A18
NEWS
Wallowa County Chieftain
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
Wallowa hires native son and decorated
veteran as new history teacher
By Ellen Morris Bishop
Wallowa County Chieftain
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
Ranchers, researchers and farmers told the U.S. Senate Agriculture
Committee this week that they have reduced agriculture’s impact on the
climate. The biggest agriculture-related impact is consumer food waste,
they said.
Agriculture has key role
in climate solutions
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
Agriculture, particularly the
livestock sector, often gets a bad
rap in discussions about climate
change, but ranchers and farmers
recently told a U.S. Senate com-
mittee they have an intimate stake
in environmental sustainabil-
ity and have welcomed advance-
ments that lighten their environ-
mental impact.
Agriculture’s role and govern-
ment support in combating cli-
mate change was the focus of a
hearing by the Senate Agriculture
Committee on May 21.
“I believe agriculture, and
American farmers and ranchers
who live by the concept of con-
tinuous improvement and volun-
tary-based conservation, can be
a model for other industries and
other countries,…” committee
Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan.,
said.
Matt Rezac, a fourth-genera-
tion farmer in Weston, Neb., said
he knew he had to change his
farming practices to stay in busi-
ness. He now relies on technology
to practice precision agriculture
that focuses on soil health.
Farmers might not talk about
their practices to maintain soil
health and water quality and quan-
tity and control erosion as a cli-
mate issue, but those goals help
provide climate solutions, he said.
“Every day, farmers like me
make stewardship decisions that
impact more than 1.4 billion acres
of rural land … making a positive
difference and leading the way on
climate solutions,” he said.
Farmers are embracing tech-
nology, and working together they
can continue to lead the way on
stewardship. A lot of their conser-
vation efforts are paid for and car-
ried out voluntarily, but it is crit-
ical that climate solutions make
economic sense for farmers, he
said.
Providing market and policy
incentives that complement farm-
ers’ stewardship goals will be
“vitally important,” he said.
Debbie Lyons-Blythe, who
runs a fifth-generation cattle oper-
ation with her husband and their
five children in the Flint Hills of
Kansas, said producers graze cat-
tle on nearly one-third of the U.S.
land mass.
Grass, pasture and rangeland
for cattle sequester carbon in the
soil, aiding the climate. Being
good stewards of the land not
only makes good environmen-
tal sense, it is fundamental for the
cattle industry to remain strong,
she said.
“Climate change policies that
unfairly target cattle producers
fail to recognize the positive role
of cattle and beef in a healthy, sus-
tainable food system, and mis-
guided policies can threaten the
viability of our industry,” she said.
Food waste — the majority
occurring at the consumer level —
is the largest contributor to agri-
culture’s carbon footprint, with
40% of food produced in the U.S.
ending up in landfills, Frank Mit-
loehner, animal science and air
quality specialist at the University
of California, said.
Cody Lathrop loves history. He
loves kids. And he loves teach-
ing. Which is all good, because
Mr. Lathrop will be Wallowa High
School’s new history teacher.
“I’ll be teaching in the same
classroom where I learned social
studies from my favorite teacher,
Marty Davis,” he said. “It’s kind
of amazing.”
Lathrop wants to bring more
hands-on learning to his classes in
history, social studies and econom-
ics. “My big thing is that you have
to engage students really well, It’s
the back-story of history that you
have to get enthralled with. And
teaching is all about your relation-
ship with your students. You are
building a learning community.”
Lathrop’s favorite subjects include
military history and ancient Euro-
pean history. But his enthusiasm
for teaching and working with stu-
dents is boundless. “I want stu-
dents to go to the next level,” he
said. “I want them to be real world
ready.”
Lathrop grew up in Wallowa,
and attended Wallowa schools
through 10th grade. But after his
family moved to the upper valley,
he graduated from Joseph High
School.
“I tried college,” he said, “but
I just wasn’t ready for it.” Look-
ing for something more adventur-
ous and hands-on, he joined the
U.S. Army and after training as a
sniper and a sapper, served as a
combat engineer, with two tours
in Iraq. “I loved the military,” he
said. “I wanted to make it a career.
It had challenge, structure, and
camaraderie.” The job of a com-
bat engineer mostly entails driv-
ing up and down the roads looking
for improvised explosive devices,
or IEDs. Lathrop found them. But
he also suffered multiple concus-
sions in explosions. “The Army
sent me to Germany for testing. I
couldn’t think. I couldn’t formu-
late sentences. I couldn’t remem-
ber things. Cognitively I was kind
of screwed.” Awarded two purple
hearts for his service, Lathrop was
medically retired.
The loss of what he’d intended
Ellen Morris Bishop
Cody Lathrop, holder of two purple hearts for his service in Iraq, will be
Wallowa High School’s new history teacher.
as a military career was devas-
tating. He wandered for awhile.
Finally he turned to another pas-
sion: coaching sports—especially
girls’ basketball. “I started coach-
ing sports with my Dad in Joseph.
Then I began to realize that I loved
working with kids,” he said. “It
seemed like another door was
opening.”
Lathrop applied to Concor-
dia College, a small liberal arts
school in Moorhead, Minnesota.
There he found his passion and
his niche, graduating Magna Cum
Laude. “For me, good grades were
few and far between when I was in
high school, and it seemed strange,
but I really pushed myself to think,
to get better,” he said.
Armed with a degree in second-
ary education and freshly-minted
teaching credentials, he began
searching for a job in Minnesota.
There were none. “I applied to
places 20 miles, then 60 miles and
finally 200 miles from home,” he
said. “I got about 15 interviews,
but no job. Schools tended to hire
the teachers with more experi-
ence rather than a new degree. It
was difficult, especially when you
worked so hard to get back from
not being able to talk or think.”
He and his wife began look-
ing toward Oregon. He found an
opening as a Title 1 Math Aide
in Enterprise. He interviewed for
it over Skype. And he got the job.
“I owe Erika Pinkerton and Kelly
Brown a huge debt of gratitude
that I’ll never be able to repay,”
Lathrop said. “They gave me an
opportunity to come back home
and pursue what I wanted to do,
when no-one else would.”
When the Wallowa history posi-
tion came open, Lathrop was reluc-
tant to apply. He and his growing
family had settled into Enterprise.
He had a job, and he’d learned
that finding a full-time teaching
job was painful and nearly impos-
sible. But with his wife’s encour-
agement, he finally decided to try.
“God just kept pushing me. I’m
extremely excited that Mr. Howe
has given me the opportunity to
teach.”
“When we interviewed Cody
Lathrop for the job,” said Wal-
lowa High School principal David
Howe, “we all looked at one-an-
other and said ‘This is our guy.’
There were no questions and no
dissent.” At its May 22 meet-
ing, the Wallowa School District
school board unanimously con-
firmed Lathrop as its newest fac-
ulty member.
real
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