In the luminous First Congregational Church of Christ downtown, roughly 700 people gathered to celebrate the life and work of “Mink River” author and Portland magazine editor Brian Doyle.
The event Thursday evening, organized by friends and colleagues of Doyle, hosted 17 speakers of the same ilk. Several current and former notable members of the University of Portland community spoke, including former Vice President of University Relations Laurie Kelley, Assistant Provost John Orr and Marcus Covert, editor of UP’s faculty and staff newsletter Upbeat.
The evening felt in line with reading one of Doyle’s popular, whimsical books. The acoustics of the Park Avenue church facilitated resounding roars of laughter that made the silence as speakers held back tears remembering their late friend feel even more pointed.
Doyle, who succumbed to a brain tumor in May, was spoken of fondly and irreverently, which fit the style of his literary voice.
“You are enthralled to a sustaining inebriation inside the torrent of his spirited words,” said Kim Stafford, an Oregon poet and essayist and the first speaker of the night. “Part clown, part shaman, part saint, part sinner.”
At the back of the church, attendees were invited to participate in “a feast of Brian's books” as many of his most popular works were available for sale. The event also aligned with the publication of Doyle’s most recent book of short stories, “Eight Whopping Lies and Other Stories of Bruised Grace,” which came out on Sept. 5.
At the event, speakers told jokes, shared memories, and reflected on what it is to be human — or an otter.
“Brian would have loved tonight,” Stafford said at the close of the event.
Nearly every speaker read bits and pieces of their personal email correspondence with the late author. “There must be millions of them out there,” Covert said in reference to the digital replies Doyle would send within minutes of receiving an email. “A real treasure.”
As if it were possible for Doyle’s work to feel more personal, glimpses into these email treasures gave the audience a chance to hear the writer combine words you’d never thought could go together, like “stork on acid”, “wolverine with hemorrhoids” and “Celtic, Western friendship.”
Doyle’s younger brother Peter Doyle took the stage and read a recent email Doyle had sent him, justifying his inaccuracies in his literary accounts of family memories.
“I care about the shivers and shimmers of memory,” Doyle wrote. “Memories are diving boards, not news reports.”
Some read emails they sent to Doyle. As they read them aloud, attendees might’ve imagined Doyle’s facial expressions as he read them in his office in Waldschmidt Hall or his home in Lake Oswego.
Seattle fireman Jimmy Watts shared a letter he sent Doyle after learning of his diagnosis, attached with a used blue firefighter’s T-shirt, one that had seen smoke and blood, death and birth, he said. Watts offered the shirt up as a kind of protection, a source of courage for Doyle in his last few months of illness.
“You’ve always been a firefighter, Brian” he said.
Other notable anecdotes about Doyle:
Orr said that when he met Doyle for the first time as an adjunct professor at UP, Doyle immediately asked to read his dissertation. From there, they formed a fond friendship in which Orr could tease him on perhaps being “the only person to engage in a sports debate with the Dalai Lama.”
On top of editing the award-winning alumni magazine, according to Orr, Doyle had a hand in writing nearly all of the University’s speeches, so much so that staffers in Waldschmidt would play bingo with the words he snuck into speeches. The words “deft” and “capacious” were common occurrences.
“He either called me boss or Laurie Kelley,” Kelley said jokingly of her working relationship with Doyle.
Kelley said that Doyle “could get a ballroom of people to sing ‘Amazing Grace’” and sometimes out of nowhere, he’d scream in his office in Waldschmidt, “Let’s get a pizza!”
Doyle famously typed with just two fingers — Covert said he could hear the “rat a tat tat of his two-finger-typing” all day long.
“Can you imagine how prolific of a writer he would have been if he knew how to type?” Kelley said.
Perhaps the most telling story about Doyle came from Oregon author Robin Cody. Cody recalled the day Doyle found out he had once again lost The Oregon Book Award for Mink River — which he would eventually win for his book Martin Marten. Even in failure, Doyle repped UP colors. Cody said he came into an Irish pub wearing a purple headband with the word “LOSER” written in bold, white letters.
Near the end of the event, Bob Pyle, writer and friend of Doyle’s, pulled out a harmonica and broke into an old Irish drinking song that ended with the words, “So be easy and free, when you're drinking with me. I'm a man you don't meet every day.”
“That’s you, Brian,” Pyle said.
