Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 2018)
Wednesday, November 21, 2018 OFF PAGE ONE GIVING: Dinner kicking off the Red Kettle Campaign doubled in attendance Page 12A East Oregonian Continued from 1A row Counties reported total revenue of $200,821 in 2013 but a net loss of $26,370, according to its tax filings, which are pub- lic records because it is a nonprofit organization. The most recent filing avail- able from Guidestar.org, which specializes in gath- ering and providing data on nonprofits, shows the local United Way had total reve- nue in 2015 of $241,270 and cleared $23,333. Nicholson said donations are returning to better levels but the days of United Way of Umatilla and Morrow Counties seeing $500,000 in revenue are done. “There’s just too much competition, so many causes,” she said. The Salvation Army in Pendleton is feeling that pinch. Capt. Ricky Scruggs said revenue is down $60,000 from last year. But the dinner kick- ing off the Red Kettle Cam- paign doubled in atten- dance from 2017 and sold out. Scruggs attributed that to the board stepping up to fight the decline in revenue with a better push for the big fundraiser. While that is good, he said, the charity has plenty of rungs to climb to get back to better funding totals. To help that, The Sal- vation Arm got a jump on the giving season. Scruggs said the bell ringers and ket- tles usually go out follow- ing Thanksgiving and con- clude Dec. 24, Christmas Eve. The end date remains the same, he said, but the campaign began Friday. The Salvation Army will have up to five kettles in Pendle- ton and five in Hermiston. He said the funds they bring in cover about 25 percent of organization’s cost. Nicholson said nonprofits are the same as other organi- zations and must adapt and seek new ways to gain rev- enue to keep providing ser- vices. That’s why the United Way of Umatilla and Mor- row Counties followed the United Way of Walla Walla County and joined the “100 Docs Campaign,” she said, in which a handful of local doctors ask 100 more doc- tors to give $1,000. “If you can get 100 docs to give $1,000 each, you just made $100,000,” she said. “I haven’t gotten any $1,000 checks yet, but I’m hopeful. And even if we got one, that would $1,000 more than we had before.” Her organization also is encouraging banks and other professional establish- ments to allow employees to wear jeans for a day if they give $5 to the United Way. That move resulted in $265 last year with nary any pub- licity, she said, so maybe this year that could jump to $1,000. “That’s a lot of hot meals,” Nicholson said. She also made a pitch for Giving Tuesday, which refers to the Tuesday after Thanksgiving Thursday, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. She said the sav- ings from those events could help local nonprofits. “If you’re a person who doesn’t need a food bank or a domestic violence shel- ter,” she said, “it’s easy to just say we have these won- Staff photos by E.J. Harris Jack Hodgdon of Pendleton drops a donation into a Salvation Army bell ringer’s donation bucket outside of the Bi-Mart on Tuesday in Pendleton. Bell ring- er Kevin Jernstrom of Pendle- ton wishes customers to try and keep warn while volunteering for the Sal- vation Army outside of Bi-Mart on Tuesday in Pendleton. This was Jernstrom’s first time vol- unteering as a bell ringer. derful services and forget they won’t be here if we don’t support them.” But money is not the only way locals can give. Scruggs said The Sal- vation Army needs vol- unteers, even on the ket- tles. The volunteers bring in more donations, he said. And while volunteers pro- liferate for The Salvation Army’s Thanksgiving din- ner, the charity can use vol- unteers all year. Combating homeless- ness and helping people meet basic needs, he said, does not go away with the holidays. VOLUNTEERS: With enough help warming station could be open 24 hours a day Continued from 1A as soon as she’s done. Richter said she con- tinues to come back to the warming station year after year because of the people she serves. She described the home- less who patronize the warming station as consis- tently grateful for the ser- vices the nonprofit Neigh- bor 2 Neighbor Pendleton provides, eager to help out with chores around the facil- ity and enforcing the rules when a resident starts acting erratically. Richter said a lodger has never complained about any of the meals the warm- ing station has served, even the year when volunteer staff had to figure out creative ways to re-serve Top Ramen on multiple nights. Although she isn’t always sure of their validity, Rich- ter finds value in the stories from the people who stay at the warming station. One time, a man passed through who claimed he had navigated the world by boat. She was skeptical until he produced a magazine article that profiled his journeys. Richter thanks the busi- nesses that donate food to the station, including Big John’s Hometown Pizza, Roosters Country Kitchen, and Elizabethan Manor, an assisted living facility. While Richter is a dedi- cated volunteer, she echoed Neighbor 2 Neighbor’s con- cern over the lack of volun- teers at the warming station. If there were more people willing to volunteer their time, Richter said, the warm- ing station could be open 24 hours per day. — Antonio Sierra Tina Fox | CASA Tina Fox is a big believer in the power one person has to make a difference. That’s why she became a CASA — a court-appointed special advocate — in April 2016. “We’re a caring, stable person a child can count on during the upheaval they experience as they go into foster care,” she said. CASAs get to know each child assigned to them, and their parents, and study the ins and outs of their case. They act as advocates for the children, share their opinion with judges on what’s best for the child and encourage parents to take care of what they need to in their life to become the best option for their child. Without a third- party adult advocating for a child in the system, she said, they can quickly become “pawns in somebody else’s game.” Fox said so far all of the children for whom she has been a CASA have ultimately been reunited with their par- ents. She finds it rewarding when she runs into them in the grocery store and sees a loving interaction between the parent and child, or when she sees the child doing well in school. Often the problems that caused a child to be taken from a home in the first place stem from the parent not ever being taught basic skills they need, she said, which creates a “breeding ground for failure.” “I feel like people just need a little bit of encourage- ment and to believe in them- selves, and if they get a little encouragement, it’s amazing what they can do,” she said. Fox said she has always enjoyed spending time with children. When a health challenge stopped her from being able to work full- time, she chose being a CASA as a way to continue contributing. “I was able to work around my own schedule and slowly build up over time,” she said. In July, after a grant allowed Umatilla-Morrow County Head Start to hire a part-time volunteer coor- dinator in Pendleton, Fox stepped into that position. She continues to volunteer as a CASA outside her paid hours as a coordinator. Fox said she often gets calls from foster parents, ask- ing that a CASA be assigned to the child they are foster- ing. Fox said she doesn’t like putting children on a waiting list, but that’s what she has to do. Even with some CASAs taking multiple cases at once, in October there were 73 children with a CASA in Umatilla and Morrow coun- ties, and 106 on the waiting list. “It’s sad there’s so much need and we can’t meet it,” she said. — Jade McDowell Susan Badger Doyle | Heritage Station Museum Digging through history is Susan Badger Doyle’s thing. Doyle, 77, volunteers at the Umatilla County His- torical Society’s Heritage Station Museum, Pendle- ton, helping to document and catalog the vast collec- tion, including the 14,000 old photos that captured something specific to Pend- leton or the rest of Umatilla County. The museum has thousands more of general images, such as period agri- cultural equipment. “I really love history, and historical items,” she said. “They have stories. They just bring the past alive to me.” Take the museum’s acquisition of a tin container that resembles a small coffee pot. The cylinder has a han- dle and a lid and spout. The underside of the spout has a spike. Doyle said it was for drinking beer. Beer cans at the time lacked pull tabs, thus the spike to puncture the can. Doyle studied anthropol- ogy and afterward earned a Ph.D. in American stud- ies in 1991 from the Univer- sity of New Mexico. She is an author and was director of the California Trail Interpre- tive Center, Elko, Nevada. Doyle is a document editor and handled original diaries for the Montana Historical Society’s 2000 publication of “Journeys to the Land of Gold: Emigrant Diaries from the Bozeman Trail, 1863-1866.” Document editors work with primary sources, such as original manuscripts, she explained, but they don’t change any words. Rather, they add footnotes and the like to provide context and valuable information to the reader. Modern museums are the same, she said, with the focus on interpretation to help people understand history. She and her husband, radiologist Roger Blair, moved to Pendleton in 1997, and right off they became members of the Umatilla County Historical Society. She served on its board and was president, but she did not start volunteering until 2011. She said that came at the nudging from the Historical Society’s Executive Director Barbara Lund-Jones. “They just needed some- one to work on the collec- tion,” Doyle said. “I volun- teered and started right in.” The museum receives all kinds of items, she said, from embroidered pillow cases to the old printing press from The Weston Leader, which ceased operations in the mid-1940s. Items that have a story are real treasures. “We want the stories that go with them,” she said. Doyle said she has no desire to slow down. She said that is the advantage of retirement. — Phil Wright Chris Hull | ASPIRE As high schoolers try to figure out what they want to do after graduation, Chris Hull helps them by asking the right questions. The retired Hermiston and Stanfield teacher is an ASPIRE mentor, volunteer- ing weekly at Hermiston High School. Each week she meets with four to five students, seeing a total of about 20 a month. She talks to students about their goals after high school, and helps them understand how to get there. “The ASPIRE mentoring program is designed to help kids figure out what they want to be,” Hull said. Though she’s long worked with kids, both as a special education teacher and as a court-appointed special advocate, this is Hull’s first year as an ASPIRE mentor. The program is optional, and students can join at any grade level. Hull said she tends to see more junior and senior students. “I get a variety,” Hull said. “There are kids that don’t have a clue, and aren’t really motivated to be think- ing about it. One girl told me she didn’t really have a pas- sion — she just wanted to get out of high school, get a job and have a house.” In those situations, Hull said she will encourage stu- dents to try and come up with some ideas for their next meeting. “My assignment to her was, ‘I want you to think about something you really like,’” she said. Hull will also do some of her own research to help stu- dents. One boy told her he wanted to be a physician’s assistant, and for their next meeting, Hull came with some information about the education requirements for that job. Hull also helps students figure out how they’ll pay for their plans. “I always ask them, ‘Are you independently wealthy? Do you have money buried away?’ They always look at me and giggle,” Hull said. “We talk about scholarships, letters of recommendation, how it’s important to get those done early.” Though she retired in 2003, Hull has continued to regularly attend school events, and almost every school board meeting. “I don’t know if it’s from different generations,” she said. “People who stay with jobs for a long time. I’ve worked in two places, and they were both in Uma- tilla County. You get a sense of loyalty to the place you worked, and I think that comes from building close relationships with the people you work with.” — Jayati Ramakrishnan ODDS: Keyshawn was one of 250 applicants for the Beat the Odds scholarship Continued from 1A to settle in Pendleton when he was in third grade, although his family’s life was still tran- sitory as he spent much of his fifth grade year moving from motel to motel. “I’ve had to grow up a lot faster than other kids,” he said. Keyshawn said his father hasn’t been involved with his life since he was 2, and when his mom “didn’t do the right things” — he didn’t want to go into detail out of respect for his mother and his mom declined to comment — his living situation became a lot more tenuous. That’s when Stacey and Ken Jacobs stepped in. Stacey, who was a librar- ian at Washington Elemen- tary School at the time, remembers Keyshawn came into school one day upset that being separated from his mother meant that he would have to move away and ruin his perfect attendance. She recalled that Key- shawn as a very bright stu- dent who always excelled in school, and along with her husband Ken, a teacher at Sunridge Middle School, they agreed to take in Keyshawn, with his brother eventually joining him. Keyshawn stayed with the Jacobs family on-and-off for a couple of months between fifth and sixth grades. Since then, Keyshawn said his fami- ly’s situation has grown much more stable and his mom is now his “biggest supporter.” Keyshawn said he was one of 250 applicants for the Beat the Odds scholarship, a field that was eventually trimmed to 25. Once he made the cut, he did a video interview with the Stand For Children Ore- gon board, which helped him secure one of the 13 scholarships. Lindner, the nonprofit’s marketing and communi- cations director, said Stand for Children was able to expand its group of win- ners from 10 to 13 and the amount it awarded to each recipient from $10,000 to $16,000 each. Stand for Children Ore- gon usually has all the win- ners speak at an event in Port- land, but because the winning group had been expanded, the organization needed to select one student to speak on their behalf. Keyshawn was bestowed that honor, and he was able to share his story for a new audi- ence once again. Stand for Children also produced a sleek video that summarized his story and recorded scenes of him run- ning track or singing in the choir. As the video nears its end, Keyshawn said he wants to attend Oregon State Univer- sity and pursue a career in human services. “If you have a lot of hard- ships, then take those and make them into opportuni- ties,” he says in the video as a last piece of advice. “If you’re positive, then you’ll have a better outlook on life and you’ll have a better out- look on education and every- thing else in your life.”
