Blueprint for success was Streeter's own.

Byline: Ron Bellamy / The Register-Guard

Someone who saw Mel Streeter play basketball at Oregon, more than 50 years ago, remarked that he had a special kind of grace, both of movement and personality.

He was a talented athlete, and a very serious student, and in an understated way, a pioneer.

When he passed away last month in Seattle, at age 75, he left a legacy in that city as one of the first prominent black architects there, as the founder of his own firm, as the designer of major buildings, and as a citizen of his community as a member of the planning commission and other organizations.

He had overcome racism - he applied at 22 firms in Seattle in 1955 before being hired; he and his wife, as an interracial couple, had trouble finding a place to rent there then, even though Mel was an officer in the U.S. Army - yet seldom discussed it.

And over the years, he never lost his love for the University of Oregon, a place where he felt lonely at first, but ultimately felt embraced.

"Eugene was the mecca for him," one of his sons, Kurt Streeter, a former professional tennis player and now a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, said Thursday. "It's the place he went to become a man. He's always had such a good feeling about the place, and how he was accepted there."

Mel Streeter came to Oregon in 1949, from Riverside, Calif., where he'd grown up and played a year of junior college basketball. He could have gone to UCLA, but he wanted to study architecture at Oregon.

Based on published reports, he was the fourth black basketball player ever at Oregon, and the first to come from out-of-state.

Charles Patterson of Portland played for the Ducks in 1935-36; Bob Reynolds, a football player, and his brother Walter, also from Portland, were on the Oregon varsity in 1942-43.

Streeter was the first black basketball player at Oregon to play more than a single season; at 6-feet-3, 192 pounds, he lettered three years for the Ducks, as a reserve center and forward as a sophomore and junior, and as a sometimes starter at forward his senior year.

As a senior, in 1951-52, Streeter averaged 5.1 points (for a team that averaged 60), and was third on the team in rebounds, with 223 in 29 games. And during that season, for perspective, he was one of six black students on campus.

"There were times that were difficult, I think, but my dad never talked about them," Kurt Streeter said. "He would indicate there were some issues, occasionally; I always had the feeling my dad would shield me and my brothers from the things he went through, like somebody who went through war, and didn't want to talk about it.

"But that's the way my dad was, he was such a positive person."

Said Mel's wife, Kathleen: "He in general had a very positive experience at Oregon. He never had any problems. He made a lot of friends, and did well in architecture, and combined that with sports."

In his first year at Oregon, Streeter was befriended by a fellow architecture student, Doug Anawalt, whose family lived in the Santa Clara area. When he was a junior, he met his wife-to-be, UO student Kathleen Burgess, who is white; by his senior year, they were dating, though a UO official, a friend of Kathleen's late father, had "read me the riot act" for dating a black man, she recalled.

"I told her it was none of her business, and walked out," Kathleen Streeter said. When she and Mel married in Eugene in 1954, it was two years after interracial marriage was legalized in Oregon.

And again, for perspective, in 1951, when Kathleen's older sister, Eugene resident Debbie Mohr, married black UO student DeNorval Unthank Jr. - who became a highly successful Eugene architect - they had to do so in Washington, because of the Oregon law.

"I can't say we experienced a lot of problems," Debbie Mohr said simply. "We did have wretched phone calls, and when I was in a sorority, there was a cross burned on the lawn."

Over the years, as Mel Streeter became a successful architect in Seattle, he and his family would often return to Eugene, for family visits and for Oregon-Washington games, and Streeter had fond, nostalgic memories of his Oregon days.

"My dad would always talk about Mac Court," Kurt Streeter said. "It hasn't changed really, right? He'd talk about the smell of the place, and what it was like to look up into that top balcony. He used to call it the ghosts there, all the memories, and all the great battles. He really thought highly of that place."

And he thought highly, too, of Ernie Kent's Oregon team that reached the Elite Eight, with Freddie Jones, Luke Jackson and Luke Ridnour. "He would say that he would have loved to have played under Ernie Kent in that run-and-gun style," Kurt Streeter said.

"He loved Freddie Jones. He loved that team."

In the bigger picture, being an Oregon athlete was just a small chapter in Streeter's life.

In the Seattle area, his firm designed the African American Academy, the Northwest Regional Headquarters for the Federal Aviation Administration and the Auburn City Hall.

Streeter and Associates also participated in designing Safeco Field, and Qwest Field.

He was known for helping the careers of black architects.

And he worked until recently, though he had dealt with health problems over the past several years, the illness finally diagnosed as amyloidosis, a rare disease that destroys internal organs. He died June 12 in Seattle, surrounded by his family, and was buried in Riverside.

A Seattle memorial service is planned for 11 a.m. Aug. 12, at Mount Zion Baptist Church.

Streeter is survived by his wife and by four sons: Doug, a London architect who plans to join the leadership of his father's firm; Jon, a Bay Area attorney who was president of the San Francisco Bar Association; Ken, a screenwriter; and Kurt, who had a story nominated for the Pulitzer Prize last year.

Mel Streeter was proud to be a Duck; in retrospect, the honor was Oregon's.