25 years ago this week — 1999

Pendleton High School senior Matthew Sanchez is the sole recipient of a corporate-sponsored National Merit Scholarship awarded this week by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.

Sanchez received the Dr. Forest C. Shaklee Memorial Merit Scholarship, given to eligible relatives of Shaklee employees. The scholarship is one of 1,100 awarded to distinguished students who advanced to the finalist level of the competition. The National Merit Scholarship Corporation does not disclose the amount of the awards.

“I found out I was a finalist in February,” Sanchez said earlier this week prior to flying to New Haven, Conn., for freshman orientation at Yale University.

“We are very pleased to bestow the scholarship to Matthew,” said Shaklee spokesman Jennifer Thompson. “He is just one of five students who received the prestigious award.”

Yale University is granting Sanchez half his tuition, so he is pleased he’s got a start on raising the other half.

“I began applying for them later than I should have,” he said of his search for grants and scholarships. “I won’t hear about any of the others until probably May or June.”

Sanchez will study a double discipline of electrical engineering and computer science. The curriculum is a five-year master’s program that will include three summer internships. He would like to attend graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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All teachers wonder how to make school exciting for their students. They lose sleep over it, says Dave Wickstrom, who admits making earth science interesting for middle school students has been a challenge.

But thanks to a grant from Princeton University and a dedicated computer technician, Wickstrom is making earthquakes a lot more fun for students at Clara Brownell Middle School in Umatilla.

“Last year I went down and bought a 49-cent Slinky to teach earth science. This year I have a whole seismic station,” Wickstrom said last week.

A seismograph, hooked to a network of computers, is making science tangible for some students. They come to class each day, some hoping to see an earthquake. If they find one, students begin measuring the distance to the epicenter — the area on the earth’s surface above where the earthquake originated.

Rod Humphreys, the district’s technology coordinator, was the man who got the program moving. A science teacher at Pilot Rock in 1995, he attended a conference at Oregon State University. He and teachers from several other schools signed up to be part of a proposed seismology program through Princeton University.

“At the time I was a science teacher and I thought it was cool,” Humphreys said.

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Repair crews are quickly forming a new road and bridge to replace the chunk of Thielsen Street in Echo that sunk next to an irrigation canal last week.

Umatilla County Roadmaster Hal Phillips said concrete footings and walls for a new bridge over the Stanfield Irrigation Canal have been poured. As long as the concrete passes muster in tests, a temporary gravel surface road could be opened over the washed-out area by the weekend.

“As of today, the very earliest the road… could be reopened is late Friday,” Phillips said Monday afternoon.

Echo mayor Jeanette Bell said she heard the same estimate.

“My understanding is by this week-end we’ll be able to drive over it,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean they’ll be all done with it.”

The section of Thielsen Street that was damaged north of town is designated as a county road, but the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is overseeing the repairs, Phillips said. Weekly Brothers, a contractor from Southern Oregon, is working on the project.

The Bureau of Reclamation had recently installed an 8-inch water pipe in the area of the washout. Investigators believe that underground water flowed along the path of the pipe and eroded the soft soil, causing a breach in the nearby irrigation canal on April 12th.

50 years ago this week — 1974

Despite rumors to the contrary, Boeing has been paying its way and adding to the economy of Morrow County, Denver Grigsby, president of the Boeing Agri-Industrial Co., told the Heppner-Morrow County Chamber of Commerce Monday.

He said that besides the $65,000 paid to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs on the lease of the land there was “$60,000 paid in taxes this year and I assume it will be closer to $80,000 next year.”

Boeing’s taxes in 1973 “amounted to 2 per cent of the taxes in the county, and use of facilities supplied by the county, such as schools, police patrol, etc., was less than one-fourth of one per cent.”

Boeing has built 32 miles of roads. “We have not asked the county to do anything.” There are five regular employees, all of whom live in town and who pay taxes also, he added.

When the space age industrial park was put together to supply the 100,000 acres Boeing leases, it required moving half the Navy bombing range, Grigsby stated. This cost $75,000 which Boeing agreed to repay to the state over 10 years, “This is now all paid back.”

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In a rush to get Hill Meat Co. in Pendeton back into operation the official ground-breaking ceremonies Wednesday came after considerable earth moving work already had been done.

“We would like to be back working by Round-Up,” Hill Meat Co. president Pete Perkins told the assemblage of dignitaries there for the ceremony. “That may be stretching it, though,” he conceded.” Round-Up will be in mid-September.

Contractor Walt Eiring of The Timber Company, Inc., Hermiston, said the probable date for completion of the new meat processing plant will be sometime in October.

Hill Meat Co.’s plant was completely destroyed by fire Sept. 12th, the first day of the 1973 Round-Up.

Bill Penney, manager of the Port of Umatilla, commended Port of Umatilla Commissioner Hadley Akins, Pendleton, for the work he has done acquiring the location in Pend-Air Heights, near the Pendleton Airport, for Hill Meat. The plant had been in southwest Pendleton.

The new plant will be located on 13.9 acres of a 26.25-acre industrial site acquired by the Port. An acre and a quarter has been sold to Action For Handicapped for a sheltered workshop, leaving just over 10 acres for further development.

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The Corps of Engineers moved into action early today in an attempt to save five Echo homes threatened by river banks that are washing out. The endangered properties are on the east side of the Umatilla River inside city limits.

The river has been at high-water level for several weeks and is washing out the bank on the west side of the river immediately upstream from the Echo bridge. A corps spokesman said immediate plans are to put some riprap in that area.

Dave White, one of those whose property is threatened, was relieved this morning to see huge earth moving equipment building a dike between his home and the river. He had been making an attempt to fill in the area with debris in an unsuccessful effort to keep the river from moving toward his back door.

Another property owner being threatened by the washing river banks is Ed Longhorn, Echo’s utility superintendent. He and other townspeople, through Mayor Irving Howard, have been making an appeal for emergency help.

White said today they finally got through to Rep. Al Ullman, D-Ore., “just in knick of time and got results.”

Portland District Corps of Engineers inspector John Reime was directing the work activity, and this morning was searching for rock and for trucks to haul riprap material.

100 years ago this week —1924

As a part of its Americanism policy the national department of the American Legion recently had an eight-reel motion picture “The Man Without a Country” filmed and the picture is being shown in American cities by posts of the Legion. The Pendleton post has secured the picture for a showing here a week from today, Wednesday, April 23.

Tom Keating, commander of Pendleton post, declared today that the chief ambition of the post in bringing the picture here is to enable the screen version of Edward Everett Hale’s masterpiece in patriotism to be seen by local people. A matinee will be given in the afternoon for school children, and plans are being made to encourage a particularly big attendance at this matinee.

“The showing of the picture is not a money making scheme for the post, though we may make a little money on it,” Keating said. “We will not solicit sale of tickets, but we do want everyone in the city to know about it, and we feel that local people will appreciate the opportunity of seeing the picture.”

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Investigation of county and city affairs, under the direction of Attorney General I. H. Van Winkle was today turned to the award recently of a contract for construction of three bridges, the probers deciding to wait for transcript of the evidence already taken on insurance and bond deals before pursuing their inquiry further in that direction.

Frank S. Sever, former chief deputy state treasurer, testified this morning on deposits of state bonus money in Portland banks. This afternoon J. H. Gallagher, president and general manager of the Coast Steel and Machinery Company, was called to testify.

According to a story printed today by the Portland Telegram, Attorney General Van Wickle divulged that when the probe returns to insurance affairs the alleged connection of Mayor Geo. L. Baker with the firm is to be gone into.

The Telegram adds that the attorney general has information to the effect that a secret fund was raised in 1920 among bankers and public utility heads to pay off debts of the mayor and to insure him an annual salary of $10,000. The secret fund was raised, according to The Telegram, when efforts to amend the charter to increase the mayor’s salary above $6,000 failed and the mayor announced he would probably not be a candidate to succeed himself.

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Mrs. Emily Rhea Cole, aged 82, who during the past 10 years made her home in Pendleton with her daughter, Mrs. Horace Mann, died yesterday in Portland, her death following an illness caused by pneumonia with complications.

Mrs. Cole was one of the pioneers of Oregon and a member of the Oregon Pioneers. She was born in Tennessee and at the age of 10 years accompanied her parents when they crossed the plains to Oregon in 1852. Like so many of the early pioneers the family settled in the Willamette Valley and became pioneers of Oregon City.

Mrs. Cole, besides Mrs. Mann, is survived by the following children: Mrs. T. B. English, of Seattle; Mrs. W. J. Webb, of Superior, Wisconsin and Wallace Cole, of Portland. All the children were at their mother’s bedside at the time of her death.

Funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. on Wednesday at Oregon City. Mrs. Cole will be laid to rest near the grave of the late Mr. Cole, who was buried at Oregon City.