COMMUNITY
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 2016
HERMISTONHERALD.COM • A3
VOLUNTEERS IN SHORT SUPPLY FOR LOCAL GROUPS
By JADE McDOWELL
HELP WANTED
Staff Writer
When the announcement
came that Umatilla’s Land-
ing Days were being scaled
back signi¿ cantly this year
due to lack of volunteers,
it signaled a growing prob-
lem.
“We usually have be-
tween 30 and 40 volunteers
and last year we got about
15,” Umatilla Chamber of
Commerce director Karen
Hutchinson-Talaski said.
After the committee said
they would cancel Uma-
tilla’s signature summer
event if they didn’t get
more volunteers for 2016,
they didn’t get much of a
response. As a result, the
plan is to forgo hosting
vendors and most daytime
activities, even though
the parade and fireworks
show with live music will
go on.
Landing Days is not
the only event that has
been scaled back or can-
celed altogether in recent
years because new vol-
unteers haven’t stepped
up to replace ones that
are burning out. Hutchin-
son-Talaski estimated the
ages of the Landing Days
Committee to be between
40 and 80 and said they
all “wear multiple hats”
in the community.
“We aren’t spring
chickens anymore and
this is a lot of work,” she
said.
She said it’s not un-
common in communities
to see the same people
stepping up to volunteer
for everything. The prob-
lem is that they often get
spread too thin and even-
tually decide they need to
step back from some ac-
tivities so they can give
100 percent to others. It
can be hard finding some-
one to replace them.
Hermiston
went
through a similar problem
with the Festival of Lights
that used to brighten the
Umatilla County fair-
grounds each December.
STAFF PHOTO BY JADE McDOWELL
Hermiston Senior Center volunteers Harry Trump, Rose Hamilton and Harry Stevenson serve
spaghetti at the center’s meal program.
After the county stopped
providing manpower for
the event in 2010 a group
of volunteers came to-
gether to keep the lights
on, but ran out of steam in
2013 when they couldn’t
find enough helpers. Af-
ter another unsuccessful
attempt to find enough
volunteers for 2014 they
canceled the festival
again, and in 2015 the
county donated the lights
to the city of Hermiston.
Other
organizations
continue on, but still find
themselves short of vol-
unteers. The Hermiston
Warming Station some-
times closes its doors
even when the tempera-
ture is below freezing be-
cause there are not enough
volunteers to keep it open
through the night.
Marci McMurphy, di-
rector of CAPECO’s Area
Agency on Aging depart-
ment, said CAPECO has
a difficult time finding
volunteers to pack boxes
at the food warehouse,
help around the office or
offer financial mentoring
to clients.
“The generation that’s
now aging was very much
into giving back ... as
they’re aging now they’re
becoming the ones who
need help,” she said.
Young people seem to
be experiencing a resurg-
ing interest in volunteer
work, she said, but their
schedules often conflict
with when agencies need
the most help.
McMurphy said it
might help people to
know that CAPECO will
take volunteers who just
want to commit to one
hour a month or want to
help out with a single
project without commit-
ting to doing any more
once it’s over.
“With peoples’ busy
schedules, the last thing
they want to do is be tied
down,” she said.
At the Hermiston Se-
nior Center, Virginia Bee-
be said it’s not uncommon
to have to ask one or two
people showing up for a
meal to throw on an apron
and help serve everyone
else first.
“We’re always short on
volunteers,” she said.
Julie
Harris-Rosner
said the problem was that
the younger seniors tend-
ed to be busy helping care
for grandchildren or ag-
ing parents or continuing
to work well past what
used to be retirement age.
“Our really, really good
volunteers are now in their
nineties, and they’re dy-
ing,” she said. “We’re left
with the eighty-year-olds.”
Gary Reisland, 69, was
there Thursday to deliver
Meals on Wheels, a vol-
unteer position he said
he has held for about 30
years. He said he and his
wife used to be involved
in a long list of organiza-
tions but have had to cut
back their volunteering to
mostly Meals on Wheels
and the Red Cross, be-
cause their health no lon-
ger permitted more.
The good news is some
organizations are find-
Here are a few places to start if
you’re looking to volunteer:
1) City committees. City
councils rely on the legwork
and recommendations of
multiple committees to make
decisions, and many of them
face a near-constant parade of
vacancies. Contact your city hall
or check their website to i nd
out about committee vacancies
or opportunities to volunteer for
activities conducted by those
committees.
2) Schools. Local school
districts are always looking for
volunteers to help out in the
classroom, chaperone i eld trips,
read to children or serve on a
committee. If you don’t have a
child or grandchild’s classroom to
volunteer in, contact a principal
or school district oi ce to i nd
out where volunteers are needed
most.
3) Nonproi ts. It’s a rare
nonproi t organization that isn’t
in need of more volunteers. A
few that are frequently looking
for more help include Meals
on Wheels, the Agape House,
CAPECO, the Warming Station,
ing ways to boost partic-
ipation. A year ago, core
members involved with
the Hispanic Advisory
Committee in Hermis-
ton started pushing hard
for people attending the
meetings to step up and
volunteer more. Chair-
man Eddie de la Cruz said
the message was heard,
and today there are a va-
riety of new faces helping
take charge of programs
like the one that provides
Spanish translators at par-
ent-teacher conferences.
“I kept talking to them
and saying it can’t be Ed-
die, Eddie, Eddie all the
time,” he said. “I can’t do
it all myself.”
When people like Hec-
tor Ramirez and Claudia
Jimenez stepped up, he
Desert Rose Ministries, Domestic
Violence Services, Salvation
Army, Boy Scouts of America, Girl
Scouts, PAWS, Relay for Life and
various local churches.
4) Umatilla-Morrow Head
Start. The local Head Start oi ce
relies on a network of volunteers
to read to children, assist teachers
in the classroom, help prepare
meals in the kitchen, plant a
garden, work as Court Appointed
Special Advocates, do main-
tenance or work in the oi ce.
Contact the oi ce to get the
proper paperwork and sign up for
a background check.
5) Hospitals and nursing
homes. Hospitals are often
looking for volunteers to help out
everywhere from the gift shop to
transporting patients who can’t
make it to the hospital on their
own. Nursing homes take volun-
teers willing to visit residents and
do activities with them.
6) Service Clubs. For those
looking to take their volunteerism
to the next level, Umatilla County
of ers more than 12 service clubs
— many with chapters in several
cities — that residents can join.
said, that helped get the
ball rolling. Each new
person who came on
board brought with them
new ideas for recruiting
volunteers and a new
network of contacts who
they could convince to
help out.
De la Cruz said he has
also talked to people about
being responsible vol-
unteers, and encourages
them to treat any board or
committee they serve on as
seriously as they do their
job, instead of frequently
skipping meetings.
He said it takes work to
recruit and train responsible
volunteers, but it can pay
off like it did for the His-
panic Advisory Committee.
“We have had quite a
change,” he said.
City will add new paved trail, waves goodbye to roundabouts
By JADE McDOWELL
Staff Writer
The Hermiston city
council approved an agree-
ment Monday that will cre-
ate a new section of trail
parallel to Highland Ave-
nue.
The
eight-foot-wide
paved trail for walking
and bicycling will stretch
from Riverfront Park to
Southwest 11th Street on
the south side of Highland,
continuing a larger trail
project that runs from Good
Shepherd Medical Center
to the park.
“This is exciting,” May-
or David Drotzmann said.
“It’s going to be a nice ad-
dition to the community.”
Originally the city was
going to pay for the project
and seek some reimburse-
ment from the Oregon De-
partment of Transportation
through a grant. But city
planner Clint Spencer said
when ODOT looked at the
project, they liked it so
much they adopted it into
their Statewide Transporta-
tion Improvement Program
and said they would pay for
77 percent of it. According
to the agreement the coun-
cil approved Monday night,
that leaves Hermiston with
about a $150,000 bill for
the remainder.
Spencer said the timeline
for the project depends on
how long it takes to acquire
the needed rights of way,
but construction will likely
take place in early 2017.
On Monday the council
also adopted an amendment
to the Transportation Sys-
tem Plan, which calls for
a signal at the Hermiston
Foods truck entrance north
of the Wal-Mart Distribu-
tion Center on Highway
395.
The signal will help han-
dle the expected increase in
traf¿ c based on a planned
Ranch and Home store at
that location.
On Feb. 22 the council
opened a public hearing on
the amendment, which at
that point included a recom-
mendation from ODOT that
the words “or a roundabout”
be included in the plan’s pro-
posed traf¿ c signals along
south Highway 395. But the
council and several citizens
who testi¿ ed that night were
unanimously against the
idea of roundabouts on the
highway.
City staff went back to
ODOT with the feedback,
and the department with-
drew its request for round-
abouts.
“The public process
worked,” Drotzmann said.
The ¿ nal amendment ad-
opted by the council Mon-
day did add the new signal
to the city’s longterm trans-
portation plan but did not
include any language about
roundabouts.
Small park named
for its creator
On Monday residents of
the neighborhood behind
Pizza Hut watched as the
council agreed to name the
park at 80 Beech Avenue as
Greenwood Park.
The city’s smallest park
has often been referred to
as Northside Park, or some-
times Candy Cane Park,
but parks and recreation di-
rector Larry Fetter said he
couldn’t ¿ nd any record of
the space ever receiving an
of¿ cial name.
The parks and recreation
committee met with the
park’s neighbors four times
over the past few months to
discuss updating the design
of the park, which includes
a small playground and bas-
ketball court, and replacing
the old equipment.
Out of those discus-
sions came a consensus that
the park should be named
Greenwood Park after long-
time neighborhood resident
Greenwood Woodrow Lus-
ter.
Fetter said that accord-
ing to a history he pieced
together from city records
and recollections from
Hermiston residents, Lus-
ter went to the city in the
early 1970s and asked if
he could build a park on a
derelict lot the city owned
near his house. He got the
Hermiston Jaycees and
members of his church
to clean up the lot and
install used playground
equipment donated from
Dun Rollin Mobile Home
Park.
Luster’s granddaughter
Jackie Linton still lives in
the neighborhood today,
and has been participating
in the meetings between the
parks and recreation com-
mittee and residents. She
said it was a great honor
to see the park named after
her grandfather.
“My grandfather loved
Hermiston,” she said. “...
He’d grin ear to ear and say,
‘Hermiston sure is grow-
ing.’”
Luster worked for Rohr-
man Ford, 8nion Paci¿ c
and Hermiston Sanitary
Disposal in addition to serv-
ing as pastor for Church of
God. He died in 2010 at the
age of 87.
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