Wallowa County honors Commissioner Susan Roberts, who steps down after treatments for brain cancer fail

ENTERPRISE — Hundreds of well-wishers Wednesday, June 11, packed into the auditorium at Enterprise High School for a farewell party for retiring Wallowa County Commissioner Susan Roberts.

State Rep. Bobby Levy, R-Echo, was unable to attend but sent a video expressing her best wishes that was played for Roberts and those in attendance.

The biggest tribute came on a video showing state Sen. Todd Nash, who served as a county commissioner with Roberts, giving the formal reading of Senate Concurrent Resolution 33, a measure honoring Roberts for her years of service to the state and Wallowa County. It is considered the highest honor the Senate can bestow on an Oregonian.

Roberts’ fellow commissioners, John Hillock and Lisa Collier, recounted how Roberts has been instrumental throughout the years in seeing improvements accomplished in the county and in leading the way by virtue of her experience.

“I had really looked forward to having several years to work with Susan,” Collier said. “But it just didn’t work out that way.”

Medical diagnosis

Collier took her seat on the board at the beginning of January. Roberts in November 2024 was diagnosed with stage 4 Glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.

One of Robert’s granddaughters set up an online fundraiser for her at GiveSendGo. According to the statement there, the tumor by February had grown six times in size.

Roberts had brain surgery on Feb. 13 with removal of 90% of the tumor, and radiation and chemotherapy followed for several weeks.

“Unfortunately, her latest MRI shows that the remaining parts of the tumor have continued to grow even with aggressive treatments,” according to the statement. “It is our hope to give her a fantastic life with what time she has remaining which isn’t very long. We are looking at a few months at best.”

The Marines

Robert lived in Minam, Wallowa, Joseph and Enterprise. She and her three brothers were rooted in the agriculture and timber industries, which are at the core of the county’s interests.

“We were ‘free-range kids,’ like everyone was back then,” she quipped.

In her public service, she helped bridge the rural-urban divide, having pursued business school in Boise, Idaho, to obtain skills vital to her extensive career in business management and public administration.

Before entering politics, Roberts worked for or managed businesses in the county for more than 35 years. Her three-year service in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Vietnam War largely molded her sense of duty to country.

“The boys were going and I had to tag along,” Roberts piped up.

The Marine Corps was part of a family tradition. Their father fought as a Marine in the Pacific in World War II and another generation — her granddaughter — of Roberts women served in the Marines.

After being presented with a U.S. flag that had been flown over the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., Roberts was visibly touched.

I didn’t have a flag to put out (Saturday for Flag Day,) and now I do,” she said.

She also noted the 250th birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps is in November.

Public service

Roberts’ began her public service with volunteer roles, such as budget committees for the Enterprise School District. She won election to the Enterprise City Council and went on to become the mayor. During her time as mayor, she was elected president of the League of Oregon Cities, where she represented Oregon’s cities before the Legislature.

She won election in 2008 to the Wallowa County Board of Commissioners for the first time. In her first term, much attention was paid to the dispersal of gray wolves that migrated here from Idaho, and along with the Wallowa County Stockgrowers, Roberts and her fellow commissioners supported the development of the Oregon Wolf Conservation and Management Plan, which helped refund ranchers for livestock lost when investigations proved that loss to be caused by wolves.

She was in the thick of things for many of those investigations and even bought a pair of rubber boots for when her sandals weren’t up for the terrain.

As Nash said, Roberts would go right up to a carcass to get her own confirmation of a wolf kill.

“Yep. That’s a wolf kill,” she said, as Nash recalled.

A longtime believer in exercising the county’s coordination status with the federal government, Roberts routinely engaged with the U.S. Forest Service to provide input on project planning and implementation.

When members of the public, local government officials and special-interest groups were unhappy with the Forest Service’s Blue Mountains Plan Revision, Roberts volunteered to co-chair the Blue Mountains Intergovernmental Council, a new alliance of Eastern Oregon agencies during the past six years. She and the BIC affected key changes in the plan revision, including how it affected public land access and local economies.

Nash’s Senate resolution concluded with: “Whereas Susan Roberts’ vision and commitment, her tenacity and her drive, and the unflappable resolve that enabled her to forge ahead and solve problems no matter how great the challenge, will be missed in Wallowa County; now, therefore, be it resolved by the Legislative Assembly of the state of Oregon: “That we, the members of the Eighty-third Legislative Assembly, celebrate the life and accomplishments of Susan Roberts, and we recognize and honor her contributions to the people of this state.”

The Senate passed the resolution unanimously with only one absentee vote and a round of applause from those present.