Museum Cuts Tie To Founder After Virus Impairs His Ability
BEND, Ore. - More than a year after Donald Kerr contracted viral encephalitis, the High Desert Museum he founded is moving on.
The museum's trustees are embarking on the first two projects Kerr has not been involved in: Searching for a new president and raising money for a new birds-of-prey center.
Kerr is recovering, but it's unclear whether he's aware of the changes.
It may have been one of Kerr's beloved owls that made him sick.
In May 1995, Kerr was performing a trick he'd done a hundred times.
He hooted, and a great horned owl swooped out of the forest, plucking a dead chick from Kerr's gloved hand before returning to the lodgepole and ponderosa pines surrounding the Kerr home.
But this time, the owl gouged Kerr's left wrist through a hole in the glove. Apparently nothing serious.
But a few days later, Kerr called his brother.
"He was puzzled," recalled Andrew Kerr, a Portland lawyer. "He said `I'm not speaking clearly,' and he wasn't. He said, `It is the strangest thing; I can't understand it.' "
Two weeks later, he was in a Bend hospital with viral encephalitis, losing his speech, his muscular coordination, even his ability to feed himself.
The owl is considered to be the most likely cause of Kerr's illness, perhaps from contaminated blood on the owl's talon, said Dr. Thomas Ward, an infectious-diseases specialist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Portland.
After entering the bloodstream, the virus can inflame the brain, causing a deterioration of the sheathing, called myelin, around the nerves that carry impulses from cell to cell.
Since Kerr began raising money in 1974 and opened the museum in 1982, he has had a hand in everything museum-related. From major expansions to the smallest details.
He saw the museum as a way to preserve the history of the seven-state high-desert region and offer a living display of its wildlife.
But he has not been able to participate in plans for a new $1.2 million birds-of-prey center that will be named in his honor.
And after a year without a leader, the board of trustees decided in May to initiate a national search for a new president.
Bend industrialist Michael Hollern, who donated the 160 acres for the museum, had to break the news.
"I met with Don and Cameron to discuss it," Hollern said. Kerr's wife, Cameron Kerr, understood and supported the decision, but Hollern said he couldn't tell whether Donald Kerr fully understood.
"His ability to generate facial expressions is reasonably limited, but he locks on with a stare," Hollern said. "You really can't quite tell the degree of comprehension."
People close to Kerr are confident he understands them. They remain optimistic he'll recover - if not completely, at least enough to resume some activities.
Andrew Kerr was encouraged recently when his brother nodded and gestured while looking through a photo album.
"He is frustrated by his inability to communicate," Andrew Kerr said. "But I've never sensed any depression with Donny. I think he's accepted the condition he's in. He's focused on getting back to where he was."