The Cedar Mill Community Library, a member of the Washington County Cooperative Library Services, has announced that the first nine in a series of nearly 20 local oral histories have been collected from area residents.

The Cedar Mill library oral history effort is part of the local libraries participation in the statewide Oregon Reads project, a celebration of Oregon’s sesquicentennial.

Inspired by the work of a Sunset High School instructor, Mark Richardson, a young adult librarian with the Cedar Mill Community Library, came up with the idea to recruit the participation of students to help the library gather oral histories of local immigrants and their descendents.

Each year, Matt Hiefield, a Sunset High history teacher, leads his students in the collection of oral histories from World War II veterans. Richardson felt that this year the two projects could be complementary and provide a way to involve students in the libraries’ participation in the Oregon Reads project.

Richardson coordinated the project with Lynne Erlandson, head of adult services with the library. Erlandson was responsible for recruiting the local immigrants and their descendents from the surrounding community. The response has been very positive.

The stories being gathered will be available on the libraries website as podcasts, and will be added to the libraries permanent collection of local history. The first nine participants were interviewed in late February. The library anticipates a gradual roll-out, posting one oral history per week on the Web site over the next two months. The first in the series of interviews should be on the Web site by March 9.

Following is a brief biography on the first nine participants:

Kathy Foldes – My parents both emigrated to the U.S. from Hungary to escape Hitler in 1939. My mother wrote a short story about how she and her family were able to get a tourist visa for her by pretending her family was wealthy. She was 15 when she came and never saw her parents again. My father came at age 18 with his mother. They were able to qualify under the Czech quota which was larger than the Hungarian quota because the town where my grandmother was born had been in that country at the time she was born there. My grandfather didn’t immigrate with them but he survived the war, which is also an interesting story. My parents both lived in New York City after they landed there and met the next year at a poetry reading at the Hungarian Club. My father was able to expedite getting his U.S. citizenship by enlisting in the Army. He married my mother and left to fight the next week and didn’t see her for 2½ years.

Jim Tsugawa – I am Japanese, a native American, born in Hillsboro. I attended David Hill and Chapman grade schools until the internment of all Japanese citizens in 1942. I was in Boise, Idaho, 1943-46. After the war I came to Cedar Mill and attended Lewis & Clark College. I served in the U.S. Army 1951-53. Attended OSU 1955-62 and took up my longtime career in dentistry. I retired in 1996.

Sitcho Karste – I am a Tibetan and currently live with my family in Bethany. I came to the U.S. in June of 1993 via India, where my parents had escaped from Tibet in 1965. I was one of 1,000 Tibetans who were accepted to the U.S. under a program by President George Bush Sr. We were chosen by lottery, and I was picked, but my husband and daughter had to stay behind. They finally joined me in the U.S. in 1998.

Rosemary Mead – My ancestors came across the plains in 1852 in two covered wagons. Along the way, the parents died but the children continued on. One of those children became my grandmother. I am 90 years old and would love to share some of the story my grandmother told.

Gloria Rivera – I was born in the Philippines in 1947 and came to the U.S. in 1973. I attended school in the Philippines through college, graduating from the Far Eastern University in Manila with a bachelor’s degree in nursing. I taught in a newly opened nursing school in my home town of San Fernando, La Union, Philippines. In the U.S., I have worked as a neonatal nurse in the NICU at Legacy Emanuel Hospital for 33 years. My husband and I have built our beach house in the Philippines and are excited to spend time there during our retirement years.

Wayne Hess – I am a 74-year-old retired CPA and have spent much of my retirement years building houses with Habitat for Humanity in Guatemala. Both of my parents were descended from Oregon pioneers who immigrated from Switzerland and Germany in the 19th century. My grandfather’s farm bordered on the land now occupied by Sunset High School. Another relative of my great-grandmother donated land for the first school in the Tualatin Valley.

Dolores Fallon – My great grandparents were Thomas and Ann (McGlone) Leahy. They came to Portland some time before 1863 with a brother, Dennis Leahy. The Washington County property the Leahys purchased in 1865 was first given to two children of a deceased private in the Captain Thompson Company of the Oregon Militia Cayuse War. It was sold to two different families between the years 1860 and1865 before the Leahys bought the land. Another set of my great-grandparents came from Ireland in the mid-19th century, traveling around Cape Horn into San Francisco and continuing on to the “gold country,” Calaveras County, Calif., in the year 1853.

Eva-Maria Muecke – I was born and raised in a small village in West Germany. After I completed 10th grade (age 17,) I completed an apprenticeship in the hotel business and subsequently worked in restaurants and hotels in Germany, Switzerland and California. While in California, I met my now ex-husband, got married and started my college education. I have a BA in biology and a Ph.D in zoology and teach at Pacific University. Coming to the U.S. clearly changed my life’s trajectory because I would not have had the opportunities I encountered here in Germany.

Julie Dennis – My father-in-law arrived in the United States from Poland at the age of 12, coming with his 14-year-old brother and mother, to rejoin the father he had never seen. His mother was a truly courageous woman who was determined to make a better life for her children, even though it meant that one child (her 18-year-old daughter) was rejected at Ellis Island for tuberculosis and forced to return to Poland alone.

The Washington County Cooperative Library Services includes Banks Public Library, Beaverton City Library, Cedar Mill Community Library, Cedar Mill Community Library Bethany, Cornelius Public Library, Forest Grove City Library, Garden Home Community Library, Hillsboro Public Libraries (Main and Shute Park), North Plains Public Library, Sherwood Public Library, Tigard Public Library, Tualatin Public Library and West Slope Community Library.