4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL July 15, 2015
O PINION
Contact your elected offi cials
Oregon State House of
Representatives:
Cottage Grove City Hall:
942-5501. www.cottage-
grove.org/
Cottage Grove Mayor Tom
Munroe: 942-5501.
Cottage Grove City
Councilors:
Mike Fleck, At Large:
942-7302
Heather Murphy, At Large:
942-3444
Jake Boone, Ward 1:
653-7413
Jeff Gowing, Ward 2:
942-1900
Garland Burback, Ward 3:
942-4800
Rep. Cedric Hayden (REP)
District: 007
900 Court Street NE
Suite H-288
Salem, OR 97301
Phone: (503) 986-1407
Fax: (503) 986-1130
Email: rep.cedrichayden@
state.or.us
Oregon State Senate:
United States Senate:
Sen. Floyd Prozanski
(DEM)
District: 004
900 Court Street NE
Suite S-319
Salem, OR 97301-0001
Phone: (503) 986-1704
Fax: (503) 986-1080
Email: sen.fl oydprozan-
ski@state.or.us
Governor:
Lane County Commis-
sioners:
John Kitzhaber
160 State Capitol
900 Court Street
Salem, Oregon 97301-4047
Phone: (503) 378-4582
Fax: (503) 378-6827
Faye Stewart, East Lane
Commissioner
Lane County Public Ser-
vice Building
125 East 8th Street
Eugene, OR 97401
Phone: (541) 682-4203
Fax: (541) 682-4616
District: 004
United States House of
Representatives
2134 Rayburn House Of-
fi ce Building
Washington, DC 20515-
0001
Phone: (202) 225-6416
Fax: (202) 225-0032
Email: http://www.house.
gov/formdefazio/contact.
html
United States House of
Representatives:
Rep. Peter A. DeFazio
(DEM)
Sen. Ron Wyden (DEM)
District: 0S1
United States Senate
230 Dirksen Senate Offi ce
Building
Washington, DC 20510-
0001
Phone: (202) 224-5244
Fax: (202) 228-2717
Email: http://wyden.senate.
gov/contact/
Sen. Jeff Merkley (DEM)
District: 0S2
United States Senate
404 Russell Senate Offi ce
Building
Washington, DC 20510-
0001
Phone: (202) 224-3753
Fax: (202) 228-3997
Email: http://jmerkley.sen-
ate.gov/webform.htm
Offbeat Oregon History
Sudden windstorm caught steamship
at worst possible moment
BY FINN J.D. JOHN
For the Sentinel
I
t was just past midnight on Jan.
12, 1936. Gale warning pennants
were fl ying in Astoria, warning ships
that they could expect winds of 39 to
54 miles per hour as they crossed the
bar — rough weather, but not nearly
rough enough to stop the big ships as
they came and went, and they’d been
doing so all day.
So there was no particular reason
why Captain Edgar L. Yates, the sea-
soned and competent skipper of the
410-foot, 8,800-ton steamship Iowa,
should hesitate. He held a bar pilot’s li-
cense, so there was no need to wait for
a pilot to come aboard.
So across the bar the Iowa steamed
... and the shipwreck that ensued would
be the worst loss of life on the Colum-
bia River bar since the Civil War.
From far away, the Iowa looked like a
very unlikely candidate for destruction
on the bar. It was a full-size modern
freighter, and a fairly new one at that.
The ship had been built in 1920 for the
U.S. Shipping Board Emergency Fleet
Corporation. It was one of 18 similar
ships built by Western Pipe and Steel
Co. of San Francisco.
But the ship had an Achilles heel, as
it turned out: its drive system. For one
thing, it was somewhat underpowered
for its size; its triple-expansion steam
engine delivered just 2,800 horsepow-
er, giving it a top speed of just 10.5
knots. But more importantly, it was
driven with just one screw (propeller).
That meant if the Iowa were to lose her
rudder for any reason — or even to lose
headway through the water — there
would be no way to steer.
This appears to be what happened
on that fateful early morning. Because
almost the instant the Iowa crossed the
bar into the open ocean, the rough-but-
manageable gale weather freshened
until it was an actual hurricane: sus-
tained 80-mph winds screaming out of
the south-southwest, pushing the Iowa
relentlessly back, back toward the long,
hungry tongue of sand that jutted out
just beneath the waves on the north
side of the river — the dreaded shoals
of Peacock Spit.
The wind put Capt. Yates in an im-
possible position. He could try to turn
the ship around and head back into port.
But this would involve turning the ship
momentarily broadside to the colossal
seas that were now surging against it.
A rollover would be the likely result
of that. His best choice seemed to be
to ring for as much power as the ship
could handle and charge into the teeth
of the gale, taking the brutal seas on the
bows.
But by 3:45 a.m., it was clear that the
hapless freighter would not make it.
A distress call went out — the last the
ship would ever make — that she was
unmanageable and adrift and moving
toward Peacock Spit, just three miles
off the shore — far too close for a ship
that drew 22 feet in saltwater.
At about 4:30 a.m., the assistant
keeper of the Cape Disappointment
Lighthouse spotted the stricken ves-
sel, which was still drifting helplessly
at that point. The lighthouse crew
watched in sober, horrifi ed silence as
the big freighter was driven into the
sandy shoals, three miles from shore.
Assistant meteorologist Charles Hub-
bard was watching through a telescope
as the waves now started pounding the
big steel ship mercilessly, and with vis-
ible effect. Pieces soon started breaking
off. As Hubbard watched, a crew mem-
ber exited the pilothouse and ran for
the foremast, obviously in a desperate
attempt to get up into the rigging and
out of reach of the seas; but before he
could reach the mast, another massive
comber overwhelmed him and swept
him into the sea. A few minutes later,
the pilothouse he’d just left was torn
from the ship and hurled overboard,
along with the funnel and bridge.
“Finally, after being a defenseless
target to several more merciless comb-
ers, the Iowa gave a violent heave,
bobbed a trifl e out of the water like a
bouncing cork, and then slipped silent-
ly and swiftly out of sight,” the Portland
Morning Oregonian’s Don McLeod re-
counted in the next day’s edition. “Only
the mast remained above the water.”
It appeared that the wave action had
carved out a big hollow in the sand just
inland from where the freighter had
struck, and now the waves had pushed
the ship into it. There could no longer
be any doubt as to the fate of the 34
crew members. No one could swim
three miles in seas like that, even if the
water weren’t 48 degrees.
Throughout this time, the Coast
Guard lifesavers had been trying des-
perately to get close enough to the
wreck to help. They had sprung into ac-
tion as soon as they got the SOS, a few
hours before dawn, with the 165-foot
cutter Onondaga. It took an hour or two
for the Onondaga’s boilers to heat up,
but she was soon steaming out across
the bar as fast as she dared.
The trouble was, it was obvious from
the start that she wasn’t going to be
able to do much of anything. The storm
was so violent it actually tore two of
the lifeboats off the cutter. She fi nally
arrived at the scene of the wreck around
noon, a good eight hours after the hap-
less freighter had drifted onto the
sands, but could do nothing but gather
up sailors fl oating in the sea — all of
whom turned out to be dead, drowned
or killed by hypothermia in the chilly
waters.
Please see OFFBEAT, Page 5A
You say tomato—We say Lycopene, a protective carotenoid
BY JOEL FUHRMAN, MD
For the Sentinel
C
arotenoids are a family of
over six hundred phyto-
chemicals,
including
alpha-caro-
tene, beta-
carotene,
lycopene,
lutein and
zeaxan-
thin. Ca-
rotenoids are abundant in green
and yellow-orange vegetables
and fruits and help to defend
the body’s tissues against oxi-
dative damage, which is a natu-
ral byproduct of our metabolic
processes; oxidative damage
from free radicals contributes to
chronic diseases and aging.
Lycopene is the signature
carotenoid of the tomato. The
lycopene in the American diet
is 85 percent derived from to-
matoes. Lycopene is found cir-
$ PUUBHF ( SPWF 4 FOUJOFM
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culating in the blood and also
concentrates in the male repro-
ductive system, hence its pro-
tective effects against prostate
cancer. In the skin, lycopene
helps to prevent UV damage
from the sun, protecting against
skin cancer. Lycopene is known
for its anti-cancer properties, but
did you know that lycopene has
also been intensively studied for
its benefi cial cardiovascular ef-
fects?
Many observational studies
have made a connection be-
tween higher blood lycopene
and lower risk of heart attack.
For example, a study in men
found that low serum lycopene
was associated with increased
plaque in the carotid artery and
triple the risk of cardiovascular
events compared to higher lev-
els. In a separate study, women
were split into four groups
(quartiles) according to their
blood lycopene levels; women
in the top three quartiles were
50 percent less likely to have
cardiovascular disease com-
pared to the lowest quartile.
A 2004 analysis from the
Physicians’ Health Study data
found a 39 percent decrease in
stroke risk in men with the high-
est blood levels of lycopene.
Data from an ongoing study in
Finland has strengthened these
fi ndings with similar results.
One-thousand men had their
blood carotenoid levels tested
and were followed for 12 years.
Those with the highest lyco-
pene levels had the lowest risk
of stroke – they were 55 percent
less likely to have a stroke than
those with the lowest lycopene
levels. Previous data from this
same group of men found that
higher lycopene levels were as-
sociated with lower risk of heart
attack as well. A meta-analysis
of 12 trials also found that daily
supplemental tomato products
(approximately 1 cup of toma-
to juice or 3-4 tbsp. of tomato
paste) reduced LDL cholesterol
by 10 percent — this effect is
comparable to low doses of
statin drugs (with no risk of side
effects, of course).
Of course, lycopene is not the
only nutrient in tomatoes – to-
matoes are also rich in vitamins
C and E, beta-carotene and fl a-
vonol antioxidants, just to name
a few. Single antioxidants usu-
ally don’t exert their protective
effects alone; we learned this
lesson from clinical trials of
beta-carotene, vitamin C, and
vitamin E supplements, which
did not reduce cardiovascular
disease risk. It is the interactions
between phytochemicals in the
complex synergistic network
contained in plant foods that is
responsible for their health ef-
fects, and this is something that
we cannot replicate in a pill.
Out of all the common dietary
carotenoids, lycopene has the
most potent antioxidant power,
but combinations of carotenoids
are even more effective than any
single carotenoid – they work
synergistically. Blood lycopene,
as used in many of these stud-
ies, is simply a marker for high
tomato product intake; similarly
high alpha-carotene and beta-
carotene levels are markers of
high green and yellow-orange
fruit and vegetable intake. Col-
orful fruits and vegetables pro-
vide signifi cant protection.
In a given year, a typical
American will eat about 92
pounds of tomatoes. Enjoy those
92 pounds and even add some
more! Add fresh, juicy raw to-
matoes to your salad, diced or
unsulphured sun-dried tomatoes
to soups, and enjoy homemade
tomato sauces and soups. Be
mindful of the sodium content
of ketchup and other tomato
products – choose the low so-
dium or no-salt-added versions.
No salt added, unsulphured
dried tomatoes are also great.
Diced and crushed tomatoes in
glass jars are preferable to those
in cans, to avoid the endocrine
disruptor BPA. Also keep in
mind that carotenoids are ab-
sorbed best when accompanied
by healthy fats – for example, in
a salad with a seed or nut-based
dressing. Lycopene is also more
absorbable when tomatoes are
cooked – one cup of tomato
sauce contains about ten times
the lycopene as a cup of raw,
chopped tomatoes – so enjoy a
variety of both raw and cooked
tomatoes in your daily diet.
Dr. Fuhrman is a #1 New York
Times best-selling author and a
family physician specializing in
lifestyle and nutritional medi-
cine. Visit his informative web-
site at DrFuhrman.com. Submit
your questions and comments
about this column directly to
newsquestions@drfuhrman.
com. The full reference list
for this article can be found at
DrFuhrman.com.
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