A14 • HERMISTONHERALD.COM
HISTORY
Continued from Page A1
bad thing — it contributed
to the reputation Hermis-
ton still has today of being
a
friendly,
welcoming
town where it doesn’t mat-
ter whether you were born
there.
“In some respects, peo-
ple had more to do with
each other and not so much
with the things we have,” he
said.
It has also made it eas-
ier to develop and modern-
ize without worrying about
historic preservation.
The downside is that
today Hermiston lacks
the “historic downtown”
approach to draw tourists.
There is no grand, historic
city hall building. The Oasis
theater that used to sit on
Main Street is gone, as is the
old hotel. A tall brick cathe-
dral with stained glass win-
dows from the early days of
the city was replaced with a
Chevron station.
Dick Lowry, another
of Hermiston’s unoffi-
cial historians, said Herm-
iston “tends to tear things
down” to clear the way for
new buildings. None of the
schools Lowry attended are
still standing. He was par-
ticularly sad to see the old
Sandstone school building
go, as he remembered hop-
ing for a fire drill as a stu-
dent so he could go down
the giant slide that served as
a fire escape.
“It was just a great old
building and they tore it
down,” he said. “There were
some other great buildings
torn down. Some just wore
out, like the Old Oregon
Hotel.”
He said Hermiston has
some old homes around
still, but they blend in, such
as L.A. Moore’s old home
on the corner of Highland
Avenue and 11th Street.
“That’s nothing spectac-
ular, and he was a million-
aire,” he said.
Preservation projects
Hermiston does have a
few historic buildings that
residents are working to
preserve. Mitch Myers has
renovated a number of his-
toric buildings over the
years. He turned a 75-year-
old car dealership building
into Nookies Restaurant and
more recently turned a rail-
road storage building from
1914 into the Maxwell Sid-
ing Event Center.
He is currently work-
ing on two other preserva-
tion projects. He is turn-
ing the “coal bin building”
off of North First Place into
a retail/restaurant space
he plans to lease to busi-
nesses that will “pay honor
to that building,” which
he believes is the oldest in
Hermiston.
Myers is also working on
the building on the corner
of Highway 395 and Main
Street that housed Hermis-
ton’s first bank in 1910. F.B.
Swayze, the bank’s owner,
was a powerful influence
in Hermiston for decades
and the first place people
stopped when they arrived.
While the main floor held
the bank operations, Swayze
used affordable rental space
upstairs to entice a doc-
tor, dentist, optometrist and
other services to Hermiston
over the years.
“He was a real driver in
the area,” Myers said.
The main floor has been
used for retail space in
recent decades, but when
Myers purchased it he was
able to track down several
original aspects of the bank,
including the teller’s desk,
and restore it to the build-
ing. What he couldn’t find
original, he restored as close
as he could get, including
$200,000 worth of mahog-
any. He is using the down-
stairs as offices for his com-
pany, Mitco Investments.
Now Myers has turned
his attention to the upstairs,
which had been stripped
down to the floor joists and
become a mess of rot and
dead pigeons.
“If we hadn’t come in
when we did, the way the
roof was pulling it, I’d say
within five years we would
have lost the downstairs
too,” he said.
Instead Myers poured
resources into rescuing
and rebuilding the upstairs,
restoring it to a three-bed-
room apartment he plans to
rent out by the night. He is
attempting to restore it to as
close as possible to its orig-
inal Victorian look, track-
ing down everything from
furniture to floor tiles to
stained glass windows from
that era. He purchased the
vividly-patterned wallpa-
pers from a specialist in
New York that uses authen-
tic old-time presses and
techniques to replicate what
the wallpaper of the day
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15, 2018
FROM A1
would look and feel like.
“You’ll be paying to get
a glimpse of 1910,” Myers
said.
He plans to have an open
house for the public once
the project is completed
within the next few weeks.
Down the street a reno-
vation of another of Herm-
iston’s historic buildings
is underway as a group of
investors turns the old Roe-
Mark’s building — built in
1907 and home to numer-
ous businesses over the
last century — back into
the Union Club, a bar that
existed during Hermiston’s
mid-century boom.
Myers said a group of
roughly 25 citizens have
revived the Hermiston Her-
itage Association and are
working on creating a list of
buildings in Hermiston they
will ask the city council to
provide special protections
for.
“It’s way too easy to tear
something down and put up
an ugly brick building,” he
said, noting the environ-
mental and structural chal-
lenges that come with reno-
vating historic buildings.
Preserving artifacts
Preserving history isn’t
just about buildings. Bar-
bara Lund-Jones, execu-
tive director of the Umatilla
County Historical Society,
said the society’s museum
in Pendleton does have a
Hermiston exhibit, but the
society would love to add
to its small collection of
artifacts from Hermiston’s
history.
“That is one area in which
we would like to expand,”
she said. “... Hermiston’s
story is very important,
and we would certainly be
encouraging people to share
more of that.”
Items currently on dis-
play include information on
the two rival companies that
helped create Hermiston
and the history of the Uma-
tilla Army Depot. It also
points out that the Shari’s
restaurant chain began with
a restaurant in Hermiston.
“We have the very first
uniform worn by the very
first waitress on the very
first day,” she said.
Lund-Jones
said
it
doesn’t matter if Umatilla
County communities are
preserving their own history
through their own museums
or donating items to the his-
torical society, “as long as it
is being preserved.”
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Special Olympics tournament director Kristi Smalley, center, is pictured with Jason Sperr,
Elizabeth Sperr, Cindy Rogers and Randy Sperr, winners of the 13th annual Hermiston/
Pendleton Special Olympics Local Program #510 fundraising golf tournament, held Aug. 11
at Echo Hills Golf Course.
BTW
Continued from Page A1
there are opportunities to
give blood over the next
month.
Good
Shepherd
Health Care System will
be holding blood drives on
Monday from 12:30-6 p.m.
and on Aug. 30 from noon
to 5:30 p.m. at the hospital.
A blood drive will be
held at the Boardman
Pool and Recreation Cen-
ter from noon to 5 p.m. on
Aug. 24 and in Heppner at
the Morrow County Fair
on Friday from 11 a.m. to
4 p.m.
Donors can find infor-
mation about blood drives
in their area and make an
appointment by download-
ing the free American Red
Cross Blood
Donor App,
visit-
ing
RedCrossBlood.org
or calling 1-800-RED
CROSS (1-800-733-2767).
• • •
After traveling miles
and miles to see Sawyer
Brown several times over
the years, Hermiston resi-
dent Heather Weems was
looking forward to hear-
ing the country group play
in her own backyard. The
band provided a Kodak
moment for the longtime
fan during their Aug. 7
Main Stage performance
at the Umatilla County
Fair.
Weems, who has been a
fan since she was 8 years
old, and her daughter,
Michelle Weems, 16, wore
big smiles as they posed
for a photo with mem-
bers of the band. Sawyer
Brown has cruised across
the country living the life
of a ‘travelin’ band,” as
one of their hit songs says,
since in 1981.
• • •
A foursome calling
themselves “Hole in 1,”
which included Randy
Sperr, Jason Sperr, Eliz-
abeth Sperr and Cindy
Rogers, shot a 55 to win
the Hermiston/Pendleton
Special Olympics Local
Program #510 fundrais-
ing golf tournament.
In its 13th year, the
four-person
scramble
event teed off Aug. 11 at
Echo Hills Golf Course.
The “Best Dressed Team”
award went to Kraft-
maid Cabinets with Jeff
Edmundson,
Gaylord
Allen, Mitchell McClan-
nahan and Madison
McClannahan.
Tournament
director
Kristi Smalley said more
than $6,000 was raised,
thanks to the support of
local businesses and indi-
viduals.
Gold
medal
sponsors included Uma-
tilla Electric Coopera-
tive, Knights of Colum-
bus Our Lady of Angels
Council #3999, A & A
Mini Storage, Roger’s
Toyota of Hermiston and
Jim Purswell’s Pumps
Co., Inc.
Special Olympics pro-
vides year-round athletic
training and sports com-
petitions for children and
adults with intellectual and
developmental
disabili-
ties. For more information,
contact Smalley at 541-
567-1546 or smalleys@
eotnet.net.
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