[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 164 (Monday, November 18, 2013)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1694]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         IN MEMORY OF DR. NOHAD TOULAN AND DIRICE MORONI TOULAN

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. EARL BLUMENAUER

                               of oregon

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, November 18, 2013

  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, our hearts go out to Mariam and Omar, to 
the extended Toulan family, to their Portland State family whose lives 
have been touched by the service commitment of Nohad and Dirce Moroni 
Toulan. Indeed, Portlanders who never knew them have benefited from 
their presence in our community for almost 40 years.
  The Toulans were a unique power couple not just in Portland, but with 
influence around the world. Indeed, they were an international power 
couple; he from Egypt, she from Argentina. They accepted international 
assignments, as when he became the first planning director for the 
greater Cairo region.
  He had been an advisor to the United Nations development program and 
to local and foreign governments. Most significant was his 20-month 
assignment directing the preparation of the comprehensive regional plan 
for the holy city of Mecca. They were amazing assignments for an 
amazing man.
  It was my honor to have met him when he first arrived in Portland in 
1974. I was working in the president's office at Portland State 
University then when he began the most critical chapter in the 
development of Portland State as a true urban university.
  It is hard to think of all the ways the Toulans contributed to the 
evolution of our modest continuing education center for returning 
veterans to the establishment of a vital, strong, thriving university 
with particular expertise in urban studies.
  Dr. Toulan was a renaissance man: a scholar, planner, and academic 
leader, a force in the community for human rights, sound foreign 
policy, and protecting the planet. There is a reason his name graces 
the School of Planning and Public Policy at Portland State. No one 
contributed more to the emergence of one of the outstanding academic 
outposts in America dealing with planning, livability, transportation, 
and how we knit these elements together for a better future.
  Nohad helped define the critical role that an urban university can 
play not just as a place of instruction, but for research and a living 
laboratory.
  Dirce Moroni Toulan in her own right was an accomplished 
professional. She didn't just support Nohad through his career, but had 
a strong academic and professional background and was greatly 
influential and respected at the university. It is not by accident that 
her name is on the library for the College of Public Affairs.
  I worked directly for two presidents and since worked with four more. 
Each put their imprint on the university which is still being enhanced 
further under the stewardship of Wim Wievel and his wife Alice. Yet 
over the last 40 years, I don't think anybody has done more for the 
evolution of the university and its role in our community, and in the 
nation, and in the world.
  We mourn the loss of this extraordinary couple even as we celebrate 
their lives. Portland State University, our community, the nation is a 
better place because of them.
  As I reflect on the sad closing of this brilliant chapter, to focus 
on the academic and the professional, important as they are is to lose 
an essential element that has become more important to me over the 
years, even as the formal phase of their career wound down.
  They were a true interfaith couple: a Catholic priest and Muslim Iman 
were at their memorial last Monday. In an era of such international 
tension these last dozen years, which have been visited upon our 
community, theirs were voices of tolerance and compassion. They were 
vigorously opposed to discrimination, and fierce champions of outreach, 
of connection, of mutual respect.
  For all of the many contributions that will live on in urban affairs 
and Portland State University, they made a vital contribution to sane 
foreign policy, religious tolerance, and interfaith cooperation which 
may not be evidenced like the name of a college or a library. Their 
message was there when the community needed to hear it and their 
example when the community needed to see it. We are richer for that 
gift.

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