Carl Walter Salser

Who was Carl Walter Salser?

Carl Walter Salser, Jr. was an American author, businessperson and educator.

Salser was born in Emporia, Kansas. He grew up in Corvallis, Oregon after his father left Kansas State Teacher's College to become Dean of Education at Oregon State College. He graduated from Corvallis High School and enrolled at Oregon State College.

With the outbreak of World War II he served as a Navy Corpsman, stationed at the Naval Hospital in Corona, California before being ordered to the Pacific Theater of Operations for the assault on Okinawa. Following the war he joined the Naval Reserve from which he retired as a Lieutenant Commander.

After the war, he graduated from Oregon State, where he also met his future wife, Barbara Anderson, of Lake Oswego, Oregon. They opened a men's clothing store and a restaurant that also served the training table for the OSU college football team, before joining McGraw-Hill Publishing and moving to Portland, Oregon. He received his Master's Degree from OSU in 1956. Also in the mid-1950s he became editor-in-chief for Allied Publishers of Portland, and in 1960 took over a college of business before forming the 501 nonprofit Educational Research Associates in 1965.