A6 — THE OBSERVER
TUESDAY, JANUARY 11, 2022
LOCAL
VOICES
First rule of public speaking:
Understand your audience
By CAROLEE KOLVE
ANYONE CAN WRITE
Special to The Observer
Wallowa County Chieftain/File
Joe Town, left, stands with Wallowa Senior Center cook Tammy Odegaard in 2015. Town, who was a member
of the Wallowa Senior Center Advisory Board, was instrumental in getting the center built.
LASTING LEGACY
Longtime city
councilor Joe Town
has spent half his
life in Wallowa
By BILL BRADSHAW
Wallowa County Chieftain
WALLOWA — Joe
Town has spent most of his
90 years in Wallowa, and
most of those years serving
the city in one fashion or
another.
He recently retired as a
longtime city councilor and,
most recently, as city council
president.
He said the stroke he
had in April is causing him
troubles.
“I’m not doing too bad for
an old man,” he said, but “it’s
limiting my total abilities.”
Born in North Dakota,
Town served in the U.S.
Navy during the Korean
War. He was an elec-
tronics technician aboard a
destroyer, but didn’t get close
to Korea.
“I spent most of my time
in the Mediterranean mon-
itoring Russian radar,” he
said.
He and his wife, Maxine,
both were teachers. They
moved here from Alaska in
1975. She taught fi rst and
second grades for 20 years
at Wallowa Elementary
School, while he taught all
math, physics and chemistry
at Imbler High School, some
34 miles away.
Those may have been
tough subjects for many, but
Town was pleased with his
students.
“You’ve got good kids to
work with,” he recalls.
The Towns had two chil-
dren. A daughter now lives
in Hawaii with their two
granddaughters. A son died
of cerebral palsy in his 40s,
Town said.
The couple retired in the
mid-1990s and decided to
stay in their home.
“I built an A-frame house
here,” he said. “We decided
to not move after we retired
and just stay here.”
Town began his service to
the city with his fi rst term on
the council in 1977.
“I got involved and
chaired a lot of senior center
projects for many years,” he
said.
His fi rst stint in offi ce
lasted until 1985. He
returned seven years ago.
Trace Collier/Contributed Photo
Longtime Wallowa City Councilman Joe Town, seated, receives a
plaque in appreciation of his decades of service to the city along-
side Mayor Gary Hulse in the council chambers at Wallowa City Hall
during the council’s meeting on Dec. 21, 2021.
Between that time, he
continued working on the
city’s budget committee.
“The most important
thing was starting the Wal-
lowa Senior Center Endow-
ment Fund with the Oregon
Community Foundation,”
Town said. “It has grown to
over $140,000 and returns
about $6,000 a year for oper-
ation of the center.”
Helping start the entree
program to support nutri-
tious meals countywide was
another long-range endeavor,
he said.
Although he’s never
served as mayor, being
council president is the same
thing when the mayor is
unavailable.
City Recorder Carolyn
Harshfi eld said Town will be
hard to replace.
“The city is truly going
to miss him,” she said in
an email. “He used to be
a math teacher and was
amazing helping with the
city budget.”
Mayor Gary Hulse
agreed.
“He has been a super big
help with the city of Wal-
lowa,” Hulse said. “He’s vol-
unteered with many things.”
At the council’s meeting
on Dec. 21, 2021 — which
also happened to be Town’s
90th birthday — the coun-
cilors presented him with a
cake and a plaque honoring
his service to Wallowa.
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“That was my birthday.
They said you have to come
to the council meeting,”
Town said. “We just talked a
bit about some of the things
that have happened since
I’ve been here.”
During that time, they
recalled that the city hall was
moved to its current location
from its former site across
from the post offi ce, the
Wallowa Senior Center was
built in 1995, the new fi re
hall was put in after 9/11 and
Kevin’s Tire Shop that was
faced with being forced to
close down at its old location
moved to a building that he
now leases from the city on
the truck route.
“We saved those jobs,”
Town said of the tire shop
move.
Hulse and others will
truly miss working with
Town.
“He’s been super good to
work with,” the mayor said.
“He’s a great guy and will
be greatly missed on helping
out with the city council.”
But for Town, it’s been
enough.
“It’s 45 years,” he said.
In my junior year in high school, my
mother fashioned herself as my col-
lege admissions coach. She decreed that
I needed something besides grades and
SAT scores. I needed to become a school
leader. “No athletic skill, no musical
talent, only mundane summer jobs,” she
told me, shaking her head sadly.
“But no track record for leadership
either,” I said.
To make it more improbable, I had just
switched from a small girls’ school to a
large public school. Not only did I know
no one, but I regularly came home from
school in tears because I had eaten lunch
by myself. How was I to transition from
pathetic loner to school leader?
It was my junior year, and I took a
stab. I ran for the lowest possible offi ce:
student body secretary. And lost. My
entire campaign consisted of two posters.
If anyone even saw them, they were cer-
tainly not persuaded to “Take a chance
with Carolee Nance.” A slogan that was
neither aspirational nor inspirational,
although it did rhyme.
But my senior year, there was another
election. This time my mother said, “This
is your last hope, so you have to run
for something which involves giving a
speech.”
My mother assured me she knew
everything there was to know about
speech-making as she had just purchased
“The Art of Public Speaking” by Dale
Carnegie. Of course, she hadn’t read it
yet.
I fi gured out that I needed some ideas,
so I polled the girls I had gotten to know.
Between us, we determined that a body
of several hundred young women could
probably do some signifi cant things, and
so far they were just an idle clump of
girls. I asked everyone, “What would you
enjoy doing?” I heard ideas about school
dances, good deeds in the community,
ways to raise money.
I tested ideas on other girls. People
nodded and smiled. My confi dence was
nudging up.
And then I learned about my
competition.
I only had one opponent. She was the
most popular girl in the school. She was
in an elite club of other popular girls,
who were all promoting her campaign.
The week after the upcoming elec-
tion was a school dance, and somehow
everyone knew she would be attending
with the handsome football and baseball
star who was about to be elected Student
Body President. Clearly, they were the
“star couple.”
Undaunted, my mother began my
speech coaching, paraphrasing loosely
from Dale Carnegie, or at least from
the table of contents. There were some
rules, but mostly it seemed to be common
sense .
I had some good ideas and wrote my
speech with actual confi dence. I prac-
ticed. I smiled. I made eye contact with
Nearly 40 years in the business have taught me that
readers are bombarded and overwhelmed with
facts. What we long for, though, is meaning and a
connection at a deeper and more universal level.
And that’s why The Observer will be running, from
time to time, stories from students who are in my
writing class, which I’ve been teaching for the past
10 years in Portland.
I take great satisfaction in helping so-called non-
writers fi nd and write stories from their lives and
experiences. They walk into my room believing
they don’t have what it takes to be a writer. I
remind them if they follow their hearts, they will
discover they are storytellers.
As we all are at our core.
Some of these stories have nothing to do with La
Grande or Union County. They do, however, have
everything to do with life.
If you are interested in contacting me to tell me
your story, I’d like to hear from you.
Tom Hallman Jr.
tbhbook@aol.com
Tom Hallman Jr. is a Pulitzer Prize-winning feature
writer for The Oregonian. He’s also a writing coach
and has an affi nity for Union County.
my imaginary audience.
On the big day, I put on my best
pleated skirt and white sweater. I
attempted to deal with my wild hair,
kinked up from ill-considered pin curls.
Oh well. I grabbed my speech and my
attention-getting prop, and off I went.
As we arrived, the candidates gathered
on stage. I looked around, and my jaw
dropped.
My opponent was dressed in the most
dazzling outfi t I had ever seen. A tight
sweater and skirt made entirely of pink
angora. As she walked the little tufts of
fl uff fl oated and waved all around her.
The assembly began, and she was
asked to go fi rst. She stepped to the
podium, and she said: “The purpose of
these speeches is for you to hear us speak
and see what we look like. So fi rst ... I’ll
show you what I look like.”
With that, she left the podium, went
to center stage, held her arms out like
a ballerina, and did a slow rotation. As
she moved, her angora fl uff s swayed in
the spotlight. The boys went crazy. They
stomped and cheered, creating additional
breezes for her waving fuzz.
Finally, she returned to the podium
and read the speech that no one would
ever remember.
My turn. I pulled out my “attention
getter,” a bunch of bananas, and said,
“The Girls’ League is not just a bunch
of girls clumped together like these
bananas.” I smiled, and I felt a connec-
tion like I had never felt before. All my
jitters disappeared, and I never had to
look at my notes. I shared ideas with
them, and I knew they were listening.
Everyone was smiling, and I was on top
of the world. I was also pretty sure of the
outcome.
My opponent was gorgeous, and the
boys loved her. But she had overlooked
the fi rst rule of public speaking. The
audience rules.
Because, of course, for Girls’ League
president? Only the girls voted.
Charles & Eileen
Stewart
10304 A 1st St.
Island City, OR
cstewartpc@gmail.com
541.910.5435
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