Dr. Craig Leman moved to Corvallis from Boston in 1957 because it was a small city with a big hospital and thriving college campus. He and his wife Nancy wanted their children to grow up in a healthy environment, and Leman worked as a surgeon at the Corvallis Clinic. Their family eventually grew to six, and their love for Corvallis remained strong through the following decades.

At 85, Leman is retired from medicine. His house faces Cloverland Park, which he considers the best view in the city. In the 51 years that he’s watched Corvallis grow, Leman not only has seen the city change, he’s helped to secure its place on the national stage as well.

Leman is one of the major players in enacting Corvallis’ landmark anti-tobacco initiative. Ten years ago, after years of public education and lobbying, Corvallis became the first city in the nation to enact an outright ban on smoking in bars and restaurants. That ban became a model for cities across the country, and it has since spread to include the workplace and even outdoor areas. But the fight was long and difficult, and Leman said it is not over yet.

Tobacco smoking is an adversary that Leman knows well. And his own battle with tobacco started long before he started fighting the habit as a social ill.

Leman was a Marine stationed in the Pacific during World War II. Along with their food rations, he and his fellow Marines received four filterless cigarettes a day as part of government standard issue. That’s all it took.

“I got hooked,” he said. For the next 30 years, Leman struggled to quit smoking. It was a goal he found nearly impossible — until an afternoon in 1975. That day, he sat beside the hospital bed of a friend and fellow doctor who was dying of lung cancer. Weakened by illness, the man asked Leman to light a cigarette for him, and hold it to his lips. As Leman watched his dying friend slowly drawing in the smoke, something in him changed.

“I thought, ‘This is crazy. This is nuts,’” he said. His friend died the next day. Leman never smoked again.

“It’s the worst thing in the world to open up a chest and see all of that cancer,” he said.

About 20 years ago, Benton County Health Officer Tom Engel and Leman started talking about ways they could work on cancer prevention, rather than treatment. They decided the easiest cancer to prevent was lung cancer, by working to keep people from becoming addicted to cigarettes, and getting those who are addicted to quit.

That idea blossomed into the Benton County Anti-Tobacco Coalition. The movement worked on many fronts, and involved a number of key players, including prominent Drs. Robert Becker and David Kliewer. The coalition worked with school nurses to encourage anti-tobacco education in local schools. They worked with the police department to keep minors from buying tobacco. A key to that effort was removing cigarette vending machines from places where minors could use them.

The smoking bans did not go into effect overnight.

“We did it step-wise,” Leman said. “We did not try to do it all at once, to make the hospital smoke free.”

The last room to become smoke free was the waiting room, where people who were stressed about the condition of ailing loved ones often turned to cigarettes to calm their nerves. Now even waiting rooms are smoke-free.

Each step was a struggle. Smokers argued that smoking strips them of their right to partake in an activity that is legal and that provides significant public revenue through tobacco taxes.

Leman’s answer: The right of people to live in a smoke-free environment trumps the right of smokers to light up. He also is bluntly critical of the tobacco industry’s advertising and marketing strategies.

“It’s immoral to try to hook kids and get them to smoke,” he said. “It’s the filthiest thing you can do.”

For his work on tobacco prevention, Leman recently was named the 2008 recipient of the Maurine Neuberger Award for Distinguished Career Achievement by the Oregon Department of Human Services. Previously, Becker and Kliewer received the award for their involvement in tobacco prevention.

Leman said it’s unlikely that smoking will disappear. Although it’s less popular now in the industrialized West than it used to be, it remains the norm in Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe. Yet he’s hopeful.

“I look to the history of the recent past,” he said. “It’s getting better. We’re making progress.”

Profile

WHO: Dr. Craig Leman, 85

What: Retired surgeon, anti-tobacco champion

Family: Wife Nancy, six children (including son Craig, who died in 1998), four grandchildren

Birthplace: Chicago

Lived in Corvallis since: 1957

Latest award: 2008 recipient of the Maurine Neuberger Award for Distinguished Career Achievement