"An Illustrated history of Baker, Grant, Malheur and Harney Counties : with a
brief outline of the early history of the state of Oregon." Chicago?: Western
Historical Pub. Co., 1902.  Page 489.  Grant County.

HIRAM C. MACK

     If to one class of people more than to another belongs the privilege of
shaping the state and upon whom rests the responsibility of instilling right
principles in the rising generation, that honor pre-eminently reverts to the
educators of this land; and it is only just to them to say that no class of
people are deserving of more credit both for unselfish and painstaking labor and
constant care along these lines than are the teachers of our land, and true it
is to-day that for the value of the services rendered there is no class that is
so stinted in the remuneration received from a generally generous public.  Among
those who have wrought in these western countries to properly train the youth,
to raise a higher standard of educational qualification, to form the plastic
forces of an embryonic state into molds of stanch statesmanship and sound
principles, the esteemed citizen whose name heads this article, stands high and
as a veritable leader he has been manifested in the years of his toils in this
line in Grant and adjoining counties.
     Mr. Mack was born in the Willamette valley in 1871, being the son of J. W.
and Helen M. (Duston) Mack, natives of New York and Ohio, respectively.  In 1852
they crossed the plains to the Willamette valley and settled on a ranch there
and in 1877 came thence to Grant county.  In the schools of Prairie City the
foundation of his education was laid.  Afterwards, by hard work and strict
economy, he was enabled to spend a term at the State University at Eugene.
After leaving the university, he began the career of the educator and it was
evident from the beginning that nature had given him those qualifications that
marked him as one to whom pre-eminent success would come as the result of his
painstaking and arduous labors and careful and constant using of the rich
talents with which he had been endowed.  It was to be expected then, that he
would do soon what he did in fact accomplish, take leading place among the
educators of eastern Oregon.  His ability for this position was quickly manifest
to all and the unbounded enthusiasm in this work and love for the same that were
constant companions with him wrought powerfully in the circle of educators of
this region, producing more ardent effort and enterprising activities in their
various duties, giving withal an inspiration that resulted in untold good to the
schools of Grant and other counties where he labored.
     Two years ago, he was allured into the field of commercial business, and
what educator has not felt the same desire to lay down the seemingly thankless
and bitter tasks of training stubborn minds and free himself by loading on his
shoulders the cares of commercial life, assuredly knowing that the burdens taken
up would be but rest compared with those laid down?  For two years he reveled in
the delights of his freedom while he carried on the drug business, but fortune
was not thus disposed to lose an ardent disciple of Socrates and Agassiz, and so
insisted by the vote of the people that he should leave the drug business and
come back to the higher, though correspondingly harder and weightier duties of
superintending the county schools.  He immediately responded with the fitting
repentence as he again took up life with his first love and the people of Grant
county are to be congratulated that they have secured his services in this
capacity and also that they rescued from the petrefaction of the commercial
world and its strife of competition one who is so well qualified to carry on
with unbounded success the calling of the true educator.  In political matters,
as is usual with the students of the land, he is allied with the Democratic
party and is a force in real politics, and it was on this ticket that he was
elected to his present position.  It is with a bright outlook for the future
that the young educator is thus again pressed into the harness and unless every
prognostication of past fact in his career is a patent perverter of the truth,
the future has in store some rich work and excellent achievement for this
student, whose heart is thoroughly in the greatest of all human callings and
professions, that of the educator.

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Submitted to the Oregon Bios. Project in October 2005 by Diana Smith.
Submitter has no additional information about the person(s) or family mentioned
above.