What’s not to like?

Send a link to the video that was taken at the interviews please.

Dan

You totally got the essence and spirit of this place and it’s people. You treated the story and us with dignity and respect and you made me love it here even more than I already did. Kudos to all of you and come back and visit sometime

Thanks so much!!

jill

I came to Oakridge with my family, in January of 1952, And stayed untill 1986 when Pope & Talbot shut
down and I had to move to find work.
I loved this small town, it was a great place to live, and raise a family.
This story brought back a lot of memories, I still have family and friends living there.
I now live in Sweet Home Oregon, a small town very simulary to Oakridge.
I enjoyed this program very much.

Of course I didn’t like it, because you didn’t include my voice anywhere in the show, not even the longer web version. After all the trouble of setting up the interview and having me re-read my letter numerous times, I should have been in there somewhere.
Bridget

Like Schrödinger’s cat, Oakridge, “remains both alive and dead (to the universe outside the box) until the box is opened.” To most, the heart and soul of Oakridge has remained a mystery. Your episode shows all sides of the Oakridge community: past & future, good & bad, abandonment & investment, but most of all hope. Thank you

I lived in Oakridge for the 1st 10 years of my life. My parent made the decision to move us when they realized we 7 kids may not find work when were old enough . This story touched me at a very deep level. My Dad worked at Hines and then Pope and Talbot. My Grandfather was a Millwright at Hines for 50 years. My heariatge is in those towns, therefore some of my soul. It was a powerful ,heartwrenching but also inspiring story, Thanks for that NPR.

I heard your Oakridge espisode on the little radio in my big city kitchen quite by accident and it felt like a gift had been dropped in my lap. Were they really talking about Oakridge? My Oakridge? My attachment to this tumbled timber town started when I was born in the Oakridge clinic more years ago than will admit to – the daughter of a logger and a plywood plant working mother. Though tough times and the Christmas flood of ’64 moved us away to the even smaller town of Glide, I will forever fondly remember my early years in Oakridge. Searching for wild lady slippers with mossy carpets underfoot and perfumed cedar boughs above was not a bad way to grow up. (though I know now not to pick the wildflowers

Hi Howard! I’m glad you enjoyed the segment as much as I did. See you at the reunion!

The Oakridge show was the first SOTRU production I’ve heard, and I enjoyed it very much. I love the medium of radio–in fact, I hardly watch any TV at all–and SOTRU, from an artistic and journalistic perspective, is some of the best radio I’ve listened to. Keep up the great work!

Hello Dan, this one is from Jerry Stonebraker. My sister, Yvonna Stonebraker, was in your class at Westfir when Westfir Lumber Co., company town was running the show. I was one grade behind you. Have many fond memories of both Oakridge and Westfir. Yvonna went to both first and second grades at Oakridge and I went to first grade there. When we moved to Westfir our classes were in an old, large building with a roofed outdoor court and outside fire escape. Teachers for my classes at Westfir were Miss Weems and Miss Leum. They built a lovely new school below the old one and a nice teacherage for the single teachers. We lived first in what they called uptown Westfir and moved to Hemlock, which I have been told is now Westfir. I delivered the Oregonian to 135 and sometimes more people at Westfir, starting at nine years of age in 1939. We lived in Hemlock till mid winter of 1942, then moved to Klamath to finish out my seventh grade, and then onto Bly, Ore. between Klamath Falls and Lakeview, in the country of lots of rocks, sagebrush and juniper. I graduated from high school at Bly in 1948 and went into the Navy from there.

Brother Dell, born in 1933, is now livi8ng in Eugene. I’m sure he has some memories of Westfir. Sometime when I’m in Eugene I’ll try to look you up. I’d like to go back and take a look at both Oakridge and Westfir and see all the changes. I know there’s many.

When we first lived in Oakridge we lived first, across the street from a former elementary school, then moved to a house on a small hill overlooking an acreage that later became the site for the Pope and Talbot Mill.

We were in Oakridge when they were first building what we called the “Salt Creek Highway,” now HIghway 58, the tunnel and all. We fished Odell Lake quite often and my father was a good friend of Roy Temple of Temple Sporting Goods with boat dock, etc. at Odell Lake. I was a friend of his son. I went to Oakridge to look up the family, found their store in Oakridge, but learned sadly their son had died in a snowmobile accident.

Lots of memories of growing up in that country. My email address is jea.jer@frontier.com.

I have lived in North Bend since 1968. .Enjoy, enjoy, and enjoy all the good times. We grew to that certain age in a great community. Sister Melissa is the one that steered me to you. Jerry Stonebraker,