INSIDE: High school coaches talk about COVID-19 vaccinations | PAGE 12
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2021
145th Year, No. 153
$1.50
WINNER OF 16 ONPA AWARDS IN 2021
Remembering Dora
Grandsons honor grandmother they never met
By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian
P
ENDLETON — Dora
Rhodes’ new tomb-
stone gleamed in the
mid-afternoon sun.
A knot of mourners gath-
ered in a semicircle around the
grave. They prayed and laughed
and shed a tear or two. They
sang “Amazing Grace” and
other old hymns.
By all appearances, the
gathering on Saturday, Oct. 9,
at Pendleton’s Olney Cemetery
seemed a typical farewell for a
beloved family member.
Except for one curious fact:
None of the 10 people assem-
bled had ever met Dora.
She had died at age 33
almost 100 years earlier on Jan.
6, 1922. The oldest person in
attendance was Dora’s 90-year-
old granddaughter, Marilyn
Williams.
The idea to honor Dora
evolved after her two grand-
sons stopped by Olney Ceme-
tery to fi nd their grandmother’s
fi nal resting place. They located
the grave but the headstone had
vanished.
Jack Rhodes, a retired news-
paper editor from California,
and Don Rhodes, a retired
banker from Washington,
decided to have a new grave
marker made. Then they made
plans for a small ceremony to
honor the grandmother they’d
never met. Eight other family
members joined them around
the grave on that sunny, breezy
Oct. 9. Offi ciating was Pastor
Patty Nance, of the Hermiston
First United Methodist Church.
Jack Rhodes, the unoffi cial
family historian, shared what
he had uncovered about Dora’s
short life as the mourners stood
near Dora’s new gravestone.
The upshot, Jack said, is that
it was miraculous that Dora was
ever born. When her father,
John Jacob Davis, was a baby,
his parents, David L. and Eliza
Davis, took him on a perilous
journey from Iowa to California
where they planned to search
for gold. The family traveled by
boat and mule to Old Panama
City where they aimed to board
an ocean liner called Golden
Gate bound for San Francisco.
When they couldn’t procure
tickets, they instead boarded
the Victorine. The ship, Jack
explained, was skippered by
“the quintessential evil ship
captain.”
According to writing by
Dora’s uncle William Murray,
the dishonest captain sold a
good deal of the provisions.
After 25 days, the rations were
nearly gone. Each day, adults
each received a small biscuit
and half a pint of coffee for
breakfast and half a cup of tea
for supper. Babies got noth-
ing. John Jacob’s parents and
uncle gave him pinches of
their biscuits and a mouthful of
coff ee every day. According to
his uncle, the infant “spent his
awake time crying for some-
thing to eat or drink.”
The passengers spent time
unsuccessfully trying to trap
rats on the ship or fi shed for
Jack Rhodes/Contributed Photo
Dora Davis Rhodes poses with her second husband, Arthur
Rhodes, sometime before her death at age 33 in 1922.
boobies. When they hooked
one, they ate meat, blood,
entrails and almost every other
part. They buried at sea the 10
passengers who starved on the
journey. After more than 78
days at sea, they made it to San
Diego and a couple of months
later to San Francisco. John
Jacob, Dora’s future father, had
survived. Dora’s birth hung by
nothing more than a slender
thread during that desperate
journey.
“If things had turned out
diff erently, Dora would never
have been born,” Jack said,
“and neither would any of us.”
See Dora, Page A11
Senate hearing
on Sams to head
National Parks
set for Oct. 19
By GARY A. WARNER
Oregon Capital Bureau
WASHINGTON — A politically polar-
ized Senate has set Oct. 19 for a hearing
on the nomination of former Oregon tribal
leader Chuck Sams as the next director of the
National Parks Service.
Sams, the longtime administrator of the
Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian
Reservation in Oregon, will
appear before the Senate
Energy & Natural Resources
Committee.
Sams is the latest in a
series of nominations by
President Joe Biden that is
part of an eff ort to restore
Sams
environmental policies
rolled back under President Donald Trump.
If confi rmed, Sams would be the fi rst
American Indian to serve as National Parks
Service director. He is Cayuse, Walla Walla,
Cocopah and Yankton Sioux.
He also would be a rare outsider to head
the service founded in 1916. The direc-
tor manages the 63 national parks such as
Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon and
Crater Lake.
The agency’s 21,000 employees manage
423 sites making up 85 million acres in all 50
states, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories.
The hearing likely will include questions
about Biden’s order announced Friday, Oct.
8, to reverse Trump’s decision to reduce the
size of protected areas of national monu-
ments in Utah and New England.
See Sams, Page A11
Report shows
some students
falling off -track
Pandemic skews some data;
distance learning cements
inequities in public schools
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
Family members and Pastor Patty Nance gather on Saturday, Oct. 9,
2021, at Olney Cemetery, Pendleton, to remember Dora Rhodes who
died almost 100 years ago. Her grandsons replaced her graver mark-
er after fi nding the original was gone.
UMATILLA COUNTY — For the second
straight year, local districts are working with
incomplete report cards.
On Thursday, Oct. 7, the Oregon Depart-
ment of Education released its report cards
for every district in the state, but the COVID-
19 pandemic infl uenced the 2020-21 school
year enough that much of the data came with
caveats. For instance, participation in state
testing dropped across the state in light of the
pandemic. If participation fell below a certain
threshold in certain districts or among certain
groups of students, the state either suppressed
the data outright or advised people against
comparing the data.
Matt Yoshioka, the curriculum instruc-
tion and assessment director for the Pend-
leton School District, said much of the data
from the report card is unusable. He pointed
to McKay Creek Elementary School, which
reported more than 95% of its students quali-
fi ed for free or reduced lunch after document-
ing a 41% pre-pandemic.
See Report, Page A11
Community rallies behind hopeful parents
Sarah and Zach Gaulke
are trying to adopt
By ERICK PETERSON
East Oregonian
PENDLETON — When one Pend-
leton couple could not have a child on
their own, several people and a few
organizations throughout Umatilla
County began helping.
Sarah and Zach Gaulke, who are
both 33 and teachers, want to adopt
a child. They have been married 11
years, and have tried to have a child
for the past fi ve years.
Sarah dreams of motherhood
Sarah, a Pendleton High School
special education teacher, remem-
bered when she was a small girl, play-
ing with dolls and someday becoming
Mary Adams/Contributed Photo
Zach and Sarah Gaulke of Pendleton pose for a recent photo to express their in-
tent to adopt a child. The couple is raising money to make their desire a reality.
a mother. Born in California, her
family moved to Indiana briefl y and
then to Hermiston, where she spent a
childhood thinking of her future. She
would become a mom, and maybe a
stay-at-home mom, if that were possi-
ble.
“It’s who I am,” she said of her
desire to be a mom. And while her
career thoughts changed — when she
went to college, she began wanting
to be a teacher — her feelings about
motherhood have not.
She does not care about whether
the child is a boy or girl. Neither does
she care if the child has a disability. In
fact, the agency with which she and
Zach are dealing, told her she and Zach
are extremely accommodating. They
have approved an unusually long list of
disabilities they would accept.
Sarah reasons, if they were to
birth a child, there would be a chance
for the child to have any number of
conditions. It would be up to God, she
said. So, they will leave it up to God
in the adoption. She said, they will
love the child, regardless.
See Adoption, Page A11