10A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2016
Camp Rosenbaum: ‘We all have a vested interest in these kids’
Continued from Page 1A
while a couple of his new
friends slowly buried his body
in the sand.
“I actually have never been
this close” to the ocean before,
Gritton said, waiting for his
turn with the counselors clad in
wetsuits, taking groups of life-
vested children to frolic in the
waves.
Camp Rosenbaum is full of
irsts for kids, who get to play
on the beach, build sandcastles,
ride horses, visit Fort Clatsop,
slide down hills on cardboard
boxes, ish for trout, cook s’mo-
res, make leather and bead art
and shoot ire hoses.
“A lot of these kids don’t
even get three meals a day,” said
Melissa Sonsalla, an employee
of Home Forward and Camp
Rosenbaum’s sole staffer. “Here
they do.”
Sonsalla said the camp only
takes about 60 percent of appli-
cants, mostly from the Portland
metro area. The kids who apply
represent only a fraction of the
more than 1,000 kids in the Port-
land metro alone who are eligi-
ble, she said. Along with their
artistic creations, kids get to take
home clothes, shoes and books
collected by volunteers.
“The advantage we have
here is that people are so com-
mitted to camp,” Sonsalla said,
adding that many of the vol-
unteers at camp spend the year
doing fundraisers and gather-
ing supplies for their activities,
before spending an entire week
with the kids.
Hearts and minds
Outside a log cabin at Camp
Rilea Thursday, oficers Matt
Huspek and David McCar-
thy let kids crawl all over their
police cruiser and motorcycles,
after taking them through Gang
Resistance Education and Train-
ing, an oficer-taught program
covering youth violence, delin-
quency and gang involvement.
“We’re trying to encour-
age them to have a community
that’s much better than a gang,”
McCarthy said, adding it helps
giving kids an early positive
experience with police.
Sonsalla said Portland police
oficers, who often worked as
guards at the camp, became
more involved in the 1990s
after seeing the beneit of reach-
ing out to kids early, and started
joining the staff as counselors.
Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
Alan Welbourn, back, and other Camp Rosenbaum camp-
ers share a laugh while riding a bus from Camp Rilea to
Sunset Beach for a sandcastle-building competition.
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Camp Rosenbaum held a camp derby using wooden race cars cut out by Jim Cunning-
ham, former U.S. Air Force pilot and commander of the Oregon Air National Guard, and
finished by campers.
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Kids at Camp Rosenbaum
trained as firefighters, haul-
ing victims out of burning
structures and shooting
fire hoses to squelch fires.
Another supporter of the
camp is Jim Cunningham, a
retired U.S. Air Force pilot and
general, and a former com-
mander of the Oregon Air
National Guard. Cunningham,
who cuts out the pinewood rac-
ers for a camp derby among
children, said he wasn’t too
enamored initially about coming
to camp, but was hooked within
the irst day.
“It’s in my best interest that
these become productive citi-
zens,” said Cunningham, who
also works with youth offenders
trying to complete high school.
“Bottom line is, we all have a
vested interest in these kids.”
Rosenbaum’s camp
At age 12, Rosenbaum
escaped out the window of his
schoolhouse in Vienna, Austria,
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
On his first trip to the beach, 10-year-old Doran Gritton
was buried in the sand and took a dip in the Pacific Ocean.
leeing the Nazis. He was taken
in by the Church of England
before reuniting with his parents
two years later and moving to
Aberdeen, Washington, in 1941.
The experience deined
Rosenbaum, who joined the
U.S. Army at 18, wanting to
ight Nazis, but he was deployed
to the Philippines. After the war,
Rosenbaum was an insurance
salesman. He retired as a brig-
adier general from the Oregon
Air National Guard and served
for 15 years as the director of the
Housing Authority of Portland,
two worlds that came together
during a summer family vaca-
tion to Gearhart that included a
trip to an empty Camp Rilea.
“I just remember him walk-
ing around and saying ‘What a
waste,’” said his daughter, Lori
Rosenbaum-Krasnowsky, who
has attended and volunteered at
camp most of her life.
Rosenbaum went all the way
to the governor with his idea,
and the Air National Guard/
Housing Authority of Portland
Camp started in 1970, renamed
after its founder within a few
years.
Underpinning each day of
camp are Rosenbaum’s eth-
ics of good citizenship, such as
being loyal, fair, sharing, caring
and working together. Rosen-
baum died in 2010, but several
of his descendants still volun-
teer at the camp, carrying out
his legacy.
“He grew to admire the coun-
try he was adopted into,” Rosen-
baum-Krasnowsky said of her
father. “Bottom line, this was his
way of giving back and teaching
kids to be good citizens.”
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Lori Rosenbaum-Krasnowsky, daughter of Camp Rosen-
baum founder Fred Rosenbaum, has attended camp and
counseled youth for most of her life. Several Rosenbaums
are still involved at the camp.
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Counselors at Camp Rosenbaum were greeted by lines of
high-fives Friday after revealing their service to campers,
who spent the week enjoying summer camp and learning
how to be good citizens.
Mo’s: Planning Commission’s decision
may be appealed to the City Council
Continued from Page 1A
The Astoria Planning Com-
mission voted unanimously
Tuesday night to approve the
project after hearing endorse-
ments from former Mayor Wil-
lis Van Dusen and other com-
munity leaders, along with
objections from some residents
worried about the impact of the
restaurant on the Astoria Riv-
erwalk, parking and smaller
competitors.
Van Dusen said he had tried
to bring Mo’s to Astoria when
he was mayor. He said he had
looked at the old train depot by
the Columbia River Maritime
Museum, the restaurant site at
the former Red Lion Inn at the
Port of Astoria and at Pier 39,
but described the end of 15th
Street as the “perfect location.”
The former mayor said Van
Dusen Beverages, his family’s
company, had been doing busi-
ness with Mo’s for 30 years.
“This is the perfect use,” he said.
“It’s the perfect family. It really
is.”
Loran Mathews, a civic
leader active with the Scandi-
navian Midsummer Festival,
reminded commissioners of
plans for a Scandinavian her-
itage monument at People’s
Park nearby. He said the Riv-
erwalk, the Astoria Riverfront
Trolley and projects like the
restaurant help connect the city
to the river.
“I think that this will do
nothing but enhance that area,”
Mathews said.
River views
Mo’s, according to plan-
ners, will have banks of win-
dows with river views and an
outdoor patio and dining area.
Planners say the chowder pro-
duction plant will be separated
from the restaurant by win-
dows so patrons can watch
how the chowder is made.
The restaurant will have 31
parking spaces. The city will
meet with Mo’s after a year to
assess trafic impacts.
Bancroft said Mo’s could
employ about 30 full-time and
50 part-time workers. She did
not say when the restaurant
might open.
The chowder production
plant will help the chain build
capacity, Bancroft said, since
all the chowder is now made
in Newport. Mo’s, founded by
Mohava Marie Niemi in 1946,
has locations in Newport, Otter
Rock, Lincoln City, Cannon
Beach, Florence and PDX.
Some are uneasy
When people learned in
June that Vintage Hardware
would have to move to make
way for a Mo’s, many ral-
lied behind the local antique
shop and complained about the
inluence of a chain restaurant
on downtown Astoria, which
prides itself as eclectic.
Vintage Hardware has
found a new home at Bargains
Galore on Marine Drive, but
some are still uneasy about
Mo’s.
Dan O’Donnell, a web
developer who lives on 15th
Street, worries about parking
and riverfront access for pedes-
trians and bicyclists. His main
objection to Mo’s, though, is
the production plant, which
he called a “clam chowder
factory.”
He questioned whether the
plant is really an accessory
use for the restaurant, since it
would take up roughly 40 per-
cent of the space, and won-
dered about odor and truck
trafic.
“That’s not an accessory
usage. That’s setting up a fac-
tory downtown,” said O’Don-
nell, who might appeal the
Planning Commission’s deci-
sion to the City Council.
The Planning Commission
has allowed similar produc-
tion facilities as accessory uses
to retail operations on the riv-
erfront, most notably for Buoy
Beer Co. off Eighth Street, so
there is precedent.
Dave Pearson, the president
of the Planning Commission,
was bemused anyone would
object to a chowder plant on
a riverfront that was once
crammed with canneries.
“Making chowder in Asto-
ria? It’s hard to believe we’d
ever discuss that in a town that
had 38 canneries at one time
along the waterfront,” Pear-
son said. “This is as minimal
impact as it gets in my view for
manufacturing on the water-
front. It kind of its with our
heritage.”
‘Dodged a bullet’
Commissioner Sean Fitz-
patrick, however, was con-
licted. The new restaurant and
production plant is in the Urban
Core, the uninished portion
of the Riverfront Vision Plan,
which guides land use on the
river.
In the discussion over the
other sections of the River-
front Vision Plan, Fitzpatrick
said, “virtually everyone that
has spoken has said no hotels,
no condos and no restaurants
on the north side of the trolley
tracks.”
Commissioner Jan Mitch-
ell, who, like Fitzpatrick, wants
the city to complete the Urban
Core as soon as possible, said
the city may have actually
“dodged a bullet.”
A decade ago, when real
estate speculators were eying
the banks of the Columbia
River, the space where Mo’s
plans the restaurant and chow-
der plant had a green light from
the city for a condo project that
would have exceeded maxi-
mum building height.
Photos by Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
Young people ride in a roller coaster ride at the Clatsop County Fairgrounds on opening
day of the fair on Tuesday.
Fair: Festivities conclude Saturday
evening with Market Animal Auction
Continued from Page 1A
Traveling with reptiles
is a family business for the
Ritchey’s. Paulette’s hus-
band, Richard, goes around the
northwest with various critters
to show-off at schools, librar-
ies and birthday parties. Some
fairgoers shuddered when
looking at the full-grown rat-
tlesnake rattling its tail behind
the glass, but others stood on
step stools to get a closer look.
“Most times the kids are
gung-ho, but if they’re scared,
it can help them overcome
their fears,” Paulette said.
The traveling reptile zoo is
just one of many attractions this
year, including carnival rides
and games, food, music, a trac-
tor pull, talent shows and the
annual mutton busting event for
children to attempt to ride buck-
ing sheep around a stadium.
This year’s theme, “Go
For the Blue,” draws from
the upcoming Rio Olympics
is meant to encourage partici-
pants who enter art or show an
animal. The auctions going on
Axel Peon prepares to ride an amusement attraction during
opening day of the Clatsop County Fair on Tuesday.
throughout the course of the
fair will be a place to show cat-
tle, rabbits, chicken and other
animals that have been raised
by local 4H groups.
In preparation for the
upcoming shows, the young
livestock owners jumped in
and out of the animals’ pens,
on Tuesday, to feed them,
shave them or shovel their
droppings.
The annual fair will run
until Saturday evening when
concludes with the Market
Animal Auction.
Another lagship event
will include a performance by
country singer Craig Morgan
on Thursday evening.
Whether you’re looking to
spin upside down, hold an alli-
gator or ride a sheep, different
thrills await at the fair that’s
been a part of Clatsop County
for over a century.