OFF PAGE ONE
Tuesday, July 3, 2018
East Oregonian
Page 13A
HEPPNER
Student wins award for essay on making a better world
By JADE MCDOWELL
East Oregonian
If there is a “good citizen-
ship” expert in Heppner, it
might be Rylee Palmer.
The Heppner Elementary
School student, 10, recently
won first place in a national
contest about citizenship.
“When you’re a good
citizen, you can help oth-
ers,” she said. “Helping oth-
ers and helping the earth is
good so we can live in a bet-
ter place.”
The “Character Counts!”
essay contest is hosted each
year by the National Associ-
ation for Family and Com-
munity Education for fourth
graders across the country.
Rylee won the local con-
test, then the state one, and
then learned on the last day
of school she had won first
place at the national level,
too.
In her short essay, she
wrote that being a good cit-
izen means not just helping
yourself, but your friends,
family and community.
“Look at the world
around you,” she wrote.
“You could probably look at
the first thing you saw and
help it.”
Along with her essay,
Citizenship
Being a good citi-
zen doesn’t just mean
you help yourself, it also
means you help your
friends, family and com-
munity. Look at the world
around you. You could
probably look at the first
thing you saw and help it.
Helping clean the envi-
ronment is an easy way
of being a good citizen.
Helping the elderly is a
she also submitted a draw-
ing that included the points
of her essay, such as help-
ing the elderly and picking
up trash. She said she does
both those things when she
can, and also tries to invite
her classmates to do activi-
ties with her when they seem
like they need a friend.
Heppner
Elementary
Principal Dieter Waite said
the school was proud of
Rylee. Fourth graders in
Heppner contribute essays
and drawings to the con-
test each year, but they have
never had a national winner
that he can remember.
“The whole fourth grade
has an opportunity to submit
work, and Rylee’s was out-
the next step in becom-
ing a good citizen. But,
the most important thing
about being a good cit-
izen is that you are a
friend. In my picture,
there are friends playing,
people picking up trash
and someone helping the
elderly.
Rylee Palmer
Mrs. Gibbs
Heppner Elementary
4th Grade
standing,” he said. “We’re
very proud.”
Waite said he appreciates
that fourth grade teacher Sue
Gibbs has her students enter
the competition each year
because it gives them moti-
vation to write and pushes
them to be better.
Rylee said part of her
motivation was sibling
rivalry — her two older sis-
ters got second and third
place finishes at the state
level in years past.
“I wanted to try and win,”
she said.
She not only won state,
but also the national contest,
which came with a $250
prize. She was awarded a
certificate at a schoolwide
Courtesy photo
Rylee Palmer’s drawing and essay about citizenship earned her first place in a
national “Character Counts!” contest.
assembly, and her work is
displayed at Murray’s Drug
in Heppner.
Rylee said she enjoys
writing and drawing and
exploring with her bulldog
Delilah. One of her favor-
ite things to draw is a girl in
the forest with her dog. She
said she is also working on
a longer story about a girl
with special powers trying to
escape her stepmother and
meeting new friends along
the way.
As she prepares to watch
fireworks with her family
this week to celebrate the
Fourth of July, she said good
citizenship is an important
part of living in America.
“It’s showing that you
are proud, and you want to
make it so other people can
be proud with you that it’s a
good place to live,” she said.
———
Contact Jade McDowell
at jmcdowell@eastorego-
nian.com or 541-564-4536.
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Burger King manager Justin Hollendaugh uses a garden hose while attempting
to stave off flames as they approach his restaurant Monday off of Southwest
Hailey Avenue in Pendleton.
Staff photo by Kathy Aney
Democratic Congressional candidate Jamie McLeod-Skinner stops to chats with
a vendor at a recent Pendleton Farmers Market. She logged around 40,000 miles
in her Jeep to campaign for the primary election in Oregon’s massive Second
Congressional District.
CANDIDATE: Challenging Greg Walden
Continued from 1A
at a table upstairs in the loft
of the Hamley Cafe in Pend-
leton, nursing a cup of some-
thing caffeinated. She admit-
ted she’d been up late giving
her dog a tomato juice bath
after he tangled with a skunk.
She settled back and pon-
dered a question about the
path leading to her can-
didacy, took a sip and got
started. There was a lot to
tell.
McLeod-Skinner spent
her early life in Wisconsin,
the daughter of a single mom
who drove school bus and
picked apples to make ends
meet. When McLeod-Skin-
ner was nine, her mom took
a teaching job in the East
African country of Tanza-
nia. The little girl attended
a school where the kids
spoke English in class and
Swahili at recess. When Idi
Amin invaded Tanzania two
years later, her mother sent
her to a boarding school in
Kenya for her safety. There
McLeod-Skinner
learned
how to play soccer.
“Girls didn’t really play
soccer, but because I was a
white kid, I was an anomaly
anyway,” she said. “I was
not only the only white kid
on the team, I was the only
girl.”
She carried that skill back
to the states. At Ashland
High School, she captained
her soccer team.
Later, McLeod-Skinner
earned a degree in engineer-
ing, a master’s in regional
planning and a law degree
that focused on water law.
She designed water systems
in rural Kosovo. She worked
as a city planner in Silicon
Valley. In California, she got
her first taste of public office
as a member of the Santa
Clara City Council.
Later, she took a job as
the eighth city manager of
Phoenix, Oregon, in seven
years.
She said she found out
why after she got there and
“looked under the hood,”
where she discovered “fiscal
mismanagement and inap-
propriate use of funds.”
“Those were gut-check
moments,” she said. “I had
the choice of keeping quiet
or losing my job,” she said.
Soon after, she was fired.
These days, based at the
Crooked River Ranch in Jef-
ferson County, she spends
most of her time driving
around the district in her Jeep
and sleeping in a teardrop
trailer that she hauls behind
it. Her Doberman rides shot-
gun. Sometimes she’s joined
by her wife Cassandra Skin-
ner, executive director of the
Oregon Board of Chiroprac-
tic Examiners, and her four
stepchildren.
McLeod-Skinner said she
didn’t start out wanting to
run for the House seat. When
her dissatisfaction with
Walden grew, however, she
got involved.
“He led the attack on
health care. Our district, I
think it would have been the
hardest hit in the entire coun-
try and he still had the hubris
to do that. I was at a town
hall in Medford last spring.
He came in and was asked
specifically about pre-ex-
isting conditions. He said,
‘Absolutely I will protect
pre-existing conditions.’ The
next week, he went back and
helped author the bill that cut
out pre-existing conditions.”
She believes Walden has
lost touch with his constitu-
ents, many of whom are just
trying to survive financially.
“I really think if you don’t
get that, you aren’t qualified
to lead this district,” she said.
“It’s a visceral thing, it’s a
fear thing. People are hurt-
ing. People are scared. Peo-
ple want to take care of their
kids.”
She says she spends her
days chatting with peo-
ple about what is import-
ant to them. She finds them
at Kiwanis meetings, pow-
wows and county fairs. They
converse about health care,
trade tariffs, water and scores
of other subjects. She prides
herself on talking to people
wearing bright red “Make
America Great Again” hats
and finding common ground.
“You end up talking about
your kids or family issues,”
she said. “You have to go a
couple of layers down. We
all are struggling and con-
cerned with so many of the
same things.”
Once when she couldn’t
connect, she asked, “What do
you hate most about Demo-
crats?” The man, momentar-
ily shocked, told her.
“At the end of it, he said,
‘I’ve never been able to talk
to a Democrat cause all they
want to do is argue with
you,’”
McLeod-Skinner
said. “This guy just needed
someone to hear him out
and then we had a fabulous
conversation.”
She said she doesn’t
worry about being judged
for being gay. When friends
in Ashland predicted that
people in Eastern Ore-
gon wouldn’t vote for her
because she is homosexual,
she shook her head.
“I joke that I’m not afraid
to tell people in Eastern Ore-
gon that I’m gay, but I’m a
bit nervous about telling peo-
ple in Ashland that I listen to
country music,” she said.
She sees the district not
as insurmountably red, but
rather purple.
Forty percent are non-af-
filiated and many Democrats
and Republicans are tired of
the polarization.
“Very few people fit into
those narrow silos on either
side,” she said. “Who can
bridge that? Who can get us
beyond that political rhet-
oric? If we talk red versus
blue, that language is miss-
ing the mark.”
———
Contact Kathy Aney at
kaney@eastoregonian.com
or 541-966-0810.
FIRE: Residents helped save property
Continued from 1A
Some
staff
mem-
bers poured water around
the property to protect
it, but employees other-
wise returned home during
the hour Burger King was
closed or waited it out at the
nearby Sinclair gas station.
The fire scarred much
of the hillside separat-
ing Burger King and the
residential area above it,
including the Blue Moun-
tain Village Apartments.
Tenants Cody Brumley
and Khamaron Scott were
sitting at a table overlook-
ing the northern expanse of
Pendleton, but they were
forced to retreat away from
the hill when the fire got
serious.
Brumley and Scott
helped hose down the
perimeter of the apart-
ment complex, a part of
a wider effort from resi-
dents to keep the property
protected.
“Ain’t nothing like a
big fire to bring people
together,” Brumley said.
Anthony
Hendershot
said he and about 15 other
neighbors at Vista Village,
228 S.W. 28th Drive, dug
multiple fire lines for about
30 minutes until crews
arrived.
“The whole community
came out to save property,”
he said.
Charlotte Roager and
her husband were vol-
unteering at their church
when her daughter called
from Lincoln City and said
she saw online that a fire
was close to their South-
west Goodwin home.
“We just stayed there
and prayed,” she said.
They were concerned
about their dog and their
African gray parrot, but
the fire was already extin-
guished upon their return.
“The parrot had a lot to
stay when we got home,”
she said.
As Roager took pic-
tures of the charred hill-
side, many of her neighbors
emerged from their homes
in the midday sun to turn
on their lawn sprinklers or
water their plants as a safe-
guard against a stray ember
or spark.
Teri Atkins, who lives
across from the Roag-
ers, has lived in her house
for 21 years and said fires
on the hill are usually an
annual occurrence but this
is the worst she’s seen.
———
Contact Antonio Sierra
at asierra@eastoregonian.
com or 541-966-0836. Tim
Trainor contributed to this
report.
Please Welcome
Gwen Libby, MD
Family Medicine Physician
Now Scheduling Appointments
541-966-0535
Dr. Libby is originally from Hilton Head, South Carolina and
graduated from Furman University in Greenville, SC. She
attended medical school at the University Of South Carolina
School Of Medicine, and completed her residency in Family
Medicine at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. She then
spent three years at Western Family Care/Lander Medical
Clinic in Riverton, Wyoming. Dr. Libby is Board Certifi ed,
American Board of Family Medicine. She has a passion for
rural medicine and looks forward to living in Pendleton with
her husband Brandon and daughter Sophie Belle.
St. Anthony Clinic
3001 St. Anthony Way
Pendleton, Oregon
www.sahpendleton.org