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About Cottage Grove sentinel. (Cottage Grove, Or.) 1909-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 9, 2019)
$1.00 S entinel C ottage G rove Est. 1889 Serving the communities of Cottage Grove, Dorena, Drain, Elkton, Lorane and Yoncalla. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9, 2019 By Caitlyn May cmay@cgsentinel.com During the last legis- lative session, lawmakers added a few new entries to the state’s law books and now that the confetti has settled and Father Time has turned the clock ahead to 2019, those laws are in full eff ect. The Roadkill Law: Say you like to eat deer but heading to the store is such a chore. Now, in Or- egon, residents can simply dine roadside — sort of. Senate Bill 372 allows for “roadkill salvage” which basically means that road- kill can now be legally harvested for human con- sumption. Th e Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is responsible for issuing permits that allow the salvage with a catch — heads and antlers must be turned into authorities within fi ve business days and residents cannot go hunting with their vehicles; meaning drivers cannot intentionally run down an animal to eat it. Other restrictions in- clude the type of animal that can be eaten — white tail deer can only be sal- vaged in Douglas County and east of the Cascade Mountains. Only deer and elk can be eaten around the rest of the state and the sale of the meat is prohibited. Workplace laws: A new pilot program is aimed at helping whis- tle-blowers by providing them additional protec- tions under the law. Senate Bill 1559 estab- lishes a two-year program that allows employees in four state agencies — the Oregon Health Authori- ty, Oregon Department of Human Services, Oregon Department of Transpor- tation and the Oregon De- partment of Environmental Quality — to anonymously report concerns. Th e eff ort will be paired with an online manual that details the proper proce- dures for whistleblowers and the protections they are aff orded. Under Senate Bill 828, employees can now sue or fi le a complaint with the state if their employ- ers do not adhere to work scheduling laws which are outlined in the Fair Work Week Act. Th e legislation mandated that employers See LAWS 9A (541) 942-0555 PayneWest.com/Cottage-Grove SPORTS Hidden Valley completes dramatic comback against Cottage Grove B1 FACEBOOK.COM/CGSENTINEL • TWITTER.COM/CGSENTINEL WED 54º/44º For a complete six- day forecast please see page A5. CGSENTINEL.COM Board closes Latham School after 165 years By Zach Silva zsilva@cgsentinel.com Latham’s fate has been sealed: the school that fi rst opened in 1853 will close its doors in June for the fi nal time. Aft er months, and years, of specula- tion about whether or not the school should stay open, the South Lane School District school board made the closing of the school offi cial on Mon- day night with a 5-2 vote to close the school. Board members Taylor Wil- hour and Merlene Martin cast the op- posing votes. “It’s been a very diffi cult decision for us as a schoolboard. It’s not easy for us to make this decision but it’s what we feel is necessary for our school dis- trict,” said board member Sherry Du- erst-Higgins who was fi lling in as the role of board chair aft er Alan Baas was absent due to a recent medical procedure. Th e decision did not come as a surprise based on the board’s previ- ous conversations regarding the school district’s “Latham School Report.” Th e report, which was released in Decem- ber, went over the logistics of the two possible board decisions: the school closing or the school remaining open for at least fi ve more years. If the school were to stay open, the report detailed that it would cost an es- timated $775,000 to repair and upgrade the building. While the board has set aside $353,000 for maintenance for Latham, the rest of the funding would have had to come out of the district’s deferred maintenance budget. Th e report noted 19 diff erent up- grades that Latham would need ranging from upgrades in kitchen technology (an estimated $26,500) all the way up to replacing the majority of the roofi ng (an estimated $95,000). With Monday’s decision, those funds will now go to various deferred maintenance projects across the district. Th e offi cial vote, that was made as a motion by board member Jerry Settelmeyer, took two attempts aft er Baas was initially not contacted via phone for the fi rst vote. When the sec- ond vote rolled around, the outcome remained the same. “I was on the side of the families and students and I think that Latham plays a really, really important part of the school district and we’ve now closed a small school that I think was really, really important,” said Martin on her decision to vote against the closure. During the meeting, other board members off ered various feelings on the closing. “My son was a third grader when we closed Blue Mountain [in 1982] and it had very small classes. He went to Blue Mountain it was a community of teachers and the kids and he went in to Harrison and it prepared him so much better, I believe, to go into Lin- coln and go into the high school,” said Duerst-Higgins. “So as a parent, I just, I was disappointed but I did a positive on that. So as parents we need to tell them, this is good and what is good about it. Because I think he benefi tted from a bigger school and the change. It’s hard to close a school, it’s very diffi - cult to close a school.” Tammy Hodgkinson recalled a dif- See LATHAM 7A Oldest home in Th e Grove gets new life New owner of the historic Lurch House hopes to reveal its past while assuring its future. By Caitlyn May cmay@cgsentinel.com When Gerald Santana and his fami- ly stood in front of 412 Adams Ave. last summer it was on the tail end of a journey from California marked with divine inter- vention, coincidence and old fashioned luck. Th e newly minted residents of Oregon had been house hunting from their rental in Eu- gene when they found the two-story house sit- t- uated under an old Red Oak tree. “It was actually diffi cult getting someone to get us into the house,” Santana said from his new desk at Th e Sentinel, where he serves as one of the newspa- wspa- pers’ multimedia specialist; a job he took, in part, art, to leaf through old bound volumes of the 130-year-old ar-old paper looking for clues about 412 Adams. “When the realtor met us, they were holding ding a fl ashlight,” he said. “And we thought, ‘Why are e they holding a fl ashlight?’” Th at's because 412 Adams isn’t just an old house with peeling paint. And it’s not just a fi xer-upper that saw its previous owners living in what amounted to the kitchen; it’s been singled out as the oldest house still standing in Cottage Grove. In the 1870s, Cottage Grove looked a little diff er- ent. Th e roads weren’t paved; downtown Main Street wasn’t yet historic and houses sat in empty fi elds instead of neat rows of other houses. “People would come off the railroad and walk down and visit in that house, like a community cen- ter,” Santana said. “I was reading things of people just hanging out o at the Lurch house.” Before 1880, there weren’t any commercial build- ings on the th east side of the river in Cottage Grove. Th e only public structures were the Union Church/ Good Templar Tem Hall that was built due to demand in 1873. Th e Ira Conner residence — since destroyed — and the Lurch house were the only houses on sou side of east Main Street in 1880. When the south the Lurches L lost their store to a fi re on the west side in 1880, they decided to rebuild the general sto next to their home — on the east side, store m making it the fi rst business located east of the r river. Shortly aft er, a wooden plank sidewalk was constructed that led travelers from the railroad depot right past the Lurch store . and house. History books and newspaper 0s 187 e articles detail parties and gatherings at the t la the n house through the late 1800s until, in 1914, the i ., Ave s stop party stopped. dam 12 A Benjam Lurch’s wife, Lena, grew ill. She traveled Benjamin 4 t e, a s Oakrid to see a doctor and returned home with to Oakridge u o h H c r exp every expectation of recovering. But in 1914, she u L The passed away leaving her husband and two daughters behind. Except for Ben Lurch’s house. “When Benjamin Lurch died in 1930, there was an Th e Lurch brothers owned a shop on Main Street article in Th e Sentinel about it,” Santana said, “It and, eventually, a house as well which they situated See HOUSE 9A directly beside the store. Homebirths a part of the rural reality, debate on safety continues By Caitlyn May cmay@cgsentinel.com Th e house was small. Two windows fl anked the front door that anchored a petite white porch. It would look like any other ordinary house except for the brightly colored twists and turns that gave way to fl ower buds painted on the porch pillars and around the door and around the win- dows. While it sits empty now, in the 1970s, the little house near the post offi ce was full of life. Literally. “When I went to Cottage Grove, it was with the idea of being a country doctor and that included things like home birth,” said Dr. Tom Duncan. Duncan founded the Birth Home in Cottage Grove in 1975 as an alterna- EDUCATION tive to the city’s hospital maternity ward. But 44 years later, both the Birth Home and the hospital have stopped welcoming babies. In fact, the only way to have a baby in the city limits of Cot- tage Grove is to purposefully give birth at home or accidentally give birth on the freeway on the way to Eugene or Springfi eld — the cities closest to Cot- tage Grove that off er a maternity ward. According to local administration at PeaceHealth, the hospital’s decision not to include a maternity ward when it was being conceived is a monetary decision; it costs money to adhere to the strict standards of welcoming new life. Th e hospital does, however, have the ability to deliver a child if a mother cannot make it to a hospital outside the city or transport the mother in labor via ambulance. However, a child has not been born in the hospital under FEATURE Search for planets Offbeat Oregon The Discover Exoplanets display begins Jan. 30 at the CG Lib rary How the 'worst western ever' was fi lmed in Oregon. PAGE A11 PAGE A3 INDEX New laws now in eff ect for 2019 PERSONAL | COMMERCIAL BENEFITS | SURETY Emerald Valley Armory, LLC Tues. - Sat. 10-6 147 E. Oregon Ave. Creswell, OR 97426 541-895-2666 those circumstances for at least a de- cade. Jody Rolnick’s child wasn’t born at the Cottage Grove Hospital either. “I don’t like medical things,” she said. Rolnick, the previous publisher for Th e Sentinel, wrote about her birth experi- ence for the paper more than 20 years ago. When her daughter Phoebe was born in 1998, it was in a pool of wa- ter — a 150 gallon Rubbermaid horse trough. Rolnick, who suff ers from a fear of hospitals, had settled on a home birth. And while she and her midwife Chris Heritage had a practice run at the Cottage Grove Hospital, when the time to have the baby grew closer, they were unable to complete their birth plan there. Rolnick says it may have had to do with insurance, but eventually she landed in a bedroom of her home, in a Calendar ...................................... B12 Channel Guide ............................... B5 Classifieds ...................................... B7 Obituaries ...................................... A2 Opinion ......................................... A4 Sports ............................................ B1 trough, giving birth. In 2016, 20 years aft er Phoebe was born, Amy Tuteur wrote an article for the New York Times, “Why is Ameri- can Home Birth So Dangerous?” At the time, home births accounted for just 2 percent of births in the developed world. In the Netherlands, the number was much higher at 16 percent. At the time, Oregon provided the best data in the nation for a side-by- side comparison for home births ver- sus hospital births because, in 2012, the state began requiring that birth and death certifi cates include where the birth took place and who attended the birth. Th e stats were grim, placing the death rate for home births that year at seven times the rate of hospital births. cgnews@cgsentinel.com (541) 942-3325 ph • (541) 942-3328 fax P.O. Box 35, Cottage Grove, OR 97424 Corner of Sixth and Whiteaker, Cottage Grove _______________ VOLUME 131 • NUMBER 2 See BIRTHS 7A
