Collection is open for research.
Linda Sue Dodds, nee Paisley, was born in Astoria, Oregon, in 1945. A short time later, her family moved to the Eugene, Oregon, area. She studied journalism at the University of Oregon. In the late 1970s, she continued her college education at Portland State University and earned a bachelor's degree. She also co-authored a book on the history of Cedar Mill, Oregon, where she resided. In 1979, she became the oral historian at the Oregon Historical Society. After leaving the historical society in 1982, she continued to do contract work as a historian, and also co-authored additional history books. In the 1990s, she earned a master's degree from Oregon State University.
She married twice, first to John Stuart Brody, with whom she had two children, in 1966. She worked professionally under the name Linda S. Brody until 1982, when she married Gordon B. Dodds.
Sources: Vital records on Ancestry.com; information provided by Dodds in her interview.
Oral history interview with Linda S. Dodds, by Jim Strassmaier, SR 2528, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
This oral history interview with Linda S. Dodds was conducted by Jim Strassmaier on March 16, 2001, as part of the Oregon Historical Society Research Library's oral history program. In addition to the audio recording of the interview, a transcript is available.
In this interview, Dodds discusses her family background and early life in Springfield and Eugene, Oregon. She talks about studying journalism at the University of Oregon, about her marriage to John S. Brody, and about completing her bachelor's degree at Portland State University. She shares her experiences co-authoring a book on the history of Cedar Mill, Oregon, and talks about how those experiences led to her interest in oral history. She describes how she became the oral historian at the Oregon Historical Society in 1979. She talks about people she worked with in the research library, about changes she made to the oral history program, and about how the program was funded. She shares her reasons for resigning in 1982, and talks about her activities after leaving the historical society, including earning a master's degree from Oregon State University and serving as director of a now-closed museum about the history of cowboys in Eastern Oregon, which was located in Northeast Portland in the 1990s.
Copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society. Use is allowed according to the following statement: Creative Commons - BY-NC-SA,