An Accidental Oregonian
Susan Castillo, State Superintendent of Public Instruction
I moved to Oregon from southern California when I was in my 20s. I didn’t plan on making the move permanent; I just sort of wandered here the way many young people did in the 1970s. I am an accidental Oregonian.
It may surprise some people to know that the State Superintendent of Public Instruction wasn’t much of a student as a child, but it’s true. I wasn’t a bad kid, just indifferent about school – a daydreamer. I didn’t go to college for several years after graduating from high school, and so I found myself working as a secretary at Oregon State University. My boss was a woman named Pearl Spears Gray, the university’s affirmative action director. She was my mentor, the one who encouraged me to go to college and earn my degree. I went on to an exciting career as a television journalist in Eugene. That’s when I put down roots in this rich, fertile ground. I became an Oregonian through and through.
Years later, when I was approached about running for public office, I can recall writing my very first speech. I wrote about my grandparents immigrating from Mexico to this land of opportunity. I wrote about my mother dropping out of school in the eighth grade and that her dream for her children was a good education. I got so flooded with emotion, I could barely get through a first draft. I didn’t understand why I was crying. Then it hit me. At that moment, I was fulfilling the American dream and now had a chance to give back to my state and my country.
Oregon has always been a land of opportunity – for the Native Americans who have cherished this land for millennia, for the pioneers who arrived in covered wagons in the 1800s. And for the many newcomers like I was who move here seeking a new and better life, whether they come from Mexico or Russia or California. Who, if they’re lucky, will fall in love with this place, with its beauty and its quirkiness, the same way I did.
Oregon has inspired me in so many ways, given me purpose and passion. This is where my life changed course in a way I never could have imagined. This is where I have been able to live out my dreams. This is home.
