COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL December 30, 2015
5A
Cottage Grove Retrospective
A look back at Sentinel stories from 40 and 60 years ago
Dec. 29, 1955
Dams save Grove area from damaging fl oods
Dec. 25, 1975: Christmas Past
Area residents got "just a hint of Christmas past at the December open house of the
Cottage Grove Historical museum. According to Donna Allen, chairman of the muse-
um committee, the rag doll and toy fi re truck in the Christmas tree display were both
1912 vintage.
POLICE BLOTTER
Dec. 24
Death Investigation, Holly
Ave
A reporting person advised of
their 90 year old mother ap-
pearing to be unresponsive and
was unable to fi nd a pulse. The
caller was transferred to Central
Lane County.
Agency Assist, Valley View
Units were enroute to the loca-
tion with medics for suspicion
of gunshots being fi red. The
While most of Oregon suf-
fered from damaging and
deathly fl oods, Cottage Grove
remained comparatively free
from the disaster. The reasons
for Cottage Grove’s freedom
from fl oods were two products
of the U.S. Army Corps of En-
gineers, Dorena and Cottage
Grove dams.
Neither of these two dams
entirely stopped the rampag-
ing fl ood water that fl owed into
them, but they controlled it.
The concrete structures kept the
Coast Fork of the Willamette
and the Row River within their
banks in the Cottage Grove area
and reduced the fl ood waters
farther down stream.
On the afternoon of Thursday,
Dec. 22, Jack Wall, dam tender
at Cottage Grove dam, was con-
cerned about the possibility of
the rain sending water over the
spillway sometime that evening.
Water was coming into the res-
ervoir at the rate of around 6,000
cubic feet per second at that time
and the Coast Fork banks could
only hold around 3,000 cubic
feet per second below the dam.
Within the last 24 hours, the
water in the 33,000 acre feet ca-
pacity dam had increased from
19,000 acre feet to 30,150.
Wall fi gured that the water
would go over the dam simetime
that night or the following morn-
ing, whether the rain stopped or
not. He calculated that the only
thing that would reduce the pos-
sibility of the fl ood being dam-
aging to Cottage Grove would
be for the rain to stop or for the
weather to become cold enough
to turn the precipitation into
snow. A few hour delay would
make the water uncontrollable.
It snowed Thursday night and
the water didn’t go over until
late Friday morning. With 2,000
cubic feet per second being re-
leased from the gates, only 250
cubic feet per second went over
the top, therefore causing no
damage below.
Cottage Grove Police Department 24-Hour Anonymous Tip Line: 767-0504
offi cers on scene confi rmed that
their were multiple gunshot
wound victims inside the resi-
dence.
Dec. 25
Domestic Disturbance, Gate-
way Blvd
A caller advised that the neigh-
bor downstairs was beating her
kids; the kids are now upstairs
with the caller. The children
are 18 and 16 years old. The
subject was still downstairs
screaming and was intoxicated.
Unlawful vehicle entry, John-
son Ave
A caller advised that their ve-
hicle was broken into last night
at the location. Reporting items
missing were a wallet with
debit cards and credit cards, an
iPod, two buck knives in a case
and two other unknown brand
knives. The total approximate
value is $450.
was broken into last night and
his daughter’s tablet was stolen.
The tablets are LG tablets and
worth approximately $99 each.
The offi cers also seized a ciga-
rette butt at the scene since no
one at the residence smokes.
Theft, Beach Rd.
A caller advised that multiple
guns have been stolen from her
residence; the caller was trans-
ferred to Lane County Sheriff’s
Offi ce.
Theft from Vehicle, 10th St.
A caller advised their vehicle
O FFBEAT
Dec. 26
Theft from Vehicle, Johnson
Ave
A caller advised that her ve-
hicle was broken into and that a
Samsung Galaxy S6 cell phone
was stolen, the approximate
value being $900. The vehicle
was left unlocked.
laptop was stolen, $50 cash
and miscellaneous jewelry was
missing as well.
Unlawful Vehicle Entry, Ar-
thur Ave.
A caller advised that her wallet
was stolen out of her car and
the subject has used her credit
card at Little Caesars, Short
Stop and Kwik Pick Market.
Burglary, 6th St.
A caller had just arrived home
to fi nd that her residence had
been broken into. A grey HP
J OYCE
Continued from page 4A
crystallized Martin’s attitudes
toward members of other ethnic
groups into frank disdain. In this
he was hardly unique among im-
perial-age military men. When
it’s one’s job to kill people,
thinking of them as subhuman
beasts to be eradicated rather
than as brother men makes that
job a lot more psychologically
tolerable. And that kind of re-
ductive, dehumanizing thinking
can and did become a lifelong
habit for an entire generation of
British, French and American
military men.
Following the Boxer Rebel-
lion, Martin returned to the
states and served in various
functions with great discipline
and competence, much of it in
the Portland area. In 1913, the
Army lent him to the limping,
ramshackle Oregon National
Guard so that he might instill
some proper military discipline
into it. In 1916 he was deployed
to reinforce Gen. John Pershing
in his operations against Poncho
Villa in Mexico.
And then the U.S. entered the
First World War.
Martin, by now a full-bird col-
onel, was temporarily promoted
to brigadier general and put in
6
charge of training camps. It’s in
this capacity that he earned the
nickname “Iron pants.”
His success in breaking down
recruits to build them back up
as soldiers led to Martin being
given a particularly noteworthy
assignment near the end of the
war — an assignment that would
probably be the ugliest stain on
his career. The military authori-
ties had a problem that they
wanted his help with. It seemed
that the African American sol-
diers who had signed up to go to
France and fi ght had been treat-
ed as equals by the French, rath-
er than as subhumans. Despite
increasingly desperate attempts
by white offi cers to induce the
French to adopt the proper at-
titude of arrogance and disdain
toward them, the black dough-
boys were enjoying an unprec-
edented level of social freedom
and acceptance. The worry was
that they had gotten used to this,
and would use their new status
as war heroes to demand similar
equality upon their return to the
states.
What was needed, according
to military authorities, was a re-
indoctrination clinic of sorts, un-
der the guise of “training.” And
who better to administer that
-day
weather forecast
THURSDAY Dec. 31
FRIDAY Jan. 1
27° | 45°
26° | 43°
Sunny
Sunny
SATURDAY Jan. 2
SUNDAY Jan. 3
28° | 43°
31° | 45°
Sunny
Sunny
MONDAY Jan. 4
TUESDAY Jan. 5
34° | 48°
36s° | 46°
Partly Cloudy
Partly Cloudy
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
training than old Iron Pants?
Martin himself had no use for
blacks, opining many times that
they were inferior in every way
to himself and his white friends,
and was thoroughly on board
with the plan to “put them back
in their place.”
Thus did Charles Henry Mar-
tin, future governor of the state
of Oregon, become the central
fi gure in one of the most shame-
ful events in American military
history — the deliberate, sys-
tematic breaking of the spirit
of an entire divisional cohort of
American combat veterans and
war heroes.
The black veterans were given
the most degrading duties Mar-
tin could fi nd for them, includ-
ing cleaning out toilet pits, bury-
ing rotting corpses, and the kind
of meaningless rock-breaking
busywork one associates with
prison chain gangs. They were
worked all day and given no
liberty to leave the camp. Mean-
while, Martin and his staff cul-
tivated rumors back home that
they had been running amok in
France, raping French girls by
the dozens, and Martin openly
referred to them as the “rap-
ist division.” (An investigation
later revealed that for the entire
war, just two charges of rape
were made against members of
the division.)
It is worth noting that Martin,
after the war, blamed the low
status of this “training” assign-
ment for the fact that his tempo-
rary promotion to general was
not made permanent after the
war. Perhaps lingering resent-
ment of that belief is why, after
the war, Martin fi led a report
that would become the core of
the U.S. Army’s policy on Afri-
can American soldiers from the
early 1920s until the early years
of the Second World War. It was
designed to minimize blacks’
access to the kind of combat
roles in which they might dis-
tinguish themselves as heroes,
to avoid having black offi cers
over the rank of fi rst lieutenant,
and most of all to ensure that no
white soldier or offi cer ever had
to take an order from any black
man of any rank whatever.
Martin’s Army career ended
with his retirement in 1927. He
left the Army a very different
man than he had been when he
entered it. A merciless disci-
plinarian with a worshipful at-
titude toward vested authority
and a growing fear of commu-
nism, he was already starting to
show signs of the Gen. Jack D.
Ripper-style paranoia that his
political career would reveal af-
ter his return to civilian life.
We’ll talk about that political
career in next week’s column.
(Sources: Murrell, Gary. Iron
Pants: Oregon’s Anti-New-Deal
Governor. Pullman, Wash.:
WSU Press, 2000; Murrell,
Gary. “Hunting Reds in Or-
egon,” Oregon Historical Quar-
terly, winter 1999)
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Continued from page 2A
way: What are you hoping for?
What are you expecting in life?
What are you looking forward
to? Focus on that.
My negative outlook was due
to my attitude about all the bad
things that had happened in my
life. I was stuck in the pain of
my past, so I didn’t believe any-
thing good would happen in my
future. Because of all of the neg-
ative things that had happened, I
was programmed to believe that
negative things would always
happen. I lost hope.
Well, God was there and He
knew that. But over time He
kept loving me and dealing with
me, promising me what Isa-
iah 61:7 says: “Instead of your
shame you will receive a double
portion, and instead of disgrace
you will rejoice in your inheri-
tance. And so you will inherit a
double portion in your land, and
everlasting joy will be yours”
(NIV). That’s a promise for us
all…a promise of double for
your trouble! Double the bless-
ing, double the joy, double the
peace! Hallelujah! Now doesn’t
that inspire hope in your heart?
Of course, this double-bless-
ing promise isn’t for the double-
minded. When you walk it out
in everyday life, there will be
times when doubt, fear, unbelief
and weariness will come against
you. It’s in these times you will
need to fi ght a good fi ght of
faith. You will need to guard
your mind against negativity
about your situation. I encour-
age you to fi nd out what God
says about it and then stand on
the promises in His Word.
The Bible tells of many times
when people encountered Jesus
and He touched their lives, they
wanted to stay with Him and
follow Hi — understandably so.
But He sent them home—back
to everyday life—to live out
and share with others what He’d
done. They had to hold on to
what He had done for them. In
the same way, we must hold on
to whatever He promises us and
be confi dent that He is working
in our situation. Hope releases
the power of the Holy Spirit in
these times.
Hope I want to encourage you
to make a decision to cultivate
an attitude of hope in your life.
Speak positive things about your
future and refuse to be negative.
You may not always feel hope-
ful but don’t give in to your
feelings. Catering to bad feel-
ings feeds and empowers them.
But standing our ground and not
giving in to negative feelings
starves them and causes them to
lose their power over us.
Just ask the Holy Spirit to
lead you. Line your will up with
His and get excited about serv-
ing God. You could even be one
who inspires others to become
prisoners of hope!
Joyce Meyer is a New York
Times bestselling author and
founder of Joyce Meyer Min-
istries, Inc. She has authored
nearly 100 books, including
Battlefi eld of the Mind and The
Mind Connection (Hachette).
She hosts the Enjoying Ev-
eryday Life radio and TV pro-
grams, which air on hundreds
of stations worldwide. For more
information, visit
www.joycemeyer.org.
Douglas G. Maddess, DMD
FAMILY AND GENERAL DENTISTRY
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