OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JULY 7, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
E
ach week we recognize those people and organizations
in the community deserving of public praise for the good
things they do to make the North Coast a better place to
live, and also those who should be called out for their actions.
SHOUTOUTS
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
The professionals were not the only ones putting on a fireworks
show on the Astoria Riverwalk on the Fourth of July.
• Organizers of this week’s July 4th celebrations across the
North Coast, which brought thousands to the area and was filled
with food, festivities and fireworks and plenty of small-town
Americana. The activities included fun-filled parades with spec-
tators filling the routes in Warrenton, Seaside, Gearhart, Cannon
Beach and Ocean Park across the river, and fireworks displays in
Seaside, Astoria and Long Beach, Washington. A special men-
tion goes to Larry Kriegshauser, a pyrotechnics specialist who
has been the wizard behind the curtain of the Seaside fireworks
shows for more than 17 years. Kriegshauser has been designing
fireworks shows across the country every Fourth of July since
1970.
• Clatsop Community College graduate Alex Lyon, who
was chosen as one of 115 Ford Family Foundation scholars from
more than 5,800 applications in Oregon and Siskiyou County,
California. The renewable scholarship covers 90 percent of each
student’s unmet financial need for each academic year. Lyon
is part of the college’s TRIO Student Support Services pro-
gram, which helps first generation, low-income and disabled stu-
dents. She intends to pursue a bachelor’s degree in education at
Western Oregon University.
• Gearhart Golf Links, which is celebrating its 125th anni-
versary this year with events planned throughout the summer.
The 6,500-yard golf course is the oldest on the Pacific Coast and
was established in 1892, predating the founding of the U.S. Golf
Association in 1896. The course, which has been returned to
its original links style this year, is managed by Jason Bangild, a
PGA professional.
• Miss Clatsop County Hannah Garhofer, of Seaside,
who competed in the Miss Oregon pageant last weekend at the
Seaside Civic and Convention Center and advanced into the top
12. Garhofer earned a scholarship and also received an award
for being the nicest contestant. She will attend the University of
Oregon this fall. In the Outstanding Teen pageant, Peyton Sims
and Nicole Ramsdell represented the region as Miss Clatsop
County and Miss North Coast.
• Building owner and entrepreneur Noel Weber, who is
restoring the former YMCA building in Astoria’s downtown his-
toric district. Weber recently received a $20,000 grant from the
Oregon State Historic Preservation Office’s “Diamonds in the
Rough” program to help restore or replace several architectural
elements on the 103-year-old building’s facade. The grant will
accelerate the restoration, and Weber says the building is a work
in progress with more on the interior and exterior coming in the
future.
CALLOUTS
• The Oregon Department of Revenue, which last week
was ordered to undergo a top-to-bottom review with a $150,000
comprehensive financial audit and a $350,000 management
assessment. Previous financial audits have shown “signifi-
cant” and “material weaknesses” in the tax-collecting agen-
cy’s accounting system, and according to the Statesman-Journal
newspaper in Salem, lawmakers upped scrutiny of the depart-
ment after its leadership made budget presentations. “They came
in and it was clear there were issues,” said state Rep. David
Gomberg, D-Central Coast. Throughout the next two years, the
agency will be required to make frequent reports to lawmakers
during the interim and regular sessions of the Legislature. The
agency has previously defended itself by saying its accountants
lacked training and experience. Gomberg told the newspaper that
department Director Nia Ray has been “reoriented” by the scru-
tiny her agency faces. He said she now has a clear sense of what
the Legislature is looking for.
Suggestions?
Do you have a Shoutout or Callout you think we should know about?
Let us know at news@dailyastorian.com and we’ll make sure to take a
look.
In remote village,
witnessing miracles
By NICHOLAS KRISTOF
New York Times News Service
B
UCHANAN, Liberia —
Miracles are rare these days,
but I’ve seen them.
In a village in
rural Liberia, a
long and muddy
road from any-
where, I came
across a grandma,
a mom and a
baby daughter
all afflicted by clubfoot. This is a
common birth defect in which one
or both feet are grotesquely turned
inward.
We don’t see it in the U.S. or
Europe because doctors correct
it soon after birth, and clubfoot
alumni include athletic super-
stars like Mia Hamm and Kristi
Yamaguchi. My mother (a tireless
walker with perfectly normal feet)
was born with a clubfoot.
Yet here, as in most of the
world, kids with clubfoot weren’t
treated and grew up as outcasts.
About one child in 800 worldwide
is born with clubfoot, and in poor
countries they are left to hobble
on the sides of their feet; unable to
work, they may become beggars.
In this village, clubfoot used to
be a life sentence: The grandma,
Yahin-yee Korwee, never went
to school, nor did her daughter,
Hannah Cooper, 26. The grandfa-
ther abandoned the family when
Hannah was born, ashamed that
neighbors mocked her as a cripple.
Then Cooper had her own
daughter 11 months ago, also with
clubfoot (it’s partly hereditary),
and her boyfriend left her as well.
“You’ve got a crippled child,” she
remembered him saying. “I don’t
want it.”
Yet this baby had her feet fixed.
This is possible with a simple
nonsurgical treatment involving a
series of plaster casts to guide the
foot into the proper position.
This approach, called the
Ponseti method, is routine in
Western countries and is increas-
ingly available in poor countries
as well, through aid groups like
MiracleFeet, based in North
Carolina, and Cure, based in
Pennsylvania.
I wish that skeptics of humani-
tarian aid could have seen the baby
get care from MiracleFeet and
emerge with feet as good as anyone
else’s. Now she’ll be able to walk
and run, go to school and hold a
job, support herself and her country.
And the total cost? Less than
$500 for transforming a life.
I’m on my annual win-a-trip
journey with a university student,
Aneri Pattani (who has been
busily blogging at nytimes.com/
ontheground — check out her
posts!). I wanted us to report on
clubfoot because it’s an antidote to
skepticism about humanitarian aid.
The dirty little secret of foreign
aid is that it’s hard. You can build
a school, but it’s hard to ensure
that teachers will show up. You
can build a well, but what happens
when the hand pump breaks? You
can provide safe birthing kits, but
what if a nurse sells them on the
black market?
I wish that
skeptics of
humanitarian
aid could have
seen the baby
get care from
MiracleFeet
and emerge
with feet
as good as
anyone else’s.
... And the
total cost?
Less than
$500 for
transforming
a life.
Look, helping people is compli-
cated. But I’m a strong advocate
of more aid because sometimes
aid is transformative. When prop-
erly done, clubfoot treatment is
straightforward, succeeds 95 per-
cent of the time and inexpensively
changes a life like that of this
11-month-old girl.
“Now she’ll go to school,”
said Chesca Colloredo-Mansfeld,
executive director of MiracleFeet.
“She’s going to stand on her own
two feet for the rest of her life.”
Yet most children in poor
countries still don’t get clubfoot
repaired. The Global Clubfoot
Initiative estimates that only 15
percent of children in low- and
middle-income countries get good
treatment, and it aims to raise that
to 70 percent by 2030. Aid groups
like MiracleFeet train local health
care workers to treat clubfoot, so
that over time each country’s own
health system can take over diag-
nosis and treatment. But for now,
thousands of children slip through
the cracks.
Cooper told us that there was
another child in the village with
clubfoot, and soon he was brought
to us. His name was Henroy, and
at age 9 he had never attended
school because he has trouble
even hobbling. MiracleFeet is now
arranging to fix his feet, too.
In another town, Ganta, we saw
the toll on families of clubfoot.
A small boy, Aria, was being
looked after by his grandmother,
Nora Glay, because his mother
fled rather than raise a child
she expected to be permanently
disabled. “She was embarrassed,”
Glay said of the mother, “and
that’s why she abandoned the
child.”
But Glay heard on the radio that
clubfoot could be repaired. So she
borrowed money from friends and
took Aria on a weeklong odyssey
to get to the Ganta hospital, where
Aria’s feet will be corrected over
the coming months so that he will
be able to walk and run.
A few feet away in the
hospital waiting area, Saye Willie
acknowledged that he was initially
devastated when his son, Bigboy,
was born with clubfoot. “I thought
it was witchcraft,” the father said.
“I accused my wife of taking a
bath at night, and I thought
somebody put drugs in the
water.”
Bigboy, 7, seems a bit over-
come at the prospect that his feet
will soon be normal, allowing him
to walk, run, play soccer. “I want
to go to school,” he told me. “I
want my feet to be good so I can
run, too.”
My friend Michael Elliott,
who ran the One Campaign’s fight
against global poverty until shortly
before his death last year, used
to say that we live in an “age of
miracles.” I thought of that while
in the village with the family
suffering from three generations of
clubfoot, where the baby now has
normal feet.
Oh, and the baby’s name?
Her mom named her Miracle.
WHERE TO WRITE
• U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici
(D): 2338 Rayburn HOB, Washing-
ton, D.C., 20515. Phone: 202- 225-
0855. Fax 202-225-9497. District
office: 12725 SW Millikan Way,
Suite 220, Beaverton, OR 97005.
Phone: 503-469-6010. Fax 503-326-
5066. Web: bonamici.house. gov/
• U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D): 313
Hart Senate Office Building, Wash-
ington, D.C. 20510. Phone: 202-224-
3753. Web: www.merkley.senate.gov
• U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D):
221 Dirksen Senate Office Building,
Washington, D.C., 20510. Phone:
202-224-5244. Web: www.wyden.
senate.gov
• State Rep. Brad Witt (D):
State Capitol, 900 Court Street N.E.,
H-373, Salem, OR 97301. Phone:
503-986-1431. Web: www.leg.state.
or.us/witt/ Email: rep.bradwitt@
state.or.us
• State Rep. Deborah Boone (D):
900 Court St. N.E., H-481, Salem,
OR 97301. Phone: 503-986-1432.
Email: rep.deborah boone@state.
or.us District office: P.O. Box 928,
Cannon Beach, OR 97110. Phone:
503-986-1432. Web: www.leg.state.
or.us/ boone/
• State Sen. Betsy Johnson (D):
State Capitol, 900 Court St. N.E.,
S-314, Salem, OR 97301. Telephone:
503-986-1716. Email: sen.betsy john-
son@state.or.us Web: www.betsy-
johnson.com District Office: P.O.
Box R, Scappoose, OR 97056. Phone:
503-543-4046. Fax: 503-543-5296.
Astoria office phone: 503-338-1280.
• Port of Astoria: Executive
Director, 10 Pier 1 Suite 308, Asto-
ria, OR 97103. Phone: 503-741-3300.
Email: admin@portofastoria.com
• Clatsop County Board of Com-
missioners: c/o County Manager, 800
Exchange St., Suite 410, Astoria, OR
97103. Phone: 503-325-1000.