Statesman Journal from Salem, Oregon • Page 21

Statesman Journal PAGE 01 30 STATE EDITOR: MATT MISTEREK 399-6862 FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 1999 Foresdxy deae ireftes after 33 years at OSU mer as a teen-ager in Missouri. The farmer, a German immigrant, impressed him with his pride in his work and his role in providing food for the world. He eventually went to Colorado State University, and then served two years in the Army after graduating, before earning his doctorate at Oregon State. After a few years as a forestry professor, Brown became the. head of the OSU forest engineer-, ing department at the age of 34.

He became dean of the college in 1990. nies provide millions of dollars each year to the College of Forestry for research in the form of a harvest tax and private donations, Brown said he relies on solid data to tell which forest management practices are best. "I'm trying to be a scientist, not an advocate who takes a position," Brown said. "Never once has (a contributor) attached a string to the money and if they had I would not have accepted it" He made his mark on the Northwest timber industry as a doctoral student in forest hydrol 60 to give him enough time to fish and enjoy the outdoors before he gets too old. He will leave behind a reputation for honesty and integrity in a post often caught between the competing interests of science, business and politics.

"He's always been a straight shooter, reporting what he sees," said Bond Starker, the president of Starker Forests who took a class from Brown as a forestry student at OSU. "He's always been great to work with." Even though timber compa STATE HEADED HIGHEST DiMlfi-RHJITB) DEATHS EVER Oregon's heroin problem surges ogy at OSU in the early 1960s. Some of Brown's studies on the effects of timber harvesting on water temperature and aquatic life in small streams were written into the Northwest Forest Practices Act, which requires logging companies to leave buffer strips of trees along creeks to keep temperatures from rising and harming wildlife. During his career at Oregon State, Brown has also seen plenty of changes in the industry and the school. In the past two years, he has I 1 1 i 4 ,1 i 119 Oregonians have died so far this year from overdosing on heroin.

The Associated Press PORTLAND Marilu Anderson never thought she would end up this way, in a room filled with soft chairs and new age music, with acupuncture needles in her ears to curb the cravings for heroin needles in her arm. She was working as a nurse when she got hooked on smack 14 years ago, starting a tailspin into joblessness, despair and the brink of suicide. "For years, heroin has been thought of as something only the scumbags did," said the 47-year-old woman who now works at a pet shop. "But in reality, it was working-class people like myself." Between 1992 and 1997, the number of Americans entering treatment centers for heroin surged 29 percent from 180,000 to 232,000 surpassing cocaine and signaling just how pervasive the deadly opiate has become, according to a federal report released Wednesday. About 16 percent of the 1.5 million treatment admissions in 1997 were for heroin and other opiates, compared with 15 percent for cocaine.

It is the first time since 1992 that heroin has surpassed cocaine. For Anderson, recovery has been a seven-month ordeal that requires treatments every week. She faces continual cravings and peddlers who roam the streets outside her apartment "I could usually pull off the freeway in any town and find it in 30 minutes," she said, her pony-tail bobbing behind her as she left overseen construction of the $26.3 million Forest Research Laboratory that includes offices, high-tech classrooms, a special floor to test the sturdiness of beams and structures during earthquakes, and a quarantine lab for studying pests that pose a threat to Northwest conifers. The facility will allow forestry professors to conduct experiments that would have been impossible in outdated labs and smaller buildings. Brown turned to forestry after working for a farmer one sum life Oregon is already on pace for its highest number of drug-related deaths in any year a dubious milestone blamed largely on an influx of purer heroin.

By the beginning of this month, 119 people had overdosed on the drug and died so far this year, compared to just 68 over the same period a year ago. The trend stunned Portland last summer, when two young, heroin-addicted lovers hanged them tip to tip, and will stretch across the entire length of the roof of the museum. The cockpit rises nearly three stories from the keel of the airplane, which was designed to take off and land in water. "Building this airplane was the 1940s equivalent of building the Saturn rocket and going to the moon in the 1960s," said Gary Thompson, executive director of the museum. The museum also will feature many other vintage airplanes and helicopters, including the last working Messerschmitt in the world, a prize addition to the collection amassed by Smith's son, Mike, an Air National Guard pilot and avid auto racer who died in an auto accident in 1995.

r. WITNESS TO ADDICTION: Marilu Anderson of Portland, is a recovering heroin addict, who says she's been clean for seven months. She was working as a nurse when she got hooked on the drug 1 4 years ago, leading her on a descent into despair and the brink of suicide. George Brown leaves behind a reputation of integrity in a complicated business. The Associated Press CORVALLIS After 33 years at Oregon State University, including a decade as dean of one of the top forestry schools in the nation, George Brown has decided it's time to head for the woods for good.

Brown said he is retiring from OSU's College of Forestry at age AROUND THE CAPITOL TODAY: Gov. Kitzhaber has been out of the office this week. CAPITOL ACTIVITIES TODAY: 6 P.M.: Commission for the Blind board meeting, HR C. 1 TRUCKS NO LONGER NEED SPLASH GUARDS Hundreds of trucks in Oregon would no longer have to be equipped with splash and spray suppressant devices under a proposed rule change being considered by the Oregon Department of Transportation. The change would eliminate the requirement, except for triple trailer combinations.

The request was made in order to be consistent with rules in other states. Written public comments will be accepted until Nov. 1, while the state awaits a federal study on the effectiveness of splash and spray devices due to be published in late October. AROUND HIE STATE Arsonist back in jail after 12 years LA GRANDE After almost 12 years on the run, confessed Elgin arsonist Michael John Lassen is behind bars in Oregon. Lassen was ordered Wednesday by Circuit Court Judge Phillip Mendiguren to be held without bail or possibility of release from the Union County jail until his next hearing in about two weeks.

Lassen, 53, pleaded guilty Aug. 31, 1987, to second-degree manslaughter and conspiracy to commit arson, a negotiated plea agreement for his part in the Jan. 27, 1986, fire at Odie's Cafe and Bronco Room in Elgin. The fire spread to a nearby hardware store and apartments above the store, killing 90-year-old Clarence Witty who had an apartment above the store. But after pleading guilty and let out on bail in October 1987, Lassen disappeared.

In early August, the FBI located Lassen living in Mexico under an assumed name and took him into custody. SPOUT SPRINGS WILL BE OPEN THIS WINTER Spout Springs Mountain Resort will be opening this season after being closed for two winters. John and Nancy Murray of Portland are the new owners and operators of the resort north of Elgin and have all the necessary permits to open. Initially, Spout Springs will provide basic Nordic and alpine ski operations with equipment rentals, lessons and a restaurant and bar at the lodge. 1 REQUEST FOR WATER LIKELY FOR REJECTION In the fight over Savage Rapids Dam, the state is expected to shut off the extra water given to the Grants Pass Irrigation District to assure leaky canals remain full.

Oregon's Water Resources Commission is expected to deny the district's request to extend the supplemental water right for 52 cubic feet per second past the Oct. 15 expiration date when it meets today in Roseburg, said Martha Pagel, director of the Oregon Water Resources Department "The whole state ought to be disgusted in this abusive con Comments should be sent to: Craig Bonney, Motor Carrier Transportation Division, Complaint Resolution, 550 Capitol SINE, Salem, OR 97310. DIRECTOR OF HUMAN SERVICES TOURS STATE Gary Weeks, the director of the Oregon Department of Human Services, is beginning a series of annual visits to local offices, partners and facilities next week with a trip to southern Oregon. The road trip will take Weeks to Grants Pass, Med-ford, Klamath Falls, Chiloquin, Lakeview, Paisley and Christmas Valley. "It's critical that those of us in Salem get out to meet with the people doing the work in communities," he said.

Weeks will be accompanied by Ramona Foley, administrator of the State Office for Services to Children and Families. Foley, who started Aug. 16, was previously child-protective services director in South Carolina. Statesman Journal staff reports duct," said irrigation district chairman Dennis Becklin. The commission granted the extra water in 1994 on condition that the district correct fish-passage problems at the aging irrigation dam.

The commission last year took steps to shut off the extra water because the district had failed to follow through on an agreement to remove the dam and replace it with pumps. But the district won a stay of the cancellation from the Oregon Court of Appeals, allowing irrigation to go on this summer. 1 TEEN GETS 5 YEARS IN ATTACK ON WOMAN After pleading guilty to charges of robbery and conspiracy to commit murder, a Sutherlin teen-ager was sentenced to at least five years in a juvenile facility for an attack last fall on the wife of her pastor. Kirra Bolt, 17, has been in the Douglas County Jail for nearly a year following a Sept. 6 attack on Freedom Gas-soway, the wife of Scott Gas-soway, a youth pastor with the Sutherlin Family Church.

Prosecuting attorney Rick Wesenberg said that on Sept 6, 1998, Bolt and Jennifer Stump asked to speak with Freedom Gassoway in private concerning a friend in crisis. Stump held a knife to throat while Bolt brandished a full wine cooler bottle and appeared ready to strike her. Gassoway fought back and when Gassoway's husband, Scott broke down the locked door, the girls fled. PROBATION FOR WOMAN IN ANIMAL ABUSE CASE Animal control officials apparently didn't think it was very serious a decade ago when they found over 100 dogs at Boneta Jones' home. A few of the dogs were in bad shape and had to be euthanized, and some were taken to the county animal shelter for adoption.

But Jones said she loved her dogs. Responding to neighbors' complaints of noise and smell, though, Animal Control revisited her rural home in February and seized 70 dogs from her crowded and filthy kennel. In court Wednesday, Jones, 53, was given five years of supervised probation for pleading no contest to two counts of second-degree animal neglect Statesman Journal news services A i. The Associated Press selves from a downtown bridge, the bodies swinging in full view of rush-hour commuters. Anderson counts herself lucky that she entered rehab and didn't contract HIV from sharing needles.

But she's the first to admit drug addiction took her to the edge in other ways. "I sat there one night holding a shotgun to my face, crying. And the next day I called the drug hot line," Anderson said. museum Mike Smith's death in March 1995 left the company without a principal heir, since Mike's younger brother, Mark, does not appear interested in taking over the business. The museum will be named the Capt.

Michael King Smith Center and will also offer education and extensive training for children and teens interested in careers in the aviation industry. Bulldozers broke ground this month at the 230-acre site just across from the Evergreen International Aviation headquarters complex. "I want this to be a living museum, a learning institute," Smith said, "not some dusty old warehouse." Showroom A.SJ.D. 585-8526 G720, at Hawthorn tmw.apringciul.conl. 9 ,4 Spruce Goose to be center of an afternoon treatment session.

"A lot of teens and college kids think if they snort it, they can't get addicted. They're wrong." In fact, that's how Anderson got started by snorting, not shooting up and it was one of the most disturbing trends identified in Wednesday's report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He built Evergreen International Aviation, one of the largest private airline and aviation service companies in the world, from a pair of helicopters. Now he's using some of his fortune to restore the Spruce Goose and turn it into the centerpiece of an air museum.

Scheduled to open in late 2000, the museum will tell the story of Hughes' wartime project to build the flying boat for troop transport. One senator dubbed it the "flying lumber yard," but a determined Hughes completed the plane and piloted it on its only flight just to show the world it could be done. The wings of the birch titan are longer than a football field from Puffklns are Now available The owner of the flying boat is building an aviation museum and training center. The Associated Press McMINNVILLE The first thing Del Smith wants people to know about the "Spruce Goose" is that the flying boat built by billionaire Howard Hughes at the end of World War II is made of birch, not spruce. "Once something gets to be a legend, the truth is a little hard to remember," Smith said.

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