Friday, November 2, 2018
OFF PAGE ONE
ENDE: Bernice Ende started long riding with no experience and little money
Page 8A
East Oregonian
Continued from 1A
eventually moved to north-
west Montana, where she
opened a dance studio and
ballet school.
Once she retired in 2003,
she began looking for a life
change and decided to give
long riding a try.
“I felt the pull of the open
road,” she wrote on her web-
site. “Adventure called, the
need to go, see, do. A win-
dow of opportunity opened
and I climbed out.”
Ende said she started long
riding with no experience
and little money, sleeping
under a tarp she brought with
her and subsisting on cans
of tuna, tortillas, and cream
cheese.
According to Ende, she
first got involved with speak-
ing engagements by play-
ing piano and telling her life
story at local senior centers
in exchange for meals.
Ende said that although
the country might be going
through a politically divisive
time, the main lesson she
learned during this time was
how unified the country was
in its kindness, as evidenced
by the food, water, and shel-
ter strangers provided for her
on her various journeys.
She gained enough noto-
riety over the years that sev-
eral sponsors have stepped
forward to financially sup-
port her lifestyle, but she still
has a minimalist streak.
The book tour’s tight
schedule means Ende needed
to eschew a long horse ride
for a 1969 Ford pickup, but
Montana Spirit and Liska
Pearl are still coming along
for the ride in a horse trailer
tied to the back.
Instead of booking hotels
or crashing on couches, Ende
showed off the horse trailer’s
small storage space, which
she fashioned into a sleeping
quarters with a few blankets
and personal items.
Ende decided to come
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Author Bernice Ende feeds alfalfa to her Norwegian Fjord horse, Montana Spirit, on Thursday at the Pendleton Round-Up Grounds.
to Pendleton through Liska
Pearl, who originally resided
in Pendleton.
In 2015, one of Ende’s
horses died and word got out
through the Pacific North-
west Fjord Promotional
Group, a nonprofit that pro-
motes the horse breed.
At the time, the Pendleton
nonprofit Rebecca Adams
had founded, Dream Catcher
Therapeutics, was going
through a transition.
An organization focused
on helping kids with dis-
abilities by doing activities
with horses, Dream Catcher
was in the process of getting
a new board, director, and
location. Suddenly, Adams
had a surplus of horses.
When she learned about
Ende’s situation through the
group, she started research-
ing Ende’s long riding career
and reached out to offer
Liska Pearl.
Although the horse had
mostly been involved with
leading and grooming activ-
ities, Adams said she felt a
connection with Ende and
agreed to personally trans-
port the mare to Ende’s cabin
in Trego, Montana.
A friendship between
Adams and Ende ensued
and Liska Pearl has been
with the itinerant Montanan
ever since.
Ende said Liska Pearl took
a couple of years to adjust to
the travails of long riding,
which often puts horses in
stressful situations like walk-
ing through urban areas and
crossing grated bridges.
Adams said most horses
stay in the same pens, are
taken to the same events, and
are transported in the same
trailers, creating a routine.
With long riding, horses are
asked to respond to a chang-
ing set of circumstances
every day.
“It’s the routine of uncer-
tainty,” she said.
Ende’s tour will take her
through 19 states and offi-
cially ends in Fort Edward,
New York, in 2019, the
100th anniversary of the
year Congress approved the
19th Amendment granting
women the right to vote. She
wants to press on after Fort
Edward to do a reading at
Harvard University, the site
of some personal feminist
history.
“I come from a long line
of suffragettes,” she said.
Ende’s great-aunt was
Linda James Benitt, the first
woman to graduate from
Harvard’s school of pub-
lic health. Ende said she
finds inspiration for her
rides through her great-aunt
and other famous feminist
figures.
Once she departs Pend-
leton, she’ll head south to
events in Prineville, Klamath
Falls and beyond.
During one of her future
legs, she’ll be joined by a
crew filming a documentary
about her.
And once she’s done
promoting her book, she’ll
unload Montana Spirit and
Liska Pearl and reward her-
self with another long ride.
———
Contact Antonio Sierra at
asierra@eastoregonian.com
or 541-966-0836.
VOLUNTEERS: Also deliver friendship and safety
Continued from 1A
Staff photo by Jade McDowell
Hermiston Senior Center volunteers Gary Reisland,
left, Virginia Beebe, center, and Darlene Reisland, right,
helped a Meals on Wheels patron get help.
ting with people who don’t
get many visitors as they
drop off meals, and in some
cases even return on their
own time to visit with people
or help them out with small
things around the house.
During his time deliver-
ing meals, Riesland said he
has found people who have
fallen, and in some cases
after he has alerted fam-
ily or the police that some-
one didn’t answer the door,
the person has been found
deceased. He has also
reported cases of elder abuse
that have led to law enforce-
ment getting a senior out of
a bad situation.
In the most recent case,
Wilcox didn’t come to the
door as usual but he could
hear her yelling from the liv-
ing room. She didn’t answer
his questions but repeated
over and over again, “Call
Pam!”
“I knew something was
wrong,” he said.
The Rieslands returned
to the senior center and
told vice president Vir-
ginia Beebe, who happens
to be Wilcox’s cousin. She
got in touch with Lincoln,
who rushed over to find her
mother on the floor, weak
and disoriented, and called
an ambulance.
Beebe said volunteers
will always follow up with
emergency contacts if some-
one doesn’t answer the door
when they were supposed to
be home. It’s a service that
can be just as important as
the food provided on Tues-
days and Thursdays.
Lincoln said she is grate-
ful that someone besides her
is helping keep an eye on her
mom after Lincoln’s father
died about two months ago.
“It’s more than just deliv-
ering meals, they deliver
friendship and safety,” she
said.
She said their family
will be coming up with bet-
ter protocols to make sure
her mother stays safe while
maintaining her indepen-
dence, and urged other fam-
ilies with elderly members
living alone to discuss med-
ical alert bracelets, daily
phone check-ins or other
safety precautions in case of
a medical emergency.
———
Contact Jade McDowell
at jmcdowell@eastorego-
nian.com or 541-564-4536.
CINEMA: Goodwill announced that it planned to open a store in early 2016
Continued from 1A
property.
Pendleton
Cinema
owner Bruce Humphrey
had been trying to sell the
property for eight years
when Goodwill Industries
of the Columbia agreed to
buy it in 2015, and as soon
as the deal went through,
he promptly closed the
movie theater and the
property’s other occu-
pant, DG Gifts, moved to
Westgate.
Although
Goodwill
announced that it planned
to open a new store in the
building in early 2016, little
visible activity happened
at the site beyond mov-
ing Goodwill’s collection
trailer to the parking lot.
Later that year, Goodwill
Carrington
bought the
property,
which spans
an entire
block, for
$250,000
officials said they were no
longer interested in starting
a new store in the Pendle-
ton Cinema building, citing
concerns over labor costs
and the distance the Pend-
leton store would be from
Goodwill Industries of the
Columbia’s headquarters
in Kennewick.
Goodwill offered to sell
the property to the city of
Pendleton for $550,000 to
accommodate a new fire sta-
tion, a slight discount from
the property $600,000 pur-
chase price, but the city opted
to place the station on South-
east Court Avenue instead.
Goodwill put the prop-
erty back on the market,
and by the time Carrington
bought it, the building had
been vacant for more than
three years.
Carrington bought the
property, which spans an
entire block, for $250,000,
less than half of what Good-
will originally paid.
———
Contact Antonio Sierra at
asierra@eastoregonian.com
or 541-966-0836.
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
The Pendleton Cinema building has been sold to the Carrington Co. of Eureka,
Calif.
OHA: The state hospital has 210 beds and 256 aid-and-assist patients
Continued from 1A
in jails, prisons or hospital
emergency rooms.
The number of defendants
sent to hospitals because they
have been judged unable to
aid in their own defense has
doubled in the past six years,
Allen said. Such clients gen-
erally remain under state
care until they are deemed fit
to stand trial.
The state hospital has
210 beds but 256 aid-and-
assist patients, according to
the Health Authority’s Oct.
29 budget request to the
Legislature.
To meet the demand, state
hospital officials have used
about 20 beds meant for
civilly committed patients.
The new Junction City unit
would allow the hospital to
restore capacity for civilly
committed patients, accord-
ing to an email from Robb
Cowie, a spokesman for the
Health Authority.
The Junction City hospi-
tal opened more than three
years ago with about 100
beds to house patients from
central and southern Oregon
counties.
“Since opening, the need
has been so high that the
campus has been serving all
Oregon counties,” Cowie
wrote.
When there’s a shortage
of beds, patients are diverted
to acute care psychiatric
wings of local hospitals, he
said.
State lawmakers on
Wednesday convened the
first meeting of a steering
committee that will pro-
pose policies to keep men-
tally ill Oregonians out of
the criminal justice system.
The effort is financed by the
U.S. Department of Justice’s
Bureau of Justice Assis-
tance and The Pew Charita-
ble Trusts.
Researchers at the non-
profit Council of State Gov-
ernments Justice Center are
helping the committee iden-
tify the number of Orego-
nians who are arrested most
often. Those individuals tend
to have mental health or sub-
stance abuse challenges, said
Steve Allen, a policy advisor
at the council.
“The best way to sup-
port people with behavioral
health needs is to connect
them with treatment in their
local communities” rather
than sending them to jail,
said Allen.
Paris Achen: pachen@
portlandtribune.com or
503-363-0888. Achen is a
reporter for the Portland
Tribune working for the
Oregon Capital Bureau, a
collaboration of EO Media
Group, Pamplin Media
Group and Salem Reporter.
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