KLAMATH FALLS (AP) — The Oregon Institute of Technology says its founding president, Winston Purvine, has died from congestive heart failure in Cary, N.C.

He was 97.

Purvine, who died Wednesday, arrived in Klamath Falls in 1947 to lead the Oregon Vocational School. The school was founded to educate servicemen returning from World War II.

Purvine pushed to have the school’s focus shift to technical education and lobbied state legislators to have the school’s name changed to the Oregon Institute of Technology. He succeeded in 1973.

In 1969, he received the James H. McGraw Award for Outstanding Contribution to Engineering Education.