Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
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Veterans have a lot of things that are hard for them to have access to. Some of them don’t have access to much money, or when they return to civilian life some of them don’t have access to a place to live because they might have been away for so long. Lincoln said, “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.” So how do we do this? One of the things that many people see is that veterans don’t have homes or jobs once they get out of the service. Getting veterans in a home or maintaining a job is something...
WAITSBURG – Waitsburg's favorite rodeo songstress spent a long and tiring day auditioning at the Moose Lodge in Ellensburg, Wash. last weekend, but returned home with the title of Washington Little Rodeo Queen. Ten-year-old Makenna Barron said she "had a lot of fun" as Miss Rodeo Washington Sweetheart for the Miss Rodeo Washington Pageant in 2013 and wanted to gain more royalty experience. Makenna's mom, Tracy Barron, said the Miss Rodeo Washington Pageant has dropped titles for younger contesta...
In 1948, when Diane Howard was 4, she was learning to play ring-around-the-rosie. In 2004, when Christian Magnuson was 4, he was teaching himself to install games on his dad's computer. On Wednesday, Howard, 71, sat in a classroom where Christian, 16, was the teacher. His class: an introduction to smartphones for residents of Westminster at Lake Ridge, a retirement community in Prince William County, Virginia. Christian began volunteering at the facility a year ago, helping at Tuesday night...
Hey there, everyone! I’m sorry I haven’t been updating you guys more frequently, but that’s mainly because nothing much has happened. Life is still pretty much the same – pointless craft projects, it-never-rains-but-it-pours dispensing of homework assignments, lame attempts at creative writing, and not enough sleep. I am currently in mourning for my 4.0 GPA (November 5, 2009 – December 29, 2015 – rest in peace, old buddy). I received a B in Continuing Hispanic Culture, a 300-level discussion-bas...
WAITSBURG – A discussion of the Feb. 9 special election results and a vote on the Dayton-Waitsburg 2016 football combine were top agenda items at the Feb. 10 Waitsburg School Board meeting. Special Election “We clearly need to celebrate the success of the maintenance and operations levy,” Superintendent Carol Clarke said. “We had really strong community support. That says we’re doing something right.” As of Tuesday, the levy, which will collect $559,000 in 2017 and $570,000 in 2018 was passing a...
The Washington Post - Yanan Wang Just over a decade ago, students at a smattering of elite colleges were debating the merits of a new website called thefacebook.com. It was all the rage at Harvard, naturally, where it had been launched by a sophomore who “literally” made it in a week. “I’m just like a little kid,” Mark Zuckerberg told the Harvard Crimson in 2004. “I get bored easily and computers excite me. Those are the two driving factors here.” The other students on campus were pretty excited, too. Within weeks of going online, the s...
WAITSBURG – More than 35 people attended a Jan. 6 community forum to learn more about the Waitsburg Raceway proposed by Walla Walla resident Brandon Kelly. Kelly hopes to convert the horse race track at the Waitsburg fairgrounds to a compacted dirt car race track. Kelly had received tentative approval from the Waitsburg city council at their Dec. 16 meeting, but the council wanted to run it past the community before signing a lease contract. During the December meeting, council members r...
WAITSBURG – Waitsburg FFA member Sydney Fowble got an extra-special Christmas present this year: a $1,000 grant from the National FFA Foundation for her Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) goat production project. Now she has the enjoyable task of figuring out how to spend the money. Fowble was selected from hundreds of applicants nationwide for her SAE project. An SAE requires a member to create and operate an agriculture-related business, work at an agriculture-related business, or c...
Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer By Alexandyr Dahlby Did you know that Rudolf never had a nose that glowed? He actually had very good eyesight to see in the fog. The reason for this is that Santa Claus took very good care of Rudolf. His father is Donder, a reindeer who pulls Santa’s sleigh. That is how Rudolf got to be the head of the team. When Santa said “Rudolf with your nose so bright, won`t you guide my sleigh tonight?” he didn`t actually mean that. He actually meant only, “Will you guide my sleigh tonight.” Perhaps this is the reason why San...
WAITSBURG – Folding chairs replaced fire trucks in the bays of the Waitsburg City Fire Station during a well-attended open house on Wed., Oct. 14. Community members, fire officials, and city and county representatives discussed three issues: the annexation of the City of Waitsburg into Walla Walla Fire District No. 2, the EMS levy on the Columbia County portion of Fire District No. 2, and upcoming changes for ambulance service in Waitsburg. Annexation of Waitsburg into Walla Walla County Fire D...
WAITSBURG – Nearly two dozen parents – more than board chairman Ross Hamann said he'd seen in attendance in his 12 years on the board – showed up at the Sept. 16 Waitsburg school board meeting to voice concerns about work crews from the Washington State Penitentiary performing work on the school grounds. The public comment session of the meeting was moved from the small Preston Hall Board Room to a larger classroom to accommodate the crowd. Parent Melanie Gagnon initiated the discussion by sa...
WAITSBURG – In honor of the City of Waitsburg's sesquicentennial, the Waitsburg Historical Society found it fitting to commemorate its own history by recognizing the two surviving members of the society's founding group as Pioneers of the Year. Bob Patton and Dona Jean Smith hold that honor. The Waitsburg Historical Society was founded in 1971 and the original board included Roberta Broom, Jan Zuger, Joe Abbey, Dorothy Kison, Bettie Chase, Dona Jean Smith and Bob Patton. Carolee Jantz joined t...
DAYTON – Columbia County Health System leaders have selected an architect team for the planned $5.5 million Dayton General Hospital upgrade, they announced last week. Two architects responded to the hospital district’s request for letters of interest last month, according to Chief Operations Officer Shane McGuire. Both were invited to the bidding process with RFQ (request for quotation). Rather than respond individually, the two architects decided on their own to come back to the table as par...
New service will specialize in providing care to clients in Waitsburg and Dayton WAITSBURG – Elizabeth Gonzalez hopes to put her 21 years experience as a Certified Nurse's Assistant (CNA) to work by pairing reliable home health care providers with patients in the Touchet Valley. Her new agency, Ameri, will provide in-home care services not only in Walla Walla, but also in Waitsburg and Dayton, where it can be more difficult to find reliable care. Business owners Elizabeth and Fred Gonzalez moved...
WAITSBURG – Several local companies worked together to improve the driveway and move the flagpole outside the Waitsburg Ambulance Service last month. The chores will help beautify the lot for the future dedication of the building to longtime Waitsburg Ambulance Service Advanced Emergency Medical Technician (AEMT) and Chief of Operations Richard Naumann, who died in April. Naumann, who passed away following a four-year battle with cancer on April 10, requested that his family not hold a s...
DAYTON – Last week the Washington State Department of Natural Resources presented to several county residents at a public hearing its plan to sell 640 acres of land it owns in Columbia County to the Bonneville Power Administration in exchange for land deemed of equal value that BPA owns in King County. All three county residents in attendance were unhappy with DNR. Merle Jackson, a county commissioner and land owner in the rural northern part of the county where this land exchange is planned, s...
DAYTON – Local youth leaders are asking community members and other supporters to help save the Dayton Summer Youth Program (Summer Rec.). All supporters must do is go online to: https://www.state-assist.com/cause/1502697/sos-save-our-summer. Those who vote for SOS (Save Our Summer) will help Blue Mountain Counseling and the Coalition for Youth and Families win a $25,000 grant from State Farm Insurance. Projects that receive the most community support (the top 40 projects) through voting will b...
Dear Editor, IT’S TIME: It takes a lot of community members to make the right decisions regarding how we live and accomplish tasks within Columbia County, its cities and Waitsburg! In most instances this is accomplished by individuals that step-up and accept a challenge, either as an elected official or as a volunteer. For several years I have been either elected or a volunteer and it is now time to pass the challenge to the younger members of our community. As I move into the mid-seventies it is becoming more difficult for me to make the d...
WAITSBURG – “I didn’t know what a heart attack was supposed to feel like,” said Waitsburg Presbyterian Church Reverend Bret Moser, who now knows all too well what to expect. Following his own recent heart attack, Moser is loudly singing the praises of the Waitsburg Ambulance Service and strongly encourages all Waitsburg residents to take advantage of the service’s unique donor program which assures swift and free service. Nothing was out of the ordinary when Moser went to bed the night of...
WAITSBURG - The Lady Cards fell 4-4 last week in games against Milton-Freewater, Walla Walla Valley Academy, Weston-McEwen and Asotin. The Milton-Freewater Pioneers felled the Cards 43-26 in a Dec. 16 league battle against the Pioneer court. Taylor Jones was top scorer of the night with seven points, followed by Loegan Harshman with five and Analise Salazar and Kassidy Kuykendall with four each. Jones nabbed nine rebounds while Kuykendall, Paige Wood and Salazar made four each. The Lady Cards...
Well, it seems as though I'm running out of summer quite rapidly. School starts next Tuesday. The Walla Walla Fair, long a herald of the break's end, will already be in full swing by the time you read this. The evenings are starting to get a little chilly, and my garden's finally yielding produce. For the most part, the elapsed time was uneventful. I worked from home, started a couple projects, visited family, hosted family, applied for a scholarship or two, baked way too much cake, and hugged...
WAITSBURG - Five Waitsburg teens returned home last week following a two-week mission trip to Guatemala. The youth are pleased with the work they accomplished there, but all five agree that they were receivers as well as givers. While those they served lacked material possessions, the teens learned the Guatemalans are rich in ways many Americans aren't. Chad (18), Nick (18) and Chloe Pearson (14) and Kavin (18) and Kassidy (17) Kuykendall, along with 13 other Walla Walla area teens, formed the...
DAYTON - Carl Robanske has a love of travel, a desire to serve God and compassion for people less fortunate than himself. He has put those passions to work as founder and chairman of the Walla Walla-based nonprofit organization Embracing Orphans. Over the past five years, Robanske and Embracing Orphans have made a real difference in the lives of many young people in the Caribbean Island nation of Jamaica. The organization has bought new cribs and built two playgrounds for a government owned...
There are no stairs in the Columbia County Senior Center, at least that I could find, and the PA system was turned up a tad louder than I'm used to. But the camaraderie and fellowship I saw there was no different than a lunch crowd anywhere. More than forty people showed up for lunch last Thursday when I stopped by for a visit, and there was a lot of information to take in. As the group waited for the call to go through the meal line, Senior Center president Barbara Gibson started off by...
We had a weekend guest recently. This particular guest was loud, demanding and wreaked havoc on our weekend plans. Everything revolved around him. I'd been in favor of him staying with us but, frankly, I wasn't sad to see him go. Yes, we just finished up our weekend hosting "Baby Think It Over." One might consider it more accurate to say that my son finished up his weekend with the baby, but the babe affected us all. Babies are like that. "Baby Think It Over" is an infant simulator aimed at...
