25 years ago this week — 1999

PENDLETON — Umatilla County Commissioners agreed Wednesday to recommend to Gov. Kitzhaber that he seek federal drought aid for county farmers.

Mary Corp, cereal crops extension agent, told the commissioners the estimated loss to local producers of dryland wheat, barley and green pea crops was about $22.6 million.

“I asked our agricultural economics people about what the impacts to the local economy might be from that loss to the producers,” Corp said. “Their conservative estimate was about $49 million to our local economy, by the time those dollars turn over 2 ½ times in our local economy.”

Corp said she arrived at her figures in a county emergency board meeting with officials from the Farm Services Agency, U.S. Department of Agriculture and Oregon Wheat Growers League.

“My current estimate is that wheat yields will be approximately 40 percent below average,” Corp said. “This puts county wheat yield at an average 37 bushels per acre, versus an expected average of 63 bushels.”

The county has about 225,000 acres in dryland wheat. That translates into 5.9 million bushels lost, or $17.7 million below average revenues. Spring barley is about 50 percent below average, a $3.3 million loss, and green peas 35 percent below average, a $1.6 million shortfall.

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PENDLETON— She stands 6-foot-3, can drill the jumper, dribble behind her back and carries a 4.0 grade point average.

Those numbers will translate to an even more impressive bottom line soon when Pendleton High School senior Sarah Keeler signs a national letter-of-intent to play college basketball on a full-ride scholarship.

“A little family joke we had after I kept growing, after I got to 6-1 and 6-2 and 6-3, my dad was like, every inch I grow is another $10,000 in scholarship money,” Keeler said. “I’ve always been tall but once I figured out basketball was my thing and started really working on that, I kind of figured out this could take me somewhere and we could end up not having to pay a dime for college.”

Keeler has been at the top of the recruiting wish list among almost all Pacific-10 Conference schools since her freshman year. The family mailbox was often overflowing her sophomore and junior years with letters, brochures and media guided from schools as far away as Maryland and New York, Tennessee and Wisconsin.

“A high school girls basketball player who is 6-3, you can make the comparison that that’s the equivalent of a 6-10 or 7-foot boys player,” Pendleton coach Jon Peterson said. Combine that size “with the fact that she’s an extremely talented athlete with the right attitude… and those are the kind of kids you like to recruit.”

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PENDLETON (AP) — Businesses in Umatilla County don’t need to check the listings of low wheat prices to know that local farmers are enduring one of their worst seasons in 20 years.

They can see the proof in their cash registers.

The struggles in this eastern Oregon county, the state’s largest producer of wheat, mirror those of farmers around the nation. The problems here also show how everyone can suffer when the engine of an economy falters.

The recent addition of four large employers in nearby Hermiston and expansion of Pendleton’s tourism industry serve as somewhat of a buffer for the economy. But they are not enough to protect some small businesses from the impact of two consecutive difficult years for the area’s 900 wheat and barley farmers.

Mike Wallis, owner of Red’s Clothing Co., says he and his employees can see the impact of the bad season in the smaller waistlines of customers who are hiring fewer people and doing more work themselves.

They sense it when customers who come in wearing thinning, patched-up dungarees buy one pair of Wranglers and say they won’t be back until next year. They hear it in the complaints about the bad season that echo throughout the wood-floored store instead of the ringing of cash registers. Wallis said he soaks up the gripes and directs farmers to discounted merchandise.

50 years ago this week — 1974

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — Federal agents raided two Indian Liquor stores Monday and confiscated more than a truckload of spirits which they allege were being sold illegally.

Nineteen agents entered the Nisqually Indian community in Frank’s Landing in north Thurston County shortly after 6 a.m. in the first raid.

The Satiacum Store at the Puyallup Indian Reservation was raided later in the morning, said B.K. Uptagrafft, as assistant special agent in charge of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

“The operators of the ships do not have a federal occupational tax stamp which permits them to engage in the sale of liquor,” one ATF agent said.

Exact amount of liquor confiscated in the two raids was not immediately determined but there was one report that over 300 cases were taken from Frank’s Landing alone. Both hard liquor and Coors beer, a Colorado brew, not regularly sold in Washington, were reportedly seized.

Hank Adams, an Indian activist, was at Frank’s Landing and called the raid “an attack by the federal mafia.” He said the agents were “running around with pistols and other weaponry.”

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The flow of grain from Northwest farmers to foreign and domestic markets has slowed, causing backups at storage elevators that may force dumping of hundreds of thousands of bushels on the ground.

The anticipated wheat harvest of 180 million bushels is but half completed.

“We’ve got 600 tons on the ground and it’s raining,” said Bob Lorence, manager of the grain elevator at Independence, Ore. Most elevators in Oregon’s grain belt, the Willamette valley and Umatilla County, are full.

Weather is a big worry. Enough rain could damage top layers of wheat stored on the ground. One elevator operator said those top layers, if damaged, would have to be thrown away or salvaged as livestock feed.

Two Portland terminals at Kamala, Dreyfus and Cargill, aren’t accepting more wheat because they don’t have any way to ship it out.

Columbia River terminals at Kalama, Vancouver and Longview in Washington report their elevators are full.

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Princess Nancy Kilkenny, Pendleton, is the fourth generation of her family to be associated with Round-Up and Happy Canton activities.

Her great-grandfather, Jim Sturgis, and her grandfather, John Kilkenny, were Happy Canyon presidents. Now her father, Mike Kilkenny is the president.

Princess Nancy has grown up with the mid-September Round-Up activities the focal point of the year.

The family history is filled with other relatives active in both Happy Canyon and Round-Up. Her mother was Round-Up queen in 1951 and both grandmothers were princesses. Aunts, uncles, cousins, all have made the Round-Up-Happy Canyon scene.

Nancy has been in the Happy Canyon cast since she was small.

Riding has been second nature to the red-haired princess. She started at four, riding Junior, the horse her mother rode when she was queen of the Round-Up.

School activities have been fast-paces for Princess Nancy. In 1972 at Hermiston High School she was homecoming princess for football and basketball and in 1972-73 was queen for basketball and wrestling. She also was a member of the Thespians dramatic society, student council, was baseball statistician for three years, and in intramural basketball, badminton, volleyball and dodgeball.

She was a member of the Girls’ Athletic Association and ski club president.

Outside school she took ballet and jazz (her favorite) for eight years, and is an acid snow and water skiier. In 4-H she held membership in horse, clothing and foods groups.

100 years ago this week — 1924

State weights and grades for wheat at Pendleton this season will not become a fact, according to the decision announced today by C. E. Spence, state market agent, in a letter to the Pendleton Commercial association. Recently a meeting was held here, and the board of managers of the association expressed themselves as unwilling to aid the inspection on milling wheat after it had been bought and paid for on an “as is” basis. No exception can be made in the case of milling wheat, the state official said.

The letter from Mr. Spence was as follows:

“In reply to your letter of the 14th inst., would state that the law requires that all grain received at a public warehouse, elevator or mill at an inspection point, shall be inspected and weighed. This would include grain purchased ‘as is’ and later shipped to the mill.

“The matter of an inspection point at Pendleton was taken up at the request of the railroad, some farmers and others.

“I believe that if growers and shippers could get state weights and grads at Pendleton they would realize a benefit that would be well worth the cost, and they would be pleased with the service. However, after investigating, I do not think it advisable to designate Pendleton as an inspection point this season.”

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Pigeons, awnings over windows of business houses in Pendleton, the most desirable place in the city building for locating a women’s jail, and a couple of ordinances constituted the material for deliberation of the city council at its regular meeting last night.

Pigeons that roost around brick buildings might as well migrate right soon and leave Pendleton behind them, because if they don’t of their own free will, they stand a good chance of being shot. Complaints about the litter created by the birds in the business section of town have been received and last night the council authorized the chief of police to deputize a good rifle shot to shoot the birds.

Yesterday a man reported to Councilman Bond that he struck his forehead on the iron brace of an awning while walking along the street. Mr. Bond declared he had looked up the city ordinance and found that many business houses are violating the provisions of the measure. All parts of the awning are required to be seven feet above the sidewalk.

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An opportunity to see motion picture actresses and actors at close range will be offered Pendleton and Umatilla county people this evening at the Movie ball at Happy Canyon when the Hoot Gibson Company of the Universal Pictures Corporation will be guests of honor at a big informal dance.

Pendletonians like Hoot and his associates and Hoot and his gang like Pendleton people, so it is anticipated that the affair will be marked with great cordiality. Judge J. A. Fee, mayor of Pendleton, Henry Collins, president of the Round-Up, L. C. Scharpf, president of Happy Canyon, James Johns, president of the Pendleton Commercial Association, and Jim Sturgis constitute the reception committee. They plan to give everyone, who so desires, an opportunity to meet the motion picture people.

Besides Hoot, there will be present the other members of the company, including Miss Marion Nixon and Miss Josie Sedgewick, feminine members of the cast, the director, Edward Sedgwick and the assistant director, Tenny Wright.