Scott Swanson
It was when Dr. Larry Horton retired that he became really active in the community.
Of course, that depends on which retirement we’re talking about.
Horton, who recently turned 72, is the former superintendent of the Sweet Home School District, where he served from 2001 to 2011-12. Then he served a year as superintendent in Reedsport. Then two years as principal at Holley School.
“That’s when I stopped getting paid for the work I do,” Horton cracked.
Then, more seriously, “But I get paid in a lot of other ways.”
Horton’s areas of community involvement include the Rotary Club, where he tends to be a lead figure in its wide range of activities, the Dolly Parton Imagination Library being one of his favorites.
“We’ve been doing that for six years now,” Horton said of the program, which mails free, high-quality books to children from birth to age 5, no matter their family’s income. “We have over 3,000 families in Linn County participating now. I’m very pleased. All indications are that kids are becoming better readers, just because they have books in their homes. Funny how that works.”
He noted that his own single mother “did not read with me, and I have never been a ‘reader,'” though he has read plenty during his schooling and as a schoolteacher and administrator.
Horton was born in Picher, Okla., and when he was 8, his mother announced they were moving to San Diego, Calif. Horton finished school in the latter state, participating in athletics and deciding to pursue education as a career.
“The Rotary motto is ‘Service above self,’ and I guess I’ve always tried to live my life with that motto, even before I got involved in Rotary,” he said. “When I was in high school, another player on the baseball team and I coached a minor-league Little League baseball team. As I started thinking about a career, teaching seemed like an obvious thing I wanted to do. I wanted to impact kids.”
He started doing that at age 21 in the San Bernardino, Calif., School District, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees at San Bernardino State University. Then he moved on to more rural, smaller communities: teaching in Running Springs School District in Rim of the World, Calif.; as principal of a K-8 school in Hayfork, Calif.; as superintendent at Three Rivers School District in Southern Oregon; then Oakridge, and finally Sweet Home.
When he retired for real, in 2015, Horton got busy establishing an Interact Club at Sweet Home Junior High, a junior extension of the Rotary Club.
“We were one of the first clubs in Oregon to have a junior high Interact Club,” he said. “I’m pretty proud of that.”
He’s also pleased that, of the initial 10 members who joined up at the junior high, all continued through high school, where the program was later instituted, eventually replacing the longtime Key Club sponsored by the local Kiwanis Club, then in the process of shutting down.
This year, thanks to COVID-19, the junior high’s Interact program is on hold, but the high school club is flourishing, he said.
“I think the entire high school has over 20 kids involved,” Horton said. “They’ve been very, very active.”
Interact members generally participate in Rotary projects, he said. Those include painting the inside of the Hope Center, serving as ushers for a classical piano concert last fall, helping to distribute Christmas cards that are posted by Rotary members throughout the community during the holidays.
Interact members, who also are advised by high school teacher Ann Knight, have also staged blood drives, including one scheduled for February.
“They’ve helped with every project that Rotary has been involved in,” Horton said. “They’ve been very active.”
Another of his recent emphases has been the city’s Health Committee, which advises the City Council.
Horton got involved in the committee two years ago, and initially became interested in an effort to bring medical students from COMP-Northwest in Lebanon to mentor Sweet Home High School students interested in such careers. That led to involvement in expanded hours of medical service in the community, the provision of a medical van to serve the community on a semi-monthly basis, and the plan to situate a new medical clinic at Wiley Creek Community.
“Those things did happen,” Horton said, attributing that “in large part due to surveys done in the community three years ago” by medical students.
The most recent Health Committee development is a plan, supported in principle by the City Council earlier this month, to situate a facility for local homeless people behind the new City Hall, replacing the encampment currently located behind the old City Hall. Horton said he’s particularly interested in finding solutions to the problem because of his late sister.
When he was approached about helping with the effort, “it seemed the right thing to do to jump in with both feet and try to help them,” he said. “My sister was homeless almost her entire life. It didn’t seem to matter what we did as a family. She remained homeless.”
He was centrally involved in the effort to create a temporary homeless shelter at the Sweet Home Nazarene Church last winter, and he was one of the local citizens and officials who traveled last summer to Walla Walla, Wash., to investigate how that city has addressed the issue, with a facility Sweet Home plans to use as a model for its own.
“We found it was a very successful program,” Horton said. “The community was very receptive. It made a big difference. The Police Department, the businesses in town, everybody had nothing but positive comments to make about the center.”
The Sweet Home group got a chance to talk to the Walla Walla facility’s inhabitants as well.
“The clients were very positive about it,” he said. “They appreciated the resources, the security – they felt safe and their belongings were not being stolen. Many of them were ready to move back into society. I’m really hoping we find the same kind of success in Sweet Home.”
Horton’s community service has not gone unnoticed. He was honored in 2021 by the Chamber of Commerce with its Distinguished Service Award.
In his free time, Horton and his wife Milli tend to the needs of their livestock – chickens, cows and horses, and “the ‘honey-do’ list never ends,” he said.
He enjoys hiking with Milli, playing golf and bowling.
And softball. Horton said he’s played the game “all my life,” from competitive fast-pitch in his 20s and 30s, slow pitch in his 40s, and then competitive senior softball thereafter to the present. Horton and his tournament team buddies from the lower Willamette Valley travel to St. George, Utah, for the annual Senior Games. He recently got his 15-year ring from that event, where, more often or not, his team trophies, he said.
He also plays on a 68-and-older travel team and in the Eugene city league on a 55-plus team.
“I play third or second, mainly,” he said. “My reaction time has slowed down, so I play more at second now than third..
“We have a good time. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being retired.”