The Steps Add Up

Superwalking Couple Supports Accounting Scholarships

:: Walking in gratitude

:: Nepal to Death Valley

:: Compulsive, not competitive

:: Read entire story

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Ron Perkins, a 1962 UO accounting graduate, is grateful to the Lundquist College of Business for launching his successful career as a certified public accountant and then chief financial officer for a venture capital firm in San Francisco. That’s why he and his wife, Carol Bruce, decided to make a pledge that will one day fund accounting scholarships in the Lundquist college.

The money that eventually will fund the couple’s gift is currently invested as part of a larger charitable remainder unitrust, which they manage themselves. The trust also provides the retired couple with an income stream that helps support an unusual hobby: long-distance walking.

NEPAL TO DEATH VALLEY
Starting with treks in Nepal in the 1980s, the couple has walked 630 miles along the southwest coast of England; 510 miles following an ancient pilgrimage route, St. James’ Way, across Spain; and 150 miles around the perimeter of Mont Blanc, which reaches into France, Italy, and Switzerland.

The couple also summited nine peaks in the Bay Area in nine days to simulate the total elevation gain of climbing Mount Everest (33,000 feet). With a friend, Ron walked 146 miles from the lowest point (Badwater Basin in Death Valley, elevation 282 feet below sea level) to the highest point in the continental U.S. (the top of Mount Whitney at 14,495 feet).

On his own, Ron has embarked on a quest to walk all the city streets in the suburban communities around the Bay Area.

Now sixty-seven, Ron says he started the long-distance walking because he could no longer engage in the long-distance running he pursued in his forties and fifties. He ran his first marathon (twenty-six miles) at the age of forty-six and his first ultramarathon (usually between fifty and 100 miles) at the age of forty-nine or fifty. He ran more than 100 ultramarathons, eleven of them 100 miles long. One was on Baffin Island in the Arctic Circle, another on King George Island on Antarctica.

Both he and Carol, also a retired accountant, have also done a considerable amount of mountain climbing.

Why does he do it? “It’s just a challenge—I’m outside, see a lot that I haven’t seen before, I get my head together, all good stuff.”

COMPULSIVE, NOT COMPETITIVE
Ron describes himself as compulsive, not competitive: “I never do anything in moderation.” He says that most long-distance runners and walkers in his age group don’t do it competitively—“It’s
more for the camaraderie, sharing the misery and that sort of thing.”

Ron says his love of challenges is a quality he admired in one of his accounting professors at the UO, the late Charles Johnson—“He had a
can-do approach that really motivated
his students.” The scholarships in accounting will be named in memory of Johnson.

The couple also made a recent outright gift of more than $50,000 to the UO College of Education in memory of Ron’s parents. His father, Laurence “Toby” Perkins, received his doctorate in education from the UO in 1965 and worked as assistant superintendent for the Eugene School District. His mother, Evelyn, was a teacher and counselor at Sheldon High School in Eugene.

Ron says he and Carol are not anywhere near slowing down. Their upcoming treks include the French portion of St. James’ Way—about 500 miles—and the Haute Route from Chamonix, France, to Zermatt, Switzerland, a ten-day hike through
the Alps.

—Ann Baker Mack