East Oregonian Days Gone By

Published 6:00 am Sunday, July 27, 2025

25 years ago this week — 2000

MEADOWOOD SPRINGS — You can hear the children laughing at Meadowood.

Speech Camp, even though many of the children can’t hear someone speak to them.

The camp, nestled in the forests of the Blue Mountains 12 miles east of Weston, is one of the most respected speech therapy programs in the nation. Children 6- to 16-years-old with serious speech and hearing disorders come to the camp for 10 days of intensive clinical therapy. This therapy is barely perceptible to an onlooker, and completely invisible for the children because Meadowood is un just like any other youth summer camp

For the campers here, Meadowood Springs Speech Camp is 10 days spent playing games, taking nature hikes, fishing, canoeing and having fun with arts and crafts. But while the campers are engaged in fun activities, their counselors, who are trained speech therapists, ensure that at every moment their varying disorders receive treatment.

Teri Griffith Schlee, the camp’s clinical director, has managed Meadowood for seven years.

“This is fun therapy and it’s happening here all the time,” she said.

Schlee is known as ‘Termite’ around the campfire because at Meadowood everyone takes on a camp name of their own choosing to reinforce for the campers a sense of being outside the regular world where their disabilities make them different from everyone else.

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PORTLAND — The federal government has released its long-awaited plan for saving Columbia Basin salmon from extinction, calling it the biggest ecosystem restoration project since the spotted owl.

Indian tribes and environmentalists said the plan announced Thursday fell far short of what is needed. There is a 60-day public comment period before the plan can become final.

Federal officials said the strategy was designed to benefit all 12 salmon runs in the basin listed as threatened and endangered species, and was the best plan that could get support from Congress. But they acknowledged that it left out the immediate breaching of four dams in southeastern Washington, omitting the single best thing that could be done for salmon in the Snake River,

The strategy will be evaluated after five, eight and 10 years.

Removing dams built on the lower Snake in the 1970s would cut off barge transport of grain and other freight between Lewiston, Idaho, and the Columbia, lower reservoirs below irrigation intake pipes and reduce Northwest electricity supplies.

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IRIGON — One float in the parade gave out free watermelon. There also were baseball games, cotton candy and a watermelon seed spitting contest. As usual, the Irrigon Watermelon Festival on Saturday offered something fun for the whole family.

The fun and food started early — breakfast was served at 6:30 and baseball bats began cracking at 7 when the softball tournament started.

The parade thrilled kids of all ages at mid-morning, with everything from clowns to old cars to colorful floats, with just about everyone throwing candy — except for the free watermelon float, which helped relieve the quickly escalating heat.

“I’ve never been to a ​​parade where they’ve given out watermelon,” said LaVerra Larson, who was attending her first watermelon festival.

Kegler’s Sentry took home the sweepstake trophy for the parade, as well as the overall float award. The Luna Tee Ball Team won the overall award for the “Kid-die Parade.” The Umatilla County Fair Court placed first in the royalty division. First place for wagons and ​​buggies went to Elmer’s Irrigation. The Irrigon/Umatilla Fish hatchery took home the trophy for the volunteer services category.

50 years ago this week — 1975

No July 1975

100 years ago this week — 1925

A tribute to William Jennings Bryan is paid by James Johus, of this city, who knew Mr. Bryan since 1896, when the two met in Minneapolis. Mr. Bryan was campaigning for the presidency at that time.

“Since that year,” said Mr. Johns, “we had been close friends. I greatly admired Mr. Bryan and considered him one of the great men of today. He was most sincere in all his beliefs; though one might not agree. with him in all his theories, his sincerity was always unquestionable. I think the world is a better place because William Jennings Bryan lived in it.”

Mr. Bryan, whenever he visited Pendleton, was always a guest at the Johns home. When he spoke here last year, he had breakfast with Mr. and Mrs. Johns at their residence.

J. W. Maloney was another Pendletonian who had met Mr. Bryan several times and

called him a friend. In 1912 he acquired a written order from the Great Commoner which he has preserved and holds as a valued memento.

“I was a delegate to the national convention of the democratic party in Baltimore that year,” said Judge Maloney. “The Oregon delegation stopped in Chicago with the intention of visiting the republican convention which was then in session. We were short of tickets, and Colonel Bryan, who came to our hotel to visit us, said that he had an extra ticket for the press section which he would give me. He had left the ticket in his room but gave me a written order for it. I presented the order and finally gained admission on the strength of his signed statement. I have preserved that piece of paper and value it very highly. Mr. Bryan was a great man and exerted a powerful influence for good.”

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“In one of those samples there is a wheat which in my opinion will be worth $500,000 to the farmers of Umatilla county.”

This statement was made this morning by Fred Bennion, county agent. He waved his hand toward five envelopes on one end of his desk that contained a half dozen heads each of new wheats that have been developed by Dr. E. G. Gaines of Washington State college. They are different strains of a development of Hybrid 128. The significant thing about the new selections are that they have the good characteristics of Hybrid 128, and they have proved absolutely smut resistant. The heads look almost exactly like Hybrid 128 except that they are slightly longer. Last year one of the strains produced 50 bushes to the acre in a nursery test at Pullman — the highest yield of any of the wheats on trial there.

D. E. Stephens, superintendent of Moro experiment station, B. B. Bales, specialist in plant breeding, and Mr. Bennion went to Pullman. Mr. Stephens got 30 samples of the wheat, and five were left here.

“The task remains of submitting the strains of this new wheat to further tests, both in the nurseries and in field lots, to ascertain ​​what selection of the various ones that are being tried is the best for Umatilla county conditions,” Mr. Bennion said. “Hybrid 128 has been popular so long and grows on about 70 per cent of our land so that a successor to it that is smut resistant promises to be one of the biggest single developments in wheat culture that we have had for many a day.”

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Efforts are being made by the sheriff’s office to ascertain the identity of a boy, described as 10 or 12 years old, who took a car from in front of a local garage yesterday, drove it toward Walla Walla and wrecked the machine about two miles, northeast of Weston.

The lad is said to have been seriously injured when the car was wrecked.

The first inkling of the taking of the machine occurred about 3 o’clock Thursday afternoon when the sheriff’s office was called and a complaint made that some reckless driving was being done on East Court street. Deputy Sheriff Stokes went in search of the reported driver, but the officer kept to the Old Oregon trail, and subsequent developments showed that the boy took the paved highway toward Walla Walla.

The boy was said to have been taken on to Walla Walla for medical attention, but efforts of Deputy Sheriff Stokes to locate the lad had been futile at an early hour this afternoon.