Background
Dirks was born in the Ozarks of Arkansas in 1912, the youngest of ten children.
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Jane Dirks-Edmunds
Edit ProfileEducation
She studied the Saddleback Mountain research site from 1935-1969. Dirks-Edmunds attended Linfield College from 1932-1937, where she received her Bachelor of Surgery in Biology. After earning her Doctor of Philosophy. at the University of Illinois, Dirks-Edmunds returned to Linfield College as an instructor of Biology and assistant to the registrar: the first female Doctor of Philosophy hired by the institution.
Career
Her parents, Linda Gates and Peter B. Dirks traveled in 1924 to Puget Sound, Washington State, finally settling in Umpqua Valley. In the prologue of her book Not Just Trees: The Legacy of a Douglas-fir Forest, she notes an early love of the Northwest’s forests. This admiration continued through her academic years.
In 1944, she took a brief leave of absence from Linfield and spent three semesters at Whitworth College, serving as the head of the Biology department.
She returned to Linfield in 1946 and taught until her retirement in 1974 as Professor Emerita. Dirks-Edmunds traveled to study other biotic communities: the Sonoran Desert, in 1967 and later in 1972, and a brief sojourn to Lake Atitlan and Guatemala"s tropical forest.
Saddleback Research Site
This mountain in Oregon state, Lincoln County (commonly confused with the Saddle Mountain of Astoria) was a project of Doctor Macnab, Dirks-Edmunds" mentor at Linfield. This hectare plot lay in the Coastal Mountain range.
They studied the numerous organisms in the soil of the Douglas-fir and Hemlock community, with Dirks-Edmunds remaining at the site after Macnab retired from field research.
As the entire region was being encroached by logging throughout the 1900s, Dirks-Edmunds traveled to the research site to find the site logged for a second time. The area never recovered as an active mature forest, and was subject to fires afterward. Her doctoral Thesis, "A Comparison of the Biotic Communities of the Cedar-Hemlock and Oak-Hickory Associations," was published in Ecological Monographs for July, 1947.
Dirks-Edmunds also worked with the Linfield Research Institute on various biological studies, including a published study on the Bronze Flea Beetle.
Not Just Trees was published in 1999 and is an important text for the Northwest because it allows a glimpse into an ecological community of Saddleback mountain that no longer exists as a mature forest. A member in the community of the First Baptist of McMinnville, she published a 125-year history, entitled Roots, Visions and Mission, published in 1992 at the request of the church"s anniversary committee.
She was also a contributor of short essays, poems, scientific papers and lectures.
Religion
The two greatest commandments are to "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with your entire mind" and to "love your neighbor as yourself."
Politics
The state should not use its authority to promote particular religious beliefs, nor should it require prayer or worship in the public schools. However, the state should leave students free to practice their own religious convictions.
Views
God created humans to be able to innovate and evaluate new forms of living that will encourage development of the fullest potential in individuals.
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Born
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Died
December 29, 2003 (aged 91) -
Nationality
United States -
Religion
Baptist