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2012 Oregon Stater Engineering Awards
College of Engineering
Oregon State University
7
S
teve Hawke enjoys interacting and
serving people. Whether he is working
with customers in the field, mentoring
youth in athletics, or helping people in need
in the community, his technical education
and strong involvement in student affairs at
Oregon State have served himwell.
Although he was born in Walla Walla,
Wash., Hawke moved frequently through-
out the West as his father was transferred
from job to job. When he was a sophomore
in high school, Hawke’s father called a
family meeting to announce that he was
starting his own business. He said that he
could run it from anywhere in the United
States and the family got to choose where
they wanted to settle.
“Portland won hands down — it was
the most favorite place we had lived,”
says Hawke. After high school, Hawke
attended Oregon State University,
where he obtained rigorous technical
training in math and engineering. “I
finished high school (in Portland) with
strong interests in math and science, so
it was natural to stick with an in-state
engineering program.”
Extra-curricular activities at the
university, he says, “probably taught
me as much about dealing in the world
as anything else. Campus involvement,
combined with the technical training I
received, was absolutely the best that
could happen to me.”
After graduating, Hawke established a
38-year distinguished career with Portland
General Electric Co., the metropolitan
area’s primary utility, fromwhich he retired
as senior vice president. In that position,
he oversaw distribution, systemplanning
and engineering, transmission services,
customer service, customers and economic
development, and a
variety of utility services
and energy sustainability
groups.
Hawke brought the
customer’s point of
view into the utility.
“Ask the customer what they want and
provide it,” he says. “It was successful —
we demonstrated the ability to bring the
customer’s view to bear with PGE, a feat
that traditionally hadn’t happened in the
past.”
While putting people first in his profes-
sional life, Hawke has also been deeply
passionate about serving people in his
community. He has held numerous
leadership and volunteer positions in
many metropolitan and regional civic
groups. He served as president of the
Professional Engineers of Oregon, which
named him the Oregon Young Engineer
of the Year in 1984 and Oregon Engineer
of the Year in 2000.
None of that compares to Hawke’s pas-
sionate involvement with his three chil-
dren and other young athletes on the “field
of battle” (as he puts it) as a coach and
mentor. “Working with kids and trying to
make a difference in a lot of lives was my
main goal,” Hawke says.
Stephen R. Hawke
Hall of Fame
Denise and Steve Hawke at Pat O’Brien’s in New Orleans
BS Electrical Engineering ’71
BS Mathematics ’71
Retired, Senior Vice President
Customer Service, Transmission & Distribution
Portland General Electric
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Portland, Ore.
I
n 1972, Scott Henry
began to grow grapes
on 300 acres of bottom-
land where the Henry
family had once grown
orchards, row crops,
and livestock feed. Today, the softly rolling
foothills of the Umpqua River Valley cradle
the rich farmland that is now home to
Henry Estate Winery.
Some might think it’s a stretch for a
trained aerospace engineer to transfer his
skills and knowledge to the vineyard and
the crush, but Henry disagrees. “There are
a lot of engineering challenges in wine-
making, as in any agricultural product,”
Henry says. “You need to be an engineering
type to make wine — it’s the pure chal-
lenge of it.”
Henry grew up on the farm and learned
his basics in a one-room schoolhouse that
sits across the road from today’s winery.
He excelled in math at Roseburg High
School, but had no real college plans. A
good friend was heading to Oregon State
and encouraged Henry to come, too.
“When I got to orientation, I didn’t
know if I was going to gravitate toward
agriculture or engineering,” Henry recalls.
“The deans stood up before the freshman
class to describe their curriculum. Dean
Gleeson from engineering — a crusty
old guy — threw out the gauntlet. He had
20 students stand up, representing how
many would begin in engineering. He then
had 18 sit down and the two remaining,
he said, were going to graduate in engi-
neering. That was a heck of a challenge
for me.”
Henry went on to earn bachelor’s and
master’s degrees in mechanical engineering
with an aeronautical emphasis. He worked
for 14 years for Aerojet, an aerospace com-
pany that develops missile and space pro-
pulsion technology for defense markets. It
was there that a co-worker introduced him
to wine through his Italian family’s wine
business. “Up until then, I was strictly a
beer and whisky guy,” chuckles Henry.
With advice and consultation on that
Umpqua Valley bottomland, Henry came
home to Oregon and his family planted 12
acres of varietal grapes. In 1978, he opened
the winery. Today, Henry Estate Winery
has 50 acres in grapes (with 200 available
to plant) and produces 30,000 cases of
wine annually. Henry is considered an
Oregon pioneer in the field, and his
operation is joined by 30 additional
wineries comprising the Umpqua Valley’s
burgeoning wine industry.
Along the way, Henry put his engineering
degree to good use. His rich bottomland
is a little too fertile for a vineyard — the
vines grow wild with a verdant canopy,
whereas good wines come from plants
that have struggled a bit. Through sound
engineering and experimentation, Henry
developed a unique trellis system for his
plants that opens the canopy to sun and
air and forces vines down to contain their
growth. The system— officially called the
Scott Henry Trellis System— is known
and used throughout the world in cool-
climate viticulture.
C. Scott Henry III
Hall of Fame
Scott Henry III at Henry Estate Winery in Umpqua, Ore.
BS Mechanical Engineering ’58
MS Mechanical Engineering ’59
President, Henry Estate Winery
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Umpqua, Ore.