A4
Opinion
wallowa.com
July 13, 2016
Wallowa County Chieftain
Dallas
slayings
hit home
W
henever there is
such terrible na-
tional news in-
volving law enforcement we
are reminded of how lucky Voice of the Chieftain
we are here in Wallowa
County to have friends and neighbors fulilling the oath to
protect and serve.
Our rural way of life here often seems a world apart from
the concrete and steel settings we see on TV or read about
that are illed with the anger, chaos and violence reaching
dangerous levels in our country.
But are we really that removed?
Local law enforcement oficers — Enterprise police, the
Sheriff’s Ofice, State Police and others — know the job
comes with great risk. They are accustomed to that risk, and
equally accustomed to mourning their fallen brethren across
the nation. Or sometimes right here in Oregon; just last Feb-
ruary, Seaside Sgt. Jason Goodding was killed while trying
to arrest a transient on a probation violation warrant.
The Dallas shootings are far from business as usual,
however. It’s one thing to place yourself in danger to serve
the public. It’s quite another to be randomly targeted and
murdered in the streets simply for wearing the badge.
Sadly, that was exactly the fate of Dallas oficers Lorne
Ahrens, Michael Smith, Michael Krol, Patrick Zamarripa
and Brent Thompson.
It has been our experience that local enforcement ofi-
cers tackle their jobs with the utmost respect, even on the
rare days when that job has required lethal action. When
every second mattered, they stepped up to the responsibility
because they had sworn to protect their communities.
These men and women are human, with all of the foibles
and frailties of the condition. But we have witnessed them
shouldering incredible responsibilities.
They are our neighbors. We see them outside of their
jobs, volunteering or competing at the local rodeos, inter-
acting with children and enjoying our local festivals and
celebrations. We know their wives, teach their children and
often know their family history going back generations.
Shortly before the Dallas shooting, a young boy at the
Enterprise Library was holding the door open for other pa-
trons, including new Enterprise Police Chief Joel Fish.
Chief Fish, entering the library, immediately stopped to
acknowledge the youngster’s thoughtful actions and gave
him a police sticker.
Chief Fish’s wife Katherine said the incident sums up
her husband in many ways.
“He feels that children are our future and wants to show
the positive side of law enforcement. It’s really hard for law
enforcement right now. … We are very thankful to be here
(in Wallowa County).”
We all can agree that American citizens shouldn’t be
dying during routine trafic stops. We also can agree that
oficers attempting to keep the peace shouldn’t be targeted
by snipers.
The path out of this mess is complex and dificult.. It
forces all of us to dig deeper for root causes and re-evaluate
our standards for multiple aspects of society. We suspect
that most solutions will come at the community level, par-
ticularly as our national leaders are so focused on arguing
over who is most corrupt.
We’re OK with that. Our community is exceptional, as
are our friends and neighbors who are sworn to protect and
serve.
This week is an apt time to acknowledge them and offer
our profound gratitude for their service.
— Chieftain staff
EDITORIAL
USPS No. 665-100
P.O. Box 338 • Enterprise, OR 97828
Ofice: 209 NW First St., Enterprise, Ore.
Phone: 541-426-4567 • Fax: 541-426-3921
Wallowa County’s Newspaper Since 1884
Enterprise, Oregon
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Contents copyright © 2015. All rights reserved. Reproduction
without permission is prohibited.
Volume 134
Growing up tough, like Sonny
I lived in a county that had a popula-
tion of over 600,000 and I was over 50
years old before I knew anyone who had
written a book. I moved to a county that
has a population of 7,000 and I have met
and become friends with a dozen people
who have a published book. The same
goes for artists, sculptors and musicians
here. So much for my kids telling me that
I was moving to a cultural wasteland.
Lately I have read two really great
books by local authors — “Temperance
Creek,” by Pam Royes and “Damn, I
Shot My Horse,” by Fred Hauptman.
Pam’s book has a lot about the Snake
River country and is beautifully written.
Fred’s book is about growing up pret-
ty much on your own. Fred’s parents
dropped him off in the middle of nowhere
Nevada and left him alone to prove up on
their homestead in his early teens. Child
protective services would be on that in
this day and age.
Fred’s book reminded me of a friend
I used to cowboy with, Sonny Tureman.
Sonny was from around John Day and
was older than me. He was a real hard
case, probably a product of the times and
his upbringing. Sonny was a tough as
anyone I ever knew. When he was a kid
growing up in Grant County he tended
OPEN RANGE
Barrie Qualle
to get into trouble occasionally. Unfortu-
nately for him, his uncle was the coun-
ty sheriff. When he was apprehended,
his uncle would make Sonny nail down
loose boards on the board sidewalks they
used to have in downtown John Day. The
old ladies in town would see Sonny back
on duty, shake their heads and scold him
about being bad again.
When Sonny was about 13, his parents
and uncle had enough of his indiscre-
tions. They loaded him up and took him
to a remote ranch where they ran in 40
head of horses that had not been touched
and told Sonny to have them ready to
go by fall. These were not 2 or 3 years
old; they were 4- to 8-year-old horses
that were feather-footed, big enough to
really buck and were tough minded. His
parents or uncle would bring Sonny gro-
ceries and tobacco every two weeks and
check on his progress. Sonny would tie
up a leg on one of the horses, throw the
saddle on, get on and pull the slip knot on
the leg. He told me that on the really bad
ones he would head and tail ive together
and get on the one in the middle. I sug-
gested that might make for a pretty good
wreck. Sonny admitted this was true but
they couldn’t buck as hard that way. He
did recommend not falling off if you tried
this.
Living alone and being on your own at
that age can have an odd effect on people.
Sonny could stand his own company and
if he didn’t like you he totally ignored
you and didn’t talk to you. It was like you
weren’t even there. If you annoyed him
you could suffer his wrath physically, or
if lucky that day just receive a good cuss-
ing. Sonny could string combinations of
cuss words unheard by almost everyone.
One day we were driving yearlings
down the road when the mail lady ig-
nored Sonny’s request to stop and she
turned the cattle back just before they
got to the gate. Sonny gave her a good
cussing and whipped her vehicle with his
rope for emphasis. The next day federal
marshals were at the ranch and wanted
to know where the guy was who had as-
saulted the mail carrier, which is a federal
offense, turns out.
See QUALLE, Page A5
Join Rail with Trail discussion
The Joseph Branch Trail Consortium
and the Wallowa Union Railroad Author-
ity sponsored a community workshop on
the evening of June 23 in Enterprise. The
purpose of the workshop was to report
efforts to develop the Joseph-to-Enter-
prise Rail with Trail segment and an-
swer questions about the trail. The major
point made during the workshop was that
the boards of the trail consortium and
WURA are determined to involve com-
munity members in the planning process,
either through their participation in pub-
lic workshops and meetings or by serving
on committees.
More reined construction cost esti-
mates, trail placement recommendations
and environmental and historical preser-
vation assessments are being prepared by
Anderson Perry & Associates, a “quali-
ied” La Grande engineering irm. The
current trail cost estimate is $2,850,000
and includes trail elements for which
costs were not included in the Joseph
Branch Rail with Trail Concept Plan
(http://bit.ly/29EocUX).
Federal and state programs provide
GUEST
COLUMN
Terry Edvalson
the majority of start-up funds for bike
and pedestrian trail development and
improvement projects in Oregon and na-
tionally. You and I — through our feder-
al and state taxes, lottery purchases and
gifts to foundations — are contributing to
these trail-development funds. Members
of the consortium and railroad authority
hope to capture Northeast Oregon’s equi-
table share of these funds for the Joseph
Branch Trail. If we don’t, the funds will
be spent elsewhere on other trails.
A grant application to the Federal
Highway Administration for an Access
to Federal Lands grant was submitted on
June 30 to help pay for construction of
the Joseph-to-Enterprise trail segment.
There will be a capital fundraising ef-
fort to raise money from trail supporters
in Wallowa, Union and Baker counties
and elsewhere in the region as tax-de-
ductible gifts for the matching funds
needed to attract federal, state and foun-
dation grants for trail construction.
A question of support for the trail was
posited in a (June 22) letter to the editor
that stated a presumption that all adja-
cent property owners are opposed to the
trail. In fact, survey results demonstrate
a majority of adjacent landowners and
residents of Wallowa and Union counties
support development of the trail.
Randomly selected registered voter
survey results:
• 20 percent of adjacent landowners
support the development of the entire
63-mile trail, and 40 percent support de-
velopment of speciic trail segments; 26
percent oppose development of the trail.
• 62 percent of all registered voters
support development of the entire trail,
while 9 percent oppose development of
the trail.
General public survey results:
See GUEST, Page A5
Not here in Lake Wobegon
To the white citizens of our county:
If today you were to see a black person
smiling and waving at the white faces
around them, would you think: “See,
they don’t all have to be so upset”; “One
of the ‘good ones’”; or “Why can’t we
all just come together in peace?”
I am in awe of the strength people
of color have just to step out the door,
to not constantly snap under the weight
of white America’s seeming inability
to understand, to witness them not just
get up every day, not just educate every
day, not just ight every day, but to see
them do it with inesse and compassion
and humor. I can’t fathom that level of
power.
As white people, we don’t have to
think about racism when our communi-
ty is nearly all white. Racism does not
usually become apparent to whites until
there are people of color in their frame
of reference. This needs to be made clear
to any rural, majority-white community
whose citizens perceive themselves to
be too far away to feel compelled to re-
act in the face of the proliferation and
pornographication of black death taking
LETTERS to the EDITOR
place in this country, whose (well-mean-
ing) police department issued a much
lauded call to peace only after (and only
directly acknowledging) the killings
nearly 2,000 miles away in Dallas.
As more and more unjustiied and
unjustiiable extrajudicial murders of
black lives pile up, and as I am confront-
ed with and participate in white silence,
with the evil that I and people like me
perpetuate and beneit from in our sins
of commission and omission, I feel the
need to speak up. A new future is pos-
sible, but can only be accomplished if
reality is accepted. #BlackLivesMatter
Robby Day
Enterprise
World economies linked
Thank you for your cogent editorial
explaining the need for trade partner-
ships to bring order to the plethora of
rules and tariffs that countries can place
on imports from other countries. You
make a strong case for eliminating the
chaos that can occur when countries
have no agreements on trade.
Another issue regarding trade has
to do with world economies, the need
to have agreements that keep everyone
aloat. At this point in time all countries
are interdependent, as demonstrated by
the current European dilemma. We in
the U.S. should consider that hundreds
of thousands, if not millions, of U.S.
citizens live, work or study in other
countries. In turn, millions of citizens of
other countries study, live and work (le-
gally or illegally) in the United States.
It is important to us that other countries’
economies are healthy. I care about the
economies of the countries where my
family members and friends live.
Trade agreements are an important
part of living in a world of 7.4 billion
people. It is imperative that we work
together, make agreements and consid-
er the needs of everyone, not just our-
selves. It is a matter of survival.
Evelyn Swart
Joseph