EUGENE–The University of Oregon faculty will honor a Portland lawyer and arts advocate, a world-renowned economist, and an award-winning composer and comedy writer with Distinguished Service Awards at the 1999 commencement ceremony on Saturday, June 12.

This year’s honorees are Brian Booth of Portland, a partner in the Tonkon Torp LLP law firm; Raymond Mikesell of Eugene, UO professor emeritus of economics; and Mason Williams of Eugene, a Grammy Award-winning composer, recording artist and television comedy writer.

The Distinguished Service Award, one of the highest honors the UO faculty conveys, will be presented at the university’s spring commencement ceremonies at 12:30 p.m. Saturday at Hayward Field, 1580 E. 15th Ave., on the UO campus. The UO faculty annually selects recipients for this award who, through their knowledge and skills, have made a significant contribution to the cultural development of Oregon or society as a whole.

"These three Oregonians have not only achieved personal success in their respective professions but have committed a great deal of time and energy to helping others and to improving the quality of life in Oregon and the nation," said UO President Dave Frohnmayer of this year’s award recipients.

A native of Roseburg and a 1958 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Oregon, Brian Booth is a longtime advocate for the arts, history and natural beauty of Oregon.

In the late 1980s, Booth founded the Oregon Institute of Literary Arts and created the Oregon Book Awards and the Oregon Fellowship for Emerging Writers. To date, these programs have provided financial benefits and recognition to more than 300 writers and publishers.

Committed to preserving Oregon’s diverse literary and cultural legacy, Booth helped found the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission. In 1996, Literary Arts, Inc., recognized Booth for his outstanding contributions to Oregon’s literary life with the Stewart H. Holbrook Award. Booth and his wife, Gwyneth Gamble Booth, were honored recently as First Citizens of Portland for 1998 and were the first recipients of the Stars in the Arts Award presented by Portland Advocates for Student Arts.

In 1989, Booth was appointed by Gov. Neil Goldschmidt as the first head of the Oregon Parks and Recreation Commission. His efforts helped increase funding for state parks and beaches and for salmon recovery programs.

A strong supporter of the university for many years, Booth has served on the UO Foundation Board of Trustees and as president of the Friends of the UO Museum of Art. He currently serves on the Oregon Humanities Center Board of Visitors, the College of Arts and Sciences Advisory Council for External Relations, and the Knight Library Press Advisory Board.

Ray Mikesell, a professor of economics at the UO for 40 years, has been a prominent figure in environmental and international economics over his entire 60-year career.

The Ohio native has served as a consultant to many national and international government organizations since World War II. He played an important role for the U.S. in the Bretton Woods negotiations that created the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and was a senior staff economist on President Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisers.

"He is known internationally for his work on natural resources issues, environmental protection and international trade policy," says Joe Stone, dean of the UO College of Arts and Sciences.

But both Stone and Frohnmayer say that Mikesell’s most important achievement has been his teaching and mentoring of students. Mikesell helped more than 50 graduate students launch careers in economics ranging from university teaching to positions with agencies such as the Bonneville Power Administration, the World Bank and the Federal Reserve Board.

Last year, Mikesell gave the university $1 million to expand teaching and research on economic aspects of environmental problems such as global warming and acid rain.

The third Distinguished Service Award recipient, Mason Williams, emerged in the late 1960s as a strong creative force in television and music circles.

With his trusty guitar by his side for the past 40 years, Williams became a national icon of instrumental music, recording more than a dozen albums on various record labels. His most famous work, "Classical Gas," won three Grammy Awards in 1968. Thirty years later, Broadcast Music, Inc., named the song its No. 1 all-time instrumental composition, based on more than three million performances on radio and television.

As a comedy writer, Williams wrote more than 180 hours of network variety television programming, culminating in the popular "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," for which he received an Emmy award nomination in 1967 and an Emmy in 1969. He also created and carried out the elaborate satirical "Pat Paulsen for President Campaign" in 1968 and was head writer for NBC’s "Saturday Night Live" in 1980.

In addition to music and literature, Williams has won acclaim for his work as a conceptual artist. In the late 1960s, he produced a work titled "Bus," a life-sized photographic poster of a Greyhound bus that is part of the permanent poster collection in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

In recent years, Williams has used his talents to promote environmental awareness and encourage musical interest among children. His "Of Time and Rivers Flowing" concert, which he has performed with his band more than 60 times, was originally created to help save the North Fork of the Middle Fork of the Willamette River from being dammed. This spring, he performed the concert for the 1999 Oregon Children’s Choir Festival, involving 2,500 students from around the state.

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