10 years ago this week — 2014

WARRENTON — In the bus barn across the parking lot from Warrenton High School, a gutted 1987 El Camino sits wheelless on stands in a vacant bay, surrounded by students eager to learn the basics of auto mechanics.

The 11 or so students, part of a 1-year-old Warrenton Auto Club, filter in for a 20-minute lecture and cleanup on Wednesdays. They return on Saturdays to tear into the car under the watchful gaze of brothers David and Clinton Reed, along with Darryl Niemi, all retired from their respective careers, members of the Lower Columbia Classics Car Club and volunteer mentors to the students.

“You can’t drive a computer down the road,” said David Reed, lamenting the loss of hands-on shop experiences in high schools.

Warrenton, like many other high schools, has cut many shop opportunities while refocusing on ventures in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics field.

At its August meeting, the Warrenton-Hammond School District Board discussed the possibility of re-adding an auto shop teacher with Warrenton High School principal Rod Heyen and superintendent Mark Jeffery. Jeffery explained the lack of the needed tools and certified teacher, adding that hiring an auto teacher would mean laying off someone else.

“Right now, vocational is not the buzzword of the day,” said Heyen at the meeting.

Sudden cardiac arrest kills hundreds of thousands of Americans each year. It strikes suddenly at people young and old, stopping blood flow to the brain and other vital organs.

It kills in as little as a couple of minutes unless the heartbeat is quickly restarted.

Astoria High School seniors Jordan Lance and Bryce Hall, through their senior projects, doubled their school’s protection against the condition, raising money for the school’s second automated external defibrillator, which was delivered Wednesday.

In recognition of the final high school football game at John Warren Stadium — Gyro Field — here’s a look back at the beginning: the first event at Gyro Field, which was a baseball game on June 12, 1927, and the first high school football game at the field on Sept. 14, 1934, Astoria v. Commerce High School of Portland.

Friday’s game between Seaside and Astoria is expected to be the final high school contest at the field, named after former Astoria and University of Oregon coach John Warren.

From the Astoria Evening Budget, Sept. 14, 1934:

“1st Game Tonight, New Field”

“Gyro field, acclaimed as Oregon’s finest athletic center, will be officially dedicated tonight and the local football season opened with a clash between the Astoria High School football team and the dashing Commerce High eleven of Portland. This event will be the capping climax of the annual fall opening here.

Preceding the dedication and game will be a big parade which is to assemble at the court house at 7 o’clock under the direction of H.T. Stoneman. Heading the parade will be police escort and color guard to be followed by the Astoria band, cars containing city, county and FERA officials and press; Anchor girls, Drum corps, football teams, Gyro Club and other service groups, American Legion drum corps, American Legion marching unit, and Astoria High School rooters.”

50 years ago — 1974

Columbia Memorial Hospital officials hastily sent a revised application for a certificate of need to the state health commission last week calling for a new 74-bed facility in south Astoria on land owned by Ernie Garcia.

Elmer Blomquist admitted the Garcia site was a last-ditch effort, but added, “At least it’s a ray of hope.” He insisted the Garcia site was the final one.

Hopes for a new hospital appeared dim after trustees voted Oct. 3 to rescind an earlier action to locate the facility in Walluski at the site of a former naval hospital.

Trustees scrapped the site because the majority of Astoria doctors said they opposed moving the hospital to Walluski. It was the fourth time trustees had settled on a site but later had to change their mind.

The freighter Northerly Trader struck the Port of Astoria’s Pier 2 bow-first Monday, causing about $10,000 in damage to the east side of the dock, assistant Port manager Ray Holbrook said today.

The accident occurred when the ship was moved from the west side to the east side of the dock because of an oil slick which threatened to contaminate logs on the west side.

The greatest flood to occur anywhere in the world in the last 10,000 years happened on the Columbia River, geologist John Allen told an Astoria audience Monday morning.

Allen, who proposes to publish a paper on the subject next year, said a wall of water over 1,000 feet high spewed at a rate of 35 miles per hour at the flood’s worst point.

Much of the Northwest was inundated.

In case you’re wondering why you’ve never heard of this catastrophe, it happened 10,000 years ago and geologists didn’t discover evidence of it until nearly the middle of the century.

A winning team attracts spectators, though most are parents or relatives of the Coast Valley League unbeaten Astoria High School cross-country runners.

For a few, it’s a chance to get out of the office or out of the kitchen for a couple of hours at picturesque Coffenbury Lake where the Fishermen compete each fall.

“We’re the only team in the state to have a course around a lake,” one of the parents of a Fisherman runner noted Monday as Astoria took on then soundly defeated archrival St. Helens of Columbia County.

Bundles of roughly cut logs called cants are piling up rapidly on open land at the Port of Astoria as the Port stockpiles wood for shipment to Japan when a depressed Japanese lumber market improves.

The 5 million board feet of cants now at the port will soon grow to about 20 million board feet, according to assistant Port manager Ray Holbrook.

Clatsop Community College is ready to charge up Coxcomb Hill for a site for future campus structures, beginning with a fine arts complex.

The college board set its sights on a hilltop plot picked by the architects after a lengthy presentation Tuesday.

The 41-acre parcel the college covets is one-half mile east of the Astoria Column. The property, recently clearcut and replanted with trees, is owned by the county.

County commissioners will be approached about its purchase soon.

75 years ago — 1949

SEATTLE — The multimillion-dollar salmon industry on Puget Sound water is doomed within the next 30 to 40 years unless corrective measures are undertaken, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported today.

Spokesmen for the fisheries authorities of three Northwest states warned the Columbia Basin Inter-agency Committee here Wednesday morning that the “lower river fisheries rehabilitation plan” is not enough to ensure perpetuation of the Columbia River salmon runs.

The inter-agency committee gathered at 8:30 Wednesday morning in the circuit court room of the courthouse for a speech-packed session scheduled to end at 4, but likely to run overtime until 5 in the afternoon.

The fisheries officials of Oregon, Washington state and Idaho had the morning session for presentation of the case for preservation of fisheries, and they were making the most of it.

Arnie Suomela, master fish warden of the Oregon Fish Commission, opened presentation of the fishery case with a warning that the fish runs which go into the upper Columbia basin must be preserved, along with the lower river runs, if the “greatest fish-producing stream on earth” is to continue to supply abundant salmon returns.

Suomela pointed out that the world population today gets only half its normal minimum food requirement, and that preservation of remaining food supplies such as the Columbia River salmon is becoming increasingly vital.

The fish resources of Oregon produce an annual value of $40 million a year, Suomela said, of which $10 million comes from Columbia River fish.

Suomela pointed out that Columbia River salmon production has fallen from a peak of 43 million pounds a year in 1883, the peak year, to about 18 million pounds a year now.

The city of Astoria is considering advisability of acquiring the land and utilities of the Astoria naval hospital property for resale to a builder who is interested in erecting between 150 and 200 homes there for sale and rental, it was revealed Friday.

The war assets division has put the land and utilities up for sale.

It is divided into two tracts, one of 24 acres including mostly tideland, in which the city has no interest, for about $3,000.

The other tract of 54 acres is upland property, on which most of the present buildings stand. This is offered to public bodies on a priority basis for about $21,000, and this is the tract the city is considering acquiring.

The wooden 1,343-ton Panamanian lumber schooner Salina Cruz was burning “furiously” today but the 17 persons aboard abandoned ship in two whale boats 180 miles west of Grays Harbor, Washington, the U.S. Coast Guard reported.

The message from a Coast Guard PBY search plane sent to the scene from Port Angeles, Washington, said.

The Coast Guard cutter Balsam off the mouth of the Columbia and the weather ship Bering Strait 150 miles northwest were racing to the scene. The Balsam was expected to arrive at the scene at 10 p.m. and the Bering Strait at 11 p.m.

The PBY radioed it had dropped signaling and ration kits and an emergency life raft, “all of which have been picked up by the two whale boats.”