My Oregon Trail!

SPOILER ALERT: This blog can’t do justice to the amazing hospitality that was shown to me this weekend by the Oregon Daughters – please be sure to visit (and follow) my DAR President General Facebook page in order to see many more photos and highlights of this great experience.

Oregon State Regent Donna Dial selected red, white and blue stars as her symbol and led during her two-year term under a theme of “Oregon Stars Shine Bright as They Work for DAR.” It was a pleasure to watch these women reunite for their first in-person conference in three years in order to celebrate their shared accomplishments and resilient spirit. It was my first trip to Oregon, and I made many new friends, soaked up a lot of history and created many wonderful memories during my weekend stay. I hope you will feel as though you joined my by reading these select highlights of the 107th State Conference in Portland and my visit to a DAR-supported school nearby.

The Newell Pioneer Village is just one of the Oregon State Society’s historic properties and includes the home of Robert Newell, the Pioneer Mother’s Memorial Cabin, the Butteville Schoolhouse and the Butteville Jail, most of which were moved to the site. Thousands of tourists flock to these properties each year to learn more about the families who settled this part of the Beaver State. The Oregon Daughters also own and operate the Caples House Museum in Columbia City.  Dr. Charles Caples left Ohio, traveling along the Oregon Trail with his family, as a child in 1844.  Charles married Lucinda McBride in 1855 and built their home overlooking the Columbia River, where he practiced medicine.

Mr. Tymchuk is passionate about his state’s history and his society’s purpose. He saved the big surprises as the finale, when he allowed us to experience four special objects from the collection: two letters (one from Abraham Lincoln and a second from Theodore Roosevelt), a piece of the Willamette Meteorite (look it up!) AND a branding iron retrieved from the mud of an Oregon riverbank. The last belonged to Meriwether Lewis, who chronicled in his expeditionary journal that the tool had been traded to Native Americans as the Lewis and Clark explorers tried to lighten their load on the return trip. It was found a century later and presented to the historical society’s collection. What a treasure! And what an honor to hold it in my hands!

Chapter Reports

The Oregon Daughters appear to have never slowed during the pandemic, for their reports were simply outstanding. Here is a list of just some of the service projects with which they were involved during the last year alone: Wreaths Across America, trash pickup, first responder appreciation items, support for GED students, food bank items, Christmas stockings for soldiers, supporting National Guard members deployed to Poland, gift cards for domestic violence shelter victims and holiday gifts to families in need. This is just a small sampling of their work – wow!

I am so impressed by each of the members whom I met – they are devoted to our mission and dedicated to honoring the memory of their Patriot ancestors through service that makes an astounding difference in their local communities.

Chemawa Indian School

It was important to me to tour the Chemawa Indian School in nearby Salem, especially as we had the pleasure of meeting many students and administrators to discuss their needs and experiences on campus. Chemawa is the oldest continuously operating boarding school for Native American students in the nation, and its students have been supported by our National Society since the 1940s. Today, about 100 young men and women live and learn here, representing dozens of tribes. The Class of 2022 contains just 18 students, a reduced number from prior years owing to the complexities of meeting graduating requirements in the aftermath of the remote learning necessitated by the pandemic. But those we met were excited for the future and grateful for their time at Chemawa.

I was the first seated DAR President General to visit Chemawa in two decades; I also twice visited Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma during my term in office, which had not been visited by one of my predecessors since the 1990s. Touring these schools and monitoring their operations is an important responsibility. But the joy comes in connecting with the students – meet one of them, Samantha Antone, in this short video.