News
Blue Mountain Eagle
Orthopedic services
return to area
Dr. Jacobson to
travel from Bend
to John Day
By Richard Hanners
Blue Mountain Eagle
Regular orthopedic ser-
vices will be returning to Blue
Mountain Hospital after sev-
eral years’ absence.
Dr. Scott Jacobson, who is
trained in orthopedic sports
medicine and specializes in
shoulder and knee injuries,
traveled from The Center Or-
thopedic & Neurosurgical &
Research facility in Bend to
John Day for his first clinic
day on Nov. 9.
“He’ll start out with a one-
day clinic every other month,”
Jenny King, the marketing
and communications director
at The Center, said. “You can
do a lot in one day. If there’s
more demand, then he could
come to John Day every
month.”
Jacobson said he stopped
coming to John Day several
years ago when he lost his
charter plane. He said the type
of orthopedic needs found in
John Day would be typical,
if not for the distance to care
centers.
“It’s a long way to drive to
Bend, so people sometimes
wait too long to see a doctor,”
he said. “Part of that is the
independent nature of peo-
ple in John Day, but a doctor
will often see more advanced
problems.”
Lynne Combs, the clinic
manager at the Strawberry
Wilderness Community Clin-
ic in John Day, said she was
“very much looking forward to
seeing this service restored.”
“We’re a very active com-
munity, so there is a higher risk
for strain, fractures and bruised
bones,” she said.
In addition to the area’s
hunters, outdoor recreationists,
timber workers and ranchers,
there’s a growing elderly pop-
ulation in Grant
County.
“These
types of inju-
ries can occur
at any age,
even children,
but definitely
Dr. Scott
Jacobson our communi-
ty has an older
segment with
approaching needs for knees
and hips,” she said.
Combs noted that avoid-
ing the lengthy drive times to
medical services in Bend can
be helpful, but it would also be
easier on people with mobility
issues.
King said Jacobson would
provide pre-op and post-op
evaluation and diagnosis, but
procedures would need to be
performed in Bend or other
locations. She said Jacobson
planned to fly to Grant Coun-
ty Regional Airport each time
with Korena Larsen-Farris, a
physician’s assistant who spe-
cializes in physical medicine
and rehabilitation and has been
seeing patients at Blue Moun-
tain Hospital since 2010.
Jacobson has more than two
decades of experience in or-
thopedic medicine. He earned
his medical degree at UCLA
and completed his residency at
Duke University and his sports
medicine fellowship at South-
ern California Center for Sports
Medicine. He started working
at The Center in Bend in 1995
and treats patients of all ages
and diverse backgrounds.
Outside of medical work,
Jacobson has placed in the
top three as a national phy-
sique competitor in open and
master’s men’s divisions, is a
multi-engine, instrument-rated
private pilot and enjoys play-
ing the piano, fishing, travel-
ing and spending time with his
family.
“I’m looking forward to
returning to John Day,” Jacob-
son said. “I enjoyed my time
in John Day, and I’m sure the
patients will enjoy seeing me
here, too.”
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
Grant County paleontologist
wins international honor
Ted Fremd
earns Morris F.
Skinner Award
By Angel Carpenter
Blue Mountain Eagle
When paleontologist Ted
Fremd of Mt. Vernon moved
to Grant County in 1984,
he’d planned to stay a short
time, find a few fossils, write
a few papers, then move on.
Fremd went from work-
ing with a collection of 120
fossils in a small laboratory
to becoming the first chief
of paleontology at the John
Day Fossil Beds National
Monument to establishing
the world-renowned Thomas
Condon Paleontology Center
where he was project manag-
er.
His achievements since
then have been remarkable,
but his latest accomplish-
ment possibly tops them all.
Fremd received the pres-
tigious Morris F. Skinner
Award from the Society of
Vertebrate Paleontology in
recognition of his many sci-
entific contributions, includ-
ing creating important col-
lections of fossil vertebrates.
“This is something like
the Nobel Prize for paleon-
tologists, and it’s kind of cool
that a Grant County person
was chosen from an interna-
tional pool,” Fremd said.
He said award committee
members were from as far
away as Beijing, China, and
Paris, France.
Fremd also credits the two
previous superintendents of
the national monument, both
of whom still reside in Grant
County, for the award.
“Ben Ladd, first super-
intendent of the park, was a
huge supporter of paleontol-
ogy, and Jim Hammett in-
sured that the visitor center
would be built and tolerated
Contributed photo/Ray Troll
Paleontologist Ted Fremd was awarded the Morris
F. Skinner Award from the Society of Vertebrate
Paleontology.
many of my insubordina-
tions,” he said.
Fremd said his wife of 45
years, Skylar Rickabaugh,
was instrumental for his suc-
cess.
He quipped, she’s the rea-
son I’m “not one of the en-
tombed biota we paleontolo-
gists study.”
Fremd spends half his
time in Eugene, where he is a
researcher at the Museum of
Natural and Cultural History
and the Department of Earth
Sciences.
He also lives on Laycock
Creek Road in Mt. Vernon,
where he enjoys the solitude,
and he still occasionally vol-
unteers at the monument.
Fremd is the only paleon-
tologist to serve as a regional
science advisor to the Na-
tional Park Service.
He has five fossil species
named in his honor, includ-
ing Plesiosminthus fremdi
(Korth and Samuels, 2015),
an important rodent to bio-
stratigraphers. Biostratigra-
phy focuses on correlating
and assigning relative ages of
rock strata by using the fossil
assemblages contained with-
in them.
Fremd has published and
coauthored numerous papers
and reports in his field, and
is now looking forward to
completing a book, with two
other authors, about the John
Day Fossil Beds National
Monument.
“I don’t think most peo-
ple have a good idea of just
how significant the monu-
ment is,” he said. “Every-
one in Australia and China
knows it. The main reason
I won the award was the
resources themselves are so
significant.”
He added, “The nation-
al monument is almost not
enough — it’s incredibly
important.”
The fossils preserved at
the monument span more
than 40 million years, and
Fremd said they are always
finding something new and
interesting.
“We thought we had a
really good handle on what
was there,” he said. “We’re
now realizing we’ve just
scratched the surface of dis-
coveries.”
He said the upcoming
book, coauthored by Joshua
Samuels (his successor at
the monument) and Regan
Dunn, will go to print in
about one year, published by
Indiana University Press.
“We’re excited about
that, to put it together once
and for all,” he said.
As a boy, Fremd collect-
ed cereal box dinosaurs, and
as early as he can remember
was interested in a variety of
scientific disciplines, includ-
ing astronomy, paleontology
and cactus plants.
He said it was fortunate
he had a high school phys-
ics teacher, who was also a
Ph.D. researcher, spurring
his interest in astronomy.
Fremd said life as a pa-
leontologist never becomes
dull, and he’s getting paid
to do what he wanted to do
when he was a child.
“It’s uplifting to encoun-
ter, discover, exhume, ob-
jects that no human being
has ever seen — ever,” he
said. “It’s entirely unexpect-
ed, undiscovered.”
To the untrained eye, the
fossils may look like “dusty,
dried rocks with bone-
shaped things,” he said,
but a paleontologist sees
more.
“In this field, you can
imagine them as living,
breathing things and analyze
what they did while living,”
he said.
FIBER FAST INTERNET existing service
areas in Grant County:
ACCESS
TODAY!
Bates
Dayville
Mt.
Vernon
John
Day
A3
Prairie
City
Canyon
City
• Available today! • Fiber fast internet speeds 1G and beyond
• Home & Business, Broadband & Telephone service
• Experts in the High Speed Internet industry • Affordable start up costs
One Telephone Drive, Mt. Vernon
541-932-4411 or 1-800-848-7969
155 West Main Street, John Day
541-932-4411 or 1-800-848-7969