Former Gulls go to
bat for Gizdavich
Beethoven scores
hit at Music Fest
SPORTS • 4A
PAGE 7A
142nd YEAR, No. 249
MONDAY, JUNE 15, 2015
ONE DOLLAR
Gov. Brown stays course to abolish gillnetting
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By DERRICK DePLEDGE
The Daily Astorian
Gov. Kate Brown
Gov. Kate Brown said she would be
open to listening to fishermen and oth-
ers who want to preserve gillnetting on
the Columbia River, but the governor
has no plans to change a policy direc-
tive to phase out gillnets on the main
stem by 2017.
“I’m open to hearing folks’ con-
cerns, but at this point we’re moving
forward,” Brown said Friday during an
interview with The Daily Astorian.
Oregon and Washington have com-
mitted to end gillnetting on the river
to protect salmon fisheries, a policy
outlined by Gov. John Kitzhaber in
2012.
Last year, Kitzhaber indicated he
would consider adapting the policy or
other options to reduce the econom-
ic harm to fishing communities. But
Kitzhaber resigned in February over an
influence-peddling scandal involving
his fiancee, Cylvia Hayes.
Kitzhaber’s position on gillnetting had
cost the Democrat Clatsop County in his No-
vember re-election campaign, and there was
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ests that Brown — the former secretary of
state who became governor when Kitzhaber
resigned — might change course.
See GILLNETTING, Page 10A
Unsung
sailors
may get
their due
Neighbors tend
Grave of the
Unknown Sailor
By KATHERINE LACAZE
EO Media Group
JOSHUA BESSEX — The Daily Astorian
Graduates make their way to their seats before the Clatsop Community College graduation ceremony at the Liberty Theater Friday.
College graduates take the stage
Gov. Brown
salutes students
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
A
t Clatsop Community Col-
lege’s graduation Friday
night, Oregon’s 38th gov-
ernor, Kate Brown, was wedged
inconspicuously among faculty
and staff gathered on stage at the
Liberty Theater.
In early February, the then-sec-
retary of state was asked to speak
at the college’s graduation. Two
weeks later, she replaced John
Kitzhaber and became possibly the
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tion speaker ever.
Brown kept her appointment
in Astoria, and Friday personally
congratulated the college’s class of
2015.
“I have learned some inter-
esting facts about the graduating
class; 125 of you, of the 168 grads,
are from Clatsop County,” Gov.
Brown said to a roar of applause.
“The oldest is 61; the youngest is
workers. Fifteen of the graduates
were pinned as nurses earlier and
will soon take their state licensing
exams.
Service to community
Biology instructor Michael
Bunch opened the event with sto-
ries about former Gov. Tom McCall
helping to create public beaches;
college board member Tessa James
Scheller promoting local public
trails and how 2015 nursing grad-
uate Rachel Ward and her husband,
Marc, help rehabilitate the sea tur-
tle population in Central America
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Forever.
JOSHUA BESSEX — The Daily Astorian
“All of us need to follow that
Gov. Kate Brown speaks during the Clatsop Community College
lead and take the second step,”
graduation ceremony at the Liberty Theater Friday.
Bunch said.
Many of the graduates Friday
17. Today, a husband and wife are
President Lawrence Galizio, in
graduating together … and a fa- earned two-year transfer degrees his last commencement address
and will continue on to universi- before leaving to lead the Com-
ther and son.
“One graduate is a Clatsop ties. But many of the college’s de- munity College League of Cali-
Community College employee. JUHHVDQGRQH\HDUFHUWL¿FDWHVZLOO fornia, asked graduates to support
And one of you was described by help students enter the workforce open-access institutions not graced
your instructor as a ‘badass girl DVZHOGHUVPHGLFDODVVLVWDQWV¿UH- by the large endowments of private
who wears Carhartt overalls to ¿JKWHUVHQWUHSUHQHXUVGHFNKDQGV research universities.
class and plans to open her own historic preservationists, mechan-
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welding shop.’”
See GRADUATES, Page 10A
SEASIDE — About 150 years
ago, the tale goes, a Seaside resi-
dent named John Hobson met three
anonymous sailors on the beach in
the cove near Tillamook Head. They
were looking for fresh water and
wanted to get back to their small
sailing ship, anchored off the Head,
before dark.
Hobson, feeling the sailors might
be in trouble as the wind picked up
and the ocean got rough, “built a big
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most of the night in case it could help
them keep their bearing, but it was no
use,” according to Inez Stafford Han-
son in her book “Life on Clatsop.”
The next day, their bodies were
found washed ashore, and Hobson
“buried them on the rise above high
tide line” in the cove, Hanson wrote.
This incident supposedly took
place April 25, 1865, becoming the
origin of Seaside’s monument know
as the Grave of the Unknown Sailor.
That retelling — where the sailors
were searching for water and met
Hobson shortly before their demise
— is the one Sarah Gearhart Byrd
shared for Hanson’s book and which
now is the most consistent and pop-
ular belief.
A different story
Further research, however, shows
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garding the origin of the grave, said
Robin Montero, who lives near the
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neighborhood group that serves as
the site’s collective caretaker.
In a correspondence to the Sac-
ramento Daily Union from Aug.
19, 1871, a man named S.A. Clarke
wrote, the solitary grave is “sup-
posed to be that of the Captain of the
bark Industry, then wrecked on Co-
lumbia bar.” He doesn’t say where
he got the information, but includes
a poem written about the memorial
that reinforces the story.
See GRAVE, Page 10A
Family traditions drive AHS graduate’s path
F
resh from donning his cap
and gown June 6, Astoria
High School graduate Mikko
Jaakola is ready to escape his
hometown for awhile and don
his heavy rain gear.
Mikko, a second-gener-
ation American, graduated
from Astoria and heads off
June 17 to work in the Alas-
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father Petri did as a young
man.
“I think it would be cool to
get away from Astoria a little
bit,” Jaakola said, adding it
is less about the money than
about experiencing something
new.
He plans on taking at
least a year off from school,
working for a month this
summer in Bristol Bay, Alas-
ka, on a barge supplying ice
to fishing boats. If he can get
his name out and land a bet-
ter job, Mikko said, he might
stay longer than a month.
But it is not something Mik-
ko said he wants to make a
career of.
“My dad’s all, ‘You can’t
do what I did anymore; you
have to have an education,’”
said Mikko, whose father
dropped out of high school to
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his mid-20s, until Mikko was
conceived. Like his father did,
“I wasn’t making the right
choices in life,” Petri said of
his path after high school,
adding his adolescence was
still part of the era when you
could still make a decent liv-
ing without a high school di-
ploma.
Coming to America
EDWARD STRATTON — The Daily Astorian
Mikko Jaakola, a second-generation Finnish-American
with the tattoo to prove it, graduated from Astoria High
School and soon heads to the Alaskan fishing industry.
Mikko wants to move from
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Petri said he is trying to
push his son toward a trade
program like the college’s
Marine and Environmental
Research and Training Station
(MERTS) campus or the feder-
al training program at Tongue
Point Job Corps Center.
Mikko’s
grandmother,
Marju Jaakola, immigrated
to the U.S. from Kalajoki,
Finland, at age 17 in 1971
with her parents and six oth-
er siblings in the Vedenoja
family.
“The plywood mill was
why my parents moved here,”
she said, adding the women
would work in canneries.
See JAAKOLA, Page 10A