4A • August 26, 2016 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com
Views from the Rock
Newspaper coverage of the
fi rst beach run in 1966.
FILE PHOTO
Th e man who brought the starting line to the Coast
R
alph Davis was almost superhuman in the
eyes of those at the beaches of Seaside
and Gearhart. A strapping man who
competed at every age, the Portland State Uni-
versity coach and Seaside lifeguard died Sunday.
Davis left his mark not only with the 250 lives
he saved over his time on the beach, but as the
founder of the Seaside Beach Run and Trail’s
End Marathon, Davis died Sunday, Aug. 14.
“He certainly was a notable fi gure on the
North Coast,” Cannon Beach’s Peter Lindsey
said. “He was a huge, lantern-jawed, strapping,
fi ne, gentle, but rugged character, believe me.”
“He and his wife Betty and their sons Bryan
and Scott were lifeguards, fi rst in Seaside, then
Gearhart for many, many years when I was a
child,” Gearhart’s Jeff Ter Har said, “He was just
super-nice, could talk to you forever, would do
anything for you — just fabulous. ”
A lifelong Oregonian born in Portland in
1920, family members described Davis’s athletic
childhood along the Columbia River Gorge,
where at a young age he constructed his own
boat and tacked it against the wind.
That athleticism was to be a characteristic
of his entire career, as a football player at the
University of Oregon and Oregon State and
later as a track and fi eld coach at Portland State
University,
On the North Coast, it was in Seaside as
founder of the Beach Run and in Gearhart as a
lifeguard that he made his mark.
Labor Day 1965 had seen the third con-
secutive year of unrest in Seaside, as papers
described “hundreds of unruly youth who
attempted unsuccessfully to take over the town.”
The city was an “armed camp,” as Oregon State
Police and National Guard put Seaside in virtual
lockdown.
The July 1966 Seaside Beach Run was a
response to the unrest, Jack Davis said. “Dad
wanted to promote a more positive image of the
community by organizing an 8-mile run.”
‘Ralph and Betty were an extraordinary,
powerful couple that were really a true force of
nature,” recalled Seaside’s Mary Blake, former
longtime general manager of the Sunset Empire
Parks and Recreation District. Blake said. “They
believed if you engaged people, they have a
great time, instead of causing problems because
they didn’t have anything to do.”
The American Athletic Union-sanctioned run
started at the Turnaround, heading south to the
Cove before returning north to Gearhart Beach
and crossing the Necanicum River at low tide.
The race ended with the fi nal leg from Gearhart
Beach to the Turnaround, again crossing the
Necanicum.
That fi rst year, a rainstorm shortened because
the mouth of the river was “a little too wide and
deep for the safety of the runners,” according to
the Signal at the time.
University of Oregon track star Jim Grelle
— who ran in the 1960 Olympics for the United
States — won the 7.5-mile loop with a time of
38 minutes, 32 seconds. “The tension in regular
CANNON SHOTS
R.J. MARX
competition is extreme,” Grelle told the Signal
afterward. “This was fun.”
The fi rst run featured 44 runners participated;
by the 1970s; that number grew to more than
1,200 participants.
“Every year, we had to re-do the course
because of the change in the estuary,” Blake
recalled one race when, because of high tides,
runners were diverted over hot sand dunes.
Another year, fog was so thick Blake and Davis
patrolled the shorelines in a rig to protect runners
who might stumble into the water.
“It was all done with volunteers,” Bryan
Davis said. “A lot of these volunteers were
people that my dad taught or had experience in
athletics. He could call upon them, and they real-
ly liked him and respected him and would pretty
much do anything for him. They took positions
timing things, recording things.”
Today, the race is organized by Seaside
Beach Run, Inc., a nonprofi t dedicated to
providing fi tness center memberships to Clatsop
County’s middle- and high-school students.
Davis’s second major North Coast running
event, the Trail’s End Marathon, was organized
in the 1970s and took a complete 26-mile loop
from Seaside to Cullaby Lake and back, starting
and ending at the Turnaround.
Ter Har said he likes to say he was the fi rst
to fi nish the marathon — ”My claim to fame is
I won it fi ve times because I drove the lead car,”
he laughed.
An avid surfer, kids “looked up to dad like
Duke Kamehameha,” the lifeguard god, Scott
Davis said. “He was very athletic. He had a
good stature. His body was built like Tarzan.”
Davis was one of the fi rst people to ride
a surfboard in Seaside and his strength in the
water was renowned — strong enough to sin-
gle-handedly clear logs or tow them away.
“The high school kids in the area would
come down to the beach and my dad would
during his breaks would organize touch foot-
ball,” Jack Davis said. “It was a lot of fun. He
never thought of himself being the age that he
was. He always thought of himself as much
younger. Even in his 80s or 90s he didn’t want to
go to someplace where ‘the old people were.’”
There was no lifeguard tower at the Gearhart
beach, Ter Har remembered, so patrols were on
foot or in the jeep.
Cannon Beach’s Lindsey recalled Davis as
his water safety instructor at Portland State. “I
was a pimply-faced 19, 20-year-old, slightly
built person,” Lindsey said. “He was about 240
pounds, all gristle and muscle. One of the things
he would do would require you to rescue him.”
One of Davis’s major accomplishments was
to organize lifeguard crews to request state fund-
ing. “The state actually disbursed an amount
of money to communities to buy trucks and
life-saving equipment,” Lindsey said.
Once Davis and the Gearhart lifeguards
challenged the Cannon Beach lifeguards to a
volleyball game on Pacifi c Way.
“When we
arrived to meet the
challenge, we get
down on the beach,”
Lindsey said. “He
was there with his
wife and son and
a couple of other
team members.
One gentleman was
sitting there — Ralph
introduced us and his
voice sounded very
SUBMITTED PHOTO
familiar. It turned
Ralph S. Davis Jr.
out to be this fellow
named Adam West
— Batman on television. His mother owned an
old hotel in Gearhart. He was having a martini,
visiting. We beat them, by Jove, but we laughed
about it afterward.”
In the 1970s, Ralph Davis became “one of
the pioneers of korfball” in the United States —
a “sort of Dutch version of basketball,” accord-
ing to Lindsey. Around here, some people call it
pickleball, former parks district manager Blake
said.
“You can live your life with this aliveness
and joy, and really being in the moment, and he
and Betty were the absolute representation of
that,” she said. “They beamed. Ralph had that
smile, physique, this attitude, this knowingness
— it was an absolute pleasure to be around
them.
“The thing about growing old is, you don’t
have to get old,” she added. “That’s the magic.
He was able to do that. He just didn’t age.”
LEFT: Ralph Davis played football for the
University of Oregon before World War II,
and fi nished his college career aft er the war
with Oregon State University. RIGHT: Betty
Davis, Bryan Davis, Ralph Davis, Scott Da-
vis Lifeguard family. Gearhart Beach 1962.
SUBMITTED PHOTOS/CANNON BEACH GAZETTE
Headed to Vermont for a wedding and some birding
I
am headed east, Vermont exactly,
for a good friend’s wedding and
I hope to get a little birding in!
To prepare I have pulled up the
Vermont bird list on the wonderful
Sibley app and am going through
each family of birds and categorize
them into the environments where I
am likely to fi nd them. I have found
that if I list the birds I will see in
trees or fi elds or marshes, I have a
better chance of narrowing down
what they might be.
This reminds me of the number
one bird id exercise that David Sib-
ley, internationally renowned bird
expert, mentions fi rst when asked
“how can I start identifying birds?”
His answer is to pick up a guide
book and studying the families
Publisher
David F. Pero
Editor
R.J. Marx
Reporter
Lyra Fontaine
Sales/Advertising Manager
Betty Smith
BIRD NOTES
SUSAN BOAC
of birds. Pick out a few birds you
see regularly and start identifying!
Starting in your own yard is recom-
mended.
The fi rst bird I did this with was
a song sparrow and they continue
to be one of my favorite birds and a
frequent visitor to my back porch.
Knowing the shape of a sparrow
bill, similar in all sparrows, I was
able to get to the right family. Then
it was a process of elimination us-
ing size, color of feathers, legs and
Production Manager
John D. Bruijn
Circulation Manager
Heather Ramsdell
Classifi ed Sales
Jamie Ramsdell
Advertising Sales
Holly Larkins
Brandy Stewart
bill and other small details. After
that process, I had a few choices
and was able to stand strong with
my decision that it was a song spar-
row. The song sparrow is mostly
brown and has these amazing gray
stripes on its head and one large
brown spot on it’s chest.
With birds I saw in the fi eld, if I
was able to take a picture, I would
look at it on the computer at home
and go through the same process,
This helped build the number of
birds I am now able to identify on
sight. Watching their movements is
also a good way to narrow down the
choices.
Looking at the list of birds I
hope to see in Vermont, I am going
to be very busy! Wish me luck!
CANNON BEACH GAZETTE
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Please join the First Sunday
bird. The next one will be on Sept.
4, so if you’re in town, join us at 9
a.m. at the Lagoon Trail on Second
Street. Bring binoculars and wear
appropriate clothing. Everyone is
welcome!
Susan has spent her life enjoying
the great outdoors from the lakes
and woods of northern Minnesota,
Mount Adams in Washington and
now the Oregon beach environs.
After spending many pleasurable
hours driving her avid birder
parents around, she has taken up
birding as a passion, to the mixed
emotions of her husband Scott. The
Boacs reside on Neawanna Creek in
Seaside where their backyard is a
birder’s paradise (confi rmed).
LETTERS
Article captured essence
of Victorian ‘cabin’
I just wanted to tell you how
grateful we are for your reporter
Lyra Fontaine who did a front
page article for us on our open
house to let everyone look in-
side my late brother’s Victorian
“cabin.” It was a huge success
— 100 to 200 people came by
and had a great time.
Lyra was such a careful re-
porter and wrote a great article.
She is surely very talented and
economical with her words,
very readable. People told us
they loved the article.
Thank you for helping us to
get the word out.
Bonnie Schein
Cannon Beach
THE NATIONAL AWARD-WINNING