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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2017
Two 911 dispatchers get awards
for outstanding performance
The Daily Astorian
An Astoria 911 dispatcher
has been recognized as the top
telecommunicator in the state.
Early this month, Candace
Pozdolski, a lead dispatcher
with 11 years of experience,
earned the state chapter of the
Association of Public-Safety
Communications
Officials’
Telecommunicator of the Year
Award. She also received an
Impact award for her part in
implementing a text to 911
system.
After three years working
in Astoria, Pozdolski was pro-
moted to the newly formed
operations supervisor position
earlier this month. The posi-
tion, created to improve com-
munication and management at
the dispatch center, will allow
Pozdolski to oversee the plan-
ning, training and supervision
of the daily operations of the
center.
Critical Incident
Jennifer Peden, another
lead dispatcher, received two
Critical Incident awards.
Earlier this year, Peden han-
dled a welfare check call for a
war veteran who was making
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Candace Pozdolski, left, and Jennifer Peden, right, are both lead dispatchers at the Asto-
ria 911 Dispatch, and both received awards earlier this month.
suicidal statements as he was
leaving work in Warrenton.
Officers responded to his home
but were unable to locate him.
After Peden’s call to the man’s
cell phone went unanswered,
he soon called back.
Peden ensured that he was
not going to harm himself as
police responded to the scene.
She also put him in touch with
her brother, a combat veteran
who suffers from post-trau-
matic stress disorder.
In March of 2016, Peden
helped a tow-truck driver as
he attempted to locate a four-
axle, 50-ton Sysco Food semi-
truck that was stalled on U.S.
Highway 101 Business near
Production Lane. The driver,
given poor directions, was
near the Astoria Regional Air-
port at the time.
Peden took about five min-
utes to help him find the truck.
Soon after, the tow-truck driver
called Emergency Communi-
cations Manager Jeff Rusiecki
to compliment Peden.
New management at
Red Building Loft
The Daily Astorian
Briana Smith has taken
over management of events
center The Loft at the Red
Building.
Smith, from Boring, first
became interested in event
management after coordinat-
ing a fashion show fundraiser
in high school for Doernbe-
cher Children’s Hospital.
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
“I have been doing event Briana Smith recently took
management for quite a long over management of the
time,” she said. “The last Loft at the Red Building.
four years, I was doing con-
ference management all over the original developer behind
the U.S. and Canada, so I’d the Red Building, decided
plan events for IT leaders and to convert the loft into office
oil and gas leaders.”
space, citing the difficulty of
Smith moved to Asto- finding uses for the space in
ria several years ago with the winter months. Below the
her husband. She volunteered loft is the popular, upscale
her skills locally with events restaurant Bridgewater Bistro.
in Cannon Beach and with
The Loft is mostly known
the Astoria-Warrenton Area for weddings, banquets and
Chamber of Commerce. She other formal occasions. But
connected with the previous Smith said she hopes to
Loft operators Evie Larson expand the community offer-
and Jessica Newhall through ings in the space, catering to
her involvement with the anything from a pop-up yoga
Astoria Downtown Historic studio to a temporary gath-
District Association’s Shore- ering place for a church. She
Style Wedding Faire held in is also contemplating a New
the space.
Year’s Eve gala.
The space formerly had
For more information, call
been closed until March 2013, 971-409-6246 or email bri-
when Unionfish Properties, ana@theredbuildingloft.com
Vietnam War: ‘We feel that all wars are fought twice’
Continued from Page 1A
Roughly 13 million people
viewed the first episode of the
18-hour Burns documentary. A
decade of research and inter-
views went into the project,
which covers the most import-
ant event since World War II,
Burns said in a USA Today
interview.
“This war didn’t turn out
well for Americans and we did
ignore it and then, sort of, clung
desperately to some fairly
superficial facts,” Burns said.
‘I would’ve moved
to Canada’
Hertel worked at a Ford
Motor Co. plant in Louisville,
Kentucky, in the 1960s. Weary
of dodging the draft by attend-
ing college classes and work-
ing, he decided to sign up for a
two-year enlistment.
At 20 years old, he thought
he might have been blackballed
economically had he decided
to move to another country.
Rather, after serving just two
years, he figured he could reap
some of the benefits afforded to
veterans through the GI Bill.
“I knew we had no business
being in Vietnam,” he said. “If
I had done what I thought was
the right thing to do, I would’ve
moved to Canada.”
In his year overseas from
1968 to 1969, Hertel served
as an enlisted soldier, conduct-
ing meteorological surveys in a
camp that also housed much of
the army’s leadership. Because
commanding officers were
present, the camp was often
shelled.
But Hertel remembers his
time in the camp fondly. Fol-
lowing relatively short work
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days, he spent much of his time
reading, writing, listening to
music and exchanging letters
with his new wife.
“Overall, I felt like it was a
pretty good year,” he said. “It
was just, like, very relaxing.”
When his tour ended, so too
did his mental involvement in
the conflict — at least for the
next four decades.
Greeted by gunfire
Another local veteran, on
the other hand, participated in
anti-war activism as soon as he
returned home.
Ben Hunt ran into legal
trouble in the 1960s, and a
judge presented two options:
jail or the military. Opting for
the latter, Hunt joined the army
in 1966.
He had what he described as
a “cushy job” at a base in Loui-
siana and could have remained
there for his three-year enlist-
ment. Instead, he decided that
he wanted to experience the
war for himself. He deployed
in 1968 as a mechanic, heli-
copter door gunner and supply
sergeant.
Hunt spent his first night in
Vietnam — Jan. 31, 1968 —
in Bien Hoa. He was greeted
within hours of his arrival by
gunfire — the Tet Offensive
had just launched.
“Arriving there was a total
shock,” he said.
Following three sleep-de-
prived nights, the attack tem-
porarily stopped. Hunt soon
transferred to a camp north of
Bien Hoa. For the rest of the
Clatsop Post 12
Taco
Salads
with
year, he tried to avoid becom-
ing what both he and Hertel
called a “grunt” — a soldier
who spent days in the jungle
fighting along the front lines.
“If you kept moving, you
didn’t get much trouble,” Hunt
said.
Hunt, now the proprietor of
Sunset Lake Farm, returned to
Oregon after the war to attend
classes at Portland State Uni-
versity. He participated in a
nationwide student strike in
May of 1970 in response to
President Richard Nixon’s
decision to expand the war into
Cambodia.
The strike included the
Kent State University demon-
stration, in which four stu-
dents were shot by National
Guardsmen.
“It was pretty exciting,”
Hunt said. “It was a pretty wild
period.”
‘All wars
are fought twice’
Both Hertel and Hunt
largely agree with Burns’ por-
trayal of the war, minus some
details.
Hunt questioned some of
the documentary’s versions of
why the U.S. became involved,
as well as its portrayal of sol-
diers’ daily life. Hertel, mean-
while, viewed some of the
film’s focus on emotional sto-
ries of soldiers who were killed
— as opposed to a more thor-
ough chronicling of facts — as
propagandistic.
“There is gallantry and her-
oism in a war, but in the midst
of all of this, the fact that we’re
supporting a colonial power
against our basic beliefs of
democracy, it’s just totally
lost,” Hertel said.
In the USA Today inter-
view, Burns said he hoped the
film would allow viewers to
parse through solid facts about
the war. It could be another
step for veterans like Hertel
and Hunt, who — in different
ways — have devoted much
of their lives trying to compre-
hend one of the pivotal events
of their lives.
“We feel that all wars are
fought twice,” Burns said,
“once on the battlefield and
then in memory.”
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