25 years ago this week — 2000

PENDLETON — Media violence is teaching America’s kids to be killers. That’s the message Lt. Col. Dave Grossman offered parents, educators, law officers and criminal justice students at Blue Mountain Community College on Thursday.

Grossman, one of the world’s foremost experts on violence, urged his audiences to not only lock up their guns for safety’s sake, but to put a lock on their television sets and video games.

Author of the book “Stop teaching our kids to kill,” Grossman has appeared on “60 minutes,” “Larry King Live,” “Meet the Press,” “Hardball” and the “Today” show.

He was called upon to serve as an expert witness in the United States vs. McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bombing case. Director of the Killology Research Group, Grossman also is a psychology professor at West Point. The Airborne Ranger infantry officer served 23 years in the U.S. Army.

Quoting Rolling Stone magazine, Grossman, who is a native of Jonesboro, Ark., said “obsession with media violence” was the common denominator among each of the school shootings in Pearl, Miss., Paducah, Ken., Jonesboro, Ark., Springfield and Littleton, Colo.

“These kids were not looking for a gunfight, they were looking for innocent kids to butcher,” Grossman said.

Visual media is developing a new breed of character.

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HELIX — Rodeo fans saw plenty of cowboying at the Heart of the Country Rodeo Saturday. A couple of heavy rain showers weren’t enough to dampen spirits of the few hundred people who attended the event.

Some sat in the stands. Some mingled. Some stood in the wheat field rising high above the portable rodeo arena, placed at the outskirts of a town with a population under 200.

A mixture of clouds, rain and sun breaks kept things interesting during an afternoon of saddle brone and bull riding.Bernice Farmer has been waiting a long time to see rodeo action in her home town and wasn’t about to let a few rain drops spoil her fun.

A member of the Helix High School Class of 1942, Farmer huddled beneath an umbrella as she watched the event.

Her son-in-law, John Kraling, used a plastic leaf bag to keep the rain off. For about 10 cents, it shed water as effectively as any expensive Gore-Tex rain jacket.

Kraling was impressed with the volunteer effort that went into making Heart of the Country a reality.

“If any community can do it, the Helix bunch can,” he said. “And we’ll do it right.”

Now a resident of Myrick, Kraling spent 20 years in Helix and was the town’s last marshal. He turned over law enforcement duties to sheriff’s deputies in the early 1970s.

He can list off numerous enhancement projects around Helix that were made possible because of community involvement.

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PENDLETON — It’s a once-a-year event when the Pendleton Underground Tours presents its “Comes to Life” celebration.

Some 90 volunteers donned period clothing and their best acting persona to portray historic characters and common folk of Pendleton’s past on May 20.

It won’t happen again until this time next year.

The annual fund-raising event for the non-profit Pendleton Underground Association gives locals the opportunity to ham it up for tourists during the normally museum-style tours of Pendleton’s famous underground.

Real-life cowboys, saloon girls, gunfighters, Chinese laundry workers, meat market butchers, ice cream parlor patrons, speakeasy gamblers, bordello madams and working girls trade one-liners with the tourists while keeping in character and acting out vignettes of life in the “good old days.”

50 years ago this week — 1975

A head=on crash on U.S. 26 20 miles east of Seaside claimed two lives Sunday night raising Oregon’s Memorial Day traffic toll to seven.

Killed were Paul Anderson Douglas and Jerome Kiederowski, both 21, of Camas, Wash.

In critical condition at a Portland hospital is Jeffrey P. Stoller, 22, Camas.

Clatsop County sheriff’s deputies said the occupants of the other car, Anna Marshall, 25, and William Stage, 24, both of Olympia, Wash., suffered minor injuries.

Jesse Theodore Bass, 3, Milwaukie, was fatally injured ​​Saturday night when the car in which he was riding crashed on Oregon 216 about four miles east of Pine Grove.

Randy McIntyre, 18, Cheshire, Ore., died Saturday night when the car he occupied crashed off High Pass Road near Junction City.

Two persons died when their car went into a ditch off Highway 26 south of Gresham and crashed into a sign post.

Police identified the victims as 20-year-old Kathy Poole of Milwaukie and 16-year-old Marcella Ashlock of Portland.

Another accident took the life of Gary Lee Cummings, 27, Sweet Home, who died early Saturday of injuries suffered in a two car crash in Sweet Home.

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Umatilla County department heads have overspent portions of their 1974-75 budget by $44,892.

By June 30, the end of the fiscal year, that figure could be even higher as, in most cases, there are still 2 ½ billing periods remaining for each budget item.

Department heads say the overexpenditures are the result of inflation, increased services required by the state, most of which are imposed without state funding, and the fact that this year’s budget was severely reduced to keep the overall 1974-75 county budget within the six per cent limitation.

Whatever the reasons, county budget officials respond that they expect department heads to submit a balanced overall department budget at fiscal year’s end.

While numerous line items are overspent in most department budgets, several as much as $3,000, only one department, district court, is currently running an overall departmental deficit, but that by only $38.

By June 30, it is conceivable that district court could be running a deficit of over $5,000.

However, four other departments, based upon their available resources and their average monthly expenditures, are in danger of also running into deficit spending by June 30. These departments are the circuit court, county clerk’s office, the election office and the courthouse itself.

It is Oregon law that an elected official could be held financially responsible for overexpenditures and be required to make repayment.

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Self-jurisdiction by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation “is not something we should push through this legislature,” Sen. Mike Thorne, D-Pendleton told the East Oregonian Thursday.

Thorne said that in finally deciding to oppose passage of SB 338, the legislation to return civil and criminal jurisdiction to the tribe, he was not opposed to the concept of Indian self-jurisdiction, but only to the timing and the way the issue has been presented.

Although Thorne was the primary sponsor of SB 38, he recently has been at odds with the Indians over ramifications of Indian jurisdiction and had said he wasn’t sure whether he could continue supporting the issue.

Thorne in a phone interview from Salem, said that he had notified the reservation leadership of his decision of “no support” and said he would be sending the tribe a detailed letter explaining his position and several alternatives that the Indians could take.

Les Minthorn, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the reservation said he  had not received the letter and refused to comment.

One of the approaches  that Thorne suggested was for the tribe to continue to promote and explain Indian legal self-jurisdiction in public meetings and then bring the issue before an emergency session of the legislature, if one is held in the winter of 1976.

100 years ago this week — 1925

There’s so much western local color at an Indian round-up that those who deplore the “passing of the Old West” would no doubt be reassured had they witnessed a scene yesterday afternoon at the Bergevin place on Squaw creek.

For the Indians came down from the hills, bringing their wild cayuses to be broken, and their colts to be branded. About a hundred shaggy-maned beasts were herded into a corral, this number being just a part of the scores of other horses in the country which are being rounded up this week.

The Bergevin corral fits nicely into a western setting, for it is of logs and stands in the shadow of tree-strewn hills. Its size was just great enough to permit the cayuses to frisk about a bit, with a never-ending thud-thud of hoofs against the soft earth and a pauseless war against the cowboys who sought to rope  and ride them.

Charley Whirlwind, his long and graying hair in a neat braid, apparently had the round-up situation well in hand and acted in the role of general adviser for the affair. Jim Mox Mox, with his well upholstered figure, was there also, as were Jim Kanine, Robert Elk and others, not forgetting a deaf and dumb Indian who really didn’t seem much quieter than the rest.

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Damon Lodge  No. 4, Knights of Pythias, will erect a new building on one-half of its property on the corner of Alta and Garden streets, it became known last night at the session of the city council when a petition for a building permit was presented to the body.

The building will be of either tile or brick construction and will occupy a frontage of 50 feet on Alta street with a depth of 80 feet, Councilman Gwinn told the council. It will be one story in height, and the cost is estimated at $5800. Construction work is to begin within a short time. The permit was granted by the council. The building will occupy the space now taken by three rooms of wooden construction which were damaged recently by a fire.

Street signs in front of stores and offices need to be thoroughly overhauled and repaired, according to a report submitted by City Engineer Perry. The report was made in accordance with a request of the council that an inspection of signs be made to determine whether they are safely fastened. More than a score were found by the engineer to be lacking in one way or another. Some had poor guy wires, others were fastened with screws and in various ways they failed to meet the requirements of the city ordinance. The council adopted a motion requiring that the signs be securely fastened. Very little work or expense will be required on most of the signs to put them into satisfactory condition, the engineer said.

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UNIVERSITY OF OREGON, Eugene, May 30. — Two seniors enrolled in the University of Oregon from Pendleton are candidates for degrees at the June Commencement. In all, 428 seniors and graduate students have applied for degrees. While failure to complete academic work may reduce this number somewhat before commencement day, June 15, the 1925 graduating class will exceed 400, and will be the largest in the history of the institution.

The Pendleton seniors and the departments from which they will be graduated are: Alberta-Lou McMonies, Physica 1 Education; Douglas Chisholm, English.

Commencement Week exercises begin Thursday, June 11, with the Failing and Beekman orations. The annual flower and fern procession of the senior girls is set for the following day. Alumni Day is scheduled for Saturday, June 13, and the following classes will hold reunions: 1883, ’84, ’85, ’86, 1900, ‘02, ’03, ’04, ’05, ‘10, ‘15, ’21, ’23, and ‘24.

Rev. Frank B. Matthews, pastor of the University Baptist Church, Seattle, will deliver the Baccalaureate sermon in the First Methodist Church, Sunday, June 14. The Rev. Dr. Matthews is an Oregon alumnus, class of 1895. Commencement exercises will be held on the following day, June 15, in the Woman’s Building on the campus, with Dean Joel H. Hildebrand of the University of California as the speaker.