News

The family of Brody Hamilton, a boy from Onalaska currently battling brain cancer, will host a fundraiser on Saturday, Oct. 19, with a dessert auction, live music, a silent auction and dinner provided by JJ’s To Go to further fund his care at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

The event will be held at the Jester’s Auto Museum and Event Center in Chehalis at 321 Hamilton Road. The doors will open at 5 p.m.

The silent auction will feature prize items to bid on such as Seahawks tickets, a three-night stay at Lake Chelan, a Derma Medical Spa gift certificate and basket, a Marin mountain bike, a Marcargi street bike, a chain saw and more.

A special raffle item put together by Brody and Tylie Tobin, another young Lewis County local also battling cancer, will be available. The proceeds from their special raffle item will go directly to the pair’s brain tumor team at Seattle Children’s Hospital to help further their research. All other proceeds will go to Brody and his family to help them through his brain cancer journey, including funding hospital bills, lodging and transportation expenses.

Dinner will be provided by JJ’s To Go, and the menu will consist of pulled pork sandwiches, potato salad or macaroni salad and a green salad. There will be a cash-only bar, and one drink ticket is included with each attendee’s meal. Further drinks beyond that can be purchased separately.

Brody is currently undergoing chemotherapy treatments and, according to his family, is responding well. They ask that people continue praying for Brody as he goes through the next round of chemotherapy.

Tickets for the fundraising event cost $40 per person, which includes dinner, one beverage and live entertainment. Tickets can be purchased through Venmo to the account BrodyStrong13. To ensure all tickets are accounted for, organizers ask that attendees include their name and desired number of tickets when purchasing over Venmo.

For additional ways to purchase tickets, contact Mary Reaves at 360-980-0472.

Nearly a dozen fiction and nonfiction authors chatted in the TransAlta Commons on Sept. 6 with people who enjoy reading and signed books during an Evening with Authors, sponsored by the Lewis County chapter of the Association of American University Women (AAUW).

Centralia College English instructor Matt Young moderated the hour-long conversation with Garth Stein, author of “The Art of Racing in the Rain,” and Olivia Hawker, who wrote “One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow.” Young is the author of “Eat the Apple: A Memoir,” published in 2018, and a novel, “End of Active Service,” released in June.

The entertaining evening, which drew easily more than 100 people, many from the Southwest Washington Writers Conference, featured raffle baskets, a no-host bar and food graciously donated by local restaurants.

“I thought it was a very classy event!” said Nancy Leventon, an AAUW member from Chehalis. “It was well planned and organized, as well as being visually stunning with the decorations, the tables, the lovely appetizers from local providers, and the dialogue with the three authors was fun and entertaining. I hope that we can do this again!”

The event was designed to replace the organization’s annual LUNAFEST film festival, which featured short films created by women or focused on them. All money raised by the $20 entrance fee and tickets sold for the raffle supports Hope Alliance, a nonprofit that helps survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, and AAUW scholarships. When the Luna Company stopped producing the films, AAUW members looked for another way to raise money and decided on an Evening with Authors.

The evening proved successful enough to raise about $4,400, similar to what early LUNAFEST events brought in and more than post-COVID-19 film festivals, according to AAUW Treasurer Donna Loucks.

I was impressed that Libbie Grant, who also writes under the pen names Olivia Hawker and Libbie Hawker, had the energy to engage so well with people that evening after teaching all day at the Southwest Washington Writers Conference. She taught nearly 70 writers how to outline their novels before they begin and how to write a bestseller. As coordinator of the Southwest Washington Writers Conference and Friday master class, I was plum tuckered out by the time the evening arrived — and even my phone had died! Stein, energetic and entertaining, presented a keynote and taught a workshop at the conference the following morning.

Bobbie from Book ‘N’ Brush of Chehalis graciously staffed the bookstore where readers could buy books and have them signed.

Sharon Lyons, an AAUW member from Toledo, commended local businesses for providing hors d’oeuvres.

“Not one of them said ‘no,’” she said. “If we didn’t get food from them, they gave us a gift certificate,”

Jo Martens, of Centralia, the AAUW member who headed the organizing committee, said she was impressed by the time, effort, and initiative of AAUW volunteers who made her job much easier.

“People just took the initiative to just follow through with great results. I just couldn’t believe how smoothly everything came together, and it was really just membership stepping forward and doing this,” she said.

“I thought it was a great event,” AAUW member Maree Lerchen, of Centralia, said. “My guest is not necessarily a reader — she doesn’t have time — but she loved it. She had a great time and visited with the authors. I hope we do it again.”

“I think it would be nice if we could do it again next year,” Martens said. “I guess we just take it back to membership and see what they say.”

•••

Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, Southwest Washington Writers Conference president, and an AAUW member, can be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com. 

We are the Lewis County Dispatchers Guild, and we want to express our full support for the upcoming two-tenths of 1% tax initiative that will be on the November 2024 ballot.

This tax is crucial for the continued success and efficiency of the Lewis County 911 center, which plays a vital role dispatching and coordinating the police, fire and emergency medical service responses throughout the entire county.

The current funding mechanism for the 911 center is inadequate and unsustainable, and for years has made maintaining staffing levels to meet the increasing demand for services as well as maintaining and upgrading systems that are vital for receiving calls from the public and dispatching emergency resources a very real challenge.

We support this tax initiative because we want to serve the citizens and visitors of Lewis County with the utmost urgency, quality and professionalism and we know the support of the communities we serve will provide us the greatest opportunity to do so.

The approval of this initiative would grant the funding needed to provide us with the tools we need to serve our community to the highest degree. It would allow our agency to upgrade our aging systems to enhance efficiency, introduce emerging technologies to provide a more effective service, and it would bring Lewis County in line with most counties in Washington state that have already adopted similar funding models for their 911 centers to significantly reduce their reliance on residents’ property taxes to provide this essential service.

We believe that passing this initiative is essential for the safety and wellbeing of the residents and visitors of Lewis County and that the success of this initiative would not only benefit the 911 center, but also the entire community by enhancing public safety and emergency response services.

Lewis County Dispatchers Guild

Chehalis

Speakers and folks in conversation at the Republican convention raised the idea that God saved Donald Trump from assassination so that he could become the future U.S. president.

Really?

As Christians who overlook Trump’s many shortcomings well know, the man they hope will advance their agenda is deeply flawed. He is a serial adulterer and divorcer. A draft dodger. He stiffs contractors, taking their work but not paying for it (lawyers, even).

He is a liar. When he says he wouldn’t sign a national abortion ban bill, he’s lying. He tweets savage social messages that stir up hatred and death threats to those who inconvenience him — while pretending not to know that. He is a convicted felon, guilty of business fraud and subverting an election. He created a fake cash cow university and a fake cash cow charity. As president, he pardoned convicted cronies and extorted the president of Ukraine. As president, Trump sabotaged our country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic — touting bleach and hydroxychloroquine as cures, resisting vaccination (while secretly getting one himself) and leaving nearly a million Americans dead before President Biden put the brakes on the epidemic. Out of office, he used his MAGA stooges in Congress to block passage of a tough, humane immigration policy, earlier this year.

There’s more, none of it good.

In God We Trust. To intervene on behalf of Trump? No, rather to bring out the best in all American people — to enable us to show our basic decency, defeat this dreadful man by a landslide vote, defeat his plans to riot himself back into the White House, and punish him by making him a loser.

David Milne

Thurston County

I want you to turn off your TV and devices and stop listening to the Democratic media for an hour.

Go fill up your vehicle with fuel, then go buy the groceries you need to feed your families. Then pay your bills with the dollars that are worth 40% less in three and a half years.  Your wallet or purse will not lie to you. You will know who to vote for.

Mitch Townsend

Silver Creek

Among the numerous misstatements uttered by Donald Trump in the  train wreck that was his debate performance with Kamala Harris, the most egregious relate to his continued obeisance to Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin.

As has been true throughout his political career, Trump once again refused to criticize Putin, and would not condemn his murderous and misbegotten invasion of Ukraine.  When asked if he would prefer a Ukrainian victory in the war, Trump did not even respond.

It will be remembered that Putin invaded his southern neighbor on Feb. 24, 2022, in full expectation of a rapid and bloodless victory.  After a week or so of minor skirmishes, Kyiv and Odesa would be securely in Russian hands and the “glory” of tsarist and Stalinist Russia would be fully restored.

Instead, Putin crashed into a brick wall of solid Ukrainian resistance.  Hundreds of thousands of Russian troops have been killed or wounded for no worthwhile purpose. The brutality of Putin’s invasion has been matched only by the stupidity of its execution.

Not surprisingly, the former KGB careerist Putin has targeted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for assassination.  This brave statesman, upon whom the fate of European democracy largely depends, deserves our continued support against Putin — and Trump.

Official assassination attempts on political leaders are not unknown in times of war.  But intelligence decrypted through the fog of war often is incomplete, misleading or totally false. 

One of the few European countries to stay neutral during World War II was  Portugal.  Regular civilian flights from Portugal to Britain remained unhindered by the Germans — with one horrifying exception.

On June 1, 1943, a German spy at the Lisbon airport noticed “a thickset man smoking a cigar.”  Somehow concluding, in the midst of a world war, that this was Winston Churchill, the spy signaled as much by secret code to his superiors. Thus did the Luftwaffe deliberately shoot down the next plane to Britain, killing all 17 passengers and crew.

Among the dead was the distinguished actor Leslie Howard, who had played Ashley Wilkes in “Gone with the Wind.”  Ironically, the Wilkes character was one of the few who fully understood the tragedy of war.

As wrote Churchill:  “The brutality of the Germans was only matched by the stupidity of their agents.”

In fact, Churchill, like Volodymyr Zelenskyy, traveled frequently and at great risk as a courageous wartime leader, but never, of course, on commercial airlines.

As quipped Bob Hope: “Churchill — isn’t he something? He’s been to Casablanca more times than Humphrey Bogart.”

Joseph Tipler

Centralia

The purpose of this letter is to bring attention to the growing need for specialty medical services available to the residents of Lewis County. Lewis County has a rapidly growing population and a higher percentage of residents ages 65+-plus compared to the Washington state average.

The population in this advanced age group is at the greatest risk of not obtaining emergent life-saving medical services. The medical services available in Lewis County do not currently include specialists who provide emergent cardiac intervention that is provided in a cardiac catheterization lab. The closest cardiac catheterization lab available is located in Thurston County.

Cardiac catheterization labs are vital to people who are experiencing a cardiac-related event, and prompt intervention is required to restore adequate cardiac function. The timing it will take to get emergency transport to a hospital in Thurston County can harshly diminish the possibility of a desirable outcome for Lewis County residents.

Our county needs to prioritize funding for these specialists so that the residents in Lewis County can have equitable access to prompt emergent cardiac interventions and minimize the delay in care for these life-saving procedures. I would like to urge our city council members and hospital stakeholders to invest additional funds to provide a cardiac catheterization lab for Lewis County.

Thank you for your attention to this important issue.

Tiffany Flemetis, RN

Chehalis

The Lewis County Auditor’s Office will mail 529 ballots to military and overseas voters on Friday ahead of the November general election.

As required by law, the mailing comes 45 days ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

“The advanced mailing provides voters in the military or overseas with time to receive their ballot, learn about the candidates and/or issues, and return their ballot in a timely manner,” the Lewis County Auditor’s Office stated in a news release.

For military and overseas voters, the date on the ballot declaration associated with the voter’s signature determines the validity of the ballot. The signature on the ballot declaration must be dated no later than election day and must be received in the Lewis County Auditor’s Office one day prior to election certification.

Military and overseas voters have the option to return ballots via fax or email,  but those ballots must be received by the auditor’s office no later than 8 p.m. on election day.

Voters can check their voter registration status and voter registration address and register to vote online at www.votewa.gov. 

More election information is available online at https://elections.lewiscountywa.gov.