DailyAstorian.com // MONDAY, JULY 10, 2017
145TH YEAR, NO. 6
ONE DOLLAR
Friends, family remember
beloved Astoria police officer
Gillum’s service made him an all-around fixture
By JACK HEFFERNAN
The Daily Astorian
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
A member of the U.S. Marine Corps sounds taps at the
memorial service on Saturday for Paul Gillum.
Friends,
family
and
co-workers gathered Satur-
day to remember a man whose
careers, passions and hobbies
made him an Astoria fixture.
Paul Gillum earned awards
for his service in the U.S.
Marine Corps during the Viet-
nam War, as an Astoria Police
officer and a member of the
Clatsop Community College
Board of Directors. He later
became a deacon at Lewis and
Clark Bible Church, a Clatsop
County Sheriff’s Office trans-
port deputy and an artist.
He died suddenly on June 18,
four days short of his 68th birth-
day. Saturday’s memorial at the
church included remembrances,
an American flag salute, prayers
and Christian songs.
See GILLUM, Page 7A
‘Brave for five minutes longer’
CLATSOP COUNTY RELAY FOR LIFE RAISES $29,000 BEFORE THE START
Paul Gillum
Lawmakers
head home
after thorny
state session
Transportation a win;
pension, tax reform not
By CLAIRE WITHYCOMBE
and PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
Damian Mulinix/For The Daily Astorian
A color guard from Warrenton Cub Scout Troop 509 stand at attention, as Will Caplinger sings the national anthem
during the opening ceremonies of Saturday’s Relay for Life at Astoria High School.
By DAMIAN MULINIX
For The Daily Astorian
T
he theme of the 2017 Clatsop
County Relay for Life asked a
very simple question: “Who is
your superhero?”
“I know that means a lot of different
things to a lot of different people,” event
chairwoman Laura Parvi said during her
opening remarks of Saturday’s event at the
Astoria High School track.
Parvi, whose husband was diagnosed
with lung cancer this year, pointed to the
numerous people in the crowd wearing
purple survivor T-shirts as her heroes.
Guest speaker Dr. Jennifer Lycette,
an oncologist and medical director of the
new Columbia Memorial Hospital/Oregon
Health & Science University Cancer Care
Center, reiterated the same sentiments.
“I get to work with real life superheroes
every day,” she said. “My patients inspire
me every day with their own strength and
perseverance. In fact, I’m in awe of them.
Damian Mulinix/For The Daily Astorian
See RELAY FOR LIFE, Page 7A
Astoria Relay for Life chairwoman Laura Parvi speaks to the crowd prior to
the start of Saturday’s event at Astoria High School.
SALEM — Oregon lawmakers have
adjourned a contentious legislative session.
The more than five-month session yielded
a two-year budget, new taxes, transportation
funding, expanded health
care benefits and staved off
MORE
the need for a second wom-
en’s prison. But lawmakers
INSIDE
also succumbed to partisan
New laws hit
gridlock over corporate tax
the books as
reform, paring pension costs
Legislature
and tenant protections.
adjourns
“At best, our successes
Page 2A
are tempered by disappoint-
ment,” state Senate Presi-
dent Peter Courtney, D-Salem, said Friday.
House Minority Leader Mike McLane,
R-Powell Butte, said the session was the
“most partisan and divisive” one he had “ever
been a part of.”
The state faced a $1.4 billion revenue
shortfall in the budget for the next two years.
Republicans agreed to support moderately
increasing taxes on corporations in exchange
for reducing the cost of public employee pen-
sion costs and spending reductions, but the
two parties were unable to reach an agreement.
A last-ditch effort to restructure small busi-
ness taxes, which would have raised nearly
$200 million in the next two years, also went
by the wayside.
‘Missed opportunities’
“The session will be more about missed
opportunities than anything else,” McLane
said. “The sound of a can being kicked down
the road is resonating.”
Lawmakers passed a long-awaited trans-
portation funding bill, made reproductive
health care free-of-charge to patients and
made undocumented children eligible for
health care under Medicaid.
Democrats and Republicans did cooperate
to pass a health care provider tax to help off-
set the state’s increasing financial responsibil-
ity for expanded Medicaid. Without the tax,
350,000 Oregonians would have lost health
coverage, some Democrats argued.
“I am just really proud of the work they
did this legislative session,” said Gov. Kate
See SESSION, Page 5A
For Allen, a hillside garden is an adventure
A 75-year-old
gardener tackles
steep rock wall
here are five tow ropes.
Three are attached to a
metal guardrail and the fourth
to the open door of the Astoria
Senior Center bus. The fifth is
wrapped around Larry Allen’s
torso to form a harness.
“At 75 years old, I’m finally
getting to do what I wanted to
do,” he says as he bends down
to pat the dirt around a patch of
young sunflowers.
Over the past year, Allen
has built a garden perched
T
above the Senior Center, turn-
ing a rocky, weedy wall into a
tiny gem.
‘Tied to a bus’
The retired civil engineer
and real estate broker has
always had a passion for gar-
dening, but once swore he
never wanted to do large, com-
plicated landscaping projects
ever again. “And here I am,
tied to a bus!”
The Astoria Seniors Peren-
nial Garden is not particularly
large, but it is complicated.
The garden beds, bounded by
rocks, more or less follow the
sidewalk as it rises with the
11th Street hill. Below and to
the south of these beds there’s
a shallow crescent of land
and a steep drop to a drive-
way below. The rest of the gar-
den is a hillside sloping up to
the First United Methodist
Church’s parking lot.
To access the garden, Allen
parks the bus in the church
parking lot, ties a rope to the
bus and himself, then carefully
See ALLEN, Page 7A
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Larry Allen double-checks the ropes that keep him safe as
he works on the garden wall at the Astoria Senior Center
last week.