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WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2021
HERMISTONHERALD.COM • A7
Stanfi eld graduate does big things in animation
‘My overnight
success was 14,600
nights,’ artist says
By ERICK PETERSON
Hermiston Herald
Since leaving his home-
town, former Stanfi eld res-
ident Richard Florence
has been gaining fame as
a cartoonist and illustra-
tor. Most recently, he has
achieved extra notoriety for
his work on the new NBC
game show, “Family Game
Fight!”
Now living in Westmin-
ster, Colorado, the Stanfi eld
High School graduate, said
he has good memories of his
time in the area. He worked
on farms, played with dirt
and stayed out until curfew
every night. He did not have
cable, but he did not need it.
He had plenty of friends,
and there were even people
who would prove infl uential
in his future career.
His grandfather was one
such person who left an
impact. Florence remem-
bers his grandfather hav-
ing given him the newspa-
per every day. The young
Florence would turn excit-
edly to the comics pages
after receiving them from
his grandfather. Alley Oop
was his favorite comic strip,
and Florence would learn to
draw by tracing the comics.
He was drawing comics
before he could even read
Another infl uential fam-
ily member was his “crazy
aunt,” who was a nude
model in Portland in the
1930s.
“She was wild,” he said,
but she did communicate
her free spirit to him, as
well as her love of art. She
had a big box of comics that
she would share with him.
Pogo, Katzenjammer Kids
and Dick Tracy were some
of his favorites.
He also remembered
long car trips with his fam-
ily, in which he would read
Archie comics.
In those early days, he
fell in love with the sort of
storytelling an artist could
do with cartooning. He
said, there is no way to do
cartooning wrong. It is not
the sort of realistic work
done by classical paint-
ers. The diff erence is good
because he did not think he
had the ability to be the next
Michelangelo. Making car-
toons, he could be himself.
In school, instead of pay-
Ryan Florence/Contributed Photo
Richard Florence of Westminster, Colorado, graduated from Stanfi eld High School and went on
to do exciting work in the world of animation.
ing attention to classroom
lessons, he drew. He drew
dinosaurs, then spies, then
Batman.
When he was young, he
met a boarder who rented
a room from his mother.
The man shared his com-
ics, underground comics —
sometimes strange works
from independent artists.
“It was eye-opening,” he
said. When he read them, he
realized he could say any-
thing in a comic.
When he got a little older,
he painted murals and signs
around Stanfi eld. He met
his wife, Ginger Florence,
at the Umatilla County Fair
in 1980. In 1981, he left
town for the Art Institute of
Colorado.
He published his fi rst
comic, “Hap Hazard,” in
1987. It is the story of a
bumbling detective, and he
still is doing it.
Then he started drawing
manga for a Tokyo studio.
He drew a 209-page-long
story at the pace of 25 pages
a month about his poodle
and followed it up with a
179-page story on Ameri-
can life.
The Japanese were inter-
ested in his stories for a
look into a diff erent culture.
When, for instance, he drew
a drive-in, people thought it
was interesting and foreign.
His work life was not
all art, though. He worked
for a phone company and
made money. Art was a side
project.
Then, he found a sec-
ond life in animation. He
learned fl ash animation,
and realized that a one-man
shop could make an entire
show. It was like magic
to him.
He started doing com-
mercials for Papa Johns, the
Chicago Tribune and other
companies. He even saw
some of his work in a Super
Bowl ad.
“I was over the moon,”
he said of his Super Bowl
ad. He had made the anima-
tion for a video game, but
it was repurposed for this
other ad. Four million peo-
ple saw his work, he said,
and he could not be happier.
“My overnight success
was 14,600 nights,” he said.
Ironically, his biggest
professional success came
after his massive heart
attack 16 years ago. Since
then, he has gotten great
jobs and awards.
His work for the NBC
show
“Family
Game
Fight!,” a show produced by
Ellen DeGeneres, is his lat-
est achievement. He has not
met DeGeneres, but he does
speak on Zoom with people
who work for her, and that
is just fi ne with him.
In addition to his anima-
tion work for the show, he is
drawing a book based on his
travels in Germany, where
he was born. That work will
be around 200 pages.
Good Shepherd welcomes three new surgeons
Johnson, Maccabee
and Rust are accepting
new patients
Hermiston Herald
Three new general sur-
geons, Marques Johnson,
David Maccabee, and Ann
Rust, joined Good Shep-
herd Medical Group Gen-
eral Surgery.
“We are excited to add
three new surgeons to our
medical staff and are very
proud of the work they are
already doing,” said Brian
Sims, Good Shepherd
Health Care System presi-
dent and CEO.
“Good Shepherd now has
a powerhouse of surgeons
with a combined 40+ years of
experience that provide best-
in-class surgical care for our
patients,” said Sims.
Dr. Johnson is board certi-
fi ed in general surgery with a
special focus in minimally-in-
vasive surgery and colorectal
surgery. He was born in Med-
ford and grew up in Eugene
where he obtained his bach-
elor’s degree from Univer-
sity of Oregon. He went on to
medical school at Loma Linda
University School of Medi-
cine in Loma Linda, Calif.,
and completed his General
Surgery residency at Maine
Medical Center in Portland,
Maine. He is a current mem-
ber of the American College
of Surgeons and the American
Medical Association.
Dr. Maccabee is board cer-
tifi ed in general surgery and
specializes in minimally-in-
vasive surgery (including
robotics), bariatric surgery
and endoscopy. Maccabee
attended undergraduate and
medical school at the Uni-
versity of California Davis
in Davis, Calif.
After a brief stint for grad-
uate school at Oxford Univer-
sity in England, he returned to
the United States for his sur-
gical training. He completed
his general surgery residency
at University of Washington
in Seattle and Oregon Health
Sciences University (OHSU)
in Portland. He went on to
complete a Fellowship in
Laparoscopic Surgery at
OHSU as well.
Maccabee has broad expe-
rience with all types of gas-
trointestinal surgery and
endoscopy, including mini-
mally-invasive hernia repair,
surgery for refl ux disease and
weight loss, skin, breast and
intestinal cancers, and var-
icose vein disease. He is a
member of the American Col-
lege of Surgeons, the Ameri-
can Society of Metabolic and
Bariatric Surgeons, and the
Society of Gastrointestinal
Surgeons.
Dr. Rust is board certifi ed
in general surgery with a spe-
cial focus on women’s health,
as well as advanced laparo-
scopic and endoscopic surger-
ies. She was born in Sand-
point, Idaho, and followed
the footsteps of her physi-
cian father.
Rust earned her Doc-
tor of Medicine degree
from Creighton Univer-
sity School of Medicine in
Omaha, Nebraska where
she also completed her resi-
dency. She is a current mem-
ber of the American College
of Surgeons, American Soci-
ety of Breast Surgeons, Asso-
ciation of Women Surgeons,
and the Society of Laparo-
scopic Surgeons.
When asked what they
enjoy doing outside of work,
the surgeons referenced ded-
ication to their families and
maintaining active outdoor
lifestyles.
All three surgeons are
accepting new patients
at Good Shepherd Medi-
cal Group General Surgery
in Hermiston.
Farm to farm: Water from NE Oregon
data centers reused for agriculture
By GEORGE PLAVEN
EO Media Group
The tiny city of Umatilla and the internet
giant Amazon have come up with a unique
use for the cooling water from the company’s
massive server farms.
They are using it irrigate the region’s other
farms — the kind that grow crops.
Perched along the Columbia River in north-
east Oregon, Umatilla is a haven for irrigated
agriculture where farmers grow everything
from hay and wheat to high-value potatoes,
onions, carrots and melons.
In 2009, Amazon broke ground on its fi rst
campus of data centers in Umatilla. Data cen-
ters are large warehouses fi lled with computer
servers. All the information gathered by web-
sites like Amazon and Facebook is stored in
the server farms.
Amazon was attracted to the Columbia
Basin, in part, by the availability of clean water
that could be used in cooling systems for all
those servers. A single data center consumes
between 250,000 and 1 million gallons of water
per day in the warmer summer months, when
outside temperatures can top 100 degrees.
That water is still mostly clean once it comes
out the other end, said Umatilla city manager
Dave Stockdale.
With two data center campuses now online
and another two being built, Stockdale said it
didn’t make sense, nor was there capacity, to
treat all that mostly clean water at the city’s
sewer plant.
Both the city and Amazon began ponder-
ing ways they could reuse the water, adding
benefi t for the community.
The answer, they decided, was to deliver
the water to the same farmers that have pow-
ered Umatilla’s economy for decades.
“To take this new age technology and sort
of marry it to our traditional roots, especially
in Umatilla which has always been an agri-
cultural community ... in reality, they actually
worked out in a great symbiotic relationship,”
Stockdale said.
The cooling water from Amazon is piped
to an irrigation canal run by the West Exten-
sion Irrigation District, which serves 10,400
acres of farmland.
The project broke ground in 2019, with
roughly 7 miles of pipe that run from the data
center campuses to a new headworks on the
district’s canal at the northeast end of the city.
From there, the water fl ows about 1,200
feet allowing it to mix with the district’s water
pumped directly from the Columbia River,
diluting any excess salts and reaching a suit-
able pH level before it can be used for irrigation.
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Umatilla, and Amazon have built a system for
using cooling water from the internet giant’s
server farms to irrigate the region’s farms.
Stockdale said the infrastructure cost a lit-
tle more than $5 million. So far, Amazon is
the only customer on the new system, though
that could change with future developments.
Water deliveries began in 2020. This year,
Stockdale estimated they provided enough
water for farmers to grow an additional 1,000
acres of crops, all with existing water rights.
“Technically, it’s the city’s water in the irri-
gation district’s canal,” Stockdale said. “If a
farmer wants access to additional water, they
have additional water capacity available to them
through this system.”
The value of agriculture in arid Eastern Ore-
gon grows exponentially with water.
Dryland wheat grown without irrigation
yields roughly $100 per acre. Adding 1 acre-
foot of water increases the crop’s value to $500
per acre. Add 3 acre-feet of water, and farms
can earn up to $5,000 per acre growing higher
value specialty crops.
An acre-foot covers an area about the size
of a football fi eld with 1 foot of water, or about
325,851 gallons.
As more data centers come online in the
coming years, Stockdale said the city is exam-
ining other potential uses for the water in addi-
tion to irrigation, such as repairing wetlands
in the area for wildlife.
“We continue to look at ways to be good
environmental stewards of our resources,”
Stockdale said.
A spokesperson for Amazon Web Services
said the project is the fi rst of its kind in Ore-
gon and for the company, and the goal is to
increase water reuse at its northeast Oregon
data centers to 100%.
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