A10 THE BULLETIN • SUNDAY, JANUARY 10, 2021
Putnam
The Putnam
house in Bend is
raised off its foun-
dation and is in
the process of be-
ing renovated.
Continued from A1
Completely restoring the Putnam
house will take more than a year to
complete, Winey said. He is starting
with constructing a new lava rock
foundation, which has required lifting
the house 10-feet off the ground.
In addition, Winey plans to remove
a back porch that was added in the
1940s and remove and replace a brick
chimney. The Bend Landmarks Com-
mission has approved the initial work.
“This particular property has gone
through 50 years of neglect and de-
ferred maintenance,” Winey told the
landmarks commission in October.
“There is a very significant shift and a
lot of settling on the first and second
floor.”
Cynthia Putnam, the granddaugh-
ter of George and Dorothy Putnam,
said she is thrilled with the renovation
plans. The 70-year-old retired English
teacher from southeast Florida visited
the home in 1997 and in 2017.
“I’m just so pleased they chose this
house to renovate because they appre-
ciate the history behind it,” Putnam
said in a phone call.
Putnam believes her grandparents
would be honored to know their first
home together is still standing today.
Putnam never knew her grandfather,
who died the year she was born, but
she knows how much Bend meant
Bend Tech
Continued from A1
“I would rather be in (full-
time), doing all the hands-on
projects, because that’s how I
learn best,” said ninth grader
Gabriel Miller, 15. “But being
able to come in, despite hav-
ing a global pandemic, is really
good.”
About 70% to 75% of
Bend Tech Academy’s stu-
dent population attends lim-
ited in-person instruction on
Wednesdays, said Principal Sal
Cassaro.
That’s not a large number of
students, as many teens who
initially signed up for Bend
Tech switched to district-spon-
sored Bend-La Pine Online
classes last fall, said Cassaro.
December enrollment statis-
tics show 97 students enrolled
at Bend Tech — a sharp drop
Ryan Brennecke/The
Bulletin
Submitted photo/Deschutes County Historical Society
A photo of the George Palmer Putnam house in 1984 shows original wooden steps,
which were replaced with stone steps in the 1990s.
to him.
Putnam appreciates how the city
remembers her grandfather for all he
accomplished, rather than how he is
remembered nationally as the wid-
ower to Amelia Earhart.
“I can’t emphasize enough what a
wonderful, pleasant way Bend, Ore-
gon presents George Palmer Putnam,”
she said. “It’s unlike anywhere else. He
was an extraordinary man, especially
for the West.”
from the school district’s pro-
jection of 159 students.
“We had such great momen-
tum in our school, we were
building great culture, doing
some great things academ-
ically,” Cassaro said. “Then
COVID hit, and it spun every-
body out.”
Cassaro took the reigns at
Bend Tech Academy, then
known as Marshall High
School, in 2018. Over the
course of a couple school years,
he transformed it from an al-
ternative high school to a ca-
reer and technical education
magnet school with classes in
unique subjects like health,
business, construction, robot-
ics and more.
Many Bend Tech students
joined the school explicitly
for these hands-on programs
that are difficult to replicate at
home. Because of that, some
Many books and movies about
Earhart, who disappeared on a flight
across the Pacific Ocean July 2, 1937,
depict Putnam in a negative light, as
someone who used Earhart for his
own personal gain, his granddaugh-
ter said.
But she reminds people that her
grandfather is the one who hand-
picked Earhart to become the first
woman aviator to fly solo across the
Atlantic Ocean.
“It was his success that made her
the icon that she is to this day,” Put-
nam said.
As for all the theories surrounding
Earhart’s mysterious disappearance,
Putnam has a simple explanation.
“It’s not sexy to say she ran out of
gas and fell in the ocean and died,”
she said. “That’s not sensational. That
doesn’t sell. But that’s what happened.”
Earhart did not know Putnam
when he was in Bend. She never vis-
ited his home on Congress Street.
It was Putnam’s influence as a
newspaper publisher, mayor and town
promoter that led to his house being
listed in 1998 on the National Register
of Historic Places.
“His desire to do good helped shape
the growing town of Bend during the
Submitted photo
Bend Tech Academy student Kyle Hutchinson builds a robot in a tech-
nology class.
students said they were disap-
pointed they could only learn
in-person once a week due to
COVID-19 for the first half of
the school year.
Ninth grader Mikah Do-
lyniuk, who’s in a construction
class, noted that much of that
online learning for the class has
been simply reviewing safety
tips. And although he’s been
able to build things at home,
2021
e e
Reporter: 541-617-7820,
kspurr@bendbulletin.com
since his family has a work-
shop, he knows many students
don’t have the same luxury.
“I got a good grade because
I can make all this stuff, but I
don’t know if other people had
a worse grade because they
couldn’t,” Mikah, 15, said.
Not every student minded
only attending school once a
week. Ninth grader Elena Ste-
phens said she actually enjoys
the balance of mostly learning
online, with just a splash of
in-person schooling.
“Only going to actual school
once a week is easier, way sim-
pler, than every day,” Elena, 14,
said.
Both teachers and students
said they felt safe on Wednes-
days, as Bend Tech Acad-
emy staff effectively enforced
COVID-19 protocols. But, as
Mikah pointed out, social dis-
tancing isn’t hard when your
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Once the Putnam house is restored,
Winey and his wife plan to move in
and retire.
Winey said the house will be his last
project, after a long career of architec-
ture work around the world.
He sees the house as a challenge
and a property that can be a jewel in
Bend.
“If you were a builder and look-
ing at it, you would say tear it down,”
Winey said. “But that’s not why we
bought it. We bought it because it’s
special and it means a lot of the neigh-
borhood.”
classes only have a few stu-
dents.
“If we’re working, it’s no-
where near each other, tables
across,” he said.
Health teacher Heather
Johnson said she was excited
to eventually have her students
back in the classroom for more
hours.
However, Johnson still be-
lieves she teaches her students
a lot in the limited time she
has now, such as practicing
stitching on a mannequin or
demonstrating intubation —
when a tube is stuck down a
patient’s throat to help them
breathe.
“I’ve got two students for
two hours. What I can do in
that time is incredibly unheard
of,” she said. “It’s remarkably
hands-on.”
e e
Reporter: 541-617-7854,
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