143RD YEAR, NO. 216
DailyAstorian.com //
THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2016 ONE DOLLAR
FISHERMEN
WIN SLUGFEST
SPRING
UNVEILING
SPORTS • 7A
COAST WEEKEND
It’s not
enough
for the
salmon
Judge: Salmon
recovery requires
big dam changes
By GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press
Sis��r�’ � rs� �u�
Photos by Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
Kibby, 85, for the first time Wednesday. BELOW: Patricia Kibby,
ABOVE: Marti Johnston, 70, tears up as she hugs her sister, Patricia
a cruise ship Wednesday morning.
left, and Marti Johnston, right, talk after Kibby disembarked from
Siblings meet after 70 years
A massive habitat restoration effort by the
U.S. government doesn’t do nearly enough
to improve Northwest salmon runs, a fed-
eral judge ruled Wednesday, handing a major
victory to conservationists, anglers and oth-
ers who hope to someday see four dams on
the Snake River breached to make way for
the fi sh.
In a long-running lawsuit, U.S. Dis-
trict Judge Michael H. Simon in Portland
rejected the federal government’s latest
plan for offsetting the damage that dams in
the Columbia River Basin pose to salmon,
saying it violates the Endangered Species
Act and the National Environmental Pol-
icy Act.
See SALMON, Page 10A
Cruise ship
brings long-lost
family together
By ERICK BENGEL
The Daily Astorian
T
AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
Two sockeye salmon swim in the Colum-
bia River with a Chinook salmon, middle,
at the Bonneville Dam fish-counting win-
dow near North Bonneville, Wash.
ears of love and elation
fi lled Marti Johnston’s
eyes when she saw her big
sister, Patricia Kibby, among the pas-
sengers disembarking from the cruise
ship Norwegian Jewel as it unloaded
Wednesday morning in Astoria .
It was the fi rst time the women, now 70 and
85, had met in person.
Born of the same mother but different
fathers, Johnston, of Longview, Washington,
spent most of her life completely unaware of
her sister, and then many more years not know-
ing how to connect with her.
All of that changed earlier this year when
Johnston’s niece — the daughter-in-law of a
third half-sister, Dolly Musante — tracked her
down. In late winter, Johnston had her very fi rst
phone conversations with her two older sisters.
When she and Kibby sat down to begin catch-
ing up on two lifetimes’ worth of stories, “I cried
the fi rst time,” she said. “It went really well.”
As the cruise ship approached in the Colum-
bia River , Johnston found herself pacing the
pier with her husband, Bill — more excited,
she said, than a child on Christmas Eve. When
the tenders docked, she studied the passengers’
faces and held up a sign reading, “Hi sis.”
Then the sisters saw each other, and sec-
onds later they were holding each other —
momentarily frozen in an embrace that made
up for all the hugs they couldn’t share during
the decades of confusion and separation.
Asked how she felt, Kibby’s voice caught
on the emotion of the moment: “I’m just
excited — nervous, excited, thrilled.”
And off they went to spend the day together.
Split-up siblings
Johnston, Kibby and Musante are the last -
known living offspring of a woman named
Thelma Faye Darling, whose habit of having
children, sending them away, then having more
children and sending them away kept many of
the siblings from knowing one another while
growing up in California.
“Our mother tossed us all out with the bath-
water when we were babies, and that was kind
of our story,” Musante said. “There were six of
us, and we were all tossed out.”
Kibby — who has worked in many
By DERRICK DePLEDGE
The Daily Astorian
When she started as a sixth-grade teacher at the
then K-8 Lewis and Clark Consolidated School in
1976, Gayla Hollaway remembers her salary was
about $9,000 and the librarian had one of the only per-
sonal computers on campus .
During more than 39 years as an educator in Asto-
ria, Hollaway saw the standalone district she started
with merge into Astoria School District and technol-
ogy advance to where she now uses Google Chrome-
books to help teach her students.
Hollaway, who retires this summer as the lon-
gest-tenured teacher in Astoria after more than 39
years, was one of the many staff and faculty hon-
ored for tenure and excellence at the inaugural Tradi-
tion of Excellence awards Wednesday at Astoria High
School.
See AWARDS, Page 10A
See COURT, Page 10A
See SISTERS, Page 10A
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Fishers wary of Pacifi c
Seafood Group’s purchase
A federal court order blocking Pacifi c
Seafood Group from purchasing Ocean
Gold Seafoods will remain until a trial into
whether the sale would create a monopoly.
Commercial fi shermen won a prelim-
inary injunction against the sale last year in
U.S. District Court in Medford. A three-judge
panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
upheld the district
court’s order Tuesday.
The
fi shermen
allege that Pacifi c
Seafood’s
acquisi-
tion of Ocean Gold,
a large fi sh proces-
sor in Westport, Wash-
ington, would estab-
lish a monopoly in the
groundfi sh, whiting
Frank
and coldwater shrimp
Dulcich
markets.
Pacifi c Seafood, a
Clackamas-based company that is a domi-
nant player in fi sh processing and distribu-
tion, announced after a legal setback last year
that the deal for Ocean Gold was canceled.
But the company, led by Frank Dulcich,
wanted the court to compel arbitration as
part of a previous antitrust suit by fi shermen
that was settled. The district court declined,
a decision also upheld by the appeals court.
Top of the class at Astoria schools
Gayla Hollaway, right, the longest-tenured teacher
at Astoria School District, was honored Wednes-
day by the Astoria School Board and the district’s
foundation, including school board members Jea-
nette Sampson, left, and Grace Laman. Hollaway, a
sixth-grade teacher with more than 39 years in the
district, will retire after this year.
Court backs
fi shermen in
antitrust suit