Will and Melissa Carpenter: A shared journey of engagement, curiosity, and service
Will and Melissa Carpenter
A shared journey of engagement, curiosity, and service
What initially brought you to Oregon?
MC: I grew up in Massachusetts and came out to Oregon to go to college at Willamette University, where I double majored in philosophy and art history.
While attending Willamette University you first met each other?
WC: We met in a philosophy class at Willamette. I am originally from Salem Oregon and went to Willamette as well, where I was a double major in philosophy and psychology. We didn’t date though. We were both engaged at the time, we became great friends and had long conversations. Eventually we both got married to our fiancés, and the four of us spent a lot of time together taking trips down to Ashland to see Shakespeare plays and over to the coast.
MC: In our 20’s we went our separate ways and in time we both got divorced. After my divorce, I went to California where my father was teaching at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and I earned a second bachelor’s degree in journalism.
I wanted to come back to Oregon, and I got a job at the weekly newspaper in Lincoln City, The News Guard. I was responsible for the community life section, so I wrote a lot of feature stories.
Will and I had lost touch with each other, so when I relocated to Lincoln City I got his address from the Willamette Alumni Office and sent him a letter.
WC: I was living in Portland at that time, doing data analysis for an HMO.
We were in our early 30’s when we reconnected. Soon, we began spending weekends together and we were married in 1986.
Will, what was your path out of college?
WC: After college I moved to Eugene and worked briefly at the University of Oregon. I lived in Portland for a year or two. Then I went to graduate school in Social Psychology at the State University of New York in Buffalo.
Just about that time a mediocre actor named Ronald Reagan was elected president. First, he broke the air traffic controllers union, and then he eliminated most of the resources for the National Institute of Mental Health, which was funding my graduate program.
With some scrimping, I was able to complete my master’s degree. I began to look for a job, although in the early 80’s there were not many opportunities for social psychologists. Fortunately, I had used a computer for statistical analysis. Computers were just being introduced in the business world, so all I had to say was “computer” and that got people’s attention.
Unexpectedly, I went on to spend my whole career in Information Technology and computer science.
Social psychology and computers seem like a perfect partnership with complementary skills.
MC: Along with data analysis!
What was your career path in Information Technology?
WC: I went to work for the State of Oregon, then for an HMO in Portland. I came back to the state under Governor Goldschmidt to work on the Workers Compensation Reform package.
At first I was doing data analysis, research, and publications. Then, the state began acquiring computers and I became involved in computer operations and systems analysis. Eventually I became a Chief Information Officer, serving much of my tenure with the Oregon Housing and Community Services. We funded low-income housing and related services to help people with disabilities and other special needs to be successful.
You mentioned that this position was Executive Service. Can you explain that term?
I was in Executive Service positions for most of my career, which meant that I served at the pleasure of the Governor.
How many governors did you serve under?
Five in total: governors Goldschmidt, Roberts, Kulongoski, Kitzhaber, and Brown.
Then you retired.
Yes. It will be seven years this July. Retirement’s been wonderful. I recommend it to everybody.
Melissa, can you talk about your work as a Torah scholar over the past twenty plus years?
MC: As a Torah scholar I do research, reading and writing about the Hebrew Bible. In the late 90’s, when we were living in Salem, we discovered a new Jewish congregation, P’nai Or, with a very dynamic rabbi, Aryeh Hirschfield. We started to go up to Portland to learn from him and eventually moved back to Portland.
Once we joined the congregation we had an interview with the rabbi. When I mentioned that I was a writer he asked if I had ever written about any of the people in the Torah. I had not, but it planted the seed in my mind. I found my mentor in Rabbi Aryeh and got interested in the Torah.
When did you first begin researching and writing about the Torah?
As we became move active in the congregation, I volunteered to write a drash--a talk--for Rosh Hashanah. I showed Will my first draft, which was pretty much a straight talk about the Torah portion. Will’s critique was, “This doesn’t sing – you can do better.” So, I started again and wrote a Torah monologue from the viewpoint of Abraham, who had almost sacrificed Isaac. That was my first Torah monologue, and one of the three I recently delivered here at Terwilliger Plaza.
Over the last 20 years, I have delivered about 20 Torah monologues.
You continued to write and delve deeper into your research and study of the Torah.
I got really involved and considered studying to become a rabbi. After completing a two-year distance learning program in Connecticut for leading Jewish services, I became a lay leader, at P’nai Or. I also went back to Willamette University to learn Biblical Hebrew. After Rabbi Aryeh died, I organized lay-led services, and led many of the services myself, I taught adult education at P’nai Or, as well.
You also love to travel and had to cut short a planned long-term stay in Europe.
MC: In 2019, after we sold our house and were living in an apartment in Portland, we decided to move all our things into storage and take off for Europe, planning to stay for at least nine months. Our goal was to spend a month at a time living in AirBnB apartments in different cities. We spent a month in Prague, a month in Florence and a month in Spain - part Barcelona, part Grenada.
WC: Then we had to renew our visas, so we went to Split, Croatia. We had a place just blocks from Diocletian’s Palace. There was great Roman and Venetian architecture and so many historical sites that we could visit and explore. We loved it so much in Split that we spent two months there.
MC: We still had another month to go on our visa renewal before we could go back to the EU, so we went to Israel. We got three weeks in Jerusalem and then things began closing because of Covid and we decided to come home.
We wanted to come back to Oregon, so we moved to Lincoln City in 2020 for the duration of the pandemic. We thought, at least we can walk the beach, even if everything else is closed. Then from Lincoln City we moved to Terwilliger Plaza.
What brought you to the decision to move to Terwilliger Plaza?
WC: We both had to move our mothers into long-term care facilities when they were in their 90’s and it was very hard on everyone. We didn’t want to do that to ourselves or make our son and daughter-in-law go through that experience.
MC: While we were looking for assisted living for my mother, we were keeping an eye open for independent living for ourselves. After we got my mother settled in Lincoln City we visited Terwilliger, where we felt that the independent living was better than any of the places we had seen. A unit that we were interested in became available just before my mother died. We had a month to move out of our apartment and into Terwilliger.
WC: The fit here at Terwilliger is really good. Location was important and Terwilliger is close to downtown. Terwilliger also has a lot of programming, most of it run by Members. We felt this would give us opportunities to meet people and engage in our own interests. I’m playing Bridge again and sampling new activities.
MC: Anyone can reserve a room here and start a group. I’ve started discussion groups about the Hebrew Bible that meet twice a month. I also joined the Faith Exploration Committee, and they encouraged me to present my Torah monologues. And we both love participating in The Inquiring Mind group. Will recently did a segment on Sigmund Freud for The Inquiring Mind.
What did your discussion on Sigmund Freud focus on?
WC: Freud’s book, Civilization and Its Discontents is considered one of his most important and widely read books. It’s rather dark, exploring the development of the superego and the death instinct, and all those ideas that were on his mind just before WWII. I offered to do a program on the book. After rereading it, I created a 30-page extract that we read and discussed over two sessions. It was the first time I had used my psychology education in a long time. It was very satisfying to dig into Freud again and share with those in The Inquiring Mind group.
So, moving into Terwilliger Plaza has been a good experience?
MC: Better than I could have imagined!
WC: We moved in on a Friday and our apartment was full of furniture and boxes. By the time we’d made the bed we were exhausted. We looked at the Terwilliger calendar and saw there was a concert in the auditorium hosted by Friday Night Music. We thought, let’s just go and relax.
It was a Baroque trio, and we were hooked. It was wonderful. Right then we knew everything was going to be alright!
MC: Terwilliger is a perfect combination for me. I love the people who we’ve met. Many people here are intellectuals and so polite, nice, and curious. It’s so easy to have a discussion.
WC: We agreed when we first moved in that we would do a formal check-in with each other every month to make sure living here was working for us. Each month that passed, we were good.
MC: Then we just forgot to check in because we were so happy. I was worried about communal living when we first moved in, but soon discovered that this is perfect for me. When we are in our apartment nobody bothers us, and I can do my Torah work. But, when we want to go to a program or exercise, it’s right here. There are such interesting people here.
WC: It’s a grand adventure living here!