Polk County News
Polk County Itemizer-Observer • December 13, 2017 15A
Gordon gets crash course as mayor
McCleery
Continued from Page 1A
“We didn’t want to aban-
don the kids for summer,
so we went from the back-
packs to Friday pantry, and
opened it up to not just
Morrison, but Dallas High
School and LaCreole (Mid-
dle School).”
They served 19 students
for the summer in a unique
set up where only the stu-
dents, not their parents,
picked out food from the
pantry. They rely on coun-
selors to recommend stu-
dents for the club.
Members still pack bags
for 13 elementary students
and 36 older students have
membership cards to the
pantry.
“A lot of the students
here live on their own and I
know that it helps them es-
pecially — those who don’t
have a support system at
home,” said Garry, a stu-
dent at Morrison. “It really
does help us lot.”
Kahneeta, also a Morri-
son student, said Mc-
Cleery’s idea has become
an important resource for
her family. She said she
shops the pantry each
week, even if there’s no
school on Friday.
“We were at a point
where this was the only
income of food that we
had,” she said.
Dana Goodale, a coun-
selor at Morrison, said
Kindness Club provides
more than food. When the
backpack program started,
she began to see a differ-
ence in the recipients’ atti-
tudes toward school.
“Students who were shy
and insecure about their
academic ability were
feeling more comfortable
speaking up in classes and
started showing up early
every morning to get
breakfast at school and
enjoy the company of
their peers,” she said. “It
really was amazing.”
Goodale said before the
pantry and backpacks, staff
members sponsored stu-
dents to participate in
Willamette Valley Food As-
sistance Program, but
couldn’t help all students
who needed it.
“Debbie has found a way
to tap into community
folks who want to give back
and support students in a
way that only three or four
staff members cannot,”
Goodale said.
Now the club has 12
board members and about
120 people who follow the
club’s Facebook page. Each
week, inventory is taken at
the pantry and needs post-
ed on Facebook. Donations
of clothing, toiletries and
other necessities come in,
as well.
Friday pantry also estab-
lishes bonds that show stu-
dents that school staff care
about them.
“She’s made a big differ-
ent in our kids’ lives,” said
Annette Anderson, a
teacher at Morrison. “I’ve
worked here are Morrison
for nine years, so well be-
fore the pantry was in op-
eration, and it’s such a
change to able to have as-
sistance to help the kids.”
McCleery said her mis-
sion to help students
through weekends has be-
come much more than she
imagined. Recently, the
club has teamed up with
Christmas Cheer so it can
accept tax deductible do-
nations.
“It’s exploded way be-
yond my expectations for
sure. I think all of us would
say that,” she said. “I think
it’s been very healing for
more than just me. It’s
given a lot of us an outlet.”
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By Jolene Guzman
The Itemizer-Observer
FALLS CITY — Jeremy
Gordon isn’t used to his new
title yet.
“People started calling me
mayor right away,” he said. “I
said, ‘that’s too quick. Slow
down.’”
Since being appointed
Falls City’s mayor on Nov.
20, following former mayor
Terry Ungricht’s resignation,
nothing’s slowed down for
Gordon.
Ungricht, who still serves
as the acting city manager, is
giving him a crash course in
city governance and what it
means to be mayor.
“There’s a lot city govern-
ment does that … is just not
on people’s radar, that wasn’t
on my radar. I assume that
the sewer is going to work. I
assume the water is going to
be clean, all these services,”
Gordon said. “Just how much
work it requires to maintain
the things that are necessary
to be a city, I have a new ap-
preciation for that.”
He describes the learning
curve as “immersion-style,
like learning Spanish and
being dropped off in Monter-
rey, Mexico.”
A resident of Falls City for
two years, Gordon said be-
coming mayor wasn’t how he
envisioned serving his com-
munity, at least at first. He
said after becoming a fa-
ther — his son Harvey just
turned 1 — and reaching the
mid-point of his career, he
believed it was time to start
giving back.
“I kind of imagined myself
starting with committee
work and learning that way,
but then Terry stepped down
and the opportunity came
up,” he said. “I was ap-
proached by some people I
really respected in the com-
munity about applying.
There was kind of a process
of me reflecting on that.”
Gordon had a conversa-
tion with his wife, Dana
Schowalter, about what that
would mean for their family,
and together they agreed he
should apply for the position.
“It actually made some
sense with some of my work
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JOLENE GUZMAN/Itemizer-Observer
Jeremy Gordon was appointed mayor on Nov. 20.
experience,” he said.
Gordon works for the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin-Milwau-
kee as the project manager
for its Flexible Option online
degree program and on state
authorization compliance for
the university. He’s able to
work in both roles remotely.
The former project is new,
and required a lot of listening
and information gathering,
two skills he believes will be
well-used as he serves as
mayor.
“I’m pretty good at listen-
ing and getting all the facts
together before I respond,”
he said. “I think that will be
helpful in leading the council
meetings.”
The other half of his job
entails working with state
government to keep the uni-
versity in compliance with
standards to offer an online
degree program.
Gordon said his new post
offers him an opportunity
he’s excited about.
“One of the positives of it
is that my family is going to
be a lot more integrated into
the community events and
things like that,” he said. “We
are going to spend more time
doing that. That’s positive for
my son and our family.”
He and Schowalter moved
to Oregon from Milwaukee
after she accepted an assis-
tant professor of communi-
cations post at Western Ore-
gon University.
Solution on Page 12A
“I talked to my boss when
she in the interview process
at Western. She’s the director
of online learning at Univer-
sity of Wisconsin, so adept at
technology. We worked out a
strategy,” Gordon said. “It’s
been working out really
well.”
The couple landed in Falls
City after a trip to looking for
housing. Gordon said anoth-
er professor lived in Falls City
at the time and invited them
to stay in his house while
they searched.
“It turns out, the owner in
Falls City hadn’t put the
house up yet, but was plan-
ning to,” he said. “We just fell
in love with the house, just
right down the road on Day-
ton Street. It eventually
worked out to buy that
home.”
Coincidently, the home is
known as “the mayor’s
house” to longtime residents
because a former mayor
lived there, Gordon said.
“When we moved here,
there was an expectation that
we would take care of that
house,” he said. “It has some
significance to the residents.”
He said the house may not
have been home to a former
mayor and the current
mayor, but a future mayor,
too.
“We joke that my 1-year-
old will be mayor someday,”
Gordon said, chuckling. “He’s
very popular.”