G. O. Roth, as Remembered by His Son, Greg, our May Sasquatch Celebrity

 
In the mid 1960s a recently retired Air Force Master Sergeant, Gerhard Otto Roth, accepted a teaching position with the Community Colleges of Spokane. And so began the Roth family’s tradition of involvement with the Community Colleges of Spokane that remains unbroken until today.

G.O., as he preferred to be called, was right in on the ground floor of the development of CCS. He had a remarkable history: a WWII veteran; a military photographer—he had mapped the Alcan Highway from air, landed on several invasions in the Pacific (carrying a 4x5 camera in one hand and a 45 pistol in the other); he also had finished college, obtained a master’s degree, was briefly a dean and - for the rest of his 19 years at SCC - an instructor. Both of his sons, his wife, and daughters-in-law have taught in that unbroken tradition at SCC and SFCC.
 


1. What CCS Foundation scholarship or program do you support and why?  I, his oldest son, and other members of his family have established two funds within the Foundation: the G.O. Roth Scholarship and the Visual Literacy Program Support Fund. The scholarship fund does just what its name suggests, and the Visual Literacy Program Support Fund was established to foster a particular line of study in the photography and philosophy departments and to support the maintenance of a photography literature collection at the SFCC library. Additionally, the Visual Literacy Program supports the acquisition of equipment for historical photographic process education.

Sasquatch Celebrity is a monthly feature that introduces the staff who support the CCS Foundation's students and programs.