Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
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WAITSBURG - It all started just before Christmas. The first topic of Andie Holmberg's conversation with B. A. Keve was the food baskets program run by the Waitsburg Ministerial Association. Holmberg's employer, AmericanWest Bank, was about to participate as a donor in the program for disadvantaged local families for the first time. But small town chats meander, and so did this one. Soon, the women's discussion turned to the subject of the Waitsburg Food Bank. Holmberg learned from Keve that the... Full story
Editor's Note: This is the fifth and last installment about the work of Clear Path International. Imbert Matthee is one of the organization's co-founders. Its mission is to offer medical and socio-economic aid to survivors of land mine accidents. T he twenty men at the Care Villa may no longer be able to walk, see or eat their food without help. But they still have their voices and they are always eager to sing for any visitors to the Mae La refugee camp on the border between Thailand and...
WAI T SBURG - The conversation didn't last long. Ross Hamann recalls how he was helping a Cycle Oregon official in the food line under one of the giant tents set up near the Cardinals football field when some 2,500 cyclists and support staff passed through town late last summer. The president of the WP booster club was passing out plates and silverware when the Cycle Oregon official pointed to the sports storage shack right outside the tent and asked what it was. It's worth describing the shack...
DAYTON - Reid Helford, the popular and award-winning manager of the Liberty Theater, has announced his resignation and will leave his position by the end of April. In other news involving the theater, former Dayton Chamber Director Lisa Ronnberg also submitted her resignation as a board member of the Touchet Valley Arts Council, the nonprofit that oversees the Liberty and its cultural programs, saying her life simply got too busy. Recognized for growing attendance at the historic theater and... Full story
John Turner, the new Walla Walla County Sheriff, got off to a running start last week when he formally introduced his new team to the media and to area law enforcement colleagues, including newly re-elected Columbia County Sheriff Walt Hessler. The team includes Undersheriff Eddie Freyer, Operations Captain Barry Blackman and Jail Superintendent Keilen Harmon. Turner and his team were sworn in the week before, but at the time he was presented with little opportunity to outline his vision for the office. On Friday, he released more details...
WAITSBURG - When you walk Taggert Road with Waitsburg City Councilman Scott Nettles, he can point to all the changes that have taken place here over the past seve ral de- cades. After all, he grew up here. There used to be an orchard to the north and asparagus fields to the east and a wrecking yard across the street. There are scattered homes on both sides now. Highway 12 is a good stone's throw away. Not too long ago, there were plans to build 26 homes on a parcel of vacant land. The road is...
DAYTON - After Claudia Nysoe and her husband, Dain, moved back to Dayton two years ago, she told him the position of Chamber of Commerce director seemed like the most interesting job in town. So when Lisa Ronnberg announced in December that she would leave the chamber to join the Columbia County's Public Works Department, Nysoe applied for it, and late last week, she got it. "This is the perfect job for me," said Nysoe, who learned on Thursday that she was chosen from among 14 applicants to lead...
WALLA WALLA - If there were ever a "bird whisperer" in the Touchet Valley, Huntsville's Joanna Lanning would be it. For 16 years, Lanning has devoted her weekdays to the Pioneer Park Aviary in Walla Walla, where she manages the daily affairs of 200 feathered friends and dotes over them like a mother over her toddlers. Her office at the compound has depictions of birds on every imaginable item: posters, tiles, pillows, place mats, carvings, trays, clocks, T-shirts, paintings and drawings. The...
WALLA WALLA - While he grew up in Southern California, John Turner remembers coming up for harvest and for Christmas to the Touchet Valley. It is, after all, whence his family hails. Turner's grandmother was Juanita Hofer, daughter of Friedrich Hofer, one of the area's homesteaders north of Prescott and also great-grandfather of Waitsburg's Gary Hofer, who taught Turner how to drive a tractor in the summers. As the newly sworn-in Sheriff of Walla Walla County, Turner comes full circle to these...
Editor's Note: This is the fourth installment in a series about the work of Clear Path International, which is based on Bainbridge Island and aids survivors of landmine accidents in Asia. Imbert Matthee is one of its cofounders. I f you ever saw the movie "The Killing Fields," you'll remember the devastation and horror brought upon Cambodia during the four-year Khmer Rouge regime in the late 1970s. An estimated 2 million people died in the small Southeast Asian nation sandwiched between...
In its Nov. 18 suspension letter to the three volleyball coaches and its Dec. 17 ruling upholding the suspension decision, the Waitsburg School District charges that Jessie Buehler, Katie Buehler and Tressa Robbins purposely placed an athlete in a position of being harassed, intimidated and bullied by her teammates. But the statements from team players on which the district's charges were based give a much more complex picture of the controversial team meeting of Nov. 13. It's much less clear...
When I first visited Vietnam more than a decade ago, it wasn't immediately obviously to me that this Southeast Asian nation was a war-ravaged country. Certainly, there were crater marks in the landscape as we flew into Hue City, and on our way to Dong Ha, Quang Tri Province, I saw a number of roadside bunkers and watchtowers that stood as a quiet testament to the conflict that had ended a quarter century before I first traveled there. But even the mostly rural province of Quang Tri looked like... Full story
WAITSBURG - In the latest development involving this fall's controversial volleyball coaches' suspension, the Waitsburg School District superintendent has upheld the high school principal's decision to dismiss the three women for the remainder of the 2010 season. Former head coach Jessie Buehler and her sister, assistant coach Katie Buehler, have appealed the superintendent's ruling, insisting they were suspended without cause and were not given a fair hearing before the suspension decision was made. That means the case of the first coaching... Full story
WAITSBURG - The Waitsburg City Council agreed last Wednesday to put back on the agenda the BMX track proposal for a parcel of city-owned land on the edge of town. All but one of the five council members said they did not object to Mayor Walt Gobel's request to discuss the proposal at the council's next meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 19, after track proponents used the public comment session to ask for a full hearing. Orville Branson was the only one who did not want the item back before the... Full story
SKI BLUEWOOD - Joe Amend pulls his visor down over his face, fires up his welding torch and, sparks flying, tools around on the surface of a steel tube in the shop downstairs from the lodge at Ski Bluewood. After a few minutes he calls over Travis Stephenson, the mountain's new general manager, to show him the results. Down the length of the rounded metal he has "written" the letters "B.wood" for Bluewood as though he had a hair to scratch his name in the bark of his favorite tree. The moment...
VISTA HERMOSA - The WP Tigers soccer team didn't break any of its own records this fall. After all, this was its first-ever season. But its tenacious performance set new benchmarks in the state, and its recognition around the league has been impressive, giving the boys and girls from the Broetje Orchards, Prescott and Waitsburg plenty to celebrate. "You started as the lowest-ranked, 23rd, and finished number one (in the 7/9 district)," head coach Rickie Hamilton told the team members, sibl...
WAITSBURG - It may sound like a strange observation, but WP basketball Head Coach T.J. Scott almost prefers to start his season with a loss, particularly against good team. "A loss makes you see what you need to improve on and become the team you want to be," he said. "That was a good team and that was their sixth game." The Cardinals Boys team lost by two points 47-45 in the last handful of seconds of their game against the Weston-McEwen Tigerscots, a heartbreaking cliff hanger more than a r...
WAITSBURG - Though they had to shake off some nerves during the first half of their game against Weston-McEwen, the WP Lady Cardinals came out regrouped after their break and beat the Tigerscots confidently in a lob-sided 45-19 victory. Head Coach Jerry Baker said he wasn't surprised his team came out a bit flat-footed in their first game of the season against an opponent that already had five games on the court, but he was pleased with the way the girls turned on the heat in the second h...
STARBUCK - The Port of Columbia will end its lease of Lyons Ferry Park with the U.S. Corps of Engineers, which means the recreational facility across the river from Lyons Ferry Marina will not reopen unless the Corps can find another tenant. The Corps is now looking for new operators for its Lyons Ferry and Central Ferry parks on the Snake River after the latter's operator too ended its lease with the federal agency. Lyons Ferry Marina, which is operated by P.M. Farmjam LLC, is not affected by the change. Farmjam owners Jim and Angela Mac... Full story
WAITSBURG - Waitsburg City Public Works Director Dan Katsel points to a long, vertical gauge painted on the concrete structure under the Main Street bridge across the Touchet. Against a white background, the river's ever- changing water level is indicated in black, one foot at a time. It starts at about the 1 and runs all the way up to the 11, with a red mark at the 8 - flood stage. On Tuesday, the level was below one foot. But last winter, the river reached six feet, and Katsel, who mon...
DAYTON - Lisa Ronnberg, executive director of the Dayton Chamber of Commerce for the past three and a half years, has announced she will leave her position there to become the business manager for the Columbia County Public Works Department. "It's an exciting opportuDirector for me," Ronnberg said about her new job under public works director Drew Wood. "I'm looking forward to it." The change is effective the first of the year. Ronnberg's assistant, Amber Phinney, who joined the Cha... Full story
DIXIE - No one seems to know exactly how tall the Northwest Grain Growers elevator in Dixie is, but even those who work there say it's no higher than 130 feet. That means the small town's tallest item, which is visible from Highway 12 tucked back in the fields south of its outskirts, will soon be eclipsed by an even loftier structure. Inland Cellular is set to build a 180-foot cell phone tower at 9970 East Highway 12 near the elevator this spring and is seeking public comment on its proposal under the National Preservation Act of 1966. Local...
WAITSBURG - Crowning one of the best fall sports seasons in its history, the WP athletics combine handed out annual awards Monday to the individual athletes who made happen in cheerleading, volleyball, football and cross country. The WP Tigers' soccer awards will be presented at Vista Hermosa at 5:30 p.m. on Friday. "Before our cross-country season began, I was unsure of how it would play out, if this small boys team, half of whom were freshmen, would be able to make our third consecutive...
WAITSBURG - Carlos Norris entered his first BMX race when he was 6. It was at the Walla Walla Valley BMX track where the Waitsburg youngster got his first taste of a course sanctioned by the American Bicycle Association, the excitement of competing with other racers and the cheers from his family. "I liked going over the hills and stuff and go after a trophy," said Norris, who is now 8. But Norris hasn't raced in two years. His mom, Lisa, who works in Walla Walla, had to come all the way back... Full story
PULLMAN - To say Monday night's 21-14 semifinal loss to Colfax was bittersweet would be an understatement. The narrow defeat to the number one-ranked team in the state was not what the Cardinals had hoped for on the chilly snowbound turf at Martin Field. A first-ever state championship game in Tacoma on Saturday was more what they had in mind after a first-ever undefeated season. But in the wake of the heartbreaking playoff drama at the big Pac 10 stadium, the 2010 Cardinals drew wi... Full story
