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About Cottage Grove sentinel. (Cottage Grove, Or.) 1909-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 30, 2015)
4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL September 30, 2015 O PINION LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Giving thanks restored. I give thanks because my grandson was not there. He is always with me, but my daughter was on vacation, so he was with his mom and dad. It would have been devastating for a 5-1/2 year old child to see his grandparents go through this hor- rible shocking nightmare. I have one older inside cat who found a good spot to hide. It was protected in this area, low to the fl oor and partially secluded with a blanket. It was the next morning that I got him out. He was trau- matized as I knew he would be. Cot- tage Grove Veterinary Clinic examined his lungs and they were OK. They also kept him for several days, as I couldn't. Thanks for Janetta — she took him into her home for a few weeks until I was settled to have him back. What would we do if we did not have all of these kind people of Cottage Grove? It's taken a lot of "guts" on my part to share with you the situation we got into. I'm hoping my sharing will help others to be very alert to help protect themselves from any catastrophe that could happen. Always check and make sure your fi re alarms are in working order, and do not just assume they are. Make sure your homeowners or your rental policies are intact and enough to cover your losses, if that time of need comes. Progress is coming along on our home, but we don't know when it will be ready for us to return. We do know that we will be ready to go home when that time comes. And we are forever thankful. On July 13, we had a major grease fi re which led to an unreal catastrophe. Everyone knows not to leave your stove unattended, but accidents do hap- pen. My husband and I went to tend the garden and chickens in our backyard. Several minutes later we heard smoke alarms and looked at each other with fear in our eyes. It was our home, and the black smoke was pouring out the partially open kitch- en window. We ran to the house and opened the door and the black smoke was so thick it was blinding. The only thing we could see was the fl ame on the stove and going up the wall behind. We tried to extinguish it to no avail. My husband called 911 and their arrival was prompt. The fi re went up the stove vent and into the attic and electri- cal. You don't smell anything worse than electrical smoke and the damage it does to everything. We give great thanks to the Cottage Grove Fire Department for their promptness and for saving our home. We give thanks to PayneWest Insurance for giving us enough money up front to get the items we needed to live for the time being, such as replacing our meds, something to eat, housing, etc. We give thanks to our good dear neighbors, Cin- dee and Mark, for helping us and being there daily to continue to help us. We give thanks to our daughter, Micki, for sharing her home until we found another. We camped in our driveway, in a trailer furnished by our insurance, for a month. We now live in a rental until our home is Cookie Howe Cottage Grove Offbeat Oregon History Clean-cut murder case turned out to be sordid and complex BY FINN J.D. JOHN The Unwritten For the Sentinel Law Files T his column is one of a series of case stud- ies of the early-20th-century mania for honor killings in Oregon. It was popularly known as “The Unwritten Law,” and it was a social convention that permitted and/or obligated a man to murder anyone whom he knew to be working to se- duce his wife or sister. Un- written Law cases arose around the country in the 1890s and were alarmingly common until around the time of the First World War. Today’s column discusses one such case, which took place in Portland in 1907, and which may actually be the case that ended what had been widespread public approval of Unwritten Law killings. F or the average Oregon newspaper reader, the fi rst inkling that something about Offi cer John Gittings’ murder was not as it appeared came a few days before Christmas, when it became apparent that he had been having an affair with his murderer’s wife’s sister. By itself, that wouldn’t seem to change much. The facts, as Portlanders knew them, were still pretty black-and-white: Melville Bradley beat his wife, Kate; Kate’s brother, Joseph Sivener, went looking for him to thrash him and brought Gittings along; Bradley came up shoot- ing and Gittings caught a bullet. The fact that Gittings was Sive- ner’s sister’s boyfriend, rather than just some random innocent beat cop helping out a citizen, didn’t really change much. But it had a signifi cant effect on Offi cer Gittings’ posthumous reputation. It soon became clear that not only was Gittings mar- ried with three small children (and one more on the way), but that he neglected his family shockingly. The Oregonian’s reporter called the Gittings family manse “a deplorable little shack, cold, forbidding, leaky, un-paid-for.” “The wind whistles uncom- fortably through the cracks where the boards fail to meet,” he continued. “The shack stands three feet from the ground and by way of a front stoop two earthen jars do service. … Git- tings got $100 a month from the city, but his family did not get so much from Gittings. There is no evidence that they ever got any- thing. The widow is miserably clothed, the three little children actually look cold.” Gittings’ brother offi cers now rose gallantly to the occasion and started taking up a collec- tion to take care of the widow and orphans. “The sentiment seemed to be that whatever discreditable there might have been in the affair … the widow and the children were innocent of it and eminently de- serving of assistance,” the Or- egonian reported. Under the cops’ leadership, with the full moral support of the newspaper, and in the spirit of the Christmas season, the community rallied around poor Mrs. Gittings. Soon she and the kids were living in a fully paid- for, upgraded home, with a cow and chickens in the back to sup- ply milk and eggs. Time passed. There was no word on the murderer – a man for whom public animosity was already starting to die down. Meanwhile, his wife, whose beating had started the whole spectacle, had moved on with her life, as had her brother, Jo- seph Sivener. Both were back in the headlines just a few months later, both under rather unfortu- nate circumstances. First, in March of 1908, Sive- ner was picked up by police and tossed in the city pokey. It seems he had acquired the habit of swindling small amounts of money by forging checks drawn on the accounts of East Side saloonkeepers and cashing them. In the grand scheme of things, it was a minor offense, but it didn’t play well with the public’s image of him as the righteous, avenging brother of the poor wronged wife, charg- ing forth to call her wife-beating no-good husband to account. Speaking of the poor wronged wife – well, perhaps it’s best to just quote from the newspaper directly. This article hit the pa- pers a little over a year later: “Mrs. Kate Kakarous, the wife of a Greek bartender and formerly the wife of Melville Bradley, the murderer of Police- man Gittings, was arrested last night as a streetwalker by Pa- trolman Stillwell, at the corner of Third and Everett streets.” Third and Everett, by the way, is right in the middle of the old North End – the rough-and-tum- ble waterfront district, down by the wharves and sailors’ board- inghouses, brothels and shang- hai joints. By this time, the avid news- paper readers of Portland had learned that the party whom Bradley had suspected of be- ing intimate with his wife (the pretext for the beating) was Git- tings himself. This suggested a whole new theory of the crime – one in which Bradley, called out of the saloon by Sivener, saw Gittings waiting for him in uniform and wearing his service revolver. Gittings, as he would have known, was a crack shot and owner of a large collection of rifl es and pistols. Thinking the whole thing a setup with Gittings the trigger man, he drew and emptied his revolver at Gittings. This theory, of course, doesn’t quite square with the earlier im- pression that Gittings and Kate Bradley’s sister, Aggie Vanders, who had made such a dramatic commotion over his corpse, were lovers. But by then, most Portlanders had concluded that everyone involved in the whole affair was some sort of danger- ous looney. And there was such a dramatic fl air in Aggie Vanders’ grief; could it have been a put- on? So, if you’re keeping track – at this point in the story, ev- ery single character in our crime drama had been revealed to be some sort of unlovable freak. The Good Guy – Sivener, who went forth to avenge his sister’s beating – turned out to be a pet- ty swindler. The Damsel In Dis- tress – Kate Bradley – turned out to also be a prostitute and bigamist. The Innocent By- stander Policeman turned out to be a serial philanderer, home- wrecker and worst family man in the city, and to also have pos- sibly been intending to murder Bradley. And for anyone tempted to conclude that Bradley had been right to do as he did – beat his wife and murder her Please see OFFBEAT, Page 9A Excellent nutrition to prevent and reverse heart disease BY JOEL FUHRMAN, MD For the Sentinel H eart disease is our na- tion’s number one kill- er. Americans suffer 715,000 heart attacks a year, resulting in 125,000 deaths due to this large- ly preventable disease. Making signifi cant lifestyle modifi ca- tions, including regular exer- cise and dietary changes, allow $ PUUBHF ( SPWF 4 FOUJOFM 116 N. Sixth Street · P.O. Box 35 · Cottage Grove, OR 97424 ADMINISTRATION: JOHN BARTLETT, Regional Publisher.............................. GARY MANLY, General Manager................942-3325 Ext. 207 • publisher@cgsentinel.com ROBIN REISER, Sales Repersentative...............942-3325 Ext. 203 • robin@cgsentinel.com E. 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No subscription for less than Ten Weeks. Subscription rates are subject to change upon 30 days’ notice. All subscritptions must be paid prior to beginning the subscription and are non-refundable. Periodicals postage paid at Cottage Grove, Oregon. Postmaster: Send address changes to P.O. Box 35, Cottage Grove, OR 97424. Local Mail Service: If you don’t receive your Cottage Grove Sentinel on the Wednesday of publication, please let us know. Call 942-3325 between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. Advertising ownership: All advertising copy and illustrations prepared by the Cottage Grove Sentinel become the property of the Cottage Grove Sentinel and may not be reproduced for any other use without explicit written prior approval. Copyright Notice: Entire contents ©2015 Cottage Grove Sentinel. people who suffer with coronary heart dis- ease to re- duce and eliminate their de- pendence on medica- tions and avoid major surgeries such as bypass and angioplasty. Research studies have docu- mented that heart disease is easily and almost completely preventable (and reversible) through a diet rich in plant pro- duce and lower in processed foods and animal products. Here are some dietary guidelines for a healthy heart: Eat a high nutrient, vegetable- based diet. Green vegetables ac- tivate the body’s natural detoxi- fi cation mechanisms and protect blood vessels against infl amma- tion that can lead to atheroscle- rotic plaque buildup. Eat berries and pomegran- ates. The antioxidants in berries and pomegranates, such as an- thocyanin and punicalagin, are especially effective in improv- ing LDL cholesterol and blood pressure. Avoid refi ned carbohydrates. Refi ned carbohydrates have been found to be just as damag- ing to the cardiovascular system as saturated fats. Eat at least one ounce of raw nuts and seeds daily. Regular consumption of nuts and seeds is associated with a 35 percent reduction in heart disease risk. Limit your intake of animal protein to at most six ounces per week. Animal protein consump- tion directly increases heart dis- ease risk. Eat beans daily. Beans help to lower cholesterol; also a 19-year study found that people who eat beans at least four times a week have a 21 percent lower risk of heart disease than those who eat them less than once a week. Have 1 Tbsp. of ground fl ax seeds or chia seeds each day. These contain cardioprotective omega-3 fats, lignans, fl avo- noids, sterols and fi ber. Exercise, of course is also es- sential for a healthy heart: Regular physical activity re- duces the risk of coronary heart disease and diabetes by 30-50 percent. The heart becomes more effi - cient through exercise, allowing the resting heart rate to decrease. This is benefi cial because a high resting heart rate is a risk factor for cardiac mortality. The mood-elevating and stress-reducing properties of exercise also contribute to its protective effects against heart disease. True heart disease protec- tion comes from achieving and maintaining normal parameters WITHOUT the need for medi- cations. There is no substitute for earning superior health! You can be free of heart disease risk and free of dependency on med- ication. The high-nutrient (Nu- tritarian) diet-style that I recom- mend lowers blood pressure, lowers cholesterol and lowers blood glucose to normal. Dr. Fuhrman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat to Live and Super Immuni- ty, and a board certifi ed family physician specializing in life- style and nutritional medicine. Visit his informative website at DrFuhrman.com. Submit your questions and comments about this column directly to newsquestions@drfuhrman. com. Letters to the Editor policy The Cottage Grove Sentinel receives many letters to the editor. 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