Mike Lowry (’62) is elected governor of Washington. Lowry was born in St. John, Washington and served various positions in the Washington State government before his election. Lowry also spoke at the 1993 commencement ceremony.
William Bugge, Washington Director of Highways, and Laurence Peter, and co-author of the Peter Principle, receive fourteenth and fifteenth Regents Distinguished Alumnus Awards.
Bugge completed three and one-half years at then-WSC, leaving in 1922 to work for the Washington Department of Highways. He received an honorary bachelor’s degree from WSU in 1990. As Director of Highways, Bugge oversaw the design and construction of some of the states most ambitious projects. In 1963, he resigned his position to become the Project Director in charge of the design and construction of the Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, in San Francisco.
Peter taught in Vancouver before attending WSU. After graduation, he moved to California where he became an Associate Professor of Education, Director of the Evelyn Frieden Centre for Prescriptive Teaching, and Coordinator of Programs for Emotionally Disturbed Children at the University of Southern California.
Weldon B. “Hoot” Gibson, Charles Schroeder, and Marshall Neill receive the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth Regents Distinguished Alumnus Awards.
Matsuyo Yamamoto is presented with Regents Eighth Distinguished Alumnus Award and is the first woman honored. After receiving her degree in home economics in 1937 at then Washington State College, Yamamoto returned to Japan where she pioneered home economics extension programs, eventually overseeing a staff of 3,000 home advisors that served the rural populations of Japan and other Asian countries. The College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Studies offers the Matsuyo Yamamoto Endowed Scholarship in her honor.
J. Clifford Folger, Nixon’s 1960 campaign finance chairman and member of the board of directors of IBM, and C. Glenn King, one of the two biochemists to isolate vitamin C, are selected for the fourth and fifth Regents Distinguished Alumnus Awards. Folger receives his award on June 3, 1963; King on April 11, 1964.
Marshall Allen Neill, future Justice of the Washington State Supreme Court, graduates with a B.A. in Political Science. In 1938, Neill received his law degree from the University of Idaho. He engaged in private practice in Pullman from 1938 to 1967, and during this time he also served as Pullman City attorney, assistant attorney general for Washington State University, part-time assistant professor at WSU, state representative (1949-1956) and state senator (1956-1967). In 1967 Neill was appointed to Associate Justice in the Supreme Court of Washington, and in 1972, President Nixon appointed him to the prestigious U.S. District Court in Spokane, a post he held until his death on October 6, 1979.
Patty L. Murray, class of 1972, was elected for the first time to represent Washington in the U.S. Senate. She was the first WSU graduate to serve in the Senate.
In 1972, students Gary Larson, creator of the acclaimed comic strip “The Far Side,” and Patty Murray, future United States Senator, graduated from WSU.
George Nethercutt, elected to Congress in 1994 by unseating then-Speaker of the House Tom Foley, graduated from WSU in 1967 with a B.A. in English. Nethercutt would serve five terms in the House of Representatives and then run unsuccessfully for the Senate against fellow Coug Patty Murray.
