Donald Arthur Wells

Donald Arthur Wells passed away peacefully in the Rogue Valley Manor on November 7, 2018 at the age of 101.5 years.  He was the third of eight children, born on April 17, 1917, in Saint Paul, MN, to Harry Edward and Madeline Sears Wells.  The family was relatively affluent until the Depression, when their produce business went bankrupt, they lost their home, and Don dropped out of high school to earn money.  From 1934-1936 he worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps in the north woods of Minnesota, developing his lifelong passion for the out-of-doors.



In 1936, Don entered the University of Minnesota in Forestry; in 1938 he transferred to Hamline University and changed his major to philosophy, graduating with a B.A. in 1940.  On September 7, 1940, he married June Elizabeth Mickman and moved to Boston where he enrolled in Boston University’s School of Theology; he graduated and became an ordained Methodist minister in 1943.  Strongly influenced by the pacifist teachings of Eugene Debs, A.J. Muste, and Norman Thomas, Don was a conscientious objector during World War II, worked in a hospital for wounded veterans, and served churches in Massachusetts and Maine until 1946.



Over this period, he realized that he would rather teach than preach, so he enrolled in the Philosophy Department at Boston University.  He received his Ph.D. in 1946 and took his first teaching job at Oregon State College in Corvallis, Oregon, where he taught until 1948 and became an avid mountain climber.  In 1948, he was invited to chair the philosophy department at Washington State University in Pullman, WA, and taught there through 1969, serving as coach of the ski team and faculty advisor to the Students for a Democratic Society.



In 1948, the family joined a group of WSU faculty who bought a section of land on Priest Lake in northern Idaho, in an area without roads, electricity, or running water.  During the winters Don taught in Pullman, and in the summers the family moved to the lake and set about building a log cabin.  Using his Forestry training and CCC credentials, Don secured a summer job at the Diamond Match logging camp across the lake, and, guided by a small book on “How to Build a Log Cabin”, the family built one!  Over these years, Don became an enthusiastic hiker, fly fisherman, captain of the sailboat he built, and jack-of–all-trades at cabin building.



Don served as chair of the philosophy department at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle, from 1969-1971, and at Hilo College in Hawaii from 1971-1992, when he and his wife moved to Ashland.  They moved into the Rogue Valley Manor in 1998.  Over the course of his academic career, Don wrote numerous articles and eight books, including God, Man, and the Thinker: Philosophies of Religion and The War Myth.  His central concerns as a scholar were the foundations of a just society, the philosophy of war and peace, and whether it is possible to conduct a “just” war. He ran marathons into his late 80s and mountain biked and cross-country skied into his mid 90s.  His wife, June, died in 2010.  Over his last years, he was blessed by the companionship of his beloved Norma Christian.  He is survived by his son, Michael, of Montreal, Canada, his daughter, Miriam, of Davis, CA, and two granddaughters and four great-grandchildren who live in the Netherlands.  No services are planned.