Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
Knife designer Jeff Freeman has been selected to be the first recipient since 2002 of the High-Q Award of Merit.
The award has been presented on an irregular basis since 1976 to a Sweet Home High School student or graduate who has distinguished himself or herself in an exceptional way on the state or national level. It is considered the most prestigious honor presented by the high school, and is very selective.
Freeman, a 1985 graduate of Sweet Home High School, graduated in the top five of his class and was an all-state defensive lineman for the football team. After graduating from Oregon State University with a bachelor’s degree in industrial and manufacturing engineering, he served in the Army from 1990-93 as a machine specialist, earning the Commendation Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Army Service Ribbon, Overseas Service Ribbon and Expert Marksmanship Badge Rifle, M16.
He is currently the senior design engineer for Gerber Legendary Blades in Portland, and has designed more than 45 unique or new products.
He has received Field & Stream magazine’s “Best of the Best” award for his Freeman Hunter blade and has won two International Knife of the Year awards, one for the Freeman Folder and another for the LMF II Infantry, which he designed for soldiers in Iraq.
Freeman is married to Kathleen (Barnes) Freeman, a 1989 graduate of Sweet Home High.
The High-Q award is financed in perpetuity by an endowment set up by the state championship High-Q teams of 1972-73.
High-Q was a TV game show that pitted teams of high school students from Oregon and southwestern Washington against each other in academic competitions, similar to the national show College Bowl.
Sweet Home’s team won 13 straight head-to-head TV matches over the course of three years, including the state championship, Erik Duncan, who was team captain, recalled.
“We did fairly well over a period of about three years,” said Duncan, who is now a clipper operator at Weyerhaeuser’s Foster plant.
When the Sweet Home team won the state title, Duncan and the other four members, Richard Black, Jim Cook, Tom Palkki and Steve Stenberg, decided to take the advice of their adviser, George Wenzel, and use the $500 they’d won to create a medal that would be awarded to deserving recipients. The award would be particularly aimed at academic achievement.
“At the time, athletics had a pretty big following, but academics really didn’t,” Duncan said. “We thought we’d recognize it with something more concrete.”
Duncan and members outlined criteria for the honor, which is awarded in the areas of academics, student leadership, vocation, extra-curricular activities and sports and may be given to students whose activities surpass the norm at the high school or to a graduate who has shown “very outstanding ability in some endeavor in adult life.”
Athletes, for instance, must be recognized on the national level to be eligible, said retired teacher Ben Dahlenburg, who served on the nominating committee.
Any student or alumnus can be nominated for the award. Winners are selected by a committee of faculty members, alumni and students.
“It’s aimed at success on the statewide or national level,” Duncan said. “If you look at past recipients, they were successful with what they did.”
Duncan credited Dahlenburg, who was president of the Alumni Foundation at the time, for re-instituting the award after it went dormant for a period of time.
Previous award recipients are:
Radio personality Jamie Bates and Miss Oregon Teenager Charlotte Alford (1976);
Mark Ringnalda for academics in science (1977);
Edith Agoff for academics and Wes Hutchins for leadership (1978);
Jim Stock and Dean Emmert, both for achievements in the business field (1982);
Rene Wolthuis for music and Kip Mechals for photography (1983);
Richie Seiber for leadership (1986);
Todd Graves for academics (1987);
Bruce Davis for athletics (1988);
Leah Land for athletics (1989);
James McCarthy for science (1990);
Jessie Schra for athletics (1994);
Brian Bennett for business (1996);
Robert Waibel for logging competition prowess and Clint Sieminski for athletics (2001)
and Jerry Farnsworth for professional achievement (2002).
Duncan said he believes Freeman is a good candidate for the honor.
“I actually sat on the committee four or five years ago,” he said. “(Freeman) was one of the candidates. That’s quite a story.
Over the year, it’s leaning more toward alums, rather than students,” Duncan said of the award. “As the years go by, it’s become a way to let people know what people who have graduated from Sweet Home High School have done.”