4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL January 13, 2016
O PINION
Offbeat Oregon History
Governor Martin’s goons were dirty
but incompetent fi ghters
BY FINN J.D. JOHN
For the Sentinel
I
n August of 1937 when
Stanley Doyle called on her,
Gwendolyn Ramsey can’t have
been too happy to see him.
Doyle had been the key fi gure
behind framing her husband, Er-
nest Doyle, and two of his fellow
union leaders, for the murder of a
ship’s offi cer the year before. And
although Doyle had been work-
ing undercover, chances are pretty
good that she knew exactly who
he was.
But what he wanted to see her
about — that interested her a great
deal. He was there to offer her a
special deal: All she needed to do,
he told her, was “sign a statement
that Harry Bridges was a Commu-
nist and that she had seen him at
Communist meetings.”
“All you have to do is sign it,”
Doyle told her, “and your husband
will be released from San Quen-
tin.”
Ramsey wasn’t interested in
perjuring herself to help Doyle
take down Bridges, the controver-
sial Australian-born labor-union
leader whom the entire West Coast
seemed to be trying to get deport-
ed. But she was very interested in
how he proposed to get her hus-
band released. Ernest Ramsey’s
conviction might have been a cor-
rupt fraud, but a conviction was a
conviction. So she played along
a little, and asked him the ques-
tion: How did he have the power
to overturn a conviction and get
Ernest sprung?
It was because, he told her, he
was “a secret service agent for
the Immigration Service and the
governors of California and Or-
egon” — and he fl ashed a fancy
gold badge that read, “SPECIAL
AGENT — STATE OF OREGON
— No. 280.”
Stanley Doyle was essentially
a personal undercover operative
answering directly and personally
to the governor of Oregon — the
ramrod-straight,
demonstrably
paranoid, ferociously anti-com-
munist Major General Charles H.
Martin (USA-Ret.), Governor of
Oregon.
And although there was wide-
spread consensus among the gov-
ernors of all three West Coast states
as well as the executives of every
major shipping company on the
subject, it was Martin who seemed
to most hate Harry Bridges. At the
very least, it was he who devoted
the most taxpayer resources to the
decades-long fi ght to have him de-
ported — a goal that would have
gotten a lot easier if he could be
identifi ed as a “red.”
Evidence today is pretty strong
that Bridges had been a member
of the Communist Party at one
time, probably in the early 1930s.
But in 1937, that evidence wasn’t
yet known — but it was fervently
wished for. And Stanley Doyle’s
mission was clear: Either fi nd or
fabricate that evidence.
It was a mission he went about
with a clumsy unsubtlety that
would have shocked anyone who
didn’t already know his methods.
An attorney, he fi rst came to the
governor’s attention in 1934 as
the prosecutor in the case of a man
named Dirk DeJonge, a newly en-
rolled Communist Party member
who, a few years earlier, had been
prosecuted for making an anti-
police speech at a Portland rally.
This, of course, was an activity
protected under the First Amend-
ment, but the judge found him
guilty and sentenced him to prison
for it anyway.
Along the way to that outcome,
though, some rather startling
things happened, all on the record
and in open court. First, under-
cover State Police agent Laurence
Milner, who had provided the key
information in the case, sought
to preserve his cover by testify-
ing in court that he didn’t know if
DeJonge was a communist or not.
Doyle, during a break in the case,
tried to persuade him to change his
mind and recant his testimony —
basically, admitting to perjury —
and when Milner refused, Doyle
actually stated, in open court, that
he had tried to get him to do so.
So Milner had to get on the stand
and perjure himself again to claim
(with rather less believability this
time) that he had not. Nonetheless,
if any labor unionists ever trusted
Milner again after that display,
they surely deserved whatever
they got as a result. His cover was
effectively blown.
(As for DeJonge, his conviction
was overturned by the Supreme
Court two years later on grounds
that throwing somebody into the
cooler for making a speech was
conduct unbecoming an American
court of law.)
The following year, in his new
role as “special agent,” Doyle blew
the lid off another laboriously con-
structed piece of anti-union James
Bondery when he traveled to Cali-
fornia to get heavy with a man
named Charles Bancksy, a private
undercover agent working for a
San Francisco shipping company.
Bancksy had a beach house in
Carmel stocked with hidden cam-
eras and microphones and with a
secret fi ngerprint lab; he hosted
parties in it, in which he essen-
Please see OFFBEAT, Page 5A
CONTACT YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS
Cottage Grove City Hall: 942-5501.
www.cottagegrove.org/
Cottage Grove Mayor Tom Munroe:
942-5501.
Salem, OR 97301
Phone: (503) 986-1407
Fax: (503) 986-1130
Email: rep.cedrichayden@state.or.us
Fax: (202) 225-0032
Email: http://www.house.gov/formde-
fazio/contact.html
United States Senate:
Oregon State Senate:
Cottage Grove City Councilors:
Garland Burback, Ward 3: 942-4800
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 oydprozanski@state.or.us
Amy Slay, Ward 4: 942-5501
Governor:
Lane County Commissioners:
Kate Brown
160 State Capitol
900 Court Street
Salem, Oregon 97301-4047
Phone: (503) 378-4582
Fax: (503) 378-6827
Mike Fleck, At Large: 942-7302
Jake Boone, Ward 1: 653-7413
Jeff Gowing, Ward 2: 942-1900
Faye Stewart, East Lane Commissioner
Lane County Public Service Building
125 East 8th Street
Eugene, OR 97401
Phone: (541) 682-4203
Fax: (541) 682-4616
Oregon State House of Representa-
tives:
Rep. Cedric Hayden (REP)
District: 007
900 Court Street NE
Suite H-379
Clarifi cation
— owner of
home lost to fi re
sheds more light
on its history
Last week, the Sentinel
relayed news of the historic
United States House of
Representatives:
Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (DEM)
District: 004
United States House of Representatives
2134 Rayburn House Offi ce Building
Washington, DC 20515-0001
Phone: (202) 225-6416
nature of a home lost to fi re
on Hillside Drive on Dec.
28. On Friday, the owner of
the home, which was built in
1865 and originally belonged
to early area farmer Alex
Cooley, called to correct a
bit of misinformation regard-
ing the house.
Sheila Barrong told the
Sentinel that she wished to
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.senate.gov/web-
form.htm
$ PUUBHF ( SPWF
4 FOUJOFM
Our Community Newspaper
correct the assertion that the
home was owned by Alexan-
der Cooley until he died in
1921 and was then pur-
chased by Virgil D. White.
White did own a home on
Hillside Drive, Barrong
said, though the home he
owned was once owned by
John Cooley and is located
up the road a ways. Barrong
since 1889
said she purchased the Alex
Cooley house herself from
Ruth DeLong in the 1950s.
DeLong reportedly inherited
the home from her father, a
former minister here. The
Sentinel thanks Barrong
for the clarifi cation and for
helping illuminate one small
piece of Cottage Grove's
history.
Vitamin D, hormones and breast cancer
BY JOEL FUHRMAN, MD
For the Sentinel
N
ew research suggests that
Vitamin D could oppose
estrogen’s breast cancer-pro-
moting effects. Published in
the American Journal of Clini-
cal Nutrition, a study of over
57,000 postmenopausal women
found that, among women who
had ever used hormone therapy,
those that were supplementing
with vitamin D had a 26 percent
reduced risk of breast cancer.
Vitamin D is known to have
$ PUUBHF ( SPWF 4 FOUJOFM
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cellular ef-
fects that
oppose the
develop-
ment
of
cancer,
such
as
promoting
cell adhe-
sion, inhib-
iting cancer cell proliferation
and anti-infl ammatory effects.
A Cochrane meta-analysis pub-
lished in 2014 concluded that
supplementation with vitamin
D3 was associated with a 12
percent lower risk of death from
cancer.
There has been extensive
research on vitamin D in rela-
tion to breast cancer risk. Some
meta-analyses have shown sig-
nifi cantly reduced breast cancer
risk with higher blood vitamin D,
whereas others have shown only
a weak association. The protec-
tive effects of vitamin D appear
to be quite strong in studies of
breast cancer patients. In a 2014
meta-analysis of six studies,
higher vitamin D blood levels
(above 29.1 ng/ml) were associ-
ated with a 42 percent reduction
in the risk of death from breast
cancer compared to lower levels
(lower than 21 ng/ml). Another
meta-analysis reported that
breast cancer patients with low
vitamin D levels had more than
double the risk of recurrence of
their cancer. Furthermore, stud-
ies that have shown that an in-
herited variation in the vitamin
D receptor gene increases breast
cancer risk.
We know Vitamin D has
overall anti-cancer effects, but
interestingly the new research
suggests that vitamin D may
oppose some effects of female
hormones, making vitamin D
especially helpful for breast
cancer prevention. Experiments
carried out in vitro suggest that
the active form of vitamin D sup-
presses aromatase expression in
breast cancer cells, resulting in
lower production of estrogen.
Vitamin D also downregulated
the estrogen receptor in breast
cancer cells, making the cells
less responsive to estrogen’s
cancer-promoting signals.
This research makes it even
more important for women to
get their blood vitamin D levels
(25(OH)D) tested and supple-
ment to reach the sweet spot
of 30-45 ng/ml. This favorable
range has been suggested by
much research on cancer, bone
fractures and all-cause mortal-
ity. I recommend taking vitamin
D3, the more potent form of the
vitamin, the form the skin pro-
duces when it is exposed to sun-
light. In my experience, 2000 IU
is an appropriate dose to bring
most people into the 30-45 ng/
ml range.
However, there are always
exceptions and for those whose
blood results fall outside of this
range taking more or less can be
indicated.
Of course, breast cancer pro-
tection involves more than Vi-
tamin D. A nutritarian diet has
been designed to maximally
protect against breast cancer,
and exercise is important too.
Dr. Fuhrman is a #1 New
York Times best-selling author
and a family physician special-
izing in lifestyle and nutritional
medicine. His newest book, The
End of Dieting, debunks the
fake “science” of popular fad
diets and offers an alternative to
dieting that leads to permanent
weight loss and excellent health.
Visit his informative website at
DrFuhrman.com. Submit your
questions and comments about
this column directly to news-
questions@drfuhrman.com. The
full reference list for this article
can be found at DrFuhrman.
com.
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