4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL August 3, 2016
O PINION
Offbeat Oregon History
One man’s cheating heart likely cost
Portland its local newspaper
BY FINN J.D. JOHN
For the Sentinel
I
t may be true that the movement
of a butterfl y’s wings can seed a
hurricane thousands of miles away,
or it may be hyperbole. But minor
events sure can lead to big things —
as was the case with a Portland man
who, back in the early 1960s, got into
a little affair with a married woman.
This fellow’s infi delity led directly
to a shooting, and that shooting led to
the complete takeover of Portland’s
metro newspaper market by the New
York mogul whose company still
owns the Oregonian today.
An amateurish duo of car bombers
with a box of dynamite also played
a key role in the outcome — and it
could never have happened at all had
not several hundred Portlanders had
their inheritance stolen from them, a
few years before that, by the crafty
attorneys in charge of a deceased
widow’s estate.
All in all, it was a bad few years
for Portland.
Now, before we get into the story,
it has to be said that the “unfaithful
husband” narrative is a theory, not a
proven fact. Despite a generous re-
ward offered for his arrest, the man
who shot and wounded Donald New-
house through his basement window
on Oct. 16, 1960, as he stood at his
workbench, has never been identi-
fi ed, so the shooter’s motives can’t
really be known.
What is known that Newhouse had
just moved into the house; the pre-
vious resident had a reputation as a
womanizer; and the gunman, from
the position the shot was fi red, had
not been able to see (or shoot) his
face and head. Hence, the theory
goes, he took the shot thinking he
was blasting the philandering former
owner of the house, not realizing he
had the wrong man.
But Donald Newhouse wasn’t just
any innocent bystander. He was the
production manager at the Portland
Oregonian, the nephew of the New
York mogul who owned it. He was
the man in charge of defeating the
various newspaper unions that had
been on strike there for nearly a year.
That union had already shown itself
willing to get heavy — one member
had threatened to shoot Newhouse as
he crossed a picket line, and another
had been caught bombing company
vehicles.
So the competing theory — that the
shooter was a thug sent by the union
— is far more often heard today. It’s
certainly what Newhouse and his
wife believed, and when Newhouse
died in surgery 12 years later — from
complications he might have sur-
vived if not for the damage the gun-
man infl icted — his widow publicly
blamed the union for his death.
The fact that Newhouse’s inju-
ries came from a shotgun blast to
the pelvis — not the usual target for
an assassin, but a very popular one
among vengeful cuckolded husbands
— suggests she may have been mis-
taken. But it scarcely mattered. In the
minds of most Portlanders, the union
now had the moral taint of attempted
murder upon it. It would take several
more years to play out, but for the
union, the battle was already lost —
and with it Portland’s only remaining
independent daily, and the city’s sta-
tus as a true two-newspaper town.
The events that led up to this fate-
ful shooting were complicated and
controversial, and involved some
of Oregon’s most powerful people;
this is most likely why the story has
been so little told or studied. Until
recently (with the work of historians
like Caleb Diehl), information about
it came generally from two sources:
The newspaper itself, and its former
union members. Obviously, both
these sources are at pains to present
themselves in the best possible light
at all times, so the real story can be
hard to pick out. What follows is my
best shot at doing just that:
Late in 1959, the Stereotypers
Union No. 49 at the Oregonian voted
to walk off the job, thereby — accord-
ing to union historians’ interpretation
— taking the bait in a cunningly laid
trap. From a public-relations stand-
point, their position was terrible:
Samuel I. Newhouse, the owner, had
installed new technology that would
automate the expensive, labor-inten-
sive stereotyping process, eliminat-
ing their positions. To the public, it
looked like they were going on strike
to force the company to stick with in-
ferior technology just so they could
keep their jobs.
Union sources said it was more
complicated than that — that they’d
been willing to work with Newhouse,
but Newhouse had wanted a fi ght and
liked how it would look to have the
strike break out over this particular
issue. Union sources also claimed
it was all part of a complicated and
cunning plot to take over the compet-
ing newspaper, the locally owned Or-
egon Journal — thereby establishing
a local newspaper monopoly — and
to break all the newspaper unions,
in one fell swoop. The level of pre-
science Newhouse would have had to
show for this to be true makes it seem
pretty unlikely. But everyone agrees
that, whether that was the plan or not,
it’s basically what happened.
It didn’t look like it was going that
way at fi rst, though. After the stereo-
typers walked out, they threw a pick-
et line up around the building, and a
picket line was not something one
lightly crossed back in ’59. Hundreds
of other employees stayed away from
work, effectively swelling the num-
Please see OFFBEAT, Page 5A
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Festival
fl ummoxed
I
have been looking for-
ward to the Festival of
Eugene 2016 at the end of
August because I was not
just performing at the Poetry
Stage but had taken a class
in TV production with CTV
29 Lane Community Public
Access TV. I was eager to
make a TV show of the Po-
etry Stage too.
Then yesterday I got an
e-mail saying that it’d been
canceled because the woman
behind the Festival of Eu-
gene had used the N-Word.
There was no way to know
who was attacking her due
to Internet anonymity. But
the mystery deepened in the
white clouds of electrons of
social media where she had
used the N-word and turned
the World against her.
Racism is unacceptable.
But how could one use of the
N-word destroy something I
have been looking forward to
and working on for months?
Who was she, and who were
her accusers? I will never
know. You see, all of this has
the substance of ghosts and
rumors to me. There was a
rumor/hearsay she used the
N-word, and the hearsay that
her Internet Facebook site
Please see FESTIVAL, Page 7A
Summer harvest affects farmers and motorists
Drivers cautioned to be
alert as farm machinery is
likely to be on the road in
Oregon
A release from the Oregon
Department of Agriculture
M
otorists in Oregon this sum-
mer are likely to face heavier
traffi c due to vacation travel and road
construction. Add in slow moving farm
machinery during harvest and it’s a
recipe that calls for ultra awareness
and extra caution. From the busy and
crowded traffi c lanes of the more con-
gested Willamette Valley to the wide
open spaces east of the Cascades, the
general advice is the same– be on the
alert, slow down, and have patience.
“There are more drivers on the road
this time of year and there is more
road construction,” says Katy Coba,
director of the Oregon Department of
Agriculture. “The constant message
is slow down. That’s the exact same
message we want to get across when it
comes to the summer harvest season.
If you see farm equipment on the road,
please slow down.”
Farmers can legally drive trucks,
tractors, combines, and other equip-
ment on public roads. Sometimes this
requires a tractor, combine, or farm
truck to be out on the road, driving
between 10 and 25 miles per hour to
get from farm to fi eld. This is perfectly
lawful as long as the equipment has a
clearly visible triangular, orange-and-
red Slow Moving Vehicle (SMV) sign
on its back end. That sign is a warning
for drivers to slow down immediately.
Farmers normally try to avoid using
high traffi c roads as much as possible,
but sometimes that just can’t hap-
pen. Urban development has moved
closer to agricultural operations, which
increases the risk of motor vehicle
accidents involving farmers and non-
farmers.
Amity farmer Bruce Ruddenklau was
involved in an accident on Highway
99E just before the Fourth of July. His
wife Helle says it was a miracle there
were no injuries.
“Bruce was bringing the windrower
home at 5:30 in the morning,” says
Helle. “It was reasonably light out, all
the road lights were on, including the
fl ashing orange lights, and the SMV
sign was clean and visible. [The driver
of a car] approached from the back
and ran straight into the left rear wheel
of the windrower. The wheel snapped
off, the windrower was pushed along
at a higher speed than the 14 miles
per hour it normally can go, and the
car fl ipped over, grazed the side of the
windrower and landed upside down on
the roadway."
Not all accidents involving farm ma-
chinery and motorists are so fortunate.
Statistics provided by the Oregon
Department of Transportation indicate
25 traffi c accidents involving farm
vehicles and equipment in 2015 and 40
in 2014, including three fatal crashes.
Education and awareness campaigns
seem to be helping. In 2011, there
were 235 motor vehicle accidents in-
volving farm vehicles and equipment,
resulting in eight fatalities.
Just as more urban motorists are on
rural roads, farmers are busy planting,
cultivating, and harvesting the many
crops of the season. That makes the
brochure’s information more timely
than ever.
“If you’re driving 55 miles per hour
on a highway and come upon a tractor
that’s moving at only 25 miles per
hour, it takes only 8 seconds to close
a gap the length of a football fi eld be-
tween you and the tractor,” says Rigor.
Chocolate: Heart-healthy?
BY JOEL FUHRMAN, MD
For the Sentinel
W
here does chocolate
come from? A darkly
colored bean – so of course,
unprocessed cacao beans are
brimming with antioxidant nu-
trients. Accordingly, chocolate
consumption has been associ-
ated with reduced risk of heart
disease and stroke. Cocoa and
$ PUUBHF ( SPWF 4 FOUJOFM
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dark choco-
late have
been inves-
tigated as
a treatment
option for
elevated
blood pres-
sure,
but
only small
decreases in blood pressure
were reported. Similarly, regu-
lar dark chocolate consumption
results in small decreases in
cholesterol levels. Flavonoids
(antioxidants present in choco-
late and many other plant foods)
do indeed provide cardiovascu-
lar protection - high fl avonoid
intake is associated with consid-
erable reductions (up to 45 per-
cent) in the risk of heart disease.
The main point to remember is
that when you eat healthfully
you are eating a large variety of
fl avonoid-rich foods, berries for
example.
Certainly, you can enjoy some
chocolate as a part of a healthful
eating style – but how you enjoy
your chocolate is important. A
milk chocolate bar is roughly
only one-third chocolate and
two-thirds added fat and sugar.
Dark chocolate bars have a
higher cocoa content and less
added sugar, but they also de-
liver a signifi cant load of calo-
ries and saturated fat. A great
way to enjoy chocolate is by
using unsweetened cocoa pow-
der. Most of the fat has been re-
moved, but the chocolate fl avor
and the fl avonoids remain. Add
cocoa powder to smoothies (like
the chocolate cherry smoothie
below), or to blended frozen ba-
nanas or cherries for a healthy
chocolate “ice cream”. Or try
making black bean brownies or
muffi ns sweetened with dates or
a healthy chocolate cake with
hidden shredded vegetables.
You can fi nd recipes like these
on the DrFuhrman.com Mem-
ber Center or in my books.
Keep in mind, when you fol-
low a high nutrient eating style
of vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts
and seeds, the polyphenols in
cocoa are only a trivial amount
of the loads of phytochemicals
provided by your overall health-
promoting diet.
Enjoy your chocolate by mak-
ing delicious treats without add-
ed fats and sugars!
Chocolate Cherry
Smoothie
(serves 2)
4 ounces organic baby spinach
1/2 cup unsweetened soy, hemp
or almond milk
1/2 cup pomegranate juice,
cherry juice or cherry pome-
granate juice
1 tablespoon Dr. Fuhrman’s
Cocoa Powder or other natural
cocoa powder, not Dutch pro-
cessed
1 cup frozen cherries
1 banana
1 cup frozen blueberries
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons ground fl ax seeds
Instructions: If using a regu-
lar blender, liquefy the spinach
with non-dairy milk and juice.
Add remaining ingredients and
blend about 2 minutes until very
smooth. If using a high powered
blender, blend all at once.
Dr. Fuhrman is a New York
Times best-selling author and
board certifi ed family physi-
cian specializing in lifestyle
and nutritional medicine. Vis-
it his informative website at
DrFuhrman.com. Submit your
questions and comments about
this column directly to news-
questions@drfuhrman.com.
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