Area authors give WSU lecture

The history of the Palouse will come to light April 15 when local authors Alex McGregor and Richard Scheuerman lecture at Washington State University. McGregor and Scheuerman will speak April 15 in the CUB Junior Ballroom at 7:30 p.m.

The event is the 14th Paul Catts Memorial Lecture. Title of the talk will be “Remarkable People and a Remarkable Land.”

“It’s about pioneer values that endure. It’s about the last bastion of family businesses, farming families,” McGregor said of his lecture.

McGregor will detail the changes brought about by European settlers to the Palouse region. He said he plans on sharing with the audience the fundamental values he believes are at the heart of pioneering, one of which is hard work.

McGregor and Scheuerman have both written books on the history and development of the Palouse Country. Scheuerman co-authored Renegade Tribe: The Palouse Indians and the Invasion of the Inland Pacific Northwest. His most recent book is Finding Chief Kamiakin: The Life and Legacy of a Northwest Patriot.

Scheuerman, a former teacher and administrator at St. John and Endicott, now teaches in the graduate school of education at Seattle Pacific University.

McGregor, president of the McGregor Co., wrote Counting Sheep: From Open Range to Agribusiness on the Columbia Plateau.

McGregor currently serves on the boards of the Association of Washington Business and the Washington State Historical Society.

The two will be presenting for the E. Paul Catts memorial series. The annual lecture is presented by the WSU Entomology Department for the past 14 years in honor of Catts, an entomology professor with the university.

The lecture is usually centered around a topic of entomology, but every five years, they try to include speakers on a more broad subject matter, said John Brown, WSU entomology professor.