Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Sorted by date Results 698 - 722 of 997
WAITSBURG -- Wai t sburg High School junior Billy Brown is exactly where he's supposed to be, playing football with the Cardinals each Friday night, selling his hog at the Fair Livestock Auction and in Oma Harting's kitchen looking for cookies. At this time last year, Brown had been transferred from Waitsburg to a foster family in Walla Walla and was playing football for Walla Walla High School. He was well-liked by his new peers in Walla Walla, but after the football season ended, Brown...
DAYTON - The Dayton community will show the best it has to offer and honor on Oct. 1 with its annual fall festival, Dayton on Tour. "It's a celebration of our local talent and our local history," said Ginny Butler, one of the organizers of the event. The festival is a joint project by the Dayton Historical Depot Society and the Dayton Chamber of Commerce. The festival began in 1976 and included only historic home tours, said Cheryl Ray, also an event organizer. For the past five years, the...
DAYTON - After five years on the Dayton City Council, Councilman and Mayor Pro Tem Merle Jackson announced he plans to retire before the end of the year. " I wa n t people to k n ow I ' m working toward full retirement," said Jackson, 66, who joined the council in 2006 after being appointed to a vacant seat following his professional retirement as a nuclear engineer. "It's time to get off the stage." Jackson said he wants to retire this fall, but will serve through Dec. 31 if necessary to ensure...
Bill Thompson was a good friend. I share that distinction with scores of folks in this community and extending the population to the Palouse. "BillyT" was his vanity plate, but his formal moniker was "Buffalo Bill," because it was largely through his efforts that the annual Lions Buffalo Feed was instituted. He was really tickled when the front page of The Times had the replica of a buffalo nickel with the motto "E Pluribus Thompson." I share some Waitsburg history with him as we both came into...
WAITSBURG - It was a day of Victorian fashion, museum tours, buffalo, corn on the cob and Butlers at Waitsburg's Fall Festival on Sunday. The attendance was anything but sparse. The community filled benches and wooden chairs on the front lawn of the Bruce Memorial Museum for a church service. Pastor Mike Ferrians, dressed as though he were from the old west in a long black coat and hat, led the congregants in singing traditional hymns and spoke about an old-fashioned farm tool he had found....
WAITSBURG - Waitsburg resident Jane Butler, age 90, has deep family roots in the Touchet Valley through her husband Bob. Butler has lived in town about 50 years, non-consecutively, and is being honored for her family history with the Pioneer of the Year award from the Waitsburg Historical Society. "I feel honored," Butler said of the award. She learned she was to be the honoree at the upcoming Pioneer Fall Festival on Sept. 18 through a letter from Bettie Chase, a member of the historical...
WALLA WALLA - The man charged with killing a Seattle cyclist on Middle Waitsburg Road in May appeared in Walla Walla County Superior Court Monday for the first time. Melvin Bohleen, 73, of Dayton, dressed in blue jean overalls and a brown t-shirt, signed paperwork and listened to Judge Donald Schacht describe possible sentencing and release. Bohleen is charged with vehicular homicide for striking a cyclist with his vehicle on May 21. The cyclist, Sarah Eustis, 61, of Seattle, died as a result of...
DAYTON - In the early hours of the morning last Thursday, Tia Gore was making her five-year-old daughter a birthday cake. Together with her eightyear old son, Gore and her daughter were planning to mark the occasion of her birth later that day. It was an easy day for the family to remember because it came shortly after they moved into their rental home at 1013 South Third just before the girl was born. As she was working on the cake, Gore suddenly heard a loud pop in the kitchen and the wall...
WAI T SBURG - I was behind the counter at the Coppei Coffee shop last week when he walked in. He donned a well-worn canvas hat, a big backpack and two sticks that looked like ski poles. With all that gear on, the diminutive elderly man stepped right up to the cash register and made his inquiry. He had heard someone at or near the coffee shop or the Times had rooms to rent and, having just walked from Dayton that morning, he was ready for some rest. It so happened I just set up the first two...
WAITSBURG - The new face behind the counter at the Weller Public Library is likely one you have seen before. Rosie Warehime, the new library manager, has lived in Waitsburg for 44 years. Her husband Walt found his first teaching job in Waitsburg. "We planned to stay 2 years and we never left," she said. Warehime hadn't ever worked at a library before, but she had been employed at the Cenex station and at local grain growers, making her a recognizable face in the community and the perfect person...
DAYTON - This year's Columbia County Fair held Sept. 9-11 will bring new entertainment, more education, bull bash and beer garden that will surely delight fairgoers. T h e event, held at the fairgrounds in Dayton, will cost $5 for adults, $3 for kids and children under the age of 6 are free each day. The fair will be open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday, 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturday, and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Shane Laib, who is in his second year as fair manager, said he and his...
WAITSBURG - Just as some residents in the Touchet Valley were watching the news about Hurricane Irene making landfall on the East Coast on Sunday, they were suddenly taken aback by a local weather event of their own. After late afternoon clouds gathered over Waitsburg, winds picked up out of nowhere and took huge clouds of dust from the dry fields with them, towering high over the city and surrounding countryside. The dust storm quickly reduced visibility to only a few hundred yards and whipped...
WAITSBURG - After recent bicyclist-vehicle collisions that resulted in death and injuries in 2011, local authorities are urging vehicles to be on the lookout for bicyclists and they're telling bicyclists to take precautions to stay safe. The Touchet Valley is becoming more and more a popular destination for cyclists and vehicles and cyclists need to learn to share the roads, said Walla Walla County Undersheriff Edward Freyer and Operations Captain Barry Blackman. "Everybody has a legal right to...
DAYTON - It was a bright day in early August. The National Guard helicopter hovered several hundred feet above the canyons in the Eckler Mountain area of the Umatilla National Forest when the spotter in the cockpit first noticed the pattern on the steep hill: a terraced slope with carefully spaced plants of a slightly darker color than the surrounding vegetation. It was just the beginning. Upon closer inspection, the spotter noticed more "grows" spread out along hundreds of yards on two...
WALLA WALLA - Dayton resident Melvin Bohleen, 73, is scheduled to appear in Walla Walla Superior Court Sept. 12 for charges relating to a vehicle-and-bicycle collision that killed a Seattle woman on May 21 on Middle Waitsburg Road. Bohleen was charged Friday with vehicular homicide, a class A felony, that could carry a sentence of life in prison, a fine of $50,000 or both if he is found guilty. Prosecuting Attorney James Nagle filed a report of an investigation by the sheriff's office and argues that Bohleen operated a motor vehicle that...
WAITSBURG - It was never Wyatt Withers' sole inspiration for going in the Navy, but once he had decided to join it certainly helped having a grandfather who had served in the same branch many decades ago. Choosing to be "seasick over digging a fox hole," longtime local farmer Jack McCaw went to amphibian training school in preparation of the Allied invasion of Japan when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He became part of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's occupation force in Japan...
DAYTON - A fire believed to have been sparked by a lawn mower threatened two homes and burned 250 acres near the county line off Whetstone Road north of the Touchet River valley Sunday. It destroyed a garden shed, scorched the side of a pickup truck and burned 50 acres of standing grain. It was the first serious fire of the summer in the territory covered by Walla Walla County Fire District 2 based in Waitsburg, even though the blaze started on the Columbia side of the county line. Dozens of...
The Times DAYTON - Law enforcement agents this week removed more than 28,000 marijuana plants from the Eckler Mountain and Hartsock areas of Columbia County and arrested two more Mexican nationals in what one local official calls the largest pot bust in the state this year. Columbia County Sheriff's deputies, U.S. Forest Service agents and Washington State Troopers seized 25,765 marijuana plants with a street value of about $25.7 million on Thursday after making two arrests and destroying 2,300...
Former Nurse Leads Primary Results DAYTON - This fall's general election runoff for Board of Commissioners Position 2 of the Columbia County Health District will be between Colleen Sproul and Blaine Bickelhaupt. With all ballots counted in the Waitsburg portion of Walla Walla County and Columbia County Tuesday night, Sproul led Bickelhaupt 41.25 percent to 37.9 with Garry Snyder, the third candidate trailing at 20.86 percent. Sproul, a former nurse, performed particularly well in Columbia...
WAITSBURG - Rick Smith claims he started his non-stop yard sale a few months ago, after he found work as a logger in upper Michigan and decided to get rid of some surplus household goods before moving there. What better way to sell them than in the yard in front of his trailer situated at the very visible corner of Warren and Second (Highway 124). The stuffed animals were in the front row this weekend, seated together on a bench not far from a variety of shop tools flanked by furniture, books,...
WAITSBURG - Hundreds of Touchet Valley residents and visitors descended on Waitsburg for its annual Classic Auto Show and its opening of three new food & drink establishments this weekend. All new businesses reported big crowds at their establishments, stretching their venues and staffs to capacity, but all startups received rave reviews for their high standards in quality offerings and service. The three days of startup celebrations marked a new wave of business activity downtown, leading some...
WALLA WALLA - Former Waitsburg resident Adam Hermanns, who pleaded guilty earlier this week to armed robbery and residential burglary, was sentenced to 13 ½ years in prison, the maximum term possible under state sentencing guidelines. A fierce protector of the idea that one's home is one's castle, Walla Walla County Superior Court Judge Donald W. Schacht said he took seriously victim impact statements, particularly from 81-year-old Dorothy Schneider, whose residence was invaded by Hermanns and...
