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September 1963 KPFA FolioPage 2: Image | Text Russell Jorgensen appointed Pacifica PresidentRussell F. Jorgensen, 46, will become President of Pacifica Foundation on October 1 of this year. He will take leave from the American Friends Service Committee to which he has given many years of distinguished service. Trevor Thomas, who has been both Foundation President and KPFA manager since 1961, and who had, upon assumption of this inordinately heavy double burden, requested early relief from one or the other, will continue as station manager of KPFA. He joins with me in enthusiastically welcoming Russell Jorgensen to this physically and mentally demanding, soultesting and rewarding field of public activity. I have no doubt that large numbers of listening participants of KPFA, KPFK, and WBAI will share with the Board of Directors, the station staffs, and advisors a feeling of gratitude to Trevor Thomas for his vision, his creative understanding, and his dependability and honesty as exemplified during the recent U. S. Senate Subcommittee hearings. We are fortunate indeed to have him continue as KPFA manager. Russell Jorgensen has served continuously on the Pacifica Board of Directors since 1955, and brings to his new position a considerable experience in administration, fundraising, and public relations. As associate executive secretary for the AFSC he has worked in housing, race relations, farm labor, penal reform and several international programs. In 1949 in Japan he helped establish the first International Student Seminar and two seminars for repatriating Japanese. With his wife, Russell has directed a variety of projects in Israel, Mexico, and the U. S. He is one of the founders of the Friends Committee on Legislation for Northern California and from 195962 was clerk of the Berkeley Friends Meeting. In 1961 he and his wife were among the 400 jailed as "freedom riders" in Jackson, Miss., after attending a religious leadership congress called by Martin Luther King. Russell holds a degree in economics from the University of Wisconsin and an M. A. in Christian ethics from the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. The Jorgensens have four children: Eric, Lynne, Mark and Paul. Eric is a senior at San Francisco State College. Russell also finds time for skiing and backpacking into the Sierra and with his camera has produced many perceptive portraits and photographic studies. It has been my privilege for approximately a decade to be associated with Pacifica. I came to know Lewis Hill intimately and his magnificent vision of communication on lofty levels of intellectual search and of esthetic perception and sensitivity. I have seen the fruits of this vision mature under the skilled hands of Harold Winkler, Trevor Thomas, and so many other colleagues sharing in what, on the death of Lewis Hill, I ventured to call "this audacious and challenging adventure of the mind and heart." Russell Jorgensen, whose work on the Board of Directors has shown understanding and dedication to the purposes and ideals of Pacifica, will be undergirded by the capable staffs of the three stations, by a strong Board and by the support of our listeners. The next years, I am sure, will be nobly productive ones for Pacifica. We shall find this "adventure of the mind and heart" increasingly audacious and ever more challenging. R. Gordon Agnew, D.D.S., Ph.D | |
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