Wednesday, November 17, 2021
A4
OPINION
VOICE of the CHIEFTAIN
Delivering
real change
and making
a difference
ore people are using area
food banks, a signal that
many are being left behind
in a supposedly robust economy,
which means regional assistance
organizations will need more help
this holiday season.
Statistics tell part of the story and
that piece of the current tale of woe
for those on the edge financially isn’t
an uplifting one.
In Boardman, a food pantry that
services residents in Morrow County
showed an almost 150% increase
in the number of people it served
since 2020. The Salvation Army also
reported a 50% increase in the num-
ber of people it served.
The nonprofit Community Connec-
tion of Northeast Oregon Inc. serves
food banks in Grant, Baker, Union
and Wallowa counties and its num-
bers have also climbed slightly this
year compared to last.
The big picture, then, shows that
rather than dropping off, the need at
area food banks and pantries is still
strong and could get a lot stronger as
the holidays hover on the horizon.
Food banks and pantries across
the region are not-for-profit organi-
zations. That means they are wholly
dependent on product from the state
and donations. That’s where the rest
of us come in.
While the needs of those on the
financial edge always seem to garner
attention during the holiday season,
the need is year-round. We can’t for-
get, when Jan. 2 rolls around, those in
need are still out there, still need help.
So first, those of us who can should
donate to the local food bank as soon
and as often as they can. Those dona-
tions don’t have to be only money or
food. Many area banks also need per-
sonal-care items such as paper towels
and toilet paper or laundry detergent.
Why help?
Besides the fact it is the humane
thing to do, donating to a local food
bank means you get to make a real
difference now. Your donation, your
assistance, will help a family or chil-
dren survive. It’s that simple. Your
help can be the difference between
a family struggling to find food to
being able to have dinner. While it
may be hard to imagine for many of
us, that is the case for many in our
region.
So, let’s get together and help our
local food banks and pantries. It will
be a chance to deliver real change and
to make a difference that will resonate
in the future.
M
‘Peace Corps gave me the best two years of my life’
MAIN STREET
Rich Wandschneider
arb, my Peace Corps partner, and
I ate evening meals together for
two years in our Turkish-Kurd-
ish village. By day, she pounded bul-
gur and went to the fountain with women
and girls; I sat in the coffee house with
men, and went to the fields to study an
irrigation project. Sometimes we walked
together to the next village, all Kurdish,
and put awful purple medicine on impe-
tigo sores that were everywhere. We were
greeted and sometimes fed by the old
Kurdish “hodja,” a leader who used us to
bend the government into building a com-
munity fountain and toilet.
We came home and went our sepa-
rate ways. Barb was from a wealthy Seat-
tle family (not widely known during our
Peace Corps time), and worked first as a
juvenile parole officer. Then she worked
in bookstores and built and owned book-
stores — she helped us start the Bookloft.
When she died — too soon — the mayor
of Seattle gave her eulogy, lauding her
work for the LGBTQ community and for
Seattle.
My own journey was from volunteer
to Peace Corps staff, and then here, to
Wallowa County with a one-year contract
with the Extension Service to develop
jobs and run youth employment. I did that
for five years before opening the book-
store, which was a wonderful 12-year
journey at the center of town and county.
It wasn’t profitable, but led to 20 years
B
directing Fishtrap, and now a dozen years
managing Alvin Josephy’s library and
Indian and historical programming at the
Josephy Center.
My work has been incredibly reward-
ing — I only rarely think about what it
might have been like to have stayed with
the Extension Service or gone to another
job with a retirement plan.
I write this now not to gain applause,
but to say that the Peace Corps gave me
the best two years of my life — and set
me on my path from 1965 to now.
I’m reminded of Peace Corps service
on Veterans Day every year, a time when
I also remember family: five uncles who
fought in North Africa, Italy, France and
Germany, one who flew the “hump” from
India to China, and the youngest, who
died in the Pacific in the last month of
World War II in a kamikaze attack. My
father, already past 30, transferred from
the Post Office and spent the war years
putting radios in B-29s in Utah and South
Dakota. My mom took his job at the Post
Office and her mom looked after me.
I remember local WWII vets — Jack,
who liberated Buchenwald and abhorred
all war from that day; Gardner, a Marine
combat engineer at Iwo Jima; Alvin, who
wrote about Iwo and Guam from fox-
holes as a Marine correspondent. They
all became friends here and together with
wives Marge, Tappy, and Betty, orga-
nized the Wallowa Valley Day Camp to
bring educational opportunity to the then
more remote Wallowa County. It lives on
today, after more than 50 years, as CJSS.
Individually, they led organizations that
managed schools and promoted ranching,
built the Ferguson Ridge Ski Area, and
helped found the National Museum of the
American Indian.
We met Gardner and Tappy as we
came into the county from our Peace
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Corps experience, and as they were about
to go on theirs — a brief period of time
when the Peace Corps sent volunteer fam-
ilies abroad; they went to Ecuador, with
children!
There are other returned volunteers
living in Wallowa County: Bridget, who
helped build a home for the disabled in
Armenia, works in mental health; Clem
and Jean were retired from college teach-
ing when they went to teach in Africa;
Jeff and Randi worked as volunteers on
two continents, and today work in health
and conservation; Judy is still trying to
retire after decades as a social worker.
Allen, who served with me in Turkey,
retired here after a teaching career in
Portland.
The pattern here is service, and it is a
pattern I see time and again in communi-
cations with other returned volunteers I
know and learn about from Peace Corps
Writers, a volunteer-run organization that
tracks the writings of former volunteers.
Their books chronicle lives of service
during and after the Peace Corps — now
60 years old with over 240,000 return-
ees — in nonprofit organizations promot-
ing health, literacy, and justice; careers in
the Foreign Service and teaching. I don’t
remember one story of a billionaire, or of
a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. I doubt
the employee records of Facebook or
Google are filled with former volunteers.
I don’t know whether people are born
or educated to careers in public service.
But I dream a day when every American,
at age 18 or 20, does one or two years of
service, in the military — or building for-
est trails, emptying hospital bedpans or
teaching in Ecuador.
———
Rich Wandschneider is the director of
the Josephy Library of Western History
and Culture.
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