OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2016
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
Water
under
the bridge
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago this week — 2006
Longtime Boy Scout Robert Lovell, of Astoria, remembers when he
first joined Troop 211.
The country was in a depression, and activities for young men were
limited. But even without video games and teen athletics, he found a
place in the Boy Scouts.
Lovell was one of the first to earn the rank of Eagle Scout after Boy
Scout Troop 211 was chartered in 1921. The longtime Astoria Port
Commissioner and businessman, who operated Lovell Auto in Down-
town Astoria for decades, was scout master for the troop in the 1950s.
He is still registered as an active Scouter today.
“We didn’t have all these opportunities,” Lovell says. “We got by for
very little money and homemade equipment.”
Today’s Troop 211 boys have a very different experience than
Lovell’s low-budget outings.
“It’s much more high-tech,” Lovell says. “We were lucky to have
pup tents.”
Wednesday evening, several generations of Troop 211 will come
together at the Astoria Masonic Temple to celebrate 85 years of Scout-
ing on the North Coast.
A multimillion-dollar National Science Foundation grant
to Oregon Health & Sciences University, announced today,
will put a team of robotic research tools into the Colum-
bia River to help scientists monitor and predict underwater
conditions.
The tools will be able to measure currents, temperatures
and sea-floor composition and compile real-time data that
will improve day-to-day understanding of the marine envi-
ronment as well as long-term monitoring on the effects of cli-
mate change.
50 years ago — 1966
SOUTHERN EXPOSURE
Ralph Davis: marathoner,
lifeguard, larger than life
By R.J. MARX
The Daily Astorian
R
alph Davis was almost super-
human in the eyes of those at
the beaches of Seaside and
Gearhart. A strapping man who com-
peted at every age, the Portland State
University coach and Seaside life-
guard died Aug. 14.
Davis left his mark not only with
the 250 lives he
saved over his time
on the beach, but
as the founder of
the Seaside Beach
Run and Trail’s End
Marathon.
“He certainly was a notable figure
on the North Coast,” Cannon Beach’s
Peter Lindsey said. “He was a huge,
lantern-jawed, strapping, fine, gentle,
but rugged character, believe me.”
“He and his wife, Betty, and their
sons, Bryan and Scott, were life-
guards, first in Seaside, then Gearhart
for many, many years when I was a
child,” Gearhart’s Jeff Ter Har said,
“He was just super nice, could talk to
you forever, would do anything for
you — just fabulous. ”
A lifelong Oregonian born in
Portland in 1920, family members
described Davis’s athletic childhood
along the Columbia River Gorge,
where at a young age he constructed
his own boat and tacked it against the
wind.
That athleticism was to be a char-
acteristic of his entire career, as a foot-
ball player at the University of Ore-
gon and Oregon State and later as a
track and field coach at Portland State
University.
Making his mark
It was a beautiful day after all for the Regatta grand land parade Sat-
urday in spite of rain the weather bureau had forecast. The sun came
out as about 15,000 people gathered in Astoria for the parade. Floats,
marching bands, the famed Astoria Clowns, Al Kader drum and bugle
corps, elected officials including the governors of Oregon and Wash-
ington participated. Entries came from all over the Pacific Northwest.
The parade progressed two hours through downtown Astoria, begin-
ning near the old ferry slip and ending west of the new Astoria bridge.
Many entries used the theme of the new bridge as their motif, with
many quite complicated in design. The Tongue Point Job Corps Cen-
ter’s bridge float was very large and symbolized the importance of the
bridge to northwest economy.
Inboard boats from Oregon and Washington competed at
Cullaby Lake Sunday on a race course described by veteran
racers as one of the best in Oregon.
Bill Muncey, well-known hydroplane driver, expected to
drive a seven-liter limited type hydroplane owned by George
Babcock of Seattle Sunday, but he didn’t appear.
About 1,500 persons watched the races from the new
county park at the south end of the lake.
75 years ago — 1941
Mrs. Anna Boettiger, daughter of President and Mrs. Franklin D.
Roosevelt and wife of John Boettiger, publisher of the Seattle Post-In-
telligencer, established herself as a fisherman of ability equal to that of
her famous father Tuesday and Wednesday when she pulled four Royal
Chinook salmon from the Columbia River.
Almost two score sailing boats from the Columbia and its
tributaries, including several Crods, this afternoon jockeyed
for position as the annual three-day Regatta races got under
way in a faint breeze.
A gun on the Coast Guard cutter Onondaga sounded at
1:20 p.m. as a warning to the special cruising class boats,
which are the largest entered, to be ready in 10 minutes. Fol-
lowing this class were the Crods, and in order, Bee class, class
A handicap, class B handicap, and the Sea Scout ketches.
For the first time in the short history of Astoria’s young but mush-
rooming Salmon Derby a woman caught the heaviest fish in daily com-
petition when at 6:30 Thursday night a 43 pound 5 ounce Chinook
landed by Mrs. Ernest Barendse of Brownsmead stood supreme among
the multitude weighed.
On the North Coast, it was in Sea-
side as founder of the Beach Run
and in Gearhart as a lifeguard that he
made his mark.
Labor Day 1965 had seen the
third consecutive year of unrest in
Seaside, as papers described “hun-
dreds of unruly youth who attempted
unsuccessfully to take over the
town.” The city was an “armed
camp,” as Oregon State Police and
National Guard put Seaside in virtual
lockdown.
The July 1966 Seaside Beach Run
was a response to the unrest, Jack
Davis said. “Dad wanted to promote
a more positive image of the commu-
nity by organizing an 8-mile run.”
“Ralph and Betty were an extraor-
dinary, powerful couple that were
really a true force of nature,” recalled
Seaside’s Mary Blake, former long-
time general manager of the Sun-
set Empire Park and Recreation Dis-
trict. Blake said. “They believed if
you engaged people, they have a great
time, instead of causing problems
because they didn’t have anything to
do.”
The American Athletic
Union-sanctioned run started at the
Turnaround, heading south to the
Cove before returning north to Gear-
hart Beach and crossing the Neca-
nicum River at low tide. The race
ended with the final leg from Gearhart
Beach to the Turnaround, again cross-
ing the Necanicum.
That first year, a rainstorm short-
ened because the mouth of the river
was “a little too wide and deep for the
safety of the runners,” according to
the Seaside Signal at the time.
University of Oregon track star
Jim Grelle — who ran in the 1960
Olympics for the United States —
won the 7.5-mile loop with a time of
38 minutes, 32 seconds. “The tension
in regular competition is extreme,”
Grelle told the Signal afterward. “This
was fun.”
Submitted Photo
Ralph Davis played football for the University of Oregon before World War
II, and finished his college career with Oregon State University after the war.
Quick growth
The first run featured 44 run-
ners participated; by the 1970s, that
number grew to more than 1,200
participants.
“Every year, we had to redo the
course because of the change in the
estuary,” Blake recalled one race
when, because of high tides, runners
were diverted over hot sand dunes.
Another year, fog was so thick Blake
and Davis patrolled the shorelines in
a rig to protect runners who might
stumble into the water.
“It was all done with volunteers,”
Bryan Davis said. “A lot of these vol-
unteers were people that my dad
taught or had experience in athletics.
He could call upon them, and they
really liked him and respected him
and would pretty much do anything
for him. They took positions timing
things, recording things.”
Today, the race is organized by
Seaside Beach Run Inc., a nonprofit
dedicated to providing fitness cen-
ter memberships to Clatsop County’s
middle- and high-school students.
Ralph Davis’s second major North
Coast running event, the Trail’s End
Marathon was organized in the 1970s
and took a complete 26-mile loop
from Seaside to Cullaby Lake and
back, starting at the Turnaround and
ending at the Turnaround.
Ter Har said he likes to say he
was the first to finish the marathon
— ”My claim to fame is I won it five
times because I drove the lead car,” he
laughed.
‘Built like Tarzan’
An avid surfer, kids “looked up
to dad like Duke Kamehameha,” the
lifeguard god, Scott Davis said. “He
was very athletic. He had a good stat-
ure. His body was built like Tarzan.”
Ralph Davis was one of the first
people to ride a surfboard in Sea-
side and his strength in the water was
renowned — strong enough to sin-
gle-handedly clear logs or tow them
away.
“The high school kids in the area
would come down to the beach and
my dad would during his breaks
would organize touch football,” Jack
Davis said. “It was a lot of fun. He
never thought of himself being the
age that he was. He always thought
of himself as much younger. Even in
his 80s or 90s he didn’t want to go
to someplace where ‘the old people
were.’”
There was no lifeguard tower at
the Gearhart beach, Ter Har remem-
bered, so patrols were on foot or in
the jeep.
Cannon Beach’s Lindsey recalled
Ralph Davis as his water safety
instructor at Portland State. “I was
a pimply-faced 19, 20-year-old,
slightly built person,” Lindsey said.
“He was about 240 pounds, all gris-
tle and muscle. One of the things he
would do would require you to res-
cue him.”
One of Davis’s major accom-
plishments was to organize lifeguard
crews to request state funding. “The
state actually disbursed an amount of
money to communities to buy trucks
and lifesaving equipment,” Lindsey
said.
Volleyball challenge
Once Davis and the Gearhart life-
guards challenged the Cannon Beach
lifeguards to a volleyball game on
Pacific Way.
“When we arrived to meet the
challenge, we get down on the
beach,” Lindsey said. “He was there
with his wife and son and a couple
of other team members. One gentle-
man was sitting there — Ralph intro-
duced us and his voice sounded very
familiar. It turned out to be this fel-
low named Adam West — Batman
on television. His mother owned an
old hotel in Gearhart. He was hav-
ing a martini, visiting. We beat them,
by Jove, but we laughed about it
afterward.”
In the 1970s, Ralph Davis became
“one of the pioneers of korfball” in
the United States — a “sort of Dutch
version of basketball,” according to
Lindsey. Around here, some people
call it pickleball, former park district
manager Blake said.
“You can live your life with this
aliveness and joy, and really being
in the moment, and he and Betty
were the absolute representation
of that,” she said. “They beamed.
Ralph had that smile, physique, this
attitude, this knowingness — it was
an absolute pleasure to be around
them.
“The thing about growing old is,
you don’t have to get old,” she added.
“That’s the magic. He was able to do
that. He just didn’t age.”
R.J. Marx is The Daily Astorian’s
South County reporter and editor of
the Seaside Signal and Cannon Beach
Gazette.