Jean and Walt.jpg

Jean Richardson, right, a pioneering Oregon engineer, rides the tram with Walt Reynolds, the first African American to earn a medical degree from Oregon's medical school. Each had one of Portland's two trams named in his or her honor. Richard died in April at age 88.

(Frederick D. Joe / The Oregonian / 2007)

Jean Richardson, the first woman to earn a civil engineering degree from Oregon State University and a designer of an important Portland water treatment plant, died in April, her family reported in obituaries published this weekend.

Richardson was honored in 2007 when one of Portland's two trams was named "Jean" after her. (The other tram is Walt, named for Walt Reynolds, the first African American to graduate from Oregon's medical school.)

Jean Richardson, an advocate for math and science education and a designer of Portland's water treatment plant, was the first woman to earn a civil engineering degree from Oregon State.

When she graduated from Oregon State in 1949, classmates told her no one would hire a woman for a civil engineering job. So to get her first one, in Birmingham, Alabama, she worked for an engineering firm for a month with no pay to prove herself. The company then hired her for pay.

According to earlier reporting by The Oregonian's Joseph Rose, Richardson took a break from her career to raise three children, then eventually returned to Oregon. She and her husband, fellow engineer William York Richardson II, found work designing complex wastewater systems for paper mills.

Later, she was hired by the City of Portland, and Richardson ended her career working on Portland's Columbia River sewage treatment plant. She said civil engineering has one basic goal: "Serve humanity."

Richardson was an advocate for education in math and science and was a state leader in both Oregon and Alabama for Mathcounts, a national competition for middle school students.

Jean McGlenn Richardson was born Nov. 15, 1927 and died April 22, 2016. She lived in McMinnville near the end of her life and is survived by her sons, W.Y. "Chip" III, Paul and Clayton; seven grandchildren; and three great grandchildren.

-- Betsy Hammond