Arthur Dye

Arthur Dye of Portland, Oregon, died peacefully in the company of cherished family members on June 29, 2026. He was born September 26, 1935, in Charlotte, North Carolina, the eldest child of Mildred Taylor Dye and Dr. Arthur McKee Dye. 

As a teenager, Arthur attended boarding school at The McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, then continued his education at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in 1957, he enrolled at the Putney Graduate School of Teacher Education, an experimental master’s degree program in rural Vermont. The program’s founder, progressive educator and pacifist Morris Mitchell, became one of Arthur’s earliest mentors, inspiring him to dedicate himself to a lifetime of community service and social activism. 

Arthur’s wide-ranging career included a decade of fundraising and community organizing for the American Friends Service Committee, a prominent Quaker service organization. As a staff member at the AFSC headquarters in Philadelphia, he was assigned to the organization’s Peace Education Program, which provided crucial support and counseling for conscientious objectors at a time when young Americans were being drafted to fight in Vietnam. Other assignments in those early years at AFSC included support for the Civil Rights Movement in the South, and humanitarian aid programs for civilians in active war zones. 

Some of the proudest moments of his career date back to his time as executive secretary of AFSC’s Pacific Northwest regional office, where he developed deep and lasting friendships with members of Native American tribal groups, African American trade unions, and the United Farmworkers of America as they fought for racial justice and human rights in Oregon and Washington.

From the mid-1970s, his career also embraced higher education and scientific research, including administrative roles at Wilmington College, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, and his father’s alma mater, the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine. He ended his career at Ecotrust, a Portland-based environmental nonprofit that partners with local communities to implement economically sustainable conservation strategies up and down the West Coast. 

At the retirement community where he lived with Jill Spencer, his wife and partner of more than four decades, Arthur was known as a gentle and caring neighbor who participated in diverse community activities and volunteerism. In recent years, when his longtime hobbies of home remodeling, gardening, and furniture making were no longer viable, he became an avid nature photographer and an amateur cultivator of bonsai trees. And nothing gave him greater joy in life than seeing his two grandsons grow into young adults.

With his first wife, Becky Dye, Arthur had three sons, all of whom were able to spend time with him during his final days. In many respects, Arthur’s character was shaped by his formative years in the South, and although he lived away from his home state of North Carolina for most of his adult life, he never lost his Southern affinity for story-telling and tall tales. Up until the very end, he held on to his abiding kindness and sense of humor – bantering with hospital staff, delighting in oft-repeated jokes, sharing memories of good times past, and expressing gratitude for the full life he had lived. Arthur is survived by his wife, Jill Spencer, his first wife, Rebecca Dye, his sons, Lewis Dye (Joan Husman), Allen Dye (Belle Gironda), and Morris Dye (Lyn Hikida), and his grandsons, Taylor Dye and Jackson Dye.

The family has requested that any memorial tributes be made in the form of charitable contributions to:

 ● Right 2 Dream Too in Portland, Oregon

https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/donation-form/donate-to-keep-us-open or

● Fox Creek Park, c/o the Swannanoa Community Council in Swannanoa, North Carolina 

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