David Grube BA ’69 - 2020 Pioneer Alumni Leadership Award

David was born in Eugene, Oregon, and raised in rural Oregon and Alaska. He came to Lewis & Clark College with the dream of becoming either a Presbyterian minister or a high school band director (neither happened). While at L&C, he played baseball, sang in the choir and with the folk group Table for Four, and performed in the band and orchestra. His second year, The Oregonian published a story that he was elected sophomore class president, but it was a mistake—he’d lost by one vote! He was also a resident assistant in Manzanita Hall his junior year.

David studied abroad in Austria his senior year, and he has organized reunions every five years since returning home from the program. In 2018, he led the group on a return to their homestays in Sankt Veit an der Glan and then back to Vienna and he has hosted biweekly virtual reunions for the group since the start of the pandemic. He was a member of the planning committees for his 45th and 50th LC reunions, and he is the L&C Class of 1969 correspondent.

David graduated from Lewis & Clark cum laude with a BA in natural science and then earned his MD from the University of Oregon Medical School. He served in the National Health Service Corps for 5 years, practiced family medicine for 35 years in Philomath, Oregon, and retired in 2012. He is currently the national medical director for Compassion and Choices. He was the Oregon Academy of Family Physicians Doctor of the Year in 1986, the Lewis & Clark Distinguished Alumni Award winner in 1994, and the Oregon Medical Association Doctor-Citizen of the Year in 2009. David has also served on many boards over the years: the Oregon Board of Medical Examiners, including two years as chair; the Philomath School Board; and his local hospital board.

David married Lynn Hansard in Lewis & Clark’s Agnes Flanagan Chapel in 1973; they have three children and five grandchildren. He and Lynn have sung in the Corvallis Presbyterian Church Choir for over 40 years. David’s hobbies are traveling (before COVID-19) and writing.