Boyd and Wilma Eagleson Oral History Interview, February 6, 2008

BOYD EAGLESON: I'm Boyd Eagleson, and I was born on April 15, 1922. Charlie Rightson Eagleson and Mary Alice Eagleson are my parents. I was born in Eddyville, Oregon, by the attendance of a midwife. No doctor, but a midwife. I am the fourth child of my parents. I had an older brother, Robert, John, and Harriet. Then I was born and I have a younger brother, Ralph. My grandparents were Charles and Mary Sawyer. They lived in Gervais, Oregon. My parents came to 00:01:00the Eddyville area in 1912 and bought our existing home ranch, which consisted of 720 acres. That included two homesteads on each side of our original claim. My mother, before she was married, was a school teacher at the Little Elk Schoolhouse, which was situated on the old Smiles' Place. She taught people, such as Jack Wakefield, Brian Wakefield, and any number of the Wakefield Family 00:02:00were her students. Two or three of the students were 23 and 24 years old going to school again. The original school is now covered with Douglas Fir plantation and no one has a real accurate description of exactly where that schoolhouse was, but we had been approached for a number of-Ralph, my brother and I, have both been approached to guide people to the original place of the school, but with all the fir trees it's very hard to determine exactly where it was at.

Growing up, I had a bad trait about me. I was left at home with my little brother when my older siblings were going to school walking 3/4 of a mile of dirt road to catch the Model T school bus. I got to a point where I had 2 dogs and whenever my mother was not watching me, why I took off with my dogs and ran away. One time, I traveled better than 3 miles on the highway going toward the 00:04:00school and the school bus stopped and picked me up and brought me back home. That led to a trip to the splitting block in the woodshed where Mother convinced me that I wasn't supposed to do that sort of thing. My father passed away in 1926. I was 3 years old and my younger brother was 6 months old. He passed away with pneumonia. I don't have recollection of actually knowing him other than the day of the funeral. He was a great man, according to my mother. After my father 00:05:00passed away, my mother took us 5 children and paid off the mortgage from the Federal Land Bank on 720 acres. When she passed away, she didn't have not one bill other than current electricity and phone bill.

WILMA EAGLESON: I'm Wilma Davis Eagleson. I was born at El Dorado, Arkansas, to Hugh Miller Davis and Anna Thompson, but I don't know what year they were 00:06:00married. My grandparents, I only remember my grandparents on my mother's side because that was the people we were the closest associated with. My dad's folks were dead by then, but my dad's folks were college professors. I had an aunt that had a college education at the age of 18 but couldn't teach. My dad run away the year he was in the 5th grade and joined the circus, but my mother had 7, 8, 10 brothers and sisters. The youngest one was between myself and my sister 00:07:00just older than I am. There was eight of us children and I was the fourth in the line of four girls: Yolanda, Pearl, Valarie, and then myself. Then there was Dude, or, he was a junior, but we all called him Dude, then Teddy and Joy and Jimmy. Those were my siblings, and I lived in most of the southern states before I was 6 years old, but I started to school in Memphis, Tennessee. I did 8 years at St. Thomas Catholic Church, or school. Then, I went to Immaculate Conception 00:08:00High School. That's where I graduated 4 years of high school.

I met Boyd in '43, wasn't it? About '43? We were married in '45, January 6, 1945. Our oldest daughter was born October 29th in '45. Count it if you want to [laughs]. I had never been out, well, I had been around the southern states, but I had never been plumb across the country until I got to come to Oregon after Boyd and I were married and quite an experience. The trees were just awesome to me. I could not believe that they grew trees like this. The biggest thing we had 00:09:00down there was an oak tree. In the southern states was an oak tree or a poplar. We just didn't have anything like they had here. By the time I was 6 years old, we lived in Memphis, and I did all my, even up to my 21st birthday, in the city of Memphis. I had never been to the country like this. We had running water. We had a toilet that flushed, and we just, we weren't rich but we just had these things. I had never known what an outhouse was or how you go to the pump and get water. I just didn't know these things. As for the telephone, we had always had 00:10:00a telephone that when you picked up the telephone the operator said, number please? Out here, when you picked up the telephone you rang it up, like three longs and a short, two shorts, three shorts-whoever you wanted to call on your line. So, I got quite an education.

BE: Wilma's talked about having that indoor plumbing and that sort of thing and at our house, well, we had a two-holer out 100' or so from the house. There was a big Montgomery Ward catalogue in there to read while you were in seclusion. Also, we had a, speaking of outhouses, Halloween nights, we were always pulling 00:11:00tricks on the farmers and other people on Halloween night when one farmer we put his jersey bull in the hay loft with slings. Also, we didn't like him very well, and they had an outhouse out back of their white dwelling and we stuck a stick of dynamite in the outhouse and painted the backside of that white house a different color [laughs].

WE: You didn't have electricity and you didn't have water.

BE: Well, yeah, but.

WE: You didn't have running water in the house.

BE: No. We never had. Anyway, we never had running water from, we had a well that was approximately hand-dug well that was about 35', 40' deep that we pumped our water from and then in later years, we ran a galvanized line from a spring and eventually got running water, but originally it was strictly just from a-and then you had to prime the pump to get it to pump the water.

WE: Electricity. What about your electricity?

BE: Well, we never got electricity. I can't remember exactly the year that we got electricity, but I remember as a high school boy slashing ride away for the power line. It had to have been just before World War II.

WE: We always had running water, and my mother-I can never remember her not having a washing machine. I can remember it was one of those that you rolled the clothes through a roller up there to ring them out, but like I said, I guess I didn't know I was rich [laughs]. But I'm sure we weren't rich. My dad was a 00:14:00plumber, but sometimes it's like they say: the plumber's things don't get fixed just like the cobbler's kids don't get any shoes. But, we grew up and like I said we didn't know we didn't have anything. We played with each other. We got along well. We played a lot on the public playgrounds that were maybe 2 or 3 blocks away from home. We swam in the public pools. We just grew up as ordinary kids in a big city.

BE: Speaking of washing machines and one thing or another, why before we had 00:15:00running water my mother had a big, not a tub, but an elongated tub that she put on the stove and heated water to wash the clothes and we had a hand operated washing machine. Growing up, it was our job, it had a lever. In fact, you pulled it back and forth to make that impeller go in there to get the washing-I mean, the clothes circulating around. Then we had a hand-wringer. After we was all through washing, the hand-wringer, we hand run it through the wringer by hand. Our eating during the Depression, there was many meals that all we had was maybe 00:16:00a stew, one thing on the table, but, man, we thought we was living high on the hog a lot of times just having one thing that we had available to eat. Mother always made homemade bread. She was a fabulous cook to be able to just throw something together and make our meals complete. She had 1,000 white legged chickens. That was her source of income. That, and we milked approximately, I 00:17:00guess it was about 14, 16 cows. We sold cream to Toledo Creamery. Our transportation from home to the Highway 20 was a horse with a sled, or sort of a scow. It was flat on the bottom and we'd haul the cream to the road. The horse would be knee deep in mud going down that road. Of course, we got home, why we was covered with mud from the horse's hooves and stuff. It was something that was very-and, at that time we never felt that we were any lower down than 00:18:00anybody else around, even though we, in the summer time we was barefooted and in the wintertime we had one pair of work shoes, or boots.

WE: I can attest to the mud on the road, because when I came and Ann and I came here we flew out in January. He came to Portland to get us. He picked up his mother in Gervais, because his grandmother was quite ill there. So, we picked her up and we came on back. I met his sister, Harriet. She worked at the courthouse at that time in Corvallis. Then we came on home. We got out of our 00:19:00car. He and I had a little, what was it a '41 Ford? We got out of that and we got into a pickup.

BE: Mother's pickup.

WE: I'm sure that the mud was plumb up to the hubs, and he apologized all the way up the hill about how bad the mess was. His mother finally said, you knew how bad the mud was when you had Wilma come out here at this time of the year. That ended the conversation about the mud. I managed to weather it. I had never had anything but city streets and sidewalks, but I found out what it was like to live in the country. We stayed with his mother, did we stay there about 6 weeks? 6 months?

BE: Yeah.

WE: About 6 months. Then we moved into Toledo into a housing project in Toledo, 00:20:00and he went to work for-

BE: Monroe Lumber Company.

WE: Yeah. And Ann and I, we stayed home. It really wasn't very much of a city when you considered it was one street compared to Memphis' whole downtown. But, like I said, I learned very quickly to adjust to these things. If I hadn't have, I probably would have gone home long before. After we moved from Toledo, we moved back to Eddyville, and we moved into a house on the highway at 26095?

BE: The old page place.

WE: The old page place. We had four bedrooms, but they weren't very big bedrooms. But, we had them. We had indoor plumbing. I had to learn to cook on a 00:21:00woodstove, because I had never had a wood stove to cook on. We always had gas. As for keeping a fire in the house, we had a wood stove. Keeping a fire in the house, sometimes I would be able to build it after it went out because I hadn't remembered to watch it. Sometimes I would just wait until he came home and Ann and I would put on a sweater. Then when Bobby was born, we got some oil. But that didn't last very good so we went back to wood again. But, I learned to not let the fire go out. We stayed warm that way.

BE: This place was originally the, we called it the old page place. It was 60 00:22:00acres, and Highway 20 ran right through the middle of it. While we were in the service, Mother bought the place originally and we bought the place from Mother. Bonneville Power at that time was putting a high voltage line through the area and they wanted right away across our place, and this was while I was still in the service, and Mother needed Bonneville Power a right away for $250. At that time, $250 was quite a bit of money, for a 200'-wide right away across our 00:23:00place. Shortly, well, we had electricity then.

WE: Oh yeah, we did.

BE: But, many, many outages. Many more than they are now because right aways may not have been wide enough or a windstorm would blow some trees down. We were without electricity quite often. Gradually through the many years, why once in a great well we'll have an outage, but that's very seldom anymore. Mother had a party line, and I was the original fella that took care of that party line. We 00:24:00had a bunch of mischievous neighbors and they'd shoot the insulators off the telephone poles. I'd have to climb the poles and put new insulators up and that sort of thing. That went on until Pioneer Telephone came into being and they wanted to get Mother's little party line. So, she sold the party line to Pioneer Telephone for $1.

WE: That's when we had a city phone. Then's when we started having a city phone that they said, number please?

BE: Originally, nearly all of Pioneer's lines were on the light poles. They were 00:25:00all aerial. But, today, why 60% or 70% of it is all underground.

WE: Well, the party line was an old crank phone on the wall, and if you call somebody up on your line anybody that had a phone knew what was going on at your house. Even right at first, it was a four-party line when Pioneer put it in there, wasn't it? There was four people on the line with you at that time. I can't even remember what year it was that we got a one-party line that nobody can, you know, your telephone is your telephone. But, it's different than what we had in Memphis. We had a private line. I can't remember us ever having a 00:26:00party line. So, like I said, it was quite an adjustment. I learned real quick to allow for these kind of things.

BE: Some of them old women would spend all day on the phone. Every phone call, every ring, they were right there with the receiver in their ear. It got to a point where you could tell by the heavy breathing and carrying on from these different old ladies that you eventually knew who they were. You get to talking to somebody else, why you'd just say, well, Edda Smiles, it would be a good idea if you hung up. I could hear a lot better [laughs].

WE: [Laughs]. We raised 3 children-a daughter and two boys. Our daughter was born in Memphis, Tennessee. She was 9 months old when we came to Oregon. The boys were born at Corvallis Hospital, but we lived right down here when the boys were born and I raised my three children there in the little red house down below that changed to be a yellow house after we had siding put on it. But it was just an old, red barn house, wasn't it, hun? But, they had good lives. Our boys played sports and our daughter was in FFA, I mean, Future Homemakers of 00:28:00America. She traveled all over the United States and they managed to get along alright. Boyd was coaching. He played baseball himself, until Bobby got big enough to play. Then he hung up his mitt and Bobby picked it up. He coached for how many years?

BE: Still coaching.

WE: Well, I know, but how many years did you-

BE: '53 is when I started.

WE: He started coaching in '53, and he's still coaching a girls' softball team.

BE: Middle school basketball.

WE: And a middle school volleyball team.

BE: Basketball!

WE: Basketball team. I'm sorry, dear. Boyd and I celebrated our 63rd wedding anniversary the 6th of January. They've been good years. Good for us. Our oldest 00:29:00child was named Ann, Ann Louise. She was born in 1945 in Memphis, Tennessee. Two years later we had Bobby, and his name was Robert William Eagleson. He was killed when he was about 21?

BE: He wasn't 20 yet.

WE: He wasn't 20. He was killed in Vietnam when he was about 20. Then our youngest one, it took him 5, 6 years to talk me into having that third one. His name was David Luis Eagleson, and he died the day before his 40th birthday.

BE: Was a brain aneurysm.

WE: We have 3 grandchildren by our daughter. We had no issues by the two boys, but 3 grandchildren-Larrick, Shane Cook, and Wendy Ann Cook, and Jolene Marie Cook. They have blessed us well with great grandchildren and now we have a great-great grandson. I think we've been well blessed at the age of 85.

BE: I graduated from Eddyville High School in 1940. I played 4 years of baseball and 4 years of basketball. We never had football. In those four years of baseball, we lost one baseball game. After that, I went and played for Albany 00:31:00Alcoves, as they called the team. It was a fast, semi-pro here in the state of Oregon. We were one of the two top teams in the state. I played baseball with Glenn Elliott, who played for the Boston Braves, and any number of-Johnny Pesky and a bunch of them that played for Silverton in the same league. I knew all these people. Never having played with them. Then World War II came along, and I spent 3 years in the Navy. I came out a first-class petty officer. I was in the 00:32:00south pacific, the biggest part of my service. When I came back, I made it an attempt-I went to spring training with the Salem Senators with a farm club of the Portland Beavers. I did alright, but I never had enough publicity or tailfeathers, whatever you want to call it. But I did know the right people. As a result, why, they wanted to ship me to the Pioneer League, and the Pioneer League only paid $100 a month salary and I had a wife and a child and we couldn't live on that. So, that was in '46. So, back to the farm and woods I 00:33:00came and I spent all my life in the woods cutting timber and logging and one thing or another.

WE: On Sunday, what did you do?

BE: When?

WE: On Sunday what did you do?

BE: On Sunday, we had a barnyard baseball team that was 8 or 10 towns had these teams and every Sunday, why, we had a ball game and a picnic that we went to. In 7 years of it, Siletz and Philomath would get into the AAU tournament there at 00:34:00Sckavone Field in Portland and they'd come and recruit me to go play ball for them for a weekend or a tournament and stuff like that. As a result, why my life's been made up around baseball, I guess you'd say. But then my sons came along and I started coaching in about '53. During my service in the Navy, I was aboard the USS Cabot. It was an aircraft carrier built on a cruiser hull, just faster than grease lightening. It would do about 45 knots in the water, so much 00:35:00faster than the big carriers were. Got into many, many sea battles and aerial battles; Tarawa, the Marshall Islands.

WE: Tinian?

BE: The what?

WE: Where you at Tinian?

BE: And up through the Philippines. It was very-you always got a warm reception from the enemy. I was in the Marianas Turkey Shoot. The fleet shot down better than 500 Japanese planes in that turkey shoot. I had many good friends, and as 00:36:00of right now, I only know of one of my shipmates that's still alive. Yeah, speaking of the Navy, I had many good friends that served and one of them was Lawrence Cook. We knew each other before we went into the service. In fact, we played sports against each other. After the war, he ended up as being one of my best friends.

WE: His son married your daughter [laughs]. His oldest son.

BE: Now I have his son as my son-in-law. Lawrence is gone now, but what a wonderful man he was. When I was in boot camp in San Diego, I was transferred back to Memphis, Tennessee, to go to aviation mechanical school, and my brother was in Fort Knox, Kentucky. He was a captain, oh what was that? Patton's Third Army. He came to...

WE: Memphis.

BE: ...Memphis and visited with me a couple of times and then Brother Ralph, I 00:38:00was aboard ship and we put in to San Diego, and he was going through Marine boot camp, and I got to see him for a few minutes on his shore leave. Then I shipped out and then he was stationed on Tinian, in the Mariannas. We flew our planes in on Tinian to refuel and I was a tail gunner and dive bomber, and I flew right over his...

WE: Battle station.

BE: ...gun position.

WE: But you didn't see.

BE: But I didn't know it.

WE: And didn't see him.

BE: And we never seen anything until we got back to the states. Jack Weinhart, who was one of the owners of WOW Lumber Company here in Eddyville was a pilot on one of those B29s that flew over Tokyo. Jack was stranded on Luzon during the war and he and his buddies went, made with a spare parts got a plane put together and flew to Indonesia from the Philippines to get away from the Japanese. He was the same as a prisoner of war for quite sometimes on Luzon. 00:40:00When he came back, originally the WOW was from out there between Lebanon and Sweet Home. They had one of them smaller mills that they sold and bought WOW here at Eddyville. Then he in later years they sold out, I believe, to Simpson Lumber Company. He went to Hawaii and bought a sugar cane plantation.

WE: He has a son John. John runs it now, doesn't he?

BE: His son, John, just a couple of years ago stopped to visit me and he lives 00:41:00on Hawaii and, of course, Jack and his wife have both passed on and it was quite a treat to see their son.

WE: Young John, yeah.

BE: Today, most all those shipboard buddies are gone. I mentioned WOW was made up of Weinhart, Ottokirk, and Weinhart. The first W was for John Weinhart, the father of Jack and his sisters. Stan Ottokirk married one of Jack's sisters.

WE: And he was a senator.

BE: Yeah, he was a senator from our area in Salem for a number of years and decided the politics was too condemning for him to be affiliated with it anymore. The younger one was Jack. Jack was the lower w in WOw. They flourished here after World War II for a good many years until they sold out to...

WE: You said Simpson.

BE: Well, it wasn't Simpson then, it was, oh gosh... I can't think of the outfit. Publishers! Publishers out of Toledo. I came back from the service and 00:43:00immediately went to work driving lumber truck for Monroe Lumber Company between Siletz and Logsden. For a year and a half, I ran lumber truck and then my little brother and I, we decided that I ought to cut timber and so we started out with the old misery whip and hand fell for a couple years. Then went to the two-men...

WE: Titan?

BE: Titan power saw, which it was a twin engine motored power saw that had around 12 horse, had about 12 horse rating. From that time on until 1987, he and 00:44:00I worked as partners cutting timber for Hopkins Lumber Company, for George Macintyre Company, Clemens Lumber Company, Starker Lumber Company, and Willamette Lumber Company. We cut timber for all those different people.

WE: Mostly it was old growth.

BE: Twelve years we cut for Clemens, we cut nothing but strictly old growth timber. After a few years, the old growth became quite a chore. We was always 00:45:00glad to find one that a bar would reach clear through. Ones we cut most of the time was running from 6' to 10', 11'. Today, those type of trees are left standing. However, I, being a woodsmen all my life, I felt that those trees should maybe have been taken, too, to get what value the public gain from the wood that was in them. Today, well, most of them are preserved for the young people to see what timber used to look like. But, today, I retired from 00:46:00Willamette in '87, and I came home and Wilma met me at the door. She said, well, how's it feel? I told her right then, I said, I'm lost.

WE: I feel empty.

BE: So, I came in the house. Of course, this house and these hallways. Every so often we was running into each other. I finally decided that it was a good idea that I got out of the house again. I put on my work clothes and grabbed my corks and I said I'm going to look for a job. I went to see my son-in-law. You bet, 00:47:00Dad, I got a place for you. Right off the bat, the next day he led me out there and they had 4 or 5 truckloads of hemlock and fir and one thing or another that all had to be limbed and bucked. It took Steve Rice and I, we both worked on the landing. It took us a couple of days to get caught up. But, every time we'd get a tree limbed and bucked, the shovel operator set another one right down there to work on again. The only time off we had was long enough to fuel up and put oil in our saws.

WE: He worked for 10 years.

BE: Many times there wasn't time for even a lunch break. We worked right through the noon hour to try to get caught up. Anymore, then we, I worked, and by the way, by the way, my son-in-law, I didn't mean to snub. We were working for Starker Forest and great people they are. Anymore, once in a while people figure that I'm still able to flag a road right away or something for the cutters, but 00:49:00people are a little but shy of old people being out there, so I spend most of my time at home anymore.

WE: I met Boyd in about '43 was it? Or '42?

BE: '42.

WE: '42, and he was stationed at the Millington Air Station. I met him through a friend that I had gone to school with. He called and asked for a date, and I said, okay. He said, well, it isn't with me, Wilma. It's with a friend of mine. I said, no. He said, come on. He said, I'll guarantee you'll like him. In 1945 I married him. We dated the whole time he was there in Memphis and then he was overseas for, what-18 months?

BE: A little more than that.

WE: And his stepdad got killed. They brought Boyd home.

BE: Back to the States.

WE: Back into the States, because all 3 of the boys were out of the States at the time, and they had to have one in the States. So, Boyd chose to come back to Millington. I can't remember just exactly what the day was that he got back to Memphis, but we were married about a month later, weren't we? About like that? In 1945, January 6, 1945. But I met him through a friend of mine, and I don't know whether sometimes I wanted to kill the friend or whether I wanted to kill Boyd. I hadn't made up my mind which. But, that's where I met him and that's how I met him.

BE: After about my middle part of my work time I was elected a director for 00:51:00Pioneer Telephone. I served on a board that included Dwayne Cummings as the general manager; Joe Maddrassal, who took Dwayne's job after Dwayne retired; and now Jerry Schachter has taken Joe's place who has retired. I sort of hung right in there and been a director for 3 different general managers, all of them very well-qualified for the work that they do.

WE: We've gone from Alaska, how far down into the southern states? We've been to Tennessee.

BE: Oh, Miami.

WE: And we've been to Florida. We've been just about every place in the United States and what was nice when we'd get down to the southern states, I would get to go and we'd spend some time with...

BE: Her family.

WE: ... some of my family and we'd all get together and have a good time, and we have enjoyed our trips on the board.

BE: When our mother passed away in 1966, the land area was divided between John, myself, and my younger brother. My sister acquired real estate in Corvallis as 00:53:00her share. As of today, Starker Forest has a portion of that 720 acres. John has sold 80 acres and I think, I don't know whether it was 200 or 240 acres Starkers acquired. I'll say one thing...

WE: From Ralph? Did he get this?

BE: From Ralph, yeah. We've lived in here in the Eddyville area all our lives, and Starkers Forest has probably got the best name of any of the timber holding companies that have operated in our area. This is not a plug for Starkers, 00:54:00although I have very high regard, but they are very highly, highly thought of. We was talking about my retirement from DTL in '97. My wife has had an operation. This is Larry's mother-in-law, and I was chasing landing for him at the time and I told him I'd probably better take a couple weeks of to take care of his mother-in-law and he says, okay. You bet. That's great. Two weeks later, 00:55:00I went back there and I was ready to go to work and he says, you know, Pop? He says, I don't think I'm going to need you. I said, by George what's happened now? He said, well, he said while you were gone I bought a piece of equipment. He said I paid around $300,000-$350,000 for it. He said, I'm not going to you. I said, by George now that's pretty good when an individual is worth that kind of money that it takes that much money to replace him. That's about as far as it went, but I digged him about it 2 or 3 times [laughs]. I understand Larry's point of view. A few years back, I had a stroke and he was always concerned that 00:56:00maybe something would happen on the job, that I might not survive or something like that. He didn't want to be responsible for me not...

WE: Being here to fight with Momma.

BE: ...yeah, fighting with your mother-in-law.

WE: We played baseball every Sunday and then from Sunday to Friday we played that game over again and then they went to practice and then they started to play the game, they were going to play the following Sunday. I'll tell you what, I raised my children and followed him from pillar to post and from one place to 00:57:00another with three children. But it was a good life and we can't complain.

BE: I've started coaching in 1953, and I've coached every year since then. I'm deeply involved with these young people. They mean everything to me. Behind me 00:58:00up here was dedicated to me in 1970 in appreciation of my many years, I guess, in little league and my work with young people. I'm very much in love with them younger, that younger set of people. Only lost one ball game out of ten.

GARY BLANCHARD: That's darn good, yeah.

BE: We're very proud of these young people. They're very cooperative and they sometimes listen real well, and other times their emotions sometimes get them carried away a bit.

GB: How many of them do you have?

BE: Ten. We have 10. I'll see tonight. We've got about 7 maybe. I think 7 or 8 00:59:00are here. Two of them, well, they've been having quite a bit of sickness, bad colds. We have good participation, too. They're eager to play.

GB: Can you play them all? Everybody gets to play?

BE: Everybody gets to play. There's times that maybe we lose a ball game by putting in the end of the bench or something like that. Still, this is a learning process and we're just sort of getting them prepared a little bit for high school. You have that thing on?

GB: Yeah.

BE: [Laughs]. But, I don't know what else to say other than the fact that when I was going to school when this high school was built in 1928. I was 6 years old when this school was built. We played in the old multipurpose room now, which had about 60' of running. The walls was right, the sidelines was right up against the walls and that's the way I played my basketball.

GB: So, you've actually gone to school here since then, since she was 6 years old?

BE: Oh yes. Born and raised on the homeplace up there where Ralph lives. Oh, 01:01:00yes. 85 years. These young girls keep me young, you might say. I don't know if it's from looking at them or their performance, because some of them have turned out to be real fabulous little athletes.

GB: Well, they're good people.

BE: They're good people. Right down to grass roots. But we have ball players from Otter Rock. That little girl over there's from Depot Bay. We have a school bus that runs from Newport to Eddyville with 70 students a day to and from. 01:02:00There's people in Newport and Toledo that enroll their children in this charter school. The drugs are a minimum. It's very seldom that there's any problem that way. A lot of these parents want them out of the big environment. [Turns to speak to student] How are you?

STUDENT: Tired.

BE: Tired? Oh, you're just ready to go. I can tell now.