Image provided by: Morrow County Museum; Heppner, OR
About Heppner gazette-times. (Heppner, Or.) 1925-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 16, 1978)
TWO The Gazette-Times, Heppner, Oregon, Thursday November 16, 1978 The Heppner GAZETTE-TIMES Sifting through jJ Li LJ LiJ Li me i ifjljdo vyDLI Heppner High School's Mustangs and lone High School's Cardinals have given a real and certain pride to those of us who have followed their football seasons this year. lone is pitted against the North Powder Badgers in a semi-final game this Saturday in lone at 1:30 p.m.; the winner advancing to the State Class B playoffs. Last Saturday the Mustangs traveled to Elgin for their quarter-final playoff game against the Huskies and although it didnt turn out quite the way everyone from South Morrow County hoped it was a heck of a football game and our boys showed their stuff. We encourage your attendance at the lone-North Powder tilt this weekend and following the game the lone Booster Club is sponsoring a spaghetti feed. Swanson doesn't sound Italian but Jim assures us the spaghetti and trimmings will hit the spot after the game. A special section is included in this week's Gazette-Times, featuring the lone Cardinals, and supportive staff. Our thanks to Janet McElligott IHS senior who writes lone sports and helped on the special section. The table tennis match and luau scheduled by the Heppner Elks Club this weekend is sure to be a couple evenings of fun and excitement. A massive undertaking, Elks members have worked hard over the past several months to carry off a top-notch show, which it promises to be. The Professional World Championship match gets under way at 5 p.m. Saturday in the Heppner High School gym with teams bearing Haitian and Thailand colors meeting at the table. Tickets for the match are on sale in Heppner at several locations and while up-front seats are a little , steep in price the $8.50 general admission assures a good view and worthwhile investment. Proceeds from the match will be used by th Heppner Elks for capital improvements at the Lodge. Each year BPOE 358 sends thousands of dollars to charities both at home and across the state including major contributions to Meadowood Springs Speech Camp near Tollgate. Those contributions do a world of good and your support of this Saturday's match will do a world of good for your Elks Lodge. Shop at home! A well-worn phrase that is often times heard but not heeded because of general feeling that "a better deal" awaits the person who travels to shop. Not so. To start with, the differences in price between local merchants and those in bigger cities is generally not that great when one really compares apples-to-apples. Secondly, the gas it takes to get out of Heppner and back eats up the savings most shoppers would realize on a normal shopping trip. Also one should take a look at the services local merchants provide their customers such as charge accounts, personal service, easy return and refund policys. service after the sale and on ad infinitum Then one can look at what keeps a community healthy. The central business district is the backbone of a town's economic health and every dollar you spend at home circulates through the community three or four times before leaving. The dollar you spend here pays the salary of your neighbors and friends that greet you with a smile when you walk in the door of that store. The dollar you spend here pays the businessman's taxes, which in turn provide a healthy chunk of the money that paves your streets, keeps teachers in your schools, and water flowing to your tap. Stores and businesses from outside the area will continue to entice customers and under the free enterprise system they should. It helps keep local businesses on their toes, prices right and service better than what you receive in a metro area. But the best deal is to shop at home... - i iST-V) aft' r 'V, 1 Y.iili ' ,',-,- '"' Hi ' - at' w44- i, . -- - -. &t..-. .: " - t V j , r III, 11 fa Aa, l, ' t V I LETTERS FROM THE READERS 'Thanks for a great season Editor: There are many things that make an athletic season successful not the least of which is the support of the fans. We have had a successful football season and fan support has been great all year. Fan support was never more evident than at last Saturday's playoff game with Elgin. The large number of supporters there indicates to the coaching staff and players that people are behind us all the way. We certainly appreciate everyone's help and support. We would also like to thank the many groups who supported us this season. Among these are the band, cheerleaders, dance team, students, school personnel and parents. Lastly, the coaches would like to thank a fine group of players who worked hard to make this a memorable season for everyone. Sincerely, John Sporseen Dale Conklin Les Payne 'Nuclear wastes not a threat9 By Rostum Roy All this business about nuclear-waste disposal is get ting out of hand. After nearly 30 years of neglect by all of us the scientists, the govern ment, the public and the press the problem has sud denly taken on enormous proportions in the minds of many people. Within the past few weeks, two Senate committees have held hearings on the subject, the President of the United States has appointed an inter agency task force to study it, Penthouse magazine ran a major article replete with warmed-over nuclear scare stories from the 1950's and 60's, and an Australian scien tist announced in World War III headlines that he had found the way to make nuclear wastes safe. It's no wonder people are confused. The truth of the matter is that mastery of the technology of radioactive waste disposal is not impossible and, in fact, is not too far in the future. Experimentally, it has been shown that we can make synthetic minerals, incorpor ate into them the nuclear wastes, and immobilize the radioactive atoms so that, when they are buried, even exposure to groundwater, heat or pressure will not seriously affect them. We have been doing it at Penn State for five years now, and similar pro cesses are in various stages of development in Sweden, Aus tralia, the Soviet Union and other countries. Over the course of 1,000 years or so, the wastes become as inert as many natural ones. Why, then, haven't we put this technology to use? Be cause there are five or six options at this point, and it will save us all time and money in the long run to choose the best combination of solid form and SUBSCRIPTION RATE $8.00 In Morrow, Umatilla, Wheeler & Gilliam County; $10.00 elsewhere The Heppner GAZETTTE-TIME Morrow County's Award-Winning Weekly Newspaper The Official Newspaper of the City of Heppner and the County of Morrow Published every Thursday and entered as second-class matter at the Post Office at Heppner, Oregon, under the Act of March 3, 1879. Second-class postage paid at Heppner, Oregon. G.M. Reed, Publisher Rick Steelhammer, News Editor Gayle Rush, Composition Dolores Reed, Co-publisher Eileen Soling, Office Manager Kyra Query, Composition Ron Jordan, Printer Terry M. Hager, Managing Editor Justine Weatherford, Local Columnist Cindi Doherty, AdvertisingOffice rock type. We are not, after all, in a life-and-death race to find a solution. While it is certainly de sirable to complete this re search as quickly as possible and get on with building factories, no one is going to die, no one is going to suffer in any way, from delaying a final decision long enough to give rational consideration to the alternatives. Currently, spent nuclear fuels are being stored in pools near the reactors, where they do no damage and stand no chance of being stolen. Over a period of 10 years in storage, their heat and radioactivity will become smaller by a factor of 10, so the problem is even being reduced of its own accord. The major portion of our wastes are from the defense operations of the past 30 years, and they, likewise, are stored on federal land under relatively safe condi tions. If we panic and rush into production of a waste-storage system now, before we have had a chance to explore the possibilities, we may force the American taxpayer to spend billions of dollars needlessly and find ourselves in the position, two or three years from now, of retracting our steps to find the most cost effective solution. The panel on radioactive waste solidification of the National Academies of Science and Engineering, which I chaired, recently presented a major report to its sponsoring agency, the Nuc lear Regulatory Commission. Included in that report, along with very specific, technical recommendations, were some general speculations on the potential for mastery of this problem. Most members of the panel believe we can have a safe, efficient, ready-to-use method of well-managed re search and development ef fort. It is regrettable that the world's scientists did not solve this problem 30 years ago, before we had begun to build nuclear power plants. It was quite simply a lack of fore sight and a misplacement of priorities. New, highfalutin science took precedence over a mundane job of scientific garbage disposal. But the current arena of wild speculation, from Pent house's declaration that radio active waste "is the monster at the end of the nuclear fuel cycle, the problem without a solution..." to the banner headlines in the Australian newspapers that nuclear wastes have been "made safe," is no way to approach the problem. There is no cause for panic, no reason for alarm. A decade or so from now, we have every reason to believe, we will be ready to begin storing radioactive wastes as artificial minerals or concrete or glass in a salt, gypsum or granite repository for burial 2,000 feet or more under ground. In the meantime, the public and congressional role should be to assure vigilance and diligence in attending to this task by the nation's scientists and engineers. That's what's been missing all along. Rustum Roy is director of the Materials Research Lab ratory at Pennsylvania State University. He wrote this article for The Washington Post. As it is today, the seemingly elusive Willow Creek Dam was in the news 30 years ago this week, when Heppner City Council pledged full support to the Army Corps of Engineers to proceed with the flood control project. At that time, the cost for the dam was estimated at $5.5 million. The proposed dam was also in the spotlight fifteen years ago this week, when the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation was asked to make a detailed study of irrigation possibilities that could arise from construction of the impoundment. Willow Creek ranchers Kenneth Palmer, Lewis Halvorsen, Herb Hynd and Dick Wilkinson were appointed by the County Court to meet with representatives of the federal agency to discuss possible irrigation improvements. During the same week in 1963, Bob Abrams of Heppner and Bob Jepsen of lone were in Portland to hear Mt. Everest conqueror Luther Jerstad speak to the Mazama mountain climbing club. Abrams was a member of the Mazamas. Sixty years ago this week, the recent signing of the ' Armistice agreement ending World War I shortened considerably the military careers of eight recently drafted Morrow County men. The eight local draftees, headed for boot camp at Ft. Lewis (then Camp Lewis), Wash., were stopped at Troutdale and ordered to return home. Ending their brief stints in - military life were Pat Curran, Lewis Cason, Wilbur Goodrich Harlan Swift Edward Letrace and Fritz Her of Heppner, and Everett Zink and Bernal Bewley of lone. Fifty years ago this week, an influenza outbreak that was sweeping the nation claimed the life of a Morrow County man. Eldred L. "Unk" McMillan, 23, a former sports standout at Lexington High, died at Morrow General Hospital two days after contracting the disease during a visit to Portland. Forest Service personnel were battling a 25-mile-an-hour wind to put out a forest fire in Stahl Canyon near Camp Five 25 years ago this week. The blaze ruined about 10 acres of virgin forest, making it the largest flare-up during the 1953 fire season. Ten years ago this week, Morrow County voters followed state and national trends in favoring Richard Nixon over Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 Presidential race. The county gave Nixon a 300 vote margin over the loquacious Humphrey. GOP challenger Bob Packwood also received the approval of Morrow County voters in his successful effort to unseat long-time incumbent Senator Wayne Morse. During the same week in 1968, the lone Cardinals earned a berth in state B-League playoff action, by defeating previously unbeaten Riverside 53-20. A seven-inch snowfall in Heppner five years ago this week heralded the formation of the new Four Corners Snowmobile Club. Among officers of the new organization were directors Jerry Samples (then of Kinzua), Rudy Bergstrom of lone, Lyle Cox of Lexington and vice-president Butch Laughlin of Heppner. If you think it's cold in Heppner, Frank Lovgren, a Navy seaman from Heppner could have told some chilly stories about the true meaning of cold two years ago this week. Lovgren had returned to the United States after spending February to October in Antarctica, where he helped maintain the Navy-National Science Foundation base at McMurdo Sound as part of the Navy's "Operation Deep-Freeze." Picture credit A full-to-the-brim log yard at Kinzua Corporation's Heppner plant becomes a winter wonderland as cold weather and sprinklers combined with stacked logs for this unusual effect. Kinzua has been stockpiling logs from the local area and points in Idaho and Washington to carry their new computerized sawmill through the winter. Where to write Federal Following is a list of Oregon and Eastern Oregon public officials for the information of readers who want to communicate with them: U.S. Sen. Mark O. Hatfield. Russell Senate Office Bldg., Washington, D.C. 20510. ' Member of Appropriations Committee, Interior Committee, Rules Committee and Indian Policy Review Commission. Portland office , Pioneer Courthouse, Rm. 107, 520 SW Morrison, Portland, Ore. 97204, phone 221-3386. U.S. Sen Bob Packwood, Dirksen Senate Office Bldg., Washington, D.C, 20510. Member of Finance Committee and Commerce Committee. Portland office, 1002 NE Halladay, Rm. 700, (P.O. Bos 3621), Portland, Ore. 97208, phone 233-4471. U.S. Rep. Al Ullman, of the Second District, House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515. Member of Ways and Means Committee. Salem office, 530 Center St. N.E., Rm. 330, (P.O. Box 247) Salem, Ore., 97308, phone 399-5724. . ...have something to say? 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