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Laila, daughter and only child of Ed and Hilja Saari, immigrants from Finland grew up in the hubbub of ethnic Finnish-American activities in Palisade, Minnesota. On the Saari farm a Finn Hall was built and it housed the gatherings of the entire Finnish speaking community. There was food, dancing, singing, poetry reciting, discussions and theater performances, and Laila�s mother Hilja was one of the pillars of that community. When Hilja and Ed Saari retired in Tucson to be near their daughter and her family, local Finnish Americans found each other and formed what still is the Finnish American Club of Tucson and Hilja was its first president. Laila, being busy with her plant nursery, never had much time for our local club, but she still speaks Finnish, has good memories and is an admirer of Sibelius�s music, Finnish literature and culture. She and Ralph have traveled in Europe, including Finland years ago.

It�s been said by many faithful customers of the Catalina Nursery that you can trust Laila and Ralph because they sell quality plants, only plants that do well in Tucson, and never plants out of season. The other day as I visited with Laila and Ralph, a caller wanted daffodils. Ralph, answering the call said �No, I only have a few of them left. It�s time for the iris; they are coming out just now.� And when I admired a lilac bush, Laila explained to me that it was a Persian an lilac and that only Persian lilacs did well in Tucson.

Laila and Ralph McPheeters, as well as Eddie and his wife, and even grandson Eddie III with their plant nursery - their many self-adopted cats and a rooster included - have given our Tucson community their expertise in growing plants, their counsel and trust for more than fifty years.. They are always there and they stick to their simple philosophy of honesty (also a Finnish trait) growing healthy plants in season, and treating people well. Ralph, now 92, has no plans for retiring, nor does Laila. They love what they are doing; why should they retire at all?

OLIVER LAINE, Ph.D.

At present specific genetic methods have opened the double helix.) The World Health Organization (WHO) supported his work in Tucson and this allowed him to hire mathematicians from Europe as co-workers.
Alvar Wilska continued the improvement of his instrument in Tucson into the early �80s, explaining that he could foresee even better results because auxiliary techniques were improved. He succeeded in shortening the column of his microscope to 32 cm, the conventional ones being two meters high. His dream was to create an easy-to-use instrument in a less than perfect environment. For this he later had collaboration with a Japanese company.

In the �30s Alvar Wilska experimented and wrote his doctoral thesis on acoustics (in German), explaining the theories behind stereo sound. This has led to present day stereo technique. In the late �30s he developed microelectrodes to measure electric currents in single nerve cells. This technique he also used at the Rockefeller Foundation in 1940. Ragnar Granit and Haldan Hartline used them in their research on retinal cells and received Nobel Prize in 1967.

During World War II in Finland, Alvar invented a stereo x-ray fluoroscope which made it possible to extract bullets and shrapnel from internal organs and tissues normally difficult to reach. Also during the war, he invented the Molotov Cocktail, an effective anti-tank weapon, for the Finnish Forces fighting the Soviet Union. He also devised a system of 5000-watt lamps with reflectors to prevent the enemy bombers from seeing an important industrial area of 100 square kilometers, thus also saving lives. While being the head of the Wihuri Foundation in Finland after the war, Alvar was invited to a pharmaceutical firm in Stockholm to help develop high-yield mutants of penicillin. In the early �50s his Anoptral microscope allowed living cells and their functions, including phagocytosis, to be observed with good contrast without staining.
Before arriving at the Physics department of the University of Arizona, Alvar Wilska was invited to do research at the Louisiana State University. While there he became a consultant for USA Philips.
Alvar traveled constantly between Tucson, Tokyo and Helsinki especially after 1972 when his family returned to Finland - until his retirement from the University of Arizona in 1983. His long days and many decades of work had taken a toll on his heart, but he continued his work on his electron microscope in Helsinki with a group of experts from Finland�s Technological Research Centre. They built the instrument and succeeded in calculating the basic theories behind Alvar�s improvements in electron microscopy, which was published after his death in 1987.

The Wilska family still visits their beloved Tucson quite frequently, enjoying the familiar desert and many friends from the 13 years they lived there.

Laila McPheeters, n�e Saari & her
husband Ralph McPheeters of Catalina
Heights Nursery are known as �nurturers of
plants and relationships� for fifty-three years here
in Tucson. When they left Minnesota in 1949 all they
knew of Tucson was that the weather was nice there at
nine o�clock in the morning every time Ralph�s train stopped there. He was working as a steward in the dining car during the war. Because McPheeters often visited plant nurseries and liked plants, they decided to study the business of plants, visiting nurseries in California, observing, even working there. Later they purchased their first acre of land at 6074 E. Pima St. and planted field-grown trees on it. Now their Catalina Heights Nursery comprises about four acres of trees, bushes, vines and flowers in season. E. Pima Street. The plants Eddie, their 10-year-old son at the time peddled from door to door - cost 25 cents a gallon. Along with everything else, petunias do cost a little more today.

Professor Alvar Wilska
(1911-1987)
Photo courtesy Maija Wilska

Alvar Wilska was a Finnish physicist, medical doctor, life-long inventor and Professor of Physics at the University of Arizona for 23 years (1960-1983). He was �on loan� from the University of Helsinki where he was a professor in physiology. He spoke several languages and wrote countless articles in them. He was also a naturalist with deep knowledge of plant life. He was �a seeker of novel solutions with remarkable abilities�, and a man of seemingly endless energy devoted to his work.

Alvar�s work at the University of Arizona dealt with electron microscopy which occupied him the rest of his life. He experimented with several electromagnetic lens systems using low voltage, and correcting the interference caused by spherical aberration. He reached high contrast without heavy-metal casting which in the early �60s gave him hope in technology that might be used in the future to read the genetic code.

Oliver Herman Laine was the founding president of Pima Community College. After the citizens of Pima County, Arizona, in 1966 approved to form a junior college district, Pima College was established. The county superintendent appointed a five-member governing board which selected a president - Olavi Laine - so of Finnish immigrants John and Anna Laine of Mountain Iron, MN. Together they then laid groundwork for the new college. With help from citizen committees, the board developed educational goals, created a financial plan, and chose a campus site. The president�s role included all that plus planning buildings and hiring faculty members.

Oliver earned his M.A. and Ph.D. at Clark University, MA, and took a teaching position at Towson State College, MD, where he also became interested in the Community College concept which provides two-year educational programs to meet the requirements of technology beyond high school.

He then accepted a position to develop a new Community College in Catonsville, MD, a suburb of Baltimore City, in 1958-68.

Tucson, AZ, discovered Oliver�s devotion to the concept of �education and the whole community� and invited him to start Pima Community College, which now with its 50,000 enrollees on six campuses and many centers, televised classes, as well as via on-line computer serves the growing need for two-year programs in southern Arizona. Just one characteristic of those needs is Oliver�s granddaughter who finished high school in three years and was permitted to enroll at Pima College and complete one year to be eligible for advance enrollment at the University of Arizona.

Oliver had his first Junior College experience in his hometown, excelling in football. During an economic depression he went to work for Civilian Conservation Corps first as a caterpillar driver, then as boat captain in the northern Minnesota federal forests, and for three years he worked in southern Minnesota as a clerk in a Soil Conservation program.

In 1939 he earned his Bachelor of Education degree at Duluth State Teachers� College, again on a championship football team. He followed his interest in geography, traveling, exploring and learning in different parts of the world. After a short stint at teaching and as an Immigration Inspector on the Canadian border, Oliver joined the military as an officer of intelligence in the 8th Air Force in Britain, where he planned missions to Germany, volunteering on three hair-raising bombing raids over Berlin. After the military he married his wife Dorothy and they had two beautiful daughters . Oliver is an active member in the Finnish-American Club of Tucson�s Finnish language group. He served as treasurer of the club for many years. His an aviator, now retired from the sport, an avid reader, speaker, interested in his Finnish roots.

P.S. Dr. Laine passed away on May 16, 2003; a month after this interview.

by: Pat Anderson

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