7A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2017
Clatsop Kinder Ready
Claire Withycombe/Capital Bureau
Ashley Nimmi, left, and Andy Gonzalez, right, received a
Welcome Baby bag filled with resources on early child-
hood development to help their new daughter, Rilee.
The Mark O. Hatfield Library at Willamette University in Salem.
Hatfield’s Senate papers
tucked out of view until 2022
By CLAIRE
WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
SALEM — The records of
former U.S. Sen. Mark O. Hat-
field, one of Oregon’s most
prominent politicians, won’t
be made public until July 12,
2022, on what would have
been the Republican’s 100th
birthday.
Hatfield, who died in 2011,
climbed to national prominence
over the course of three decades
in the Senate and built a repu-
tation that close supporters still
protect.
The Dallas-born politician
served in the state Legislature
before being elected secretary
of state in 1956. He served as
governor from 1959 to 1967,
when he ventured to Capitol
Hill to represent Oregon in the
U.S. Senate, a post he held until
1997.
Records that observers say
could be of national signifi-
cance — he chaired the influ-
ential Senate Appropriations
Committee and opposed the
Vietnam War and the nuclear
program — are kept at Willa-
mette University in Salem, a
hearty stone’s throw from the
state capitol.
Representatives of the uni-
versity, a private institution,
can’t say much about the spe-
cific contents of the collection.
The trove includes speeches,
correspondence, memos, leg-
islative records, photos, vid-
eos, campaign records, artifacts
and other items spanning 2,200
linear feet of storage space,
including 2,000 boxes of paper
records.
Hatfield’s widow, Antoi-
nette, said the release date was
chosen after he died.
“Well, I would rather have
them (made public) after I was
in the grave, to be truthful,
because I couldn’t answer any
of the questions they would ask
about his papers,” she said.
Antoinette Hatfield, who
now lives in Portland, main-
tained that she was not involved
in her husband’s political
affairs. “I didn’t do anything in
his office over the years,” she
said. “It was not my business.”
She said that Hatfield’s
100th birthday “seemed like
a nice round number to have
them come out.”
The papers generated by
federal legislators are consid-
ered their personal property, not
public documents, Karen Paul,
the archivist for the U.S. Sen-
ate, said. It’s their responsibility
to have them boxed and ready
for shipment to the location of
their choice the day before their
final term ends.
Hatfield got a jump on the
process. Willamette began
preparing the collection even
before he left the Senate.
A spokesman for Willamette
said Richard Jones, a historian
at Reed College, was initially
hired by the university to start
sorting through the collection in
1985, 12 years before Hatfield
left the Senate. Staff of the uni-
versity’s Hatfield Library took
over processing in 1992.
Generally, the archiving pro-
cess tries to preserve the orig-
inal order of the papers, says
Willamette University Archi-
vist Mary McRobinson. The
archival process also includes
Kirk Hirota/George Fox University
The late Mark Hatfield after his retirement from the U.S.
Senate. Hatfield’s papers from his 30 years in the Senate
are housed at Willamette University, but won’t be opened
to the public until July 12, 2022, on what would have been
his 100th birthday.
Marion County Historical Society
Mark Hatfield signs papers
around 1960 during his first
term as governor of Ore-
gon.
describing, down to the folder
level, what the records contain,
and making them easier to nav-
igate for researchers.
It’s not apparent what the
collection may reveal.
Hatfield’s legacy permeates
the Beaver State. He is cred-
ited with creating the research
powerhouse that is now Ore-
gon Health & Science Univer-
sity, and the 1986 designation
of the Columbia River Gorge
National Scenic Area.
But he also made well-pub-
licized missteps.
In 1984, Antoinette Hatfield
was paid $55,000 in real estate
fees by Basil Tsakos, a Greek
businessman who wanted to
build an oil pipeline in Africa
and sought help on the proj-
ect from Sen. Hatfield, accord-
ing to Willamette Week’s 2011
obituary of Hatfield. The Hat-
fields donated the money to
charity and in 1987, the Justice
Department said it wouldn’t
investigate Hatfield, according
to the New York Times.
In the early 1990s, Hat-
field was investigated by a fed-
eral grand jury for gifts he’d
received but hadn’t disclosed
from a university president in
the 1980s. At the time of the
gifts, Hatfield was weighing a
$16.3 million grant to the uni-
versity, according to the New
York Times. He was rebuked
by the Senate Ethics Commit-
Willamette University
Mary McRobinson, archi-
vist at the Mark O. Hatfield
Library at Willamette Uni-
versity, is in charge of the
late senator’s papers.
tee in 1992.
Jim Moore, director of the
Tom McCall Center for Pol-
icy Innovation at Pacific Uni-
versity, says the collection
could shed more light on those
incidents.
“He had some major scan-
dals in the 1980s and people
would really, really, really like
to know what documents he
has on that and what he was
thinking,” Moore said.
Moore said it’s more com-
mon for politicians to set out a
future date when the papers will
be accessible.
Packwood and Smith
The papers of two former
Oregon senators also held at
Willamette are not yet publicly
available either.
Some papers of Republican
U.S. Sen. Bob Packwood —
his Senate papers and records
of the annual Dorchester Con-
ference, which he founded in
1965 — are stored offsite and
available to researchers by
appointment.
However, the university
could not say when the Pack-
wood collection will be public,
or when the whole collection
will be available to researchers.
Packwood, who was elected to
the Senate in 1968, resigned
his seat in the wake of a sexual
harassment scandal in 1995.
The papers of Republican
U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, who
served in the Senate from 1997
to 2009, won’t be public until
2029 at the earliest.
There’s often a delay in
making political papers public.
Supporters tend to guard the
reputations of revered figures
such as Hatfield, Moore said.
“When you open up that
archive, that kind of becomes
secondary, and it’s new stuff,”
Moore said. “And people get
nervous about that.”
Brent Walth, an Oregon
journalist whose authorita-
tive biography of former Gov.
Tom McCall was published in
1994, said he was approached
on two separate occasions by
people close to Hatfield asking
whether he’d be interested in
writing a book about him.
Walth told the interested
parties that he’d need complete
access to Hatfield’s papers and
need interviewees to be open
with him about all aspects of
Hatfield’s life. He heard noth-
ing more about the idea.
Walth doesn’t know why
they didn’t follow up, but noted
there could have been a num-
ber of reasons why he wasn’t
contacted again after those
discussions.
The Hatfield papers also
raise questions about when
records created in the course
of official business should be
public. Not all of the records
are under seal: Some corre-
spondence of Hatfield’s is scat-
tered among other U.S. institu-
tions and available for public
scrutiny there, according to the
Biographic Directory of the
United States Congress.
And oral history interviews
with Hatfield and his staff are
kept at the Oregon Historical
Society and OHSU, according
to the directory.
State papers
Unlike Senate papers,
records created by the state’s
top executives are considered
public. Since 1991 — decades
after Hatfield was governor
— state law has required that
records created by the gover-
nor, secretary of state, attor-
ney general and treasurer be
turned over to the state archi-
vist, says State Archivist Mary
Beth Herkert.
Before then, turning over
the records to the state archives
was the implied rule under the
state’s public records law, but it
wasn’t followed, Herkert said.
“It was just getting to the
point where you’re losing out
on these records,” Herkert says,
“And that’s not right because
you’re alienating a public
record, which is not allowed to
be done.”
Nearly five more years will
pass before Oregonians can see
the collection for themselves.
Walth, the journalist, noted
that memory fades the longer
that someone is out of office,
and once someone is no lon-
ger living. Furthermore, pub-
lic interest in Hatfield may also
fade as time goes by.
“And the longer those
papers stay locked up … it
could be harder to find a con-
text for him or his story,” Walth
said. “I hope not. I think it
would be a terrific story, but I
don’t know.”
Program: ‘Parents
are the first teachers’
Continued from Page 1A
Robbie Porter is vice
principal of Warrenton Grade
School and recently took
over as coordinator of the
P-3 Early Learning Council,
more commonly known as
Clatsop Kinder Ready, from
former Seaside principal Dan
Gaffney, who is focusing on
a yearlong feasibility study
for universal preschool in
Clatsop, Tillamook and pos-
sibly Columbia counties.
The group focuses on
improving developmental
outcomes for children from
birth through third grade, a
key developmental stage by
which kids should be transi-
tioning from learning to read
to reading to learn.
The group has mostly
focused on kids in preschool
through third grade and
wanted to start a program
focusing on prenatal care
and infants, Porter said. In
an application for their fourth
and final year of funding
from the Oregon Commu-
nity Foundation, the group
wrote a grant for the Wel-
come Baby program.
The group assembled 400
of the tote bags.
“Parents are the first
teachers,” said Diane Dieni,
an early childhood educator
helping oversee the program.
Each bag includes basic
newborn supplies such as
hats, burp cloths, teething
toys and measuring guides.
Much of it is donated by
local organizations serving
children, from libraries to
birth companions called dou-
las. The Welcome Baby edu-
cational and resource book-
let was curated for the North
Coast and printed on a stu-
dent-owned press at Jew-
ell School in rural Clatsop
County.
“I’ve never seen anything
so comprehensive or county
specific,” Porter said of the
guide.
Bags will be given to new
parents throughout next year
at Columbia Memorial Hos-
pital in Astoria, Providence
Seaside Hospital and at ben-
efits, breastfeeding and post-
partum appointments. Clat-
sop County’s birth rate has
averaged nearly 417 over the
past five years.
For parents without a
safe place for their child to
sleep, Clatsop Kinder Ready
has acquired 20 specially
designed cardboard boxes
with mattresses from The
Baby Box Co. The Finnish
government has given such
sleeping boxes and maternity
supples to new families since
the 1930s.
The Welcome Baby pro-
gram costs $10,000, half
paid for by Clatsop Kinder
Ready and half by the non-
profit Friends of Columbia
Community Health. Each
bag and set of materials costs
less than $20 to compile.
Clatsop Kinder Ready
is searching for future grant
funding, and donations to
help provide the Welcome
Baby bags, Porter said.
The group thinks the bags
would be a perfect proj-
ect for the Columbia-Pacific
Coordinated Care Organiza-
tion serving regional Oregon
Health Plan members, Dieni
said.
“The whole focus on pre-
natal to 3 years old, this is
kind of the direction of inter-
est now,” Dieni said. “If you
want to make an impact,
you’ve got to catch families
as early as possible.”
‘If you want to make
an impact, you’ve got
to catch families as
early as possible.’
Diane Dieni
an early childhood educator helping
oversee the Welcome Baby program
Ludy: Celebrates
decision to commit
to the beach life
Continued from Page 1A
Ludy got the idea after
living and working in Napa
Valley, California for the past
five years. When she first
moved to Sonoma, there was
a variety of activity clubs
newcomers could join to
meet others. The North Coast
Newcomers group would
focus on connecting mainly
retirees, she said, who she
envisions would participate
in monthly lunches or group
activities outdoors.
She hopes to get the
word out starting in January
through “newcomer packets”
she hands out at Ticor Title
for new homeowners.
“I love to bike ride and to
cook and to golf, but I want
to find other women who
like to do that, too,” she said.
“I’ve heard the same prob-
lem from other new people.
If I put this out there, I think
they will come.”
Overall, Ludy still cele-
brates her decision to com-
mit to beach life. The rain
can be tiresome, she said, but
also “is also what makes this
place so beautiful.” Every
so often she yearns for the
restaurants and wineries
that make the Napa Valley
famous in the culinary world.
But with ocean views
a few blocks away and the
elk outside her white picket
fence, she’s reminded of the
tranquility that drew her here.
“It’s a perfect fit for me,”
Ludy said.