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Wednesday, December 8, 2021
WALLOWA.COM
Elane Dickenson
Jim
Pace
Enterprise
Favorite
Christmas
song is
‘Silent Night’
ENTERPRISE — Jim Pace has lived in
Enterprise his entire life, and he’s not the
fi rst generation.
“This is home for me,” he said. “My
dad was born out on Prairie Creek.”
Now retired, he worked for the Wal-
lowa County Grain Growers for 45 years
in a variety of capacities.
“Growing up here, I’ve known a lot
of people and that’s one thing I really
enjoy about being here, all the people
that I’ve grown up with, to be able to
see them and how they’re doing, along
with the newcomers coming in, being
able to meet them and see how they’re
doing, how they’re adjusting to the
community.”
He and his wife, Leslie, who worked
in medical billing for many years, have
two daughters, a son and fi ve grand-
children. Although some of the grand-
kids are nearing marriageable age, there
aren’t any great-grandkids yet.
“We’re hoping it’ll be a while longer,”
he said.
He recently shared his thoughts
about living in Wallowa County.
What’s your favorite thing about
Wallowa County?
I enjoy looking out every day and
thanking the Lord I get to live here.
What does Christmas mean to
you?
A lot of things. Bringing back mem-
ories from when we were kids and cre-
ating new memories with our own fam-
ilies. And, of course, (it’s about) the birth
of Christ that we celebrate who came
into this world to save us from our sins.
Do you have a favorite
Christmas song? Why?
“Silent Night,” it’s one of those that
actually brings everything to a head and
relates the story of Christ and His birth
and how we’re to be reverent about it.
What’s your advice for people
who are thinking about moving
here?
Leave everything they didn’t like
behind. Don’t bring any bad baggage.
Be kind to one another.
— Bill Bradshaw
Wallowa County Chieftain
Remembering
a county icon
Dickenson,
a 36-year
veteran
reporter, died
in November
in the Portland area since 2019
in order to be treated for compli-
cations from multiple myeloma
and kidney failure, died Nov. 8
at the age of 73.
“After nearly three years of
battling her illness, a multitude
of issues continued to worsen
and she was too weak for che-
motherapy,” Herman said. “She
ultimately decided to stop dialy-
sis and go on hospice, where she
passed with my brother and I at
her side.”
By RONALD BOND
Wallowa County Chieftain
Ready to settle down
E
NTERPRISE — For
nearly 36 years —
almost half of her life-
time — Elane Dicken-
son was synonymous with the
Wallowa County Chieftain.
A native of Pendleton, Dick-
enson, who joined the Chieftain
in 1978, dedicated her life to the
newspaper, to the community
that she called home and to her
two children, Jenny (Blanchet)
Herman and Matt Dickenson.
“Working at the Chieftain
was really her life. She has been
single since I was in the second
grade. She raised my brother
and I as a single mom,” Herman
said. “Everything was about the
Chieftain and the two of us.”
In the decades she served
the paper and community, she
gained an admiration of many
as a reporter who carried herself
with integrity, holding it tighter
than the notepad and camera —
fi rst fi lm and later digital — that
she carried as she covered just
about every event imaginable.
“One of the things that
amazed me as an editor of mul-
tiple papers was that she’s the
only reporter I ever had that
Jenny Herman/Contributed Photo
Elane Dickenson poses for a photo in front of Notre Dame Cathedral
holding a copy of the Wallowa County Chieftain, the paper she
worked at for nearly 36 years. Dickenson died on Nov. 8, 2021.
no one accused of having mis-
quoted them,” said Rick Swart,
who was the editor of the Chief-
tain — and Dickenson’s boss
— for more than two decades.
“No one ever challenged her
accuracy as a reporter. There’s
an old saying that says there’s
no substitute for accuracy. She
was amazingly accurate. You
wouldn’t have known it by the
looks of her desk, but she really
paid attention to detail. That
stood out as outstanding.”
In her later years, and in
retirement, Herman said her
mom took great joy in being a
grandmother, and was one who
would get on the fl oor with her
grandkids. Dickenson’s four
grandchildren range in age from
17 to 1.
The much beloved reporter,
who retired in 2014 and has lived
Dickenson was such a staple
in the community that Herman
noted the oddity of speaking to
a reporter from that paper who
hadn’t met her mom.
“I would say it is a little bit
weird to me to be getting inter-
viewed by someone from the
Chieftain who didn’t know her,”
Herman said last month.
Dickenson — who at the
time was Elane Blanchet — was
hired in September 1978, and
moved to the county with her
then almost-2-year-old daughter.
It was her third newspaper gig
out of college, as an announce-
ment of her hire in the Sept. 14,
1978 edition of the Chieftain
noted she had previously worked
for the Burns Times Herald and
the Heppner Gazette Times. She
wrote she also had a brief run as
a college newspaper editor. She
was hired essentially on the spot
by then-editor Don Swart, she
recalled decades later.
Swart clearly saw some-
thing in the then-30-year-old
Blanchet, and she had found a
home.
See Icon, Page A5
Trails group gives update to commissioners
Wallowa Mountains
Hells Canyon Trails
Association has been
hard at it clearing trails
By BILL BRADSHAW
Wallowa County Chieftain
ENTERPRISE — A regional
trails maintenance group received
a positive response after an
update on their activities to the
Wallowa County Board of Com-
missioners at the board’s meeting
Wednesday, Dec. 1.
“The trails association has a
mission to maintain trails and
conserve heritage sites in North-
east Oregon,” said Rick Bom-
baci, director of the Wallowa
Mountains Hells Canyon Trails
Association. “It began in 2016
in a partnership that was com-
posed of Eastern Oregon Uni-
versity, Wallowa Resources and
the Forest Service and this, as
yet, unformed organization, and
the trails association became the
fourth leg of that stool. We had
meetings at Cloud 9 for about a
year over lunch … in 2017, we
actually started doing work in the
fi eld. We are incorporated as a
501(c)(3).”
Keeping score
Since that fi eld work started,
the trails group has had 747 vol-
unteers working 11,277 hours in
the fi eld. They’ve cleared 479
Wallowa County Chieftain, File
Wallowa Mountain Hells Canyon Trails Association volunteer David Cook carries a 4-by-4 across the Wallowa River
en route to a new one-log bridge that the group helped the Forest Service construct across BC Creek.
miles of trails, brushed 159 miles
of trails and assessed another 212
miles. They have removed nearly
3,500 trees, manufactured 44 trail
signs, installed 24 of those signs,
repaired three bridges and had six
work sessions on historic sites.
Bombaci said those statistics
are required to be kept by the
group for the U.S. Forest Service
since that agency is the primary
source of its funding.
He described the partnership
through which the trails group
works and receives its annual
budget of about $30,000. He said
the group receives that funding
from the Forest Service; private
foundations and other organiza-
tions, such as Cycle Oregon, the
Eastern Oregon Visitors Associ-
ation, Travel Oregon, the Wild-
horse Foundation and the Oregon
Hunters Association. Other gov-
ernment money comes from the
National Wilderness Stewardship
Alliance and directly from Wal-
lowa County.
Volunteers and outreach
The group has had volunteer
workers from Eastern Oregon Uni-
versity, the University of Idaho,
Trailkeepers of Oregon and Wal-
lowa County Community Correc-
tions which has sent work crews
doing community service.
Commission Chairman Todd
Nash expressed his appreciation
on behalf of the board after the
presentation.
See Trails, Page A10