Empathy for people and appreciation for their history fueled reporter’s work

Gary Fletcher's climbing prowess took him to the top of Borah Peak in Idaho at 12,665 feet elevation with Fred Barstad, Don Swart and Lowell Euhus. - Submitted photo

“‘Do you have a degree in journalism?’ No. ‘Do you have experience writing news?’ No. Every question they asked me, I had to answer no,” Fletcher said.

“I was feeling desperate so I told them there were two advantages to hiring me over a young, recent college graduate with a fancy degree. First, I told them, if you hire someone from outside Wallowa County, they won’t stay. They’ll suffer from shopping deprivation and maybe even hunter’s widow syndrome. I’m not going anywhere. Second, I know a lot of people to get information from,” Fletcher said.

“Then they looked at each other and laughed and said, ‘If you take this position, that will change. No one will want to talk to you,’ and they were sorta right!” Fletcher said with his signature laugh.

Fletcher, reporter and bureau chief for the La Grande Observer in Wallowa County, is retiring after 11 1/2 years with the paper. He was raised in the county, went to Enterprise schools and graduated from high school in 1965. He attended and graduated from Eastern Oregon University (then EOC), and describes his college experience as “the best four years of my life”. He had an opportunity to transfer to the University of Oregon, he remembers, but his involvement in the college community, the fun he was having, and his fiancée and future wife, Judy, all kept him at Eastern.

“You had such intellectual freedom there. You could question everything. After graduation, in the real world, you just clicked your heels, saluted and repeated the company line if you wanted to succeed. But I am so grateful and appreciative to my professors at Eastern. … I actually called one of them years after I graduated to express my gratitude,” he said.

After college, Gary enlisted in the National Guard and went to basic training in Fort Campbell, Ky., and advanced training in Texas where he became a field medic. After the military he entered a four-year training program with F.W. Woolworth Co., which he completed in three years. He was given the largest store in the Pacific Region to manage in San Jose, Calif. This was a good opportunity, but Fletcher says he didn’t like San Jose very much and always planned to return to Oregon. After 2 1/2 years with the Woolworth Co., he found out they were closing down all their stores in Oregon so he left and took a job with Fred Meyer Co. in Portland.

About 1982 he was in Wallowa County for a reunion with his wife’s family and learned of a job opening as city recorder for the city of Enterprise. He applied and landed the position, which he kept from 1982 to 1992.

Gary’s roots in Wallowa County run deep. His great-grandparents homesteaded here and his great-grandmother, Martha J. Fletcher, taught in 17 schools in the county, from Imnaha to Hurricane Creek to Deer Creek on the north end, and back in Enterprise, Alder Slope and the Pratt School. Gary’s dad started Raven Foods Dairy, which produced the only Swiss cheese product west of the Rocky Mountains at that time. The high grasslands of Wallowa County were particularly suited to the production of Swiss cheese.

Called Matterhorn Swiss Cheese, the product was marketed, packaged and shipped out of Wallowa County.

Fletcher worked at Parks Bronze in Enterprise for five years, adding to his knowledge of the many walks of life and kinds of people here in Wallowa County. His empathy for people and appreciation for their history, which is evident in his feature stories, was fed by his own varied life experience. Fletcher says communicating in writing was something he spent quite a bit of time doing. He often wrote letters of support to friends and family who were going through a difficult time. He shared stories of Wallowa County, of hunting and hiking with his friends and family.

“I was working for the Chieftain cleaning the press and started writing a few feature stories which they paid me $15 for, $20 with a photo, and Rick Swart, the editor, didn’t have anyone to cover the re-dedication of Joseph Canyon to the Nez Perce and asked me to do it,” Fletcher remembers. “I used the biggest words I could find, used the most space I could, I did everything wrong and they still printed it. I was so proud of myself!”

Fletcher’s second experience with journalistic fame occurred when he entered and won The Observer’s hunting story contest with a true story he’d submitted. He said he had entered it in a contest in Portland and didn’t place, but that was probably because it was such an incredible story they didn’t believe it.

Writing portraits of long time Wallowa County residents was a labor of love for Fletcher.

“History is close enough to reach out and touch you around here, but it’s dying every day. Every time one of these elders dies, it’s like Rick Steber said, like a library burning down. I kept trying to preserve their stories.”

The most enjoyable writing Fletcher did for the Observer was the column “Up the Branch.”

Sharing his outdoor experiences, like mountain climbing with the Old Farts Mountaineering Club, made for humorous, informative and entertaining reading.

“I had a lot more freedom than when I wrote hard news stories. I could express my sense of humor, be creative.”

Gary Fletcher, reporter for the La Grande Observer in Wallowa County, is retiring after 11 1/2 years with the paper. - Photo/RON OSTERLOH

“ I enjoyed the culture, the stories they told me. They were so friendly and open. They’d invite you to stay in their homes, share a meal. It was important for me to just stop my “big ass American hurry” and enjoy the country and people.”

Mt. Whitney, Mt. Borah, the Grand Tetons, all of the peaks in the Wallowas and Mt. Rainier, which at 14,000 feet-plus had the most awesome glacial landscape, he says, all made up his Pacific Northwest climbing experiences.

“I was fascinated by crevasses that could swallow a house. Vast and formidable faces. I felt like a beebee on a beach. … You could disappear and no one would ever find you. It puts you in your place. You are so separated from the boxes everyone lives in, and you’re more in touch with God there. Climbing is a contest with yourself. Definitely an endurance sport.”

Fletcher remembers getting started with mountain climbing with his old friend Fred Barstad.

“When I was in insurance sales I had an office on the Willamette River and I could see Mt. Hood and I always wanted to climb it. I had heard of people climbing it in flip-flops, but I also knew people had died up there. When we moved back here, my wife wanted me to go to the faculty picnic at the school and I didn’t want to go. Then she said the husband of one of the teachers had climbed Mt. Hood 56 times. I said, ‘Just a minute. Let me change my shirt.’ That was the start of it all.”

Fletcher felt the most difficult part of his job as reporter was obtaining complete information for hard news stories. He said most people don’t want to talk to a reporter for fear they will be made to look silly or incompetent.

“I think humans are at their nastiest when they’re afraid. Sometimes they did look pretty silly, but I didn’t report all of that. I just wanted to find the truth and tell it in a story that was balanced, that told both sides, and to get it done in a timely manner. That was my greatest challenge,” he said.