Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Vernonia's voice. (Vernonia, OR) 2007-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 3, 2016)
november3 2016 VERNONIA’S volume10 issue21 www.vernoniasvoice.com free reflecting the spirit of our community Roll Columbia Concerts a Success Two concerts were a prelude to the release of the album featuring all 26 Woody Guthrie BPA songs. By Scott Laird Joe Seamons, and his many musician friends, held two concerts on Saturday, Octo- ber 22, 2016 at the Old Church in Portland. The concerts were in celebration of the 75 th an- niversary of Woody Guthrie’s Pacific Northwest Songs and featured musician and Guthrie historian Bill Murlin, Seamons’ band, and Vernonia favorites, Timberbound, Seamons’ musi- cal collaborator Ben Hunter, and numerous other accom- plished musicians. The two concerts, one at 2:00 pm and one at 8:00 pm, were fundraisers for the up- coming Roll Columbia album that Seamons has put together, and featured numerous musi- cians from that long anticipated album project. Seamons an- nounced at the concert that the album is scheduled for release in January on the Smithsonian Folkways record label. The album will include all 26 songs that Guthrie wrote in a one month period while employed by the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) in 1941. The album recording has been completed and includes a stunning array of musicians and partnerships, including many northwest and Portland based musicians. Guthrie was hired to write songs for a film the BPA planned to produce, that they hoped would help promote elec- tric power to the rural north- west, and was paid $266.66 for his 30 days of work. He record- ed about a dozen of the songs continued on page 11 Rebuilding a Life Seven years ago, in a drunken haze, Desmond Hines shot and killed his good friend Darrell Schoonover. Now, recently released from prison after serving his time, Hines is attempting to restart his life and learn to live with his past mistakes. This is his story. By Scott Laird On March 18, 2009 Desmond Hines, 31, an alcoholic who was angry and despondent over the recent death of his father and the revelation that he had been cut out of his father’s will and left with nothing, sat with his good friend inside 6 osu forestry presentation 7 new dental hygienist 8 halloween parade highlights 8 vhs fall sports Darrell Schoonover at Hines’s father’s house in Birkenfeld with a half-gallon of rum and a hand gun. What happened in the late hours of that dark and disturbing night would end Schoonover’s life and forever change Hines’s. Today, after serving seven years for manslaughter in the Oregon State prison system, Hines is living in Vernonia, stay- ing sober, trying to start a busi- ness and become a productive member of society. He’s also trying to deal with the tragedy that took the life of his friend, along with everything that has happened to him leading to that fateful night. *** Desmond Hines grew up in the rural community of Birkenfeld, living with his single fa- ther, brother, and sister. He attended Mist Grade School and the Vernonia Middle School. When he was just an infant, Hines says his mother kid- napped the children when she split up with their father and took them to Texas. They lived there for several months before the private investiga- tor his father hired, located the kids and brought them back to Oregon. “I never saw my mother again,” says Hines. His father told Hines she died of an overdose when he was just eight; he later learned from his lawyer at his prison sentencing that his mother had committed suicide because his father would not let her see the children. Life with his father, Dennis in the basement of the BPA of- fice in Portland. The originally planned film never material- ized, but three songs were even- tually used in the documentary film, Columbia, later produced by the BPA in 1948. The rest of the songs disappeared and were thought to be lost. Murlin, also an em- ployee of the BPA in the 80s and 90s, spent years tracking down all 26 of Guthrie’s Pacific Northwest Songs. It has been a long-time dream of his to have all 26 songs recorded and re- leased together. He partnered Hines, was hard, says Desmond. Den- nis was a heavy equipment operator for several different logging outfits over the years, and also a heavy drinker and hard core alcoholic who was extremely critical and physically abusive. “He was very particular about the way things should be done,” says Hines. “It could be a little thing like, you didn’t do your dishes or your chores, and he would just beat the crap out of you. My older brother got it the worst and then it trick- led down to me and my sister.” For all of his anger issues and the abuse, Hines says Dennis was still a really good father. “We always had a roof over our head, food in our bellies and firewood. He taught me how to fish and hunt and camp. A lot of the good things outweighed the bad and made me the person I am today.” As an infant Hines contracted a parasite called toxoplasmosis while playing in a pile of sawdust. When his father didn’t bother to take him to the doctor he lost the vision in his right eye, growing up blind in that eye. When he was 13 Hines got in trouble with the Vernonia police and told them he didn’t want to go home because his father was going to beat him. “My old man’s abuse had got a little too heavy for me and I just couldn’t take it anymore,” says Hines. Hines ended up being placed in the foster care system. He bounced around, living with several different families, and even wound up back with his father for a brief time. “But it was just the same thing – he was just drunk and angry all the time and I didn’t like being around it.” He eventually landed with Betty and Dave Vaughan and worked at their restaurant, The Country Kitchen in Vernonia, before he found himself in more trouble after stealing a large supply of alcohol from the restaurant with some of his teenage buddies. “That was when my own alcoholism really started to de- velop,” he says. He ended up working off a $27,000 restitution at The Country Kitchen over the next several years and dropped out of high school. *** “After that I just dove real hard into the heavy drinking,” says Hines about the next five years of his life. “I did some drugs for a while. I was getting continued on page 3
