100 years ago

The double pleasure that comes from having a good time for themselves in giving their show and in being led to believe that their audience also enjoyed the minstrel was the lot of Pendleton Elks and members of the Legion who went to Walla Walla last night where the show was presented to disabled veterans in the government hospital.

“We get to see and hear shows and musical programs quite often, but usually the shows are ‘tired out’ on us.” some of the ex-service men said after the program. “This minstrel is the best thing we have heard for many a day.”

Reports confirming the words of the soldiers were heard on every hand from the officers, nurses and other attaches of the hospital who crowded the hall until standing room was well taken up during the evening’s program.

50 years ago

Sol Walker and his wife were headed across Foster Flats in the Eastern Oregon desert south of Burns in their pickup truck when it became stuck in a mudhole.

They had planned to drive to the town of Lakeview, to the south, for dinner. But Walker, who is 72, for a 58-mile walk instead of a restaurant meal.

He walked 16 miles down the dirt road, maintained by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and then walked back when he found no help.

Then, after the couple spent the night in the truck, they walked 26 miles before another motorist came upon them.

“Part of the time it rained, part of the time it snowed,” said Walker.

After 30 hours without food and water, they were treated to soup, sandwiches and coffee at Malheur Wildlife Refuge maintenance station.

Walker, though without ill effects beyond blisters and sore muscles, blamed his experience on the government.

”The Bureau of Land Management should block that road off during the winter,” said Walker. “It isn’t passable. It’s a summer road.”

25 years ago

Life is hard enough for kids who, struggling with disorders or abuse, are placed into court custody.

But when those children are members of a tribe, placement usually has an added burden: They are taken away from their ancestral homeland, the center of their culture and home to a network of family and friends. And their tribe has lost them.

Now, there will be a way to keep at least some of those “wonderfil, precious children” on the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Five special needs children soon will move into a specialized residential program named “Ha Ta Pow Moo my uts” a name which means the “wonderful, precious children” in the Cayuse language.

“This has been a really significant need,” said Renee Corley of Corley Care Centers. Twenty referrals were made for the home’s first group of five clients, all of whom were tribal members in the target audience – 7 to 17-year-olds who suffer from a variety of physical, mental and emotional issues who have been placed into the custody of the tribal court.