At 7:20 PM on August 19, 1994, Linus Pauling passed away, a victim of rectal and prostate cancer. Twenty-five years later, the Pauling Blog will be devoting the month of August to remembering.
Today’s post features three video clips of local news broadcasts announcing Pauling’s death and commenting on its aftermath. Each of these reports was collected by Oregon State University’s News and Communications Services unit and later deposited with the Special Collections and Archives Research Center at OSU Libraries.
In the first clip below, which aired the day after Pauling died, Portland’s NBC affiliate KGW-8 provides a nice overview of Pauling’s life that includes footage of his last visit to the Rose City in February 1991.
This next clip, which also aired on August 20, 1994, was produced by Eugene station KVAL-13 and features footage of OSU chemist Carroll DeKock as well as Ramesh Krishmurthy, formerly the Projects Director at the OSU Special Collections. Both talk about Pauling’s impact and Krishnamurthy provides a glimpse of the Pauling Papers as they were arranged at that time.
Finally, this shorter item, which aired on August 23rd, was broadcast on a different Eugene station – KEZI-9 – and focuses on the future of the Linus Pauling Institute. It also includes a few shots of the Special Collections reading room, which was located on the fourth floor of the Kerr Library at the time and demolished five years later as part of a major building expansion that relied, in part, on Pauling’s name to generate private support.
