(Photo courtesy of Bend Senior High Alumni)
Five graduates celebrated at assembly and Homecoming game October 16.
Bend Senior High School will honor five distinguished alumni during Homecoming events Friday, October 16. This year’s honorees include:
• Jessie Evans, Class of 2002, a State Department employee who has served Sudan and East Africa, and spent a year in Kabul at the U.S. Embassy and who worked in Myanmar as a Conflict Specialist.
• Cheri Roarig Lovre, Class of 1967, a school crisis specialist, who developed the Flight Team response concept and who helped schools in the aftermath of several shootings, in New York after 9/11 and at an orphanage in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami.
• Carol Roarig Palmer, Class of 1960, a nurse who served in many areas, including at the Oregon School for the Blind, in hospice and who has been a 21-year volunteer for the Flight Team, which helps in crisis response.
• Phil Peoples, Class of 1942, a World War II fighter pilot who worked at Boeing as a design engineer and engineering supervisor who worked on the Saturn Booster Rocket, among other items.
• Malerie Pratt, Class of 2004, the youngest-ever inductee, who helped create a foster home in Zambia for vulnerable children and who is in medical school with the goal of becoming a doctor working in Africa.
“I am wowed by this group of outstanding alumni who showcase the incredible contributions our graduates make to not just their community, but to the world,” said Principal Christopher Reese. “We are proud to celebrate them.”
The alumni will be recognized during events throughout the day on Oct. 16. The honorees will attend a student assembly at 11 a.m. in the Bend Senior High School gym, which will be emceed by Bob Shaw. The alumni and their families will be escorted to Punk Hunnell Stadium by Principal Reese and will be recognized at 6:30 p.m. prior to the start of the Homecoming game at 7:05 p.m.
Plaques honoring these distinguished alumni will be hung in Bend Senior High School near plaques honoring former recipients near the main office.
Biographies for Distinguished Alumni 2015
Jessie Evans – Class of 2002
Jessie graduated from Bend High in 2002.She was active in athletics and played tenor saxophone with the jazz, symphonic, and marching bands. She was a leader in our DECA program and an excellent student.During her senior year at Bend High, Jessie was selected as the National DECA Western Region Vice President, a position that she held during her freshman year at Occidental College.
Jessie graduated from Occidental in 2006, working her senior year as an intern with the West Africa Desk of the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations. She then worked at Harvard’s School of Public Health from 2006-2008, supporting grant management for projects with organizations like the United Nations and the Ford Foundation. In 2008, Jessie drove 7,300 miles from England to Cameroon as part of a fundraising effort to promote awareness for sustainable poverty reduction in Africa. Successfully navigating rough terrain and insecure environments, Jessie’s team of three raised over $15,000 cash and in-kind donations.
From 2008-2010 she attended graduate school at the prestigious Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. In 2009, she worked at the Department of Defense as a Desk Officer for Sudan and East Africa. Since graduation from Tufts, Jessie has served over three years as a contractor with the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO). The bureau is assigned to mitigate crises in unstable countries and address the underlying causes of destabilizing violence.
Jessie spent a year in Kabul, Afghanistan at the U.S. Embassy serving as co-chair and lead strategic planner on the gender working group. Her responsibilities included briefing ambassadors, generals, and congressional delegations on the challenges facing Afghan women and the ways in which the U.S. government could mitigate risks. In 2013 she was assigned to Burma (Myanmar) as a Conflict Specialist for the U.S. Department of State.
Cheri Roarig Lovre – Class of 1967
Cheri grew up in Bend.Her dad taught orchestra and her mother was the school superintendent’s secretary.She attended Reid, Thompson and Kenwood Elementary Schools, Cascade Junior High and Bend High.She was active in music and athletics.
She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degree in social studies/special education from Oregon College of Education, and then worked as a behavior specialist in schools.
Cheri has received national recognition for her work developing the Flight Team concept for school crisis response teams.She created Crisis Management Institute in 1991 and works nationally and internationally with schools and communities impacted by traumatic events.She provided emotional, logistical and technical support following several school shootings, including Thurston High School and Columbine High School, and spent two years in New York City working with the 29 schools that “fled Ground Zero” following the events of 9/11.She served in an orphanage in Sri Lanka following the tsunami of 2004 and was on the Oregon Attorney General’s Coalition for Violence Prevention and Safe Schools.
Carol Roarig Palmer – Class of 1960
Carol Palmer moved to Bend at age seven when her father took a job as orchestra teacher in the Bend School District.She attended Reid and Kenwood Elementary Schools and Bend Junior High prior to entering Bend High.At BSH she participated in Girls League, Honor Society, Booster Club, Honor Choir, All-state Orchestra and the All-Northwest Orchestra.
Upon graduation in 1960 she entered Good Samaritan Hospital School of Nursing in Portland, graduating in 1963.After receiving her nursing education she began a long and varied career as a nurse in Redding, California, Klamath Falls and Bend.From 1974-79 she was the supervisor for medical, psychiatric and dental services at the Oregon Women’s Correctional Center in Salem. From 1980 to 1983 she was the supervisor for infirmary and medical services at the Oregon School for the Blind in Salem.In 1984 she founded Central Oregon Home Health in Bend.
In 1986 Carol earned her masters degree in counseling from Oregon State University and transitioned to the Deschutes County Juvenile Department in 1989, where she became a juvenile court counselor.From 1994-2001 she worked with Hospice of Bend & Redmond.Because of her training in grief and bereavement, Carol has been a Flight Team volunteer for Deschutes County for 21 years.As a team leader, she has provided support and training in crisis response situations in our local community, working with students, parents and educators.
Phil Peoples – Class of 1942
Phil Peoples was born May 19, 1924 in the old St. Charles Hospital on “Hospital Hill,” near present downtown Bend.His mother, Mabel, was a teacher at Bend High prior to 1920 and his father became the manager of the box factory at the Shevlin-Hixon Mill.Phil attended Reid School, Kenwood Elementary and Bend High prior to his graduation in 1942. At Bend High he was a yell leader, treasurer of his class and a member of the ski team.He played the bassoon in the school concert band and orchestra.He also played the piano in Fred Raycraft’s dance band at local dances.
Phil enlisted in the Army Air Corps after graduation during the summer of 1942, started college at Oregon State College (OSC) that fall and was called into service in March of 1943.He was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant in 1944 and was sent to the Italian theater, where he piloted a P-47 fighter he named Bend-er-Bust. During his service in Italy, he was awarded four air medal citations and the Distinguished Flying Cross.
After the war he returned to OSC and earned his bachelors degree in engineering.In 1949 he accepted a job at Boeing where he enjoyed a successful career as a design engineer and engineering supervisor.His many projects over the years included work on the Saturn Booster Rocket, the Supersonic Transport Project, as well as product development of the 757 and 767 commercial airplanes.Phil retired in 1983 and remains a lifelong skier, sailor, and golfer.
Malerie Pratt – Class of 2004
Malerie was born and raised in Bend.She attended Juniper Elementary, Pilot Butte MS and graduated from Bend High in 2004.At BSH she participated in our Italian and art programs, Ecology Club and ran both track and cross-country. At Bend High she forged a special relationship with Italian language teacher Carmelo Bellavia and his wife Marlena that would prove to be life changing.
Malerie enrolled at Central Oregon Community College in 2004, immediately studied abroad in Italy, and in 2005 traveled to Zambia, Africa to work with handicapped children at an AIDS Hospice Center.This proved a significant event in Malerie’s life that still motivates her today and led to the creation in Zambia, with Marlena Bellavia as her partner, of a foster home for abandoned, abused, and vulnerable children. They named this foster home the Vima Lupwa Home. “Lupwa” in the local language means “family.” They didn’t want to create an institutionalized orphanage. Instead, the goal was to create family homes, taking no more than fourteen children into each home and raising those children to honor their own culture under the parenting of a loving Zambian mother and father. The Vima Lupwa Home, “built on $20 dollar bills” and other small donations, is to this day a thriving safe-home for vulnerable children.
Malerie graduated from Oregon State University-Cascades in 2011 and entered medical school in 2014 at the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, with the goal of becoming a physician and working with underserved communities in Africa and at home in the U.S.Her dream is to develop medical training centers in areas of conflict in Africa that will provide support to local populations within their own culture.She says, “If I can provide medical training for 20 Africans to save lives in their communities, then I can make a sustainable positive impact in their communities long after I leave.”
