In Memory of
Raymond F. Mikesell
Born February 13th 1913, Died September 12th 2006
The Memorial Service was held Saturday, September 23. Remarks and photos are here.
Last Surviving US Economist at the Bretton Woods Conference.
Raymond F. Mikesell, Professor of Economics at the University of Oregon, passed away on September 12, 2006 at his home in Eugene, from age related causes. He was 93.
Professor Mikesell had a remarkable life as an academic, advisor to the US Government, outdoorsman, and author of more than 30 books and monographs. He earned his Ph.D. in 1939 from Ohio State, and after several years as a faculty member of the University of Washington in Seattle, he went to work for the federal government to help prepare the economy for war. Near the end of World War II, he became an advisor to Assistant Treasury Secretary Harry Dexter White, who led the US efforts to shape the world’s postwar economy.
Professor Mikesell is believed to have been the last surviving US economist at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference, where White and John Maynard Keynes negotiated the design of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. These institutions ended the prewar British system of colonial preferences, funded the European recovery, and laid the foundation for the postwar economic expansion. Professor Mikesell’s job was to provide the data for White to use against Keynes’s attempts to preserve British interests. Many economists would have been worried to be on the opposite side of an argument from Lord Keynes, but Professor Mikesell was never a timid man. In his later years Mikesell argued for reform of the Fund, and for abolishment of the Bank, which he said had become an inefficient bureaucracy.
After the war, Mikesell became a professor at the University of Virginia while also working as an advisor to the State Department on currency reform in Saudi Arabia, and as Economic Advisor to the Joint British-American Cabinet Committee on Palestine. In the 1950’s he served, among many other posts, as a senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisors, and then on the Paley Commission, designing policies that helped to encourage worldwide development and trade in natural resources. He was a consultant to the UN, the World Bank, the Organization of American States, the Inter-American Development Bank, and to Oregon Senator Wayne Morse and the Committee on Foreign Relations.
In 1957 Mikesell left Virginia to take the W.E. Miner Chair at the University of Oregon Department of Economics. He loved mountains, the Pacific Northwest, hiking, and skiing. His PhD students – and there were many – each has a story about how Ray would take them hiking, wear them out on the trail, and then sit around the campfire while they recovered, smoking cigars and telling them what they needed to do for their dissertation.
Ray traveled everywhere from Antarctica to Nepal. It seemed like he knew every mountain, trail, and stream in the southern Cascades, and his favorite camping spot was Linton Meadows. Ray was still skiing downhill at Willamette Pass in his nineties – and said it was a lot easier with a new heart valve. He was also an avid tennis player, and played his last doubles match a year before his death.
Professor Mikesell’s political beliefs were interesting. As a college student he had supported the socialist Norman Thomas, and he said that every war the US ever fought could and should have been avoided “and that includes the revolution!” He was an environmentalist who favored government protection of wilderness, and as an economist he was also a firm believer in market institutions and economic development. He resigned from the Sierra Club over their opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement.
In 1998, Professor Mikesell endowed a chair in environmental and resource economics at the University of Oregon. At the graduation day speech announcing his gift, Ray walked slowly to the podium, then stopped and looked up at the students and their parents. “Some of you might be wondering how a professor got to be so well off that he could afford give this much money away.” he said. “You do it like this. Save 5% from every paycheck and invest it, even if it’s only at 3%. Eventually, you’ll have a million dollars too.” He looked up again, and then with perfect timing added “Of course, it helps if you live as long as I have.” The crowd broke into laughter, then applause. Ray smiled, and walked off the stage.
Professor Mikesell was preceded in death by his two sons, George and Norman, and two previous wives, Desyl and Irene. He is survived by his wife Grace and her three children: Norman Hill of Detroit, Alice Kaser of Eugene, and Cynthia Bulgach Hill of Venice, California. Grace and her children brought a new and joyful family life to Ray’s last 10 years, to his obvious satisfaction.
Donations may be made to either of Ray’s favorite Eugene hiking spots: Mt. Pisgah Arboretum, or Friends of Hendricks Park.
