Hiram Merry’s self-portrait
captures editor’s attention.
PAGE 4
Enterprise, Oregon
Issue No. 47
Wallowa.com
March 8, 2017
$1
WORKING
IN WALLOWA
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ENTERPRISE S
A DIFFICULT
CONVERSATION
Film “Bully” is shown
at the OK Theatre
By Steve Tool
Wallowa County Chieftain
I
magine the horror of a parent walk-
ing into a child’s bedroom to fi nd
him hanging dead in a closet. Con-
sider the pain of a middle-school
child facing incessant bullying
from the time he leaves home for the school
bus stop until he returns – only to face more
bullying from his father and sister, for being
bullied.
A crowd of more than 200 witnessed
these and other tragedies when they attend-
ed the showing of the documentary fi lm
“Bully” at the OK Theatre Thursday night.
The local movie showing was part of a Fu-
ture Career, Community Leaders of America
project of Enterprise High School freshman
Jadon Garland. The EHS student took up the
project at the urging of his mother Julie Gar-
land, who counseled at the school in the past.
The fi lm addresses bullying through telling
the stories of fi ve bullied youths. Two of the
bullying victims, including an 11-year-old boy,
eventually committed suicide. The other three
victims included a gay student and two students
bullied for the crime of “being different.” It is
not a movie for the squeamish.
The 2011 R-rated movie, shot at schools in
Iowa, Texas, Mississippi and Oklahoma during
the 2009-2010 school year, contains explicit
bullying scenes as well as graphic scenes of
family dynamics centered on bullying and the
two families dealing with the tragic deaths of
their children.
One poignant scene shows one of
the victims, taunted beyond endurance,
bringing a fi rearm on the school bus and
threatening her tormentors with it in graphic
language. Perhaps even more disturbing is the
indifference in communities and even school
administrators. Some of them denied a bul-
lying problem existed even when faced with
video evidence.
Several local teachers, students from all
the county’s schools watched the fi lm. No
school administrators attended.
“I KNOW IT’S CLICHE,
BUT I THOUGHT,
‘WOW, I’M NOT THE
ONLY ONE. I’M NOT
THE ONLY PERSON THIS
IS HAPPENING TO.
BUT I ALSO FELT PRETTY
BAD ABOUT MYSELF.”
TOM,
A LOCAL VICTIM OF BULLYING
How to
make it in
the new
economy
By Steve Tool
Wallowa County Chieftain
Tyler Evans and his wife and chil-
dren moved to Wallowa County fi ve
years ago. The two had vacationed
here as children and continued the
tradition as they became a couple
and had children. During a working
vacation Evans had a revelation.
“I was working on my laptop
while sitting on
top of the (east)
moraine and it
kind of dawned
on me: ‘You know
what? It doesn’t
matter where I am
anymore.
With
cell technology
Evans
and the Internet I
don’t need to be in
a gray cubicle in Hillsboro.”
NetApp agreed, and Evans
moved his family to Wallowa Coun-
ty within months.
Evans doesn’t hold down more
than one job to live in the county,
but he is probably the fi rst part of a
wave of people who telecommute.
He works at home from a computer
for a company located in Sunnyvale
Calif. He is also a member of the Jo-
seph City Council.
Born in Pendleton, Evans moved
as a boy with his family to the Port-
land area. Upon graduation from
high school Evans attended the Uni-
versity of Oregon where he graduat-
ed with majors in fi nance, business
and psychology. He focused on orga-
nizational psychology as a career and
after graduation moved back to Port-
land and worked in the investment
industry before going to work at In-
tel. He eventually found work with a
company later bought by NetApp, a
networking and storage company.
Employment observations
“I was fortunate to be able to
bring a job with me. I don’t think I
could live here if I had to fi nd a job
here with my skill set and what I was
making in Portland,” Evans said of a
lack of viable full-time employment
in the county. “I think in general
there is a defi nite lack of jobs to sup-
port a family whether it’s one or two
jobs,” he said.
Evans thought the lack of such
jobs was because of the geography
and infrastructure of the area.
“Sheer distance in terms of ship-
ping product into the county to con-
vert to a higher value and ship back
out will be diffi cult to be compet-
itive because of the transportation
costs. You have to look into services
and businesses not as dependent on
heavy haul trucking to get things
done,” he said.
See BULLIES, Page A16
See ECONOMY, Page A5
Sled dog athletes win Montana race
By Kathleen Ellyn
Wallowa County Chieftain
Wallowa County’s Morgan Anderson,
daughter of Rene Grandi and Craig Ander-
son of Enterprise, along with her exchange
student “sister” Charlotte Burkhardt of
Oggau, Austria (about one hour from Vi-
enna) have returned from the Flathead
Classic Sled Dog Race in Montana with
wins.
The two students had entered the Eagle
Cap Extreme Sled Dog Race this January
where Morgan won the six-dog 31-mile
race and Charlotte, competing for the fi rst
time, won the fi ve-dog 22-mile junior race.
Emboldened by their experience here,
the two went to the Feb. 26-27 race in Ol-
ney, Montana, north of Whitefi sh. They
were the only two competitors for the six-
dog 82-mile race, there.
“We did 41-miles on Saturday and
41-miles on Sunday,” said Anderson.
The girls run Alaskan Huskies. Ander-
son ran with one dog of her own and fi ve
borrowed from musher Trevor Warren of
Council, Idaho.
Charlotte ran with three of Trevor War-
ren’s dogs and two borrowed from Enter-
prise Animal Hospital Veterinarian Jerald
Rice.
They started off scared, Morgan said,
but found their feet immediately.
“Before the race the trail boss was ex-
plaining all the turns and about the ava-
lanche danger,” Morgan said. “He was just
explaining about the trail, but we were
scared about missing a turn or the ava-
lanche danger. But once we’re on the trail
it was well marked. It’s always scariest
before the race, but once I’m out there it’s
fi ne.”
See RACES, Page A10
Charlotte
Burkhardt
Ellen Bishop/
for the Chieftain