Peter Eberhardt
The son of a U.S. Foreign Service Consular Officer, Peter
Eberhardt spent four years of his childhood in Cuba, where he chased
butterflies and heard gunfire on the streets during the Cuban
Revolution, then another four years in Mexico. "I'm bilingual and
bicultural," he notes. "I take vacations to visit friends in Mexico."
When his father left the Foreign Service, the family moved to
Corvallis, Oregon, where he went to Corvallis High School and two years
of college at Oregon State. "I paid my first month's rent in Eugene
with money earned in a food booth at the Oregon Country Fair," says
Eberhardt, who migrated 40 miles south to study geography at the
University of Oregon, got interested in mapmaking, and started the
cartography booth McKenzie Maps at the Country Fair the following
summer, in 1978. "We worked every year through 2014, a very successful
final year: best sales ever and best party ever!" A letterpress map,
Rivers of Oregon, was the best seller. Aside from the fair, Eberhardt
also made maps for the U.S. Forest Service, in Eugene and at the
McKenzie Ranger Station, for 13 years, plus five years for the Lane
Council of Governments. "My most important work was a map of the
Willamette National Forest for the 1990 Forest Plan," he recalls. More
recently, inspired by a presentation and musical performance by local
NAACP leader Eric Richardson on the UO campus in January of 2020,
Eberhardt invented the Oregon Blackberry Award to recognize people
making a difference in the cultures and communities of Oregon. Modeled
after the annual Nobel Prize, the OBA is scaled to a local level and
presented more frequently. "Awardees are chosen by the Oregon
Blackberry Trust," Eberhardt explains, "a group of friends committed to
progressive social change, good conversations and fun." During the 11
months since the first award was presented to Eric Richardson in May of
2020, a total of 20 additional OBAs have been issued, 18 of them to
individuals and two to news organizations: KLCC radio and the Eugene
Weekly.
happening people
photograph and story by Paul Neevel
Eugene Weekly / 15 April 2021
|
|
archive
contact