Joan and James B. (“JB”) Rainey met while enrolled in the Oregon State University Army ROTC program. The couple were stationed with the same brigade in Northern Germany and married in 1981. J.B.entered active service in 1979 as an armor officer and retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1999. Joan went to junior college in Portland, before joining the OSU Army ROTC program. Upon graduation, she was commissioned as a Medical Service Corps officer and entered active service. She became ill while on active duty and was medically retired.
Both of Joan’s grandfathers served in World War I, and her father Edward Foster and his four brothers all served in World War II. Edward fought with the U.S. Army Air Force in Italy as a navigator on B-24s. Edward earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal. After graduation from college, he was called back for the Korean War and flew missions over enemy territory again. Edward eventually returned to the U.S. and was stationed in Moses Lake, Washington, where he met and married Helen Perkins, Joan’s mother. Helen was a member of the Cadet Nurse Corps and was commissioned as an Army nurse in 1945.
J.B. and Joan established the Bond/Foster/Rainey Families Endowed ROTC Scholarship following the death of JB’s mother, Roberta Rainey.The scholarship is funded through the generous donations of family and friends, and provides a lasting tribute to the military service of the family members described below:
Colonel Aubrey Bond and his wife Faye were married in Astoria in 1919. Col. Aubrey served at many Army camps in the United States and its territories, and was an assistant professor of military science at Oregon State College. He and his wife had two daughters, Elizabeth and Roberta.
Elizabeth Bond was born in 1921 in the Territory of Hawaii. She graduated from Scripps College and served as a Red Cross worker in the South Pacific. After World War II, she married Bruce Starker and they settled in Corvallis. She and Bruce had two sons, Bond and Barte. It should be noted that “Betty” Bond Starker Cameron served on the BCF’s board of directors from 1975 to1981. Betty passed away in 2004.
Roberta Bond was born at Camp Lewis, Washington, in 1925. She was also a graduate of Scripps College. After her graduation in 1946, she was employed by the U.S. State Department and was stationed in Japan as an intelligence analyst. There she met and married Captain James W. P. Rainey. They had six children – Shawn, Erin, James B., Katherine, Walter, and Rochelle – who all earned their bachelor’s degrees from Oregon State University. Roberta served as the executive director of the Benton County American Red Cross from 1973 to 1989. James retired as a colonel in 1970, and both sons, J.B. and Walter, received their commissions through the Army ROTC program and entered active duty. Walter entered active service in 1982 as an aviator, retiring in 2008 as a lieutenant colonel. Roberta passed away in June 2008.