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THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2021
Virus death: ‘Get vaccinated if you can. Just don’t let this get too far’
Continued from Page A1
vaccine outside of emergency
authorizations — would have
swayed him. More, it seemed
he didn’t think the virus would
aff ect him.
His youngest daughter,
Sierra Hodges, didn’t learn he
was unvaccinated until after
he was hospitalized.
She asked him why.
“He said he’d never
thought it would get him, ” she
said.
Mother and daughter say
they have to resist playing
“what if” scenarios now —
for their own sakes — as they
fi gure out how to grieve .
Still, Hodges said, “I’m
almost hurt, like why wouldn’t
you take that opportunity to
help yourself? I can’t help but
think if he’d gotten (the vac-
cine), he wouldn’t be dead.
… If he’d gotten it, maybe he
could be here with us.”
She hopes people who hear
about her father will take the
pandemic seriously. She took
it seriously from the begin-
ning, she said, wearing masks
before they were required, but
she knows others did not.
“Take care of yourself,”
she said. “When they say
quarantine, quarantine. Get
vaccinated if you can. Just
don’t let this get too far. Watch
your symptoms and get help if
you need it.”
“I don’t want anyone else
to suff er through this,” she
added. “It’s an ugly thing, a
painful and ugly thing.”
Julie Stallsworth said she
knows of more than a dozen
people who decided to get
vaccinated after learning
of her husband’s death and
hearing what the family had
endured.
One of Stallsworth’s doc-
tors in Portland urged Julie:
You have to keep telling that
story.
It’s not a role she really
wants to play.
“But,” she said, “if people
want to talk to me about Ted,
I’ll talk all day about Ted.”
Photos by Hailey Hoff man/The Astorian
ABOVE: Nearly 200 people attended Ted Stallsworth’s memorial service. LEFT: Brandon
Stallsworth speaks about his father, Ted, at a memorial service. He carried an oxygen tank with
him due to contracting COVID-19 and pneumonia.
ried, but she thought about
how a high percentage of
virus patients with mild cases
get better after 10 days. If any-
one needed to take 10 days off
and relax, it was her dad, she
thought.
But Stallsworth’s condi-
tion worsened. He was hospi-
talized at Columbia Memorial
Hospital in Astoria and then
had to be fl own to Portland
for care, according to family
members. He was on a venti-
lator and other life-sustaining
measures.
Goodbye
‘He understood that we
were better together than
on our own and isolated’
Raised in Medford, Stalls-
worth had a diffi cult child-
hood and struggled with drug
and alcohol addictions as an
adult. He got clean in the mid-
1990s and settled in Seaside
and, later, Warrenton.
He started Pro-Fresh Car-
pet Care and, with Julie, raised
four children . He served as a
reserve offi cer with the War-
renton Police Department
for seven years. He loved to
fi sh and hunt. He rarely took
a break. Personal space was
for other people, family and
friends say. He’d talk and talk
and talk, but he’d also listen.
“He understood that we
were better together than
on our own and isolated,”
said Jerry Gaidos, a police
chaplain .
Warrenton Police Chief
Mathew Workman called Stalls-
worth “extremely dedicated.”
Stallsworth put in “hun-
dreds of hours on patrol and
at community events and was
very respected by his fellow
offi cers,” the police chief said.
Stallsworth had joined the
U.S. Army at 17 years old and
was honorably discharged
three years later. He met Julie
when they both worked at the
same restaurant in Medford.
She refused to date him at fi rst
because of his drug and alco-
hol addictions. He told her
he’d change for her. The two
eventually dated and had a
child together, Ted’s second
child, a son named Jacob. But
Ted didn’t change, so Julie
and Jacob left.
They reconnected several
years later when Stallsworth
was sober and ready to make
a diff erent kind of life for him-
self and his children. Besides
Jacob, he had another son,
Brandon, and two daughters,
Ariel Barber and Hodges.
For the rest of his life,
Stallsworth would seek out
support from other recover-
ing addicts and alcoholics and
off er help in return.
With help from a former
girlfriend, Stallsworth started
the carpet-cleaning business .
He worked a variety of jobs in
addition to running the busi-
ness. Some days, he would
sleep for only a few hours
between jobs. At 52, he was
only just beginning to slow
down.
When Hodges heard her
dad was sick, she was wor-
On Aug. 16, one of Stalls-
worth’s doctors called Julie.
You need to bring your fam-
ily together, the doctor told
her. Ted wasn’t likely to last
the week.
On Aug. 19, the fam-
ily prepared to say good-
bye . Under visitor policies
at Legacy Emanuel Medi-
cal Center, only two people
at a time could go into Stalls-
worth’s room. Hodges knew
she wanted to be there when
the machines were turned off .
Through her work as a care-
giver, she has been with sev-
eral people when they died, so
she knew she would be able to
handle it.
She also knew if she left
her father’s hospital room and
he was still breathing, his heart
still beating, her brain might
accept his death, she said, but
“my heart would have told me
he was still alive.”
Stallsworth’s room looked
like any standard hospital
room. There was a bed and a
bunch of machines. Hodges
hadn’t seen her father in three
weeks and she wasn’t pre-
pared for what he looked like.
He had been heavily sedated
for a long time. He was pale,
bloated. His muscle mass was
gone. He was covered in tubes
and wires, diffi cult to reach,
especially for someone short
like Julie. Looking at him,
Hodges realized her mom
wouldn’t be able to kiss him
while he was still alive.
THE VIRUS
THAT KILLED
STALLSWORTH
HAS KILLED
MORE THAN
600,000 PEOPLE
IN THE UNITED
STATES TO
DATE — 13
IN CLATSOP
COUNTY AS OF
EARLY MONDAY.
She went into “nurse
mode” — a reaction to her
fear, she says now. She asked
the nurses to adjust Stalls-
worth’s bed, lower the rail-
ing on one side, move some
of the wiring and cords.
When they turned off
the respiratory machines,
Hodges watched the heart
monitor with the nurse. She
saw the little bumps mark-
ing Ted’s heart beat become
smaller and smaller — the
heart beat getting fl atter and
fl atter — until there was only
a fl at line. It had barely been
two minutes.
She laid her head on her
dad’s chest.
Stallsworth’s
mother
killed herself when Ted’s
third child was very young,
but Barber said her death
marked him for the rest of
his life. He couldn’t seem to
accept it.
“He carried it right on his
chest,” Barber said.
There was a lot of anger
— anger she feels she’s inher-
ited from him along with,
she hopes, his charisma, his
sense of humor, his genuine
desire to help everyone, any-
one. She never felt so safe as
when she lived in her father’s
house.
At Stallsworth’s memo-
rial service, Brandon Stalls-
worth said it wasn’t until he
was a teenager that he began
to understand all the things
his father was trying to over-
come. Stallsworth , Brandon
realized, was actively learn-
ing how to be a husband and a
father, how to be a good man.
Stallsworth never did hard
drugs again, but over the
years, he still slid back into
alcohol at times. It wasn’t
always easy in the Stalls-
worth household. Ted’s anger
could bubble up; he’d lash
out verbally.
He got sober again in
2019. This time, it seemed
like it was for good .
That
sobriety
com-
forts Hodges now. Her dad
died, but he died sober. He
achieved what he had pushed
for and against for so long.
Wiitala: Early chapters highlight encounters in the woods, footprints, noises
Continued from Page A1
— and no one can produce
one, dead or alive.
Bigfoot believers main-
tain that part of the main-
stream denial is wrapped in
religious beliefs, with a com-
monly held viewpoint that
anything not endorsed in
scripture must be the devil’s
work.
Wiitala said this philos-
ophy dates back to Theo-
dosius, who decreed that
anything that is outside the
state religion is suspect.
The last emperor of a united
Rome converted to Christi-
anity in the year 391, ban-
ning all forms of pagan wor-
ship, including long-standing
devotion to Zeus.
Wiitala’s rejects this nar-
row thinking. “I remember
sitting in church and saying,
‘T hat’s not all the answers,’”
he said.
He believes these crea-
tures do exist and are an
advanced species. “Human
beings consider themselves
the ‘superior’ race,” he said.
“They are really full of
hubris. We aren’t. They are
more evolved than us and
they are ‘superior.’ They have
the skills to outperform us
out in the fi eld, a collective
higher intelligence.”
‘Metaphysical and
telepathic’
An in-person interview
inevitably seeks simple
answers.
What do they look like?
“They have hair on their
back, they’re light tan col-
ored like elk, with large
rounded shoulders.”
What are they? “Sas-
quatch are very closely
related to us, but that diff er-
ence makes such a diff erence.
They are metaphysical and
telepathic.”
His book, however, delves
way deeper.
In 17 0 pages, he describes
his belief that these crea-
tures can travel through por-
tals located near electromag-
netic vortex fi elds. He seeks to
defi ne and explain these con-
cepts and his experiences with
them, addressing heavy topics
in a conversational style.
Early chapters highlight
encounters in the woods,
footprints, noises and defi nite
feelings of “not being alone.”
One describes ghostly haunt-
ings at the Hannan Play-
house, until recently home of
Willapa Players. Later there
are descriptions of attempts at
telepathy and UFO sightings.
There are also many
detailed number mysteries,
including his connection to
327, pi, Fibonacci sequences
and Pythagoras. Other num-
bers refer to the angles of the
great pyramids of Egypt stud-
ied by Carl Munck, a retired
U.S. military man who stud-
ied numerical codes in
ancient monuments. Inventor
Nikola Tesla’s study of mag-
netic fi elds also comes under
the spotlight.
All told, Wiitala concludes
it comes down to Ham-
let’s quote, “There are more
things in heaven and earth,
Horatio, than are dreamt of in
your philosophy.”
Chosen?
Wiitala said his life
experiences have drawn
him to this quest. He lived
in Portland and Grants Pass
before moving to Asto-
ria, where he graduated
from high school in 1971
then served a stint in the
U.S. Navy. When his father
moved to Bay Center, he
encouraged him to fol-
low him into a career with
the U.S. Postal Service. He
retired after 27 years as a
rural carrier.
His early life was char-
acterized by diffi culties
that in recent times likely
would have been diagnosed
as attention defi cit hyperac-
tivity disorder. He confi rms
a touch of Asperger’s syn-
drome, a form of autism, in
his makeup.
“I have known I was ‘dif-
ferent’ from the time I was
born, but this is another
level,” he said. “It was a
curse growing up and now
I consider it ‘my super-
power,’” he added, ear-
nestly. “I can see through
a lot of fl ak. I surprised
myself.”
Wiitala said the way
he is wired adds to his
perceptiveness.
And, perhaps most con-
troversially, he believes he
has a role in helping sas-
quatches communicate with
the disbelieving world.
There is a strong belief
in cultures around the world
that shamans are chosen
by some life force or deity.
They can interact with spir-
its and they possess meta-
physical knowledge that
others don’t.
“I was chosen,” Wiitala
said. “My realization of that
came slowly.”
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