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About Hermiston herald. (Hermiston, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 7, 2019)
TAKE A LOOK AT THE UMATILLA COUNTY FAIR PARADE | PAGE A11 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2019 HermistonHerald.com $1.00 INSIDE SHOOTING One teen is in jail and two took a trip to the hospital after a shooting in Hermiston on Monday night. PAGE A3 BIG FISH Hermiston teacher Josh Walker is using his summer away from the classroom to try to catch 100 fi sh. PAGE A7 HOT DAYS FFA and 4-H kids gear up for a hot week at the Umatilla County Fair PAGE A10 BY THE WAY First Melon Fest coming to Hermiston With watermelons roll- ing off the shelves, the Hermiston Downtown District is gearing up to host the inaugural Melon Fest. The event is Satur- day, Aug. 17 in downtown Hermiston. People are invited to register as ven- dors (applications avail- able at Lucky Endz Gifts, 239 E. Main St.) and as participants in Splash and Dash 2019, an obstacle course bathtub race (forms at Hermiston City Hall or the Hermiston Commu- nity Center). The regis- tration deadline is Thurs- day, Aug. 15. See next week’s Hermiston Her- ald for a full story about Melon Fest. • • • Those traveling across town this week may want to skip Hermiston Ave- nue in favor of Highland, Orchard or Elm avenues as the road goes down to one lane while crews work on repaving it. After this week most of the road will reopen, but between Aug. 11 and the end of Septem- ber, Hermiston Avenue will be closed between First Street and Third Street. Businesses there will still be open, however. See BTW, Page A12 HH fi le photo A young exhibitor and his cow, Aug. 10, 1999. The Umatilla County Fair today looks diff erent from the fairs of yesterday, but some things never change By JESSICA POLLARD STAFF WRITER I n the fall of 1918, prepa- rations for the sixth annual Hog and Dairy show in Umatilla County were put to a screeching halt by the Spanish Infl uenza pandemic. The Hermiston Herald at the time wrote that the fair was set to be far more attractive and stu- pendous than any of the other preceding shows. “The withering hand of a widespread infectious disease had to step in at an inopportune time and put a stop to these well laid plans that meant so much to the dairymen, hog raisers, and agricultural people of this com- munity, who have yearly taken pride in exhibiting the products of their farms.” wrote the Herald that October. Today, the Hog and Dairy Show is a county fair — the Umatilla County Fair, to be exact Staff photo by Ben Lonergan Blair Bracher, 13, ties up his cow in the livestock barn during the Umatilla County Fair on Tuesday afternoon. The Umatilla County Fair continues daily through Saturday. — and its growth shows no sign of slowing. Its attendance, said this year’s grand marshal Dan Dorran, has blossomed over the decades as the week’s attendance reaches up to 100,000 people. While hogs, dairy, and other farm products still star in the fair each year, the passing of time represents a change in the way See AGES, Page A12 Aspen Springs project could open by end of year By JADE MCDOWELL NEWS EDITOR A 8 08805 93294 2 n acute psychiatric care facility being built in Hermiston could accept its fi rst patient by the end of 2019. Lifeways broke ground on Aspen Springs Psychiatric Hos- pital, a secure 16-bed facility for patients with an acute mental health disorder, in 2016. Micaela Cathey, Lifeways’ executive direc- tor for Umatilla County, said the project recently passed its initial site review with the state and is moving forward with the review for the state licensing process, fol- lowed by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services certifi cation. “We’re very excited to bring this to the community,” she said. “We’re as anxious for this to open as the community is.” As part of the CMS process, Lifeways anticipates a “soft open- ing” of about six beds in Novem- ber or December, before transi- tioning into full 16-bed service at the beginning of 2020. Cathey said they will hire between 35 and 40 employees, from social workers to nurses, to fully staff the facility. When Lifeways broke ground in summer 2016 they expected to open in about a year, but Cathey said meeting all of the regulations in place for such a secure facility “has led to some lengthening of the timeline, much to our chagrin.” Elizabeth Johnsen, executive director of business excellence, said an acute psychiatric care facil- ity has to meet higher standards Staff photo by Jade McDowell See ASPEN, Page A12 Aspen Springs Psychiatric Hospital is going through the review process to receive the neccesary certifi cations for operation.
