A14 • HERMISTONHERALD.COM
FROM A1
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, 2019
DARK DAY
WALDEN
Continued from Page A1
Continued from Page A1
Pennington, stayed behind to
work at a railroad site.
At 9:29 p.m. something went
wrong. Later, some would spec-
ulate that one of the bombs mal-
functioned. Others thought it
might have been dropped “just
right.”
Whatever the case — the
mystery has never been com-
pletely solved — a massive
boom shook the depot as the
igloo containing 264 bombs
exploded, killing all six people.
Clara Ellen Fraser Brown
was 15 when her father Ken-
neth was killed in the explosion,
which leveled the specially-re-
inforced concrete bunker and
Photo courtesy the U.S. Army
destroyed two vehicles. It took
hours to ascertain who had died A cross marks the site of the explosion at the Umatilla Chemical Depot in modern day.
in the explosion, as there were
second time through the phone costal Tabernacle, presided over serves as a memorial on the por-
no remains to identify.
“We had nothing to bury,” as the sound reached Pendleton by Rev. S.E. Graves. Altogether tion of the Depot that has been
she said. “It was just a horrible 30 miles away.
five women lost their husbands turned into a National Guard
thing.”
Emotional shockwaves came and 13 children lost their father. training facility.
Most of those who were next, as word of the explosion
A partnership of local gov-
Fraser’s family held their
working 75 years ago at the traveled, leaving the families own memorial in Irrigon. ernment bodies known as the
Depot are no longer living. Eve- of hundreds of ordnance work- Brown, who at age 90 is the Columbia Development Author-
lyn Guerrant Thomas of Mil- ers to spend a sleepless night last surviving member of Fras- ity hopes to gain ownership of
ton-Freewater, who died in waiting to hear if their loved er’s immediate family, said her the rest of the property some-
2015, told the East Oregonian ones were among the victims. mother’s grave at Hermiston time soon.
in a 2010 interview that she was Brown remembers hearing her Cemetery has a plaque in his
Don Russell, chairman of the
waiting in a car at to go home mother Minnie crying as a local honor.
CDA board, said the CDA plans
when the blast caused her to hit minister brought the news after
Little mention of the blast to turn the section of the Depot
the ceiling. She was in a dress midnight.
was made in subsequent edi- with the igloos into a wildlife
and high heels, but immediately
The loss of the Fraser fam- tions of the Hermiston Herald preserve managed by the Con-
reported for duty and visited ily patriarch hit them hard. Ken- — two brief notices the next federated Tribes of the Umatilla
the still-hot crater in the sage- neth had always done whatever week stated that contributions Indian Reservation. He said his-
brush with photographer Jimmy it took to support his fam- were being made to the families torical preservation is one of the
ily through the Great Depres- of victims, and that while there last pieces being negotiated for
Drake to document the scene.
Linda Gilleese told the sion, but even when he worked had been fear that the accident the transfer, and the site of the
Hermiston Herald in 2008 that long hours he took time to play would put a damper on recruit- explosion will likely end up fea-
the front axel of one of the vehi- games like Chinese checkers ment, “actual reports were that turing a plaque telling the story.
cles landed 20 feet from her with his children and train them more and more workers were
Brown, the spunky girl who
desk at her office nearly a mile to do quick mental math.
seeking employment at the delivered newspapers in boys’
away.
clothes and won scholarships
“He was a very intelligent Depot.”
In Hermiston, shock waves person— very math-minded,
The paper also praised the for college, became a teacher
from the blast rippled through and he loved reading when he engineers for the U.S. Army after her mother encouraged
the city, shattering plate glass had time,” Brown said.
who came up with the igloo her to pursue a higher educa-
windows downtown and knock-
The United States was at war, design. The 1,001 triangular tion. Now retired and living
ing merchandise off store and the blast at a military instal- igloos at the depot were built in Hermiston, she said she has
shelves. Some residents who lation brought to mind fears of off-center from each other to been to several past memorials
had been outside reported see- sabotage. The military acted keep any explosion from setting for the victims of the explosion
ing a flash of light in the direc- quickly, and the Hermiston off a chain reaction. The sandy in honor of her father.
tion of the Depot about 15 sec- Herald reported that all guards soil and other design elements
“He did a lot of things in his
onds before the concussion employed at the Depot were also kept the disaster from being life,” she said.
reached them.
called into work immediately, magnified.
Information taken from inter-
N.W. O’Donnell, the local taking “complete charge of the
The 1944 explosion would views, the Morrow County
manager of Pacific Telephone & situation” and remaining on turn out to be the only fatal Chronicles and the Hermis-
Telegraph Co., called the com- high alert the rest of the night.
accident at the Depot during its ton Herald and East Oregonian
pany’s Pendleton office after
The following Friday, a joint decades of use. Today, a sim- archives. See A2 for a reprint of
hearing the boom, and was sur- funeral service for five of the ple white cross marks the spot, the original Hermiston Herald
prised to hear the explosion a victims was held at the Pente- and a ragged chunk of the igloo article about the explosion.
negotiate a number with Congress in
good faith, then try to use emergency
powers to get more money anyway.
Keeping in mind that Congress is sup-
posed to have “the power of the purse,”
he said he believed the separation of
powers between the branches of gov-
ernment was essential to democracy and
required protection.
“It’s a lonely fight protecting the
Constitution from executive overreach,
and it’s especially uncomfortable when
it’s your own president,” he said.
Walden pointed out that Washing-
ton Governor Jay Inslee, who is run-
ning for the Democratic nomination for
president, has said he will declare cli-
mate change a national emergency on
“day one” if elected. Other Democrats
could use the precedent set by Trump
to declare a national emergency on gun
violence to pursue a gun control agenda.
Walden also said he was concerned
by Trump’s plan to take the money from
the budget for military construction
projects that had been planned to “pro-
tect our men and women in uniform.”
“This isn’t some slush fund,” he said.
Maier pushed back on Walden’s
answers several times, stating it was
frustrating to see the lack of progress on
border security and immigration reform,
and disagreeing with Walden about
whether additional funding for a border
wall was an emergency.
“When they flood over and kill our
agents and break into families’ homes,
when is it a national emergency?” she
asked.
Tony Justus of Pendleton asked
Walden if he thought the law that
allowed Trump to declare a national
emergency should be repealed.
Walden replied that he thought it
needed reviewed. He said there were
other routes the president could have
taken to get more funding, and refer-
enced a comment Trump had made pub-
licly that he didn’t need to declare an
emergency but wanted to do it to build
the wall faster. But he said there were
some cases where there might be a legit-
imate reason to declare one.
“If we have an Ebola outbreak, and
Congress can’t act quickly, and you
have to jump on that, I think it would be
appropriate,” he said.
Other
commenters
questioned
where the money was coming from for
migrants to form caravans from Cen-
tral American countries, and questioned
why Republicans hadn’t gotten some-
thing done on immigration before they
lost control of the House.
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