Biography

Irvin "Irv" Herman Luiten was born in Odessa, Washington, in 1915. His parents moved him and his six siblings to a wheat farm in Ritzville, Washington, in the early 1920s, then to Edwall, Washington, in 1926. He was an avid student and he won a scholarship to Kinman Business University in Spokane, Washington, which he attended during the winter of 1935. In 1936, he began attending Washington State University and studied journalism. After he graduated in 1940, he was a reporter for the Colville Examiner in Colville, Washington, until 1941, when he began working for Northwest Farm News in Bellingham, Washington. After the attack on Pearl Harbor that same year, Luiten immediately joined the army, where he served as an intelligence officer and defense counsel in the 103rd Anti-Tank Battalion. He was deployed to England, where he spent the bulk of the war working with the Military Intelligence Service to teach escape and evasion tactics to airmen. After leaving the service in 1946, he returned to Washington and took over as editor for the Northwest Farm News. He married Ellen Boyde the same year. After their daughter was born in 1947, Luiten took various jobs, motivated by higher salaries, until he began his career with Weyerhaeuser Company as a writer for Weyerhaeuser News. He did public relations work for the company and then became a Weyerhaeuser lobbyist to the Oregon Legislature, serving from 1953 to 1978. After retiring at age 63, he did public relations consulting work for various Oregon companies. He died in 1997.

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