Page 2 The Skanner Portland & Seattle December 26, 2018
®
Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now
The Associated Press considers the glimmers of hope that shone through the
darker stories of the year
Bobbie Dore Foster
Executive Editor
By The Associated Press
Patricia Irvin
Graphic Designer
Monica J. Foster
Seattle Office Coordinator
Susan Fried
Photographer
2017
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In this Nov. 23, 2018, file photo, volunteers search for human remains at a mobile
home park in Paradise, Calif. Task force leader Craig Covey, center left, says his
team is doing a second search because there are outstanding reports of missing
people whose last known address was at the mobile home park.
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TheSkannerNews
On Jan. 2, Gov. Kate Brown announced that she would appoint Adrienne C.
Nelson, then a trial judge in Multnomah County, to the Oregon Supreme Court.
Judge Nelson is the first African American to serve on an appellate court in
Oregon and the second woman of color to serve on the Oregon Supreme Court.
Hear about it first.
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Breaking News
and Events at
PHOTO BY ANTHONY HARRIS
Updated daily.
it
In this Oct. 28, 2018, file photo, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, right, of Tree of Life/Or
L’Simcha Congregation hugs Rabbi Cheryl Klein, left, of Dor Hadash Congregation
and Rabbi Jonathan Perlman during a community gathering held in the aftermath
of a deadly shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. As the Jewish
community grieved, Myers took a leading role during public memorials and
presided over seven funerals in the space of less than a week.
See 2018 on page 5
Justice Nelson Sworn In
LOCAL NEWS
BRIEFS
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A MORBID BUT
CRITICAL TASK
It was the week before
Thanksgiving when Craig
Covey got the call for what
would be his most difficult
mission as a search-and-res-
cue team leader: picking
through the ashes of Paradise
for human remains.
It was a morbid but critical
task.
A wildfire that swept
through on Nov. 8 all but oblit-
erated Paradise, once home
sasters across the country
and beyond. Earlier this year,
his team helped rescue an ex-
hausted 82-year-old man who
had been flushed out of his car
by floodwaters and pinned in
some trees amid Hurricane
Florence in North Carolina.
Paradise was different, but
brought rewards of its own.
“We weren’t shaking hands
with people,” Covey said. “But
we were making a difference
for folks, for closure, who are
missing their families.”
— AP writer Kathleen
Ronayne in Sacramento, Cal-
ifornia
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE STATE OF OREGON
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‘I CHOSE TO ACT’
Rabbi Jeffrey Myers said no
class in any seminary could
have prepared anyone for the
role he was thrust into.
Myers was leading Shabbat
services when gunfire erupt-
ed inside his Pittsburgh syn-
agogue on Oct. 27. After help-
ing others to safety, Myers
turned back and raced up the
stairs to a choir loft, where he
called 911. Seven members of
his Tree of Life congregation
and four others in the build-
ing were killed.
As the Jewish community
grieved, Myers took a leading
role during public memorials
and presided over seven fu-
nerals in the space of less than
a week.
“I really had two choices
to 27,000 people. To find and
identify the 86 dead, author-
ities had to call on searchers
like Covey to gather up what
amounted in some cases to lit-
tle more than teeth, bone frag-
ments or artificial hips. Then
they had to rely on the exper-
tise of rapid-testing DNA labs,
forensic anthropologists and
other specialists.
“It was apocalyptic up
there,” Covey said several
weeks after returning home
to Costa Mesa, California.
Covey’s team is deployed
by the Federal Emergency
Management Agency to di-
AP PHOTO/KATHLEEN RONAYNE, FILE
D
Christen McCurdy
News Editor
y
eadliest shooting at an
American high school:
Parkland, Florida.
Deadliest U.S. wildfire
in a century: Paradise, Cali-
fornia.
Deadliest attack on Jews
in American history: Pitts-
burgh.
The cities of Parkland, Par-
adise and Pittsburgh became
synonymous with tragedy in
2018, a year when the nation
seemed to careen from one
deadly horror to another. Yet
in every calamity, there were
people who showed their hu-
manity, their selfless strength
and their sense of duty amid
the suffering.
As the year draws to a close,
Associated Press reporters
on the front lines of some of
the year’s heartbreaking sto-
ries offer up accounts of com-
passion and decency.
when it came down to how to
respond,” Myers said. “One
of them was ... curl up with a
bottle of scotch. The second
choice was to act upon it. I
chose to act upon it.”
His response inspired Tree
of Life congregants, including
retired psychiatrist Joe Char-
ny, 90.
“There’s no question that
he’s been super, and it’s hard
to imagine that anybody
could have done a better job,”
Charny said. “He has the right
touch. He has maintained
through all this a sense of
humor. I don’t know how he’s
done that.”
Myers has vowed to no lon-
ger use the word “hate.”
“To me, that’s the mission
that has come out of this, that
for 11 beautiful people to have
not died in vain,” the rabbi
said. “The conversation about
hate speech in America must
be elevated and it must gain
attention, because that type
of speech leads to action such
as what happened at my syn-
agogue.”
— AP writer Mark Scolforo in
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
AP PHOTO/MATT ROURKE, FILE
Bernie Foster
Founder/Publisher
Jerry Foster
Advertising Manager
in y o u r c o m m u n
Amid 2018’s Tragedies Were Moments of
Compassion and Duty
Grace Addresses MLK
Breakfast
Cheryl Grace, a senior VP at Nielsen, addressed an audience of about 1,000
people at the Red Lion Hotel on the River on Jantzen Beach for The Skanner
Foundation’s 32nd Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Breakfast. Grace urged
the audience to move past fear and leverage their power as consumers and
business leaders, to use social media, networking organizations and churches
to start organizing. Twenty-two Oregon students received scholarships at the
event, the highest number in the foundation’s history.
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