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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 31, 2019)
OFF PAGE ONE Saturday, August 31, 2019 East Oregonian A13 McBee: Beloved dentist, community activist passes away Continued from Page A1 best, was his passion for Pendleton, his savvy as a community leader, a strong sense of ethics, a willing- ness to take unpopular stands and his ability to transform a stranger into a friend in mere minutes. McBee had staying power. He was the local Rotary club’s longest contin- uous member at 55 years. He served 43 years on the Pend- leton Foundation Trust. For- ty-eight years with the Elks and longtime member of the Knights of Pythias and Main Street Cowboys. He led the Pendleton School Board through some tough issues and when he finally decided to go off in 1971, 130 teachers signed a petition imploring him to stay. For a full account of McBee’s community ser- vice, see his obituary. He led a full and rich life until congestive heart failure finally got the best of him this week. McBee and his wife, Car- olyn, met at the University of Oregon on a blind date. Carolyn taught in the Chi- cago school system while John attended dental school at Loyola University. After moving to Pendleton, she taught at Washington Ele- mentary School until their first of five children arrived in 1959. Stories of McBee’s soft- hearted approach to life abound. Susie Stuvland, who once lived around the block from McBee, remembers the den- tist soothing her traumatized daughter. Stuvland’s 8-year- old daughter Sally had been brushing her teeth one night when a tooth broke into mul- tiple pieces that fell into the sink. Not knowing what to do, Susie, her husband Dave and Sally — all in pajamas — trooped over to see McBee, who was a family friend. “He comes to the door in his robe,” Stuvland said. “Sally is hysterically crying. John sat down and talked to her. He was so sweet and kind.” Turns out nothing was amiss, the tooth had fallen out on schedule, albeit a tad dramatically. The story, Stuvland said, “epitomized how and who he was — he was so gracious and kind.” Houk remembered McBee Contributed photo John and Carolyn McBee look happily at wellwishers on their wedding day. Thursday would have been their 66th anniver- sary. opening his office to treat a member of a delegation from Pendleton’s sister city in Japan. “He had a terrible tooth- ache,” Houk said. “John went down and fixed his tooth.” “He was a guy with the biggest heart,” said daugh- ter-in-law Debbie McBee. “He wasn’t a black-and-white person, but he thought people shouldn’t cheat the system. He expected people to have the same virtuous character he did. He was a good exam- ple of how one person could make a difference.” More than anything, she said, “he loved Pendleton. He was all about making Pendle- ton a better place.” Kevin Hale said he sat in McBee’s dental chair as a child and later served with McBee on the Pendleton Foundation Board. He said he already misses the man’s unfiltered leadership. “He was the diplomatic, but decisive voice of reason,” Hale said. “He had strong opinions, but the majority of the time, he was spot-on.” John Jr., a Pendleton sur- geon, will miss his father’s ability to strike up conversa- tions with total strangers, “My dad was the friendli- est guy in the world,” McBee said. The elder McBee was a three-sport athlete at Pend- leton High School, graduat- ing in 1947. He attended hun- dreds of PHS sporting events and loved his Oregon Ducks. On a recent day, he called grandson, Patrick McBee, just to talk about the Seattle Mariners. Tom Melton, a local his- torian of Pendleton athletics, remembers McBee’s efforts to keep the OSAA 2A bas- ketball tournament in town. “Redmond wanted the tournament and courted the heck out of the OSAA,” Melton said. McBee, who spearheaded the effort to retain the lucra- tive event, pushed back hard. “They proved to OSAA that there’s no better place for the tournament,” he said. McBee loved to hunt deer, ducks, turkeys and upland game. This spring, he went on his final turkey hunt with his son John at their ranch in Echo. “I drove him right to a cottonwood tree and sat him in a chair,” John said. “He could barely lift his gun, but he got ’er done.” The elder McBee bagged two turkeys that day. Jim Krout, a retired PHS administrator and fellow Rotarian, visited McBee shortly before his death. They talked about hunting and then McBee grilled Krout about the most recent Rotary meet- ing in which the speaker was Blue Mountain Community College President Dennis Bailey-Fougnier. “He was still interested,” Krout said. McBee wasn’t perfect, as no person is. His son con- firmed the fact by admitting that his dad was constantly losing things. “He lost his cellphones, his cameras, his gloves,” McBee said. “He lost a brand new hunting hat on our first outing. He was not materialistic so he didn’t pay attention.” McBee may have lost many inanimate objects, but he won’t soon lose the love and gratitude he garnered during a lifetime of service. A funeral mass is sched- uled for 10:30, Wednesday at St. Mary’s Church with private burial following at Olney Cemetery. Creek: City working for approval to ready park for spring rains Continued from Page A1 City Manager Robb Cor- bett said the state allows that kind of in-stream work from Dec. 1-March 31. “We have a real short time to get this done,” he said. But he expressed confi- dence in getting the permits during a meeting with McKay Creek area residents Wednes- day night and said the city hired the engineering firm of Anderson Perry & Associates Inc. to shoulder that work. “We feel they give us the best opportunity to be suc- cessful,” Corbett said. Removing the 2,000 cubic feet of gravel from where the creek runs through and along Community Park required an emergency permit from the Oregon Department of State Lands. The agency granted the permit because the city owns the park where the creek continued to flood. Brad Baird, president of Anderson Perry, explained getting per- mits to remove six gravel bars, including one he described as “huge,” takes a lot more steps. His team has to conduct a biological assessment, a stream flow assessment, and come up with strategies to allow for fish passage. The typical process, Baird said, takes 12-15 months. But he and Corbett are hopeful this effort will move fast. That’s based in some measure on last week’s Kai- zen meeting, where Corbett, Baird, other stakeholders pitched their needs to the the alphabet soup of controlling and regulating agencies. They said those agencies agreed to review documents within a couple of weeks rather than months. “That was the first time I heard ‘fast track’ and ‘biolog- ical assessment’ in the same sentence,” Baird said. The city also has key part- ners in this effort. The Uma- tilla County Board of Com- missioners in August set its goals for the fiscal year, and addressing the flood- ing throughout the county made the list. County Com- missioner John Shafer also attended the Wednesday night meeting. The Lower McKay Creek Water Control District also is on board. Chair Bill Wohl- ford said much of McKey Creek needs restoration work, and that has to start somewhere. It makes sense, then, for the city to focus on the area where the housing density is higher. He also said he was about to walk away from any hope of obtaining permits this year until that Kaizen meeting. Still, he remained cautious about getting the permits. City crews surveyed the six gravel bars Thursday and Friday. City engineer Tim Simons said the rough estimate is the debris totals 4,000-6,000 cubic yards. Anderson Perry will crunch the survey numbers to get a better estimate, he said, and calculate how deep to dig so the channel can carry 1,500 cubic feet of water per second. “We’re trying to get back basically to that number,” Simons said, because that capacity reduces the risk of flooding. The emergency excava- tion cost about $13,000. Baird said Anderson Perry’s bill for this permitting work could be in the $40,000-$45,000 range. This work would only deal with removing mate- rial and not restoration of the creek, and working outside the rules would not fly with state and federal regulators. “They would shut you down so fast, it will make your head spin,” he said. The city might get per- mission in February, he said, which would allow a few weeks to complete the project by deadline. However, per- mits would be good to do the work the next winter. The community group McKay Creek Solutions Committee also is pushing for the permits. Mark Mul- vihill spoke for the group and urged patience. “This is going to be a long, long time of government work,” he said. “I think we’re kidding ourselves if this is a quick fix.” The larger picture involves an analysis of the whole McKay Creek basin. “We’re starting to pursue funding for that now,” Corbett said. The study would show the creek’s route post-flood, which could inform home building in the area, and establish a list of priorities. Baird said the study is the map to funding for work on the creek. Corbett said the basin study would be a long, pub- lic process, and encour- aged locals to stay steadfast throughout. “The community’s voice,” he said, “needs to be heard in that.” Rail: County working to settle land deal Continued from Page A1 Staff photo by Ben Lonergan Imelda Tejeda, left, and Kristi Brown pose for a portrait following a dress-up competition they organized for Labor Day at Marlette Homes in Hermiston on Friday. Rosie: Paying homage Continued from Page A1 While Marlette’s employ- ees have been throwing hol- iday costume contests at work for years, this was the first time one was held for Labor Day and the first time the contest transformed into a moment of empowerment. Originally, the idea was to hold a regular costume con- test with a theme of famous women in history. But as the workers started to dis- cuss their costume plans for Friday, it became clear the contest would be hard to judge because almost every- one wanted to be Rosie the Riveter. So it was decided that everybody would dress up like Rosie, and Brown and Tejeda took the initiative to make sure it happened. “We believe it’s import- ant for women to be in the workforce,” Brown said of their motivation. Brown purchased fab- ric earlier in the week and Tejeda began turning it into bandannas. After about two days of work, Tejeda had enough for the women who wanted to participate while everybody was responsi- ble for putting together the remainder of their outfit. Other than making the bandannas, the plan went off without a hitch. “All it took was commu- nication,” Tejeda said. According to David Cam- pana, Marlette’s training and hiring manager, the manu- facturer employs 215 people between the office and pro- duction floor, roughly 70 of whom are women. Many of those working the floor, such as Brown and Tejeda, partic- ipated on Friday. Tejeda, 34, has built cab- inets while working on and off at Marlette for the last five years. And Brown, 52, has spent the last six months wiring main panels but has worked on the manufactur- ing floor for five years in total. “We’re doing some of the same work as the women who were doing the men’s jobs while they went to war,” Tejeda said. Generations later, the idea that Rosie the Riveter rep- resented still resonates with American women who have progressively filled a greater portion of the labor force and continue to integrate into manufacturing jobs that had once explicitly excluded them. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, wom- en’s participation in the workforce has grown from 32.7% in 1948 to 56.8% in 2016. But while women’s employment in manufactur- ing jobs rose constantly until peaking in 1990 at 33.2%, a 2016 U.S. Census Bureau report showed that figure has fallen to 29% since. For Tejada and Brown, however; they’ve found a place where they feel valued and respected as women in manufacturing. “I love working here and the way we treat each other,” Tejada said. “We get pats on the back when we deserve them,” Brown added, laughing. Wednesday, Aug. 21, to the board to the Malheur County Court, and the board of Mal- heur County Development Corp., the public company established to run the project. Smith is a Republican state legislator from Heppner. While cast as a new man- date, records and interviews show that county officials were warned six months ago that the state would only fund what was immediately needed to get a rail center built and operating. Smith acknowledged that in an email to the Enterprise last week. “This has been part of the discussion with the state,” Smith said. He said he expects negoti- ations with the state to make the case that all of the land sought by the county is key to the project. But if the state doesn’t relent, the county faces challenges. The Malheur County Court a year ago approved deals to buy two parcels for a total of $3.3 million. One is featured as the prime site for the shipping center — a 293- acre lot owned by the Farmer family — and the other is a 76-acre lot owned by Nyssa Industries. Both are situated along Union Pacific tracks north of Nyssa. Smith said the state told him last week that money would be provided for only 55 acres. That means Malheur County could have to come up with millions to cover the balance or convince the Farmer family to break up the lot to sell a smaller portion for the rail center. Jim Farmer, president of Fort Boise Produce, didn’t respond to a telephone mes- sage seeking comment. “There are many ways to acquire real estate” with- out the state funding, Smith wrote to the Enterprise. He said that “negotiations continue with the owners of the Nyssa Industries prop- erty” — priced at $394,650 under the existing contract. But Larry Wilson, a county commissioner and minor stockholder in Nyssa Industries, said the county doesn’t have the money. “The county can’t jump in on it, even if we had the money. That’s out of the ques- tion,” said Wilson. In an Aug. 9 worksheet submitted to the state, Smith allocated $3.2 million in state money to buy all that land, representing the Farmer and Nyssa Industries ground. “It is the position of the Malheur County Develop- ment Corporation that the parcel known as the Farmer property is the minimum amount of real estate needed to operate efficiently,” Smith wrote. Smith said he was aware since last year the state wanted to fund real estate for the project only under very specific conditions. In September 2018, the county reported to the state it needed approximately 100 acres to build the rail center, create enough parking and build a staging area. “This leaves an additional approximately 190 acres for future development,” the county said, not accounting for the additional 76 acres under contract nearby. Smith said last week that officials wanted to buy all 366 acres at the site to “ensure the best opportunity for the county.” State transportation department officials in Feb- ruary told Smith’s team there would be no blank check regarding land purchases for the facility. A Feb. 22 fact sheet given to Smith emphasized that the land purchases for the project are a “reimbursable expense when it is reasonable, nec- essary and directly related to the project. Additional land would not be an eligible expense.” State officials presented the form to Smith the day after he appeared before the Oregon Transportation Commission with a presen- tation that covered the land purchases. “It’s the land needed for the reload facility and the sup- porting infrastructure around it, such as the access roads, not for developing an indus- trial park or other supplemen- tary uses. It is for the reload facility,” said Erik Havig, transportation department planning section manager. Havig said the state “went through all that with the proj- ect sponsors, that the land needs to fit the size and scope of your facility.” “We didn’t put any acre- age on it because we are not in final design, but it is not to be land speculation or any- thing,” said Havig. Wilson said last week he was surprised to learn of the restriction. “I think, once again, they (the state) approved our proj- ect and then kind of changed it after the fact. But we are trying to set up a meeting with the state to iron out the problems,” said Wilson. Grant Kitamura, president of the Malheur Economic Development Corp., declined to go into detail about the issue. “We are working on it,” said Kitamura. The dispute over real estate may have long-term implications for the facility and isn’t the first challenge for the project. The project has faced intense state scrutiny since January when its operating plan — including queries about rail car availability — were questioned.
