found out three months later that she loved it.
Belcher graduated from Marymount College in Salina, Kansas, with a
bachelor of science in nursing and soon after got married. Her husband
was an administrator in the Air Force which meant constant moving. Bel
cher has since lived in nine different cities.
When she was 21-year-old, she and her husband moved to Lincoln, Neb
raska, where she promptly got a nursing job in a hospital that had never had
a Black nurse. Only two weeks after she began work, the head nurse went
on vacation. Belcher was then asked to fill in, which she eagerly did. As
luck would have it, the head nurse never returned, and Belcher took charge
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Belcher admits that it took some of the doctors at least three to four
months to accept her, because they had had little experience with an edu
cated Black person. However, no one ever was discourteous, says Bel
cher, and eventually everyone treated her as an equal. It was a great
"sense of success," she says.
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Belcher's popularity grew at the hospital, especially amongst the nursing
students, who had decided that Belcher would make a great instructor.
Encouraged by their enthusiasm and her own love for working with stu
dents, Belcher then went back to school at the University of Nebraska.
Several moves later she received her Master of Nursing degree at Mary
mount in 1966.
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Once she had entered teaching, she knew that she would teach forever.
"To help people discover and understand the world they live in," says Bel
cher, "is the most beautiful thing in life."
In 1956 Belcher gave birth to twin girls. While moving and working, Bel
cher also raised her daughters who are now both successful career women.
Belcher's daughters grew up with her own words of wisdom. She would
instill in them the belief that they "could do whatever it is they wanted."
Having followed the military somewhat sheltered her daughters, says
Belcher. They weren't exposed to very much beligerent racism nor did they
ever attend segregated schools. They were lucky in that they had a chance
to live among a very diverse group of people, she says.
The only instance of blatant discrimination that Belcher can recall was in
the late 1950s. She and her husband took their daughters out to breakfast
at a pancake house that was close to the base. Upon seating themselves,
they were informed by the waitress that she could not serve them. Bel
cher's husband immediately reported the incident to his base commander
who then ordered the restaurant off limits to all military personnel. Con
sequently, the pancake house was forced out of business.
In 1969 Belcher and her family finally settled in Seattle, WA. There she
worked at Bellevue as an instructor of nursing for two years, division chair
of health sciences for four years and tO associate dean of instruction for
the past nine years. Her list of corr mity activities, while in Seattle,
seems endless, ranging from serving on the boards of Seattle-King County
Chapter of the American Red Cross to participating in the Women's Net
work of Professionals, Managerial and Businesswomen.
Belcher also attended the University of Puget Sound while in Seattle and
received her Doctor of Jurisprudence in 1983.
In 1986 Belcher began looking for yet another career challenge. That
was when she learned of the opening at Lane Community College in
Eugene. Belcher knew people there and was familiar with the area, be
cause they had lived in Eugene for four years before moving to Seattle.
Seizing the opportunity for a change of pace, she applied and got her cur
rent position.
"I do not take my experience lightly," says Belcher as she reflects on her
lifetime collection. She realizes most Black women's difficulties in the work
force. "I do not sit comfortably in my position and say that I have no obli
gations to society at large, but certainly to Black women and women in
general," says Belcher.
As an addition to her list of activities, Belcher recently became President
of the American Association of Women in Community and Junior Colleges,
Dr. Ja cq u e lyn B elcher, Vice P resident
representing all female students, faculty and administrators.
Belcher particularly stresses the importance of a good primary and secon
dary education. It doesn't matter whether a person becomes a secretary,
sanitary engineer or professor, says Belcher As long as people do their
jobs with dignity and self-respect. We need all types of people
every
position is im poitant."
The key to a person's success, especially a Black person, lies in educa
tion, says Belcher. "Education makes a tremendous difference" in develo
ping a person's self esteem. "Self esteem is everything.'
Belcher believes that there are a variety of ways of learning and that
school should be fun and not a punitive experience. Each Black individual
needs credit for what he or she is capable of doing. They need credit for
what they have learned and especially should be acknowledged for their
self-worth as human beings.
of a 45-bed unit.
W hat We M UST Teach
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Children About Drugs
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(The'W ar on Drugs' Begins at Home)
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by Terry White
American does not have a drug problem. It has a people problem. Peo
ple take drugs. Left to their own devices, drugs just sit harmlessly in little
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packages and do nothing.
We spend large sums of taxpayer's money in an effort to keep peop
from eating or sniffing or smoking what's in these little packets. We try to
stem the flow of illegal drugs into our country and, in what really is quite a
desperate measure, our police arrest anyone who is caught in possession o
Of course, all this would be very commendable if it did keep people from
ingesting these substances. But the end result of all this effort seems to
have been to convince a great many Americans that we have a drug p ro
blem - one that just won't go away no matter what we do.
So we step up our police enforcement and throw more money at drug
education programs. We run anti-drug campaigns on television and put
diplomatic pressure on those countries where drug crops are grown, usually
quite openly. And after all that, we hear from our children that they can
buy drugs on the school ground from fellow students!
Something isn't working. Rather than a war on drugs, maybe we need
a war on ignorance, apathy and misery, those things that are perhaps most
responsible for the conemung wide abuse of drugs. And perhaps this is a
yvar that rrwersTart in the home, long before kids start itching to have the
keys to the family car.
Like any disease, prevention is always by far the best cure. But how do
you ensure that your children stay away from drugs?
There are no easy foolproof answers. But a proper understanding of
drugs and the full extent of their harm would be one place to start. It is,
incidentally, a point where most drug education programs fall down. Exact
|y how drugs destroy the mind's effectiveness and capabilities was not
Drugs are essentially poisons The degree they are taken determines
the effect. A small amount gives a stimulant. A great amount acts as a
sedative. A larger amount acts as a poison and can kill one dead. This is
true of any drug.
Some drugs, such as those that form the illegal street fare, directly act
on the sub conscious part of the mind, turning on pictures and sensations
of past experiences of which the person is not completely aware. The long
term mental after-effects of such drugs is to render a person "stupid, blank,
forgetful, delusive, irresponsible." He gets into a "wooden sort of state,
unfeeling, insensitive, unable and definitely not trustworthy.
Also, if drugs are used to suppress unwanted sensations and emotions,
these turn on harder once the effect of the drug has worn off. One of the
answers a person has for this is MORE drugs.
In short, drugs worsen the problem one is seeking to overcome or avoid
as well as making a person far less able to cope with life generally.
Explaining to teenagers about these exact effects could be far more per
suasive against any peer pressure to try drugs than general scare tactics.
For one thing, kids could see these very characteristics in the drug takers
pushing the poisons on others.
But beyond factual information on the mental harm of drugs, the real
answer lies in helping your children become successful and happy indivi
duals—people who have too much to lose by turning to drugs. Really,
their best defense lies in having no reason to be attracted to the temporary
escape drugs seem to provide.
The issue of drugs is really the issue of people, it is a story of pain and
suffering, of depression and despair.
But there is also happiness and success. There is love and achievement.
Perhaps these alone are the real weapons with which the 'war on drugs'
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