Cliff
& Tony
By
Jeff Welsch
OSU emeritus professors Tony Van Vliet, ’52,
and Clifford Trow, politicians from the same
town but on opposite sides of the aisle, are
friends and occasional foes who regularly
traveled their turf together in hopes of grasping
issues and finding solutions.
"Almost so much that we became Siamese
twins," recalls Van Vliet, a Republican
from Corvallis who spent 20 years in the Oregon
Legislative Assembly.
"The Cliff and Tony Show," remembers
Trow, a Corvallis Democrat who represented
Benton County in the state Senate from 1975
to 2002.
On a blustery autumn Monday, the Cliff and
Tony Show is making yet another stop, this
time at a small table in the back of the Allann
Bros. Beanery restaurant in northwest Corvallis.
The longtime friends have come together to
reflect on their two decades of public service,
a time when they were household names in Benton
County, the last of a special breed of statesmen
who were respected regionally for their statesmanship.
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