Rich Wandschneider

The Friday tornado that started at the Wallowa River canyon mouth, traveled over Bear Creek and settled hard in Wallowa made that town and the “lower valley” the center of state and local news.

“Lower Valley … Wallowa …” passed through on the way to Wallowa Lake, Hells Canyon and Joseph galleries, passed over in the local news. I called Wallowa friends to check on them, their cars and houses and the longhouse and arbor on the Nez Perce Homeland grounds. My dog Skye and I drove down and around town, out Bear Creek for a short hike and back down Lower Diamond Creek Road.

Shattered windshields and dented car bodies everywhere, windshield docs busy with repairs, plywood and plastic coverings over west-side windows. Stories of people hit by or hiding from hailstones, of dead chickens and shattered glass — someone said the carpets could not be vacuumed clean, would have to be torn up — oozed from the streets and houses.

All the while I smiled at Skye and thought all the good Wallowa stories I’d learned and even been part of. One of the first and most memorable characters I met in Wallowa County was the banker, Orrin Kirkeby. Chuck, my county agent boss, made a point to introduce me to important people. We walked into Orrin’s dark office, Chuck turned on the lights and told Orrin that he could afford the electricity, and the whiskered, peacoat-garbed, recovering alcoholic banker offered us a coke from a small fridge stuffed with them. He talked about besting Jim Cheatham, president of the bank or Wallowa County in Joseph, in the upcoming fall fair — his bank, the First State Bank of Elgin, Wallowa Branch, would buy the grand champion steer.

I regularly checked in with Orrin, and soon was getting late night calls. One said that he needed help. It was coming on Chief Joseph Days and the Mingo Motel, which he was financing, could not open because of some defugalty with the health department. The next morning I was in his office to pick up a set of motel plans and a few hundred dollars in cash for a private plane ride to Portland. Back to Enterprise and a Bud Stangel flight to PDX, a quick taxi ride to and from the health department, and Bud and I were back in Enterprise and the Mingo opened in time.

I was on the school board in Enterprise in the 1980s — my only successful run at public office — but I knew that Wallowa had the best schools in the county. I had the pleasure of running a Neighborhood Youth Corps training program out of the Extension office, meaning I had jobs for about 50 teenagers in summers, and kept a dozen going in winters with jobs in the hospital and other public offices. That was reason for frequent visits with Wallowa Superintendent Leroy Childers, and smokes in the furnace room with teachers on their free periods. Leroy told me that he had a deal with the National Guard to level the football field, six or eight feet lower on the north end, but the blankety-blank school board wouldn’t come up with the money for the diesel to get the job done.

Dave Smyth followed Leroy, and he hired a bunch of new young teachers who included Nancy and Terry Crenshaw. Terry, said Dave, might have been the best teacher I ever hired, but don’t think it was easy administering him. When the first Iraq war hit the news, Terry called me late at night and asked me what I knew about Iraq, Kurds and Arabs (he knew I’d been in the Peace Corps in Turkey). I was in his classroom the next morning. His class once put Harry Truman on trial for dropping the A-Bomb — but that’s another story. Terry, Dave said, pushed limits.

When Terry and Nez Perce-Cayuse Taz Conner started talking about an Indian presence in Wallowa, we — Wallowans and a few of us from Upper Valley — were in his classroom, plotting what would become Tamkaliks and the Nez Perce Wallowa Homeland. When Main Street businesses were going dark, the school kept the town going. And Homeland has given it new vigor.

Wallowa continued to play football games on Friday afternoons well after Enterprise and Joseph were lit up. There were some football glory years there — Crenshaw, Verle Lewis and Tom Baird coaching. Before my own kids were even playing age, I’d make it down for Wallowa games. Enterprise, I’d tell folks, is the government town and Joseph the tourist town, but Wallowa is where people and families stay.

I’d walk to the south end zone, and people I hadn’t seen for years would hail me. Then Gary Willet would yell, “Wandschneider, get over here. I need another Democrat among all these blankety Republicans.”