June 24, 2016 • Seaside Signal • seasidesignal.com • 7A
Father Nick: He can ’reach anybody’ A personal
story of abuse,
dysfunction
Farewell from Page 1A
Helping Hands Reentry Program in
Seaside. He initiated a Sunday Sup-
per at the church that has nourished
thousands in his years here. His min-
istry extends from Astoria to Wheel-
er. “My family here is not only the
Catholics,” he said. His calling, he
said, is to serve all people.
Dedication of the new 8,400-square-
foot church in 2012 was the culmina-
tion of a 20-year effort by congregants,
replacing the 97-year-old Our Lady of
Victory Catholic Church with a new
building more than twice its size.
At the time, church council President
Chris Rose credited Nilema for mov-
ing ahead despite the obstacles.
“We had four priests before Father
Nick who all knew we needed a new
church,” Rose said. “Father Nick had
the courage to say, ‘Let’s do it.’”
The building features a hand-
carved life-size wooden crucifi x from
Nilema’s homeland of Tanzania.
Working with
law
en-
forcement in Seaside is a role Nilema
has participated in since his arrival.
“When they need my help, they call
me, when I need their help I call
them,” Nilema said.
Nilema was especially close with
Sgt. Jason Goodding, the Seaside police
lieutenant shot while making a felony
warrant arrest in February. “With Jason
it was heartbreaking because I worked
with him so closely,” Nilema said.
In mourning Goodding earlier this
year, Nilema called the death “a big,
big loss for our community.” The of-
fi cer had a passion for what he was
doing, and “he was so willing to ask
for help” when he needed advice or
support to better serve Seaside.
“He was always telling me, ‘You
know, Father Nick, we have to put our
efforts together to help take care of our
people,’” Nilema said.
Nilema is returning to the Moshi
Diocese in northern Tanzania.
Arriving in Seaside will be a long-
time colleague of Nilema’s, Joseph
Barita, 59, of Moshi, Tanzania. The
two men grew up in the same town
in East Africa, and studied together at
a seminary as young me. Barita and
Nilema were ordained together —
July 3, 1988 — and both have served
in Oregon parishes. He fi rst served
in the United States in the Archdio-
cese of Los Angeles, coming to the
country in 2000. From 2010 to 2014
Barita served as pastor at St. Frederic
in St. Helens.
Barita returned briefl y to Tanzania
when his father was ill, but is now
returning to Seaside to take on the re-
sponsibilities of his predecessor.
“He is not only beloved, he has
the ability to reach people,” said
parishioner Kay Foetisch-Robb of
Father Nick, as he is affectionately
known. “Small children run up to
him, old people. He has the ability to
reach anybody.”
A farewell celebration takes place
tonight, Friday, at Our Lady of Vic-
tory Parish Hall from 4 to 7 p.m. and
at St. Peter the Fisherman Parish Hall
in Arch Cape on Saturday, June 25,
after the 5:30 p.m. Mass. The entire
North Coast community is invited.
Recovery from life in a
polygamous family
By Eve Marx
For the Seaside Signal
A special story to tell
Parishioner Mike Davies has a special
story to tell of his longtime friendship and
inspiration from Father Nick. “Thanks for
reaching out to me regarding Father
Nick and his imminent depar-
ture. I have a very personal and
unique relationship with the
man — with stories that
might fi ll volumes. I’ve
been associated with him
for almost his entire 18-
plus years in Seaside
— in a wide variety of
diff erent roles. Initially
I was one of his many
new parishioners at
Our Lady of Victory —
a non-Catholic parishio-
ner at that!
“But, as a result of his incredibly gre-
garious nature, we very quickly became
friends. That friendship was cemented in
2001 when my family traveled with him
and 12 other parishioners to visit his home
in Tanzania, East Africa. The incredibly
moving visit to his home parish high on
the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro was life
changing — to say the least!
“Since that fi rst visit, I have returned seven
more times —each time accompanying visi-
tors from around the United States and Can-
ada. The strong personal relationships forged
during these visits have broadened our world
and our family — we now have an ‘adopted’
extended family in Tanzania — including our
new, 9-month-old ‘grandson’! My family —
and our parish — are forever tied to Tanzania
via the bonds forged by Father Nick!”
Community garden includes teaching area
Garden from Page 1A
Making something
beautiful
The garden includes a teaching area
and containers of different heights, mak-
ing them accessible to all students.
Children from the district’s youth
programs — including the Learning
Ladder preschool, after-school adven-
ture and kindergarten programs and
summer camp — have taken owner-
ship of the garden and will sustain it,
but Hassan hopes it gets used by other
youth-centered agencies and organiza-
tions, like the Seaside School District,
with its Broadway Middle School near-
by.
“Were trying to make this really
open, available and exciting,” Blake
said. ‘’We have to eat as if our lives de-
pended on it, because they do. And we
really all have to get on board with that
as early as we possibly can.”
Shelly Saunders, the district’s pre-
school and kindergarten coordinator,
takes her students to the garden a few
times per week to water the plants and
check on their progress. She desires to
give the children a foundation to learn
about growing their own food and dis-
covering how to use it.
The group’s original intention was
to build the Youth Garden at Seaside
Heights Elementary School, where the
after-school program for kindergarten
and elementary students was relocated
during the 2015-16 school year. Compli-
cations compelled a change of plans, but
while they were waiting for their new
garden to be built, the students were in-
structed by Hassan in container garden-
ing and nutrition and got seeds planted to
have starts ready.
“Every plant they wanted is out here
in this garden,” Hassan said.
Those plants include berries, apple
trees, potatoes, cucumbers, parsley, cur-
ry plants and many more. In fact, Has-
san mentioned, one of the fi rst lessons
during the Summer Camp’s gardening
activity may focus on thinning.
‘A step program’
The Sunset Pool Garden is one of the
Clatsop Community Gardens. Because
it was inspired by children expressing a
desire “to grow their own pizza,” Blake
said, two of the original 18 plots were
dedicated to the After-School Program.
Hassan developed a curriculum
around food production, gardening and
nutrition that she has used during the
district’s Summer Camp. During camp
this year, the gardening component will
incorporate aspects of the Junior Master
Gardener curriculum.
“We’re not going to adhere to it
strictly, because it’s actually written for
school gardens and we only have the
kids for a few weeks during the summer,
but it’s got some wonderful informa-
tion,” Hassan said.
However, the garden will get used
to some degree for various programs
throughout the year.
“The wonderful thing about our
climate is we can grow things all year
long,” Hassan said.
With the Learning Ladder program
expanding this fall to add a full-day op-
tion and afternoon enrichment activities,
W H EN TH E
U N EX PEC TED H A PPEN S
expect your a m bula nce costs
to be covered. $59 per yea r
protects your fa m ily* from
needless w orry.
SUE CODY/FOR SEASIDE SIGNAL
Josef Barbic, Raiden Bowles and
Sam Beaudoin received plaques and
gifts from the Sunset Empire Park
and Recreation District for building
the Youth Garden as their Seaside
High School Pacifi ca Project.
students will be served lunch, and Saun-
ders sees that as an opportunity to use
items grown in the garden. Students also
can take produce for their families, and
the excess is donated to the local food
pantry.
Garden-style lessons have and will
continue to teach respect, for both the
garden itself and one another as multi-
ple children tend to the plants together;
water, plant and life cycles; preparing
healthy meals and snacks; and many
more. Instilling the value of good nutri-
tion and healthy activities is “a step pro-
gram,” Saunders said.
“We’re at this step here and we’re
going to go to the next step, because
our goal is to provide a healthier alter-
native for children while they’re here,”
she said.
L ife Ca re
O N LY
5 9
$
00*
I experienced a sense of dis-
connect putting together the calm
and professional demeanor of the
author Ruth Wariner, whose mem-
oir, “The Sound of Gravel,” with
what I later read and what she
related at her author event at the
Seaside Library on June 16. Wari-
ner, whose book was published by
Flatiron Books, a division of Mac-
millan, is a pretty blond woman of
about 40. She was the witness and
the victim of unspeakable crimes,
the worst being repeatedly molest-
ed for years by her stepfather. And
yet she seems to have forgiven
everyone. She doesn’t even seem
that angry about her stepfather.
In a terrible way, he did give her
a strong story to tell, something
every great writer needs.
Wariner, who lives in Port-
land, grew up in the polygamist
Mormon colony known as Colo-
nia LeBaron, located in Mexico
in the northwest state of Chihua-
hua. Her grandfather, Alma Dayer
LeBaron, established his polyg-
amist community in 1944 after a
falling out with his Utah Mormon
church. Wariner was her mother’s
fourth child and her father’s 39th.
Wariner’s own father, consid-
ered a prophet, was murdered by
his own brother (who authorities
called “the Mormon Charles Man-
son”) when she was just a few
months old. Her mother, not long
after, became the second wife of a
man named Lane with whom she
had several more children. Lane
begins fondling and molesting
the pre-adolescent Wariner right
under her mother’s nose. He also
molests two of her stepsisters,
daughters of his fi rst wife. The
girls, when they tell their moth-
ers, get zero traction. Wariner’s
mother denies her story and then
stonewalls her daughter for years,
saying that when confronted with
the abuse, her husband cried and
said he’s sorry. For his own part in
the matter, Lane tells his families
that he hasn’t done anything very
wrong. “They’re not my blood
children,” he says indignantly. “I
would never do such a thing to my
own blood.”
To say the Wariner household
is dysfunctional doesn’t begin to
cover it. There are two mental-
ly disabled siblings. Her mother
disappears for days on end, leav-
ing the children with nothing to
eat. Most days even when she is
home, they subsist on bread and
peanut butter. Boys and girls are
pulled out of school by the age of
14 to work around the house or the
farm. For years there is no running
water in their falling apart adobe
house; in the late 60’s when Lane
fi nally installs a modicum of mod-
ern conveniences, there is a real
danger that one could be easily
burned in the house or electrocut-
ed. Two of her younger siblings
are in fact electrocuted and die
against an electric fence; Wari-
ner’s mother dies that way too,
attempting to save them.
Before Wariner fi nally gets the
courage at the age of 15 to steal
SUBMITTED PHOTO
Author Ruth Wariner at the Sea-
side Public Library.
two of her younger sisters and
run away, she is fully aware of
how her mother and her mother’s
American-born sister wives make
a practice of raping the U.S. econ-
omy, making monthly pilgrimag-
es across the border into Texas to
collect welfare and food stamps.
Without judgment she describes
her mother’s facility to lie and
tell inquiring social workers she
doesn’t know who the children’s
fathers are and that she’s been
with lots of men.
At the library presentation,
Wariner asked for a show of
hands. How many of you have
read the book, she asked. There
were not many. She said she
would change her talk because she
didn’t want to spoil the book for
anyone. She read a small section
of the book that fi rmly established
time and place while her husband
(yes, she overcame the trauma of
her early years to get her G.E.D.,
go to college, get a master’s de-
gree, marry a monogamous man,
and become a teacher) orchestrat-
ed a slideshow of Wariner family
photographs. The photos show
nothing but smiling faces. One
particularly charismatic photo
shows Wariner on a pony, a beau-
tiful blond tiny girl, seemingly
happy as a clam.
The HBO television series
“Big Love” and the TLC reality
series, “Sister Wives,” have of-
fered American viewers a slice of
polygamous Mormon life. These
television shows give viewers the
impression that multiple women
being married to one man might
not be so bad. On “Big Love,”
which is supposed to be fi ction,
there is some serious strife going
on beyond female jealousy. On
that show, people are kidnapped
and they are murdered and very
old men taking child brides. But
until I read “Sound of Gravel” the
full monty of polygamist Mormon
culture for me had never been ad-
dressed.
I’ve since learned there is a
pantheon of contemporary liter-
ature on the subject. Goodreads
suggests “Escape,” by Carolyn
Bishop; “Stolen Innocence” by
Elissa Wall; “Shattered Dreams”
by Irene Spencer; “The Chosen
One” by Carol Lynch Williams.
Even the esteemed author Jon
Krakauer has tackled polygamy
in his book, “Under the Banner of
Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith.”
Yet I wonder how many people
truly understand what goes on in
a polygamous community. And
why Wariner, who stays in touch
with her biological siblings, some
of whom practice polygamy, has
shied away from calling the situa-
tion she escaped from what it is, a
cult. “I love my family,” she said.
New Lo
cation
for 2016
!
Wednesdays
3:00 - 7:00pm
June 22 - August 31, 2016
in the parking lot of Broadway Middle School off of Highway 101
SNAP%HQH¿WVDUH$FFHSWHG
SeasideMarket.org
*Full year,
per household.
Family includes you
and household dependents.
BECO M E A M EM BER. IT’S EAS Y .
O pen en ro llm en t thro u gh Ju n e 30, 2016
C redit ca rds a ccepted.
C a ll us toda y 503-861-5558 or stop by our office
w w w .a m bula ncem em bers hip.com /m edix
2325 SE DOLPHIN AVENUE
WARRENTON
www.medix.org
IN AN EMERGENCY CALL
9-1-1
