For Longtime RVUUF member and Humanism Leader, please meet below the Upper Duck Pond

Leslie Ward Jensen, 90, died August 28, 2021 at his home in Ashland, Oregon, of chronic lung disease. He was born February 12, 1931 in Aberdeen, South Dakota, the son of Leslie Jensen and Elizabeth Ward. When his father served as governor of South Dakota from 1937-39, he lived in the state capital of Pierre, but Les really grew up in the 1940s in Hot Springs, South Dakota, where the Jensen family operated a small independent telephone company. Les went through Hot Springs High School in three years (class of 1948) and then the University of Chicago in only two years (class of 1950). After Chicago, Les studied philosophy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and then attended the University of Nebraska College of Law in Lincoln. He never practiced law but worked at Shepard’s Citations, a legal reference service, in Colorado Springs, Colorado after receiving his law degree in 1954

Les married Mary Margaret Cook in 1957 in Hot Springs, South Dakota, and moved from Colorado Springs to Hot Springs in 1962 to help manage the family telephone company there. The academic world beckoned again in the 1970s when he was appointed to the South Dakota Board of Regents, which governed the seven state-supported colleges and universities in the state. In 1978, the Jensen family sold the telephone company founded by Les’ grandfather. Les became a student again when he enrolled in the Claremont Graduate School in Claremont, California, and started on a master’s thesis on Leslie Stephen, the father of Virginia Woolf. He moved to Ashland in 1988 and began his career as a bookseller in 1990 when he bought Back Alley Books in downtown Ashland and renamed it Shakespeare & Co. after the famous bookstore in Paris. While operating his store, Les collected books on Abraham Lincoln and James Joyce. He sold his store in 1999 and for many years took courses at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Southern Oregon University and taught classes there. Until 2019, he was also a longtime discussion leader for the Ashland Humanism Group sponsored by the Unitarian Church.

Les is survived by his four children and three grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his wife Margaret.

If you are unable to attend the memorial, you may add a memory or photo to Les’ tribute wall on the Litwiller-Simonsen website.