Timothy John Gauthier was born in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1958. His father became a police officer at University of California at Santa Barbara, and Gauthier spent most of his childhood in that city. He attended Santa Barbara City College, then transferred Southern Utah State College (now Southern Utah University), where he earned a business degree in 1975. He then began working for the National Electrical Contractors Association in Washington, D.C.; Kansas City, Kansas; and Portland, Oregon. He worked closely with Edward L. Barnes of IBEW Local 48 in Portland, and was involved in the establishment of the Market Recovery Program (M.R.P.) in 1982, which uses union dues to supplement union wages. He married in 1984 and had two children.

Raymond Woodrow Nyls, nee Suesens, was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1920. After his mother remarried, he took his step-father's name. He joined the Army Air Corps just after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1940, he and Lucile Katherine Tinker were married; they later divorced in 1945. That same year, Nyls and Laila "Peggy" Rose Garver were married. During the Korean War, Nyls served as an engineering officer and also flew missions as a fighter pilot. Some years later, Nyls and Peggy Nyls divorced, and he married Marjorie (her surname before marriage to Nyls is unknown). Nyls ultimately had three children. During the Cold War, he continued to serve in the U.S. Air Force, and for a time served as a UFO investigator. After his retirement, the Nyls family lived in Eugene. He died in 2019.

Richard Wilhelm Sundeleaf was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1900. In 1923, he earned a degree in architecture from the Oregon Agricultural College, now Oregon State University. After graduating, he worked with the firm of Sutton and Whitney for four years. In 1925, he and Mildred Beatrice Deaver were married; they later had two children. In 1928, he opened his own architectural firm, and during the Depression, he worked on the Historic American Buildings Survey. Several of the buildings he designed are on the National Register of Historic Places. He died in 1987.

Herbert Retzlaff was born in Königsberg, Germany (which is now Kaliningrad, Russia) in 1903. During World War I, his family was evacuated to Berlin. He attended the University of Munich for three years. Inflation in post-World War I Germany drove him to seek employment abroad, ultimately landing him in Portland, Oregon, in 1924, where a fellow German American offered him a job at a gas company. In 1932, he and Lucile N. Martin were married. During the Depression, Retzlaff studied accounting at the Oregon Institute of Technology and became a CPA in 1933. In 1939, he began working as an accountant for Fred Meyer Inc. In 1955, he became a vice president of Fred Meyer Inc., and he retired in 1972. Lucy N. Martin died in 1978, and in 1980, Retzlaff and Helen E. Amacher were married. He was a patron of the Portland Opera, and established the Herbert Retzlaff Chair of Management Accounting endowment at Portland State University in 1986. He died in 1999.

Bertha Marian Holt was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1904. She attended the University of Iowa and earned a nursing degree around 1925. In 1927, she and Harry Spencer Holt, her cousin, were married. Growing up in a large family, she had always planned to have a large family of her own. The couple had four children and adopted eight from South Korea. The couple lived in Firesteel, South Dakota, until 1937, when they settled in Lane County, Oregon. Together, she and Harry Holt founded the adoption organization Holt International Children's Services in the wake of the Korean War. They successfully lobbied to change the laws surrounding international adoption. Bertha Holt tells her family's story in the book "The Seed from the East." She died in 2000.

Joel Redon was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1961. He studied writing at New York University and with Paul Bowles at the American School of Tangiers in Morocco. He was diagnosed with AIDS in 1986. He authored several novels, including the semi-autobiographical novel, "Bloodstream." He died in 1995.