Sean C. Morgan
In their retirement, Dave and Linda Holley stay busy in relatively unconventional ways, this past weekend running gift cards to Northern California for the victims of a wildfire that killed at least 85 people and left many more missing or homeless in the area of Paradise, Calif.
Dave, 79, a former mayor, has remained involved in city politics, committees and projects – particularly as chairman of the city Budget Committee.
While Linda, 67, was an active community volunteer, with the Jamboree, for example, while she was still working, she has turned her attention to more personal matters, helping individuals who are ill near the end of their lives, for example.
“Basically, you’re watching it on TV and you’re just sick,” Linda said of the fires. “I said to David, there’s got to be something we can do.”
Her thought was to ask friends and family for a little cash, like $25, raising $300 or $400 to take with them when they visited their son, Derek, in Roseville, Calif., for Thanksgiving. Evacuees were being housed nearby.
Linda stopped by the Bohemian Club, owned by Clint Pollock and Heather Pollock, her niece. She asked for $25.
“Heather said, ‘Oh, we can do better than that,'” Linda said. “She put some signs up there at the Bohemian, and she got on Facebook.”
“It mushroomed,” Dave said.
In a day and a half, their friends and customers had raised more than $900, bringing the total to some $1,275, Dave said, adding that they gave a ” shout out as well to Michael Hall and The Point.”
Linda and the Pollocks deserve the credit, Dave said.
Donations of gift cards instead of cash are preferred, Linda said. They are allowed to receive a limited amount of cash directly.
“They’ve got plenty of some stuff, clothes,” Linda said, and they really need to be able to buy more personal things – not hand-me-downs – to help get them back on their feet and building back with new things.
“We wanted to do something,” Dave said. “We didn’t want to make cash donations or do it online. These types of things just bring (dishonest) people out of the woodwork, so we wanted to hand carry it.”
“I just think there’s more we can do,” Linda said. “I’d like to try to figure out something else we can do. Maybe we can adopt a family or something. This isn’t going to be over in a month for these people.”
“After talking with aid organizations in the Chico, Calif., area, we decided to go by the Orland, Calif., shelter site to drop off the cards,” Dave said. That location was providing shelter to 70 people on Saturday when the Holleys visited. It planned to take 50 more Monday.
“Shelters and campsites have been set up in various cities in the areas. We met with Richard C., who was the supervisor for the shelter area and turned over to him the gift cards for distribution among the fire victims.”
“It wasn’t just from Linda and I,” Dave said. The package was signed, “From Sweet Home, with love.”
The Holleys originally planned to photograph some of the recipients but after seeing how they had to deal with “drive-by” photographers, “we decided to leave them with their privacy in this particular shelter,” Dave said. In that particular shelter, the media had already been banned due to some issues.
“People were driving by taking pictures, and they were laughing as they were driving through,” Dave said.
“Needless to say, these people have been through a lot, and it pleased us to be able to help a little bit,” Dave said. “Thanks so much to all of you who contributed and thanks as well for your trust in us to do the right thing with your donations.”
Linda has lived in Sweet Home pretty much all her life, she said. She was born in Portland, the daughter of Jack and Christine Adams, but was reared up the Calapooia.
Her father drove truck, and one brother, Scott Adams, continues to drive truck in Sweet Home. She graduated from Sweet Home High School in 1969.
“I love it here,” she said. Like many kids, she thought of leaving after graduation. She went to Albany and didn’t like it. She came back and took a job at The Point Restaurant before going to work in the Sweet Home School District. She worked in alternative education and retired after 28 years in the district.
Dave came to Sweet Home from Wright City, Okla., in 1951 at the age of 12, with his parents James and Dimple Holley, who were seeking better-paying jobs. Wright City was a company town, which meant the Dierks Forests, Inc. firm owned the stores and the housing. Rent was taken directly from paychecks.
Despite that, Dave didn’t like Sweet Home much when he arrived.
“In the early ’50s, if you were from Oklahoma, you were like a trespasser, almost,” he said. “They say Wright City took over Sweet Home without firing a shot.”
He got into several scraps in junior high as a result. When the unions went on strike a couple of times, a local grocer put soup bones outside his store in case Oklahomans needed something to eat.
Dave served three years in the military before going to work for Willamette Industries for 43 years.
“I was the longest-term employee except a gal in the Portland office,” Dave said. “I was never one to jump job to job.”
He retired at age 62 from Foster Mill, he said. “They were in the process of finalizing the takeover by Weyerhaeuser. In the long run, it benefited me. I had been in the stock purchasing program for 25 years.”
When the deal was complete, the Willamette Industries stock price went from $27 per share to $46 per share, he said. Dave got involved with the city in the early 1980s, serving initially on the Budget Committee. That’s a job he’s gone back to over and over again over the years.
He is the current chairman of the Budget Committee and will serve on the city’s Charter Review Committee next year. He served two terms on the council in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including terms as mayor.
“I just had a want to be involved,” Dave said. “In a small town, you have more of a chance to have an impact. In a big city, I don’t think you really have a voice. There’s just too many people.”
In a small town, people can have a voice, he said. His has been guided by what he thinks is good for the city, the citizens and the employees, he said.
If something is good for two or three, he said, then it was something he thinks the city should try. City officials have to remember though that spending money in one area can take away from other areas of the budget.
Involvement with the city was a good way for him to stay informed, he said. “You need to stay informed, and the only way to do that sometimes is to stay involved.”
He doesn’t necessarily want to “be in the loop,” he said, “but I don’t want to be in the dark either.”
Dave said great people like councilors Sherman Weld, Bob Whitfield and Granville Hopkins were “just super to work with.”
“We worked well together,” Dave said. His City Council worked with Mel Wagner and and Doris Johnston of Pacific Power to form the Sweet Home Economic Development Group, which created the Oregon Jamboree.
“It was the City Council that got involved with it at the start to find some way to draw in business and draw in jobs,” Dave said. That was after the listing of the northern spotted owl as an endangered species and mill closures.
“The handwriting was on the wall. We were not going to be supported by the timber industry.”
His involvement wasn’t limited to city government at the time. He also worked part time for the radio station announcing for football, basketball and baseball.
“I got to do the state championship (football) game in 1987 when Sweet Home won the state championship for the first and only time,” said Dave, who wears an Oklahoma Sooners cap regularly. “I’ve always been kind of a sports nut.”
He also announced high school games in Portland and Eugene. For three or four years, he helped out with summer baseball.
Since retiring, he also served a couple of years on the Sweet Home Alumni Association.
“This is like my third time back to the Budget Committee,” Dave said. “My idea was to get away from it, but they kept coming up with openings they can’t fill.”
At this point, he’s saying when his term runs out next year, that’s it.
Things are quite a bit different now than they were 20 to 30 years ago, Dave said. He remembers taking two or three budget cycles to put away $500 just to replace a chair for Finance Director Barbara Shaw.
He might continue, he said. He might go back to work on city committees.
“If I see a need for the most part,” Dave said. “We’ve got dedicated people. There seems to be younger people getting involved.”