John Angell

The following essay was written by John's son Townsend (Towny) Angell for the 50th Anniversary publication in 2018.

FATHER, TEACHER, and FRIEND

John Deforest Angell was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on January 24th, 1918. He grew up in Buffalo, New York, went to Andover Prep School in Massachusetts, and later attended Oberlin College from September 1936 to January 1938. He married my mother, Adelaide Townsend, in Pelham, New York, in 1940. They would have five children, three daughters and two sons. I am the youngest.

After the birth of their first child, the family moved out to Oregon where my grandfather owned some timber land and John and his brother started the Angell Lumber Company and never looked back.

They quit the lumber business in the 1950s and he would take uninspiring jobs in insurance and sales before returning to college at Portland State College in the 1960s and becoming a teacher with Portland Public Schools. Teaching was the first work he really loved. He taught 4th and 6th graders at Boise Elementary from 1965 to 1969 and was at MLC from 1969 to1973.

During this time of his life, he and my mother were living in the Shire, a communal Northwest Portland house with the Williams and Lea families. Many other MLC families gathered there for meals and social hours, games and political debates. It was a wonderful and exciting place to be. At the same time he had started Camp Cedar Rock on Shaw Island in the San Juans with the help of many MLC and Unitarian families who made up the majority of the attending campers. This was an educational extension to the outdoor experience that provided an unusual continuity between the academic school year and a summer camp experience, all with much the same cohort. School and play and life were one.

He loved travel and adventure and would often drive the family on long trips to Mexico to learn and enjoy the richness of that culture. He organized Unitarian trips to Mexico in rented full-size commercial buses. He organized a trip to Mexico for MLC students with parental approval on one of these buses over a winter break. He did not have the full approval from PPS and the Couch principal, but he had already committed to the kids and their families, so he took them anyway. That was too much for PPS to bear and the school and my father parted company and he retired. After MLC he moved to Mexico, living in Puerto Angel full time where many old MLC and other Portland friends came to visit over the years.

Portrait of John Angell painted, according to his son Townsend, by an artist friend of John's and Jan Taylor's, in Puerto Angel, Mexico, where they'd retired. "It looks exactly like him and that shirt and hat were his favorite for years," Townsend wrote in 2025. "The frame is the remnants of the crate dad had made to ship it to me in the States. That was some 40 years ago and I foolishly did not write down the artist's name and I never got the chance to meet her .... She was a pro with an agent, so she didn’t sign it." Courtesy of Townsend Angell.

He was a great supporter of passion and encouraged students to follow their interests intensely. He was a voracious reader and literally read any and every book he could get his hands on. In his life he was involved with the beginnings of the Portland Opera, acted with the Civic Theater, and sailed boats, mastering the helm of the 58’ steamship Oceanid, the camp craft at Shaw. He took 60 kids one summer on deck for a cruise from Shaw to Victoria, BC, where everyone stayed in three rooms at the Empress Hotel; that was quite a scene. The hotel staff didn’t bat an eye.

He learned countless songs on piano and guitar and taught many of my friends to play; he had a powerful rich singing voice, learned Spanish, memorized many Mexican folk songs, and enjoyed all food and wine and, most of all, people, particularly the young and curious and active kids whom he taught and mentored. He thrived on that youthful energy and always retained a sense of the child himself.

He treated everyone he met with honest respect and I don’t think he truly disliked anyone, except a few politicians as required. He embraced a positive optimism, a wonder of the unknown, and a constant joy of discovery. He and my mother always made our homes very welcoming to large numbers of people and I believe he found some essence of meaning in every day of his life. He truly loved his time at MLC; he was very comfortable there and very sad to go, but he did not hold on to regrets.

My father died in Puerto Angel on September 24, 1986. That is almost 32 years ago. I am almost the age now he was then. Life goes on. Many sons speak of the inspirational impact their fathers had on their lives and I can definitely attest to that, but many other people have told me through the years of the profound effect he had on their lives, how he exemplified a way of living in simple harmony with what life has to offer. I still think of him often and it always brings a smile to my face and warmth to my heart. Father, teacher, and friend.

Townsend Angell, August 15, 2018

John aboard the Oceanid, at Shaw island. Courtesy of Townsend Angell.

John in his classroom, circa 1970.