Salem in 1997

World Events

• Yasser Arafat returns to Hebron in Palestine after a 30 year absence to celebrate Israel's return of West Bank Palestinian cities.
• The United Kingdom lease on the territory of Hong Kong expires. Its administration is taken over by the People's Republic of China.
• The Nobel Peace Prize is shared by Jody Williams (US) and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (Switzerland) for their campaign to ban and clear anti-personnel mines around the world.
• Madeleine Albright becomes the first female US Secretary of State.
• Diana, Princess of Wales, with her companion Dodi Fayed, dies in a Paris auto crash in the Pont de L'Alma tunnel. (The Diana Chronicles, Tina Brown, 2007.
• Pathfinder sends Mars photographs back to earth.
• In London, DNA on a Neanderthal skeleton supports the theory of an African Eve of 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
• The F. W. Woolworth Company closes after 117 years in business.
• Timothy McVeigh is convicted of multiple murders in Oklahoma City bombing in previous year. Andrew Cunanan shoots and kills fashion designer Gianni Versace outside his Miami home.
• Academy Awards: "Titanic"(US), "Character" (Netherlands). Prize-winning Books: Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier and Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, Steven Milhauser.

World Beat Festival 1997

In Salem

The Salem Multicultural Institute is founded in February of 1997. Two moms with young daughters saw the need to create a positive, tangible response to growing concern about racial tensions in Salem. This grass-roots effort grew out of meetings in living rooms and coffee shops into a meaningful celebration and year-round community volunteerism, taking the form of a festival, celebrating all of the many cultures that make Oregon such a wonderful place. Their first event, World Beat, was held in Riverfront Park in the next summer. The photograph above is from the 1998 Statesman Journal files with the caption, " Middle Eastern dancer Naia of Eugene whirls across Riverfront Park's outdoor stage in the World Beat Festival and the official dedication of the park."
Held annually at this "front yard" of Salem, the summertime festival has grown from the amphitheater park site, shown above, to encompass the whole 23-acre park with more 250 exhibitors and performing arts groups, 400 volunteers and 70 sponsors involved with the festival annually. The average annual attendance has reached approximately 30,000 guests.
The Institute continues to follow its original vision: to create an environment of openness for all people. SMI aims to be family-friendly, economically inclusive, and culturally authentic. Although a voluntary donation is welcome at all entrance gates, the Institute does not have an entrance fee for its World Beat Festival or for its exhibits at the Reed Opera House World Beat Gallery or lecture series. SMI also hosts an annual Multicultural Ball each October in the Reed Opera House Ballroom.


When you visit

World Beat Gallery in Reed Opera House 2014

 In 2006, the Salem Multicultural Institute moved their office downtown and opened the World Beat Gallery at the Reed Opera House with an exhibit entitled Diversity in the Philippines. The gallery has since hosted other cultural exhibits, including Holidays Around the World, Black Voices from Salem’s Past, Scotland and Her People, Windows into China and three series about international marriage customs. The Performance and Lecture series, which began in 2007, encourages local ethnic communities to showcase cherished traditions in the intimate, historic setting of the Reed. A small staff coordinates the work of volunteers, curates the exhibits and organizes the year-round events

Other events

• Raul Ramirez is the first Hispanic to be elected as Marion County Sheriff. A star athlete and student leader, eighteen-year-old Raul Ramirez was ordered to report to his Woodburn High School principal’s office. There he found the local Police Chief waiting to talk to him. "I didn’t do it," thought Ramirez, sure he was about to be blamed for something. As he explains it, "Back then, law enforcement was not a friend of the Hispanic community. "
  Until then, Ramirez's goal was to be a physical education teacher and work with youth. But his meeting with the Police Chief that day changed his life -- and his future career.
  Police Chief Bob Prinslow wanted Ramirez to help police build relations with teen-agers. "I needed him," Prinslow later said. "There was a lot of juvenile crime at the time and I wanted a leader to help me. Raul was a natural." Ramirez became the department’s first police cadet and was later hired as a part-time dispatcher. Prinslow was the Marion County Under Sheriff when Ramirez was hired as a deputy. The two have remained friends and Prinslow watched proudly as Ramirez replaced him as Marion County Sheriff.
• The Oregon Garden in Silverton is begun with a groundbreaking ceremony in June. It will open to the public in April 1999.
• The transit district, following ADA guidelines, converts buses for the use of disabled patrons.
• The Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, a minor league baseball team, is organized. They are a Short-Season Class A team in the Northwest League, and are an affiliate of the San Francisco Giants. They play their home games at Volcano Stadium that seats 4,252 fans.
• A group of prisoners in the State Penitentiary dig a tunnel 24 feet long before their escape route is discovered.
• In January of 1996, Keiko, the killer whale star of Free Willy and Free Willy II, was moved from Mexico City via cargo plane into his new home at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Over the next 32 months, Keiko is rehabilitated at the aquarium, where more than 2.5 million people pay him a visit. In the fall of 1998, Keiko was moved to a pen in the waters of the North Atlantic off Iceland, rehabilitated for living on his own. He died December 12, 2003, after the sudden onset of pneumonia in the Taknes fjord.
• In 1997 several "Salem Public Library History" exhibits were mounted in the Heritage Room. In March, Tired Old Barns was the exhibit with over 40 Marion Court Historical Society photographs taken by Al Jones. Other collections on display included "Oregon Covered Bridges" and Salem Public Library History.

Salem in 1927

World Events

• As the controlling Chinese Nationalists murder members of the opposition Communist party in Nanchang, the Communist Chinese People's Liberation Army is formed.
• Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin with control of the Soviet Union.
• Iraq gains independence from Britain
• Charles Lindbergh makes a solo flight across the Atlantic in his single-engined Spirit of St. Louis. There is a huge ticker-tape parade in New York city to welcome his homecoming. The Holland Tunnel opens linking NYC with New Jersey.
• The Iron Lung is invented for the relief of polio sufferers.
• The popular Harlem Globetrotters take to the road for performances. Babe Ruth hits 60 home runs.
• Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System (CBS) goes on air with 47 stations.
• The Academy Awards are established with "Wings" winning best picture. The Pulitzer Prize goes to Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder.

In Salem
This year Lee Eyerly establishes his flight school in Salem at what would become McNary Airfield. In 1921 he had been Salem’s pioneer commercial pilot. Using the latest training methods, he opened a ground school and taught mechanical work, rigging, meteorology, and navigation. Salem high school administrators caught the spirit and were offering flight-training classes to students. By 1928, Eyerly's planes were doing cross-country business as well as passenger hops over the State House, thought by many to be a prospective landing place. By this time, Salem had progressed so that any major plane overhaul or rebuild job was possible. The successful Salem airport campaign was presented in the form of a charter amendment calling for issuance of $50,000 in bonds for the purchase of land and the establishment of the landing field.

When you visit
Commuter air service in Salem was briefly served by SeaPort Airlines in 2011. Seaport took off from a terminal with a newly completed 4.000-square-foot expansion, a $1.5 million project paid for by grants from the Federal Aviation Administration and the State of Oregon. A great way to see the airfield is to visit the Flight Deck restaurant. The dining area has large windows overlooking the airfield.

For residents who are interested in commercial air service in Salem, the Salem Airport Advisory Commission meets on the 3rd Wednesday of each month at Fire Station #6. The public is welcome.

Other Events

• Thomas A. Livesley becomes mayor.
• The new YMCA Building, just completed, is much larger than the neighboring Court Street residences of the Boise and McNary families. To the east, toward the State House, the street was lined with handsome homes of other prominent "Old Guard" familes. None have survived.
• The last of the Ford Model-T automobiles are produced this year.

From left: Commercial Street from State Street looking north

• Marion County conducted a Health Demonstration Project between the 1926 and 1930. The parade of 1927 (above), led by the governor, proceeded down Commercial Street while automobiles and spectators lined the route.
• Salem Lutherans of German descent begin worshiping in old 1894 Presbyterian Church on Church Street. They buy the church and rename it as the Lutheran-American Church to indicate the services will be English. According to church records: "Mr. (Max) Gehlar, the Sunday School superintendent was a leader and through his efforts the Sunday School became one of the most active and well attended in the city."
• Notice is received from Redlands, California that Libbie Patton has died at the age of 85. She was the second wife of two noted Salem pioneers: she married Joseph Holman (1815-80) in 1875 and Thomas McFadden Patton (1829-92) in 1889. In both cases, she was the second wife.
• Ercel Kay establishes the Salem Golf Club with the first nine holes completed on the former John Hughes Land Grant. The fee for playing was 25 cents.
• Outdoor activity may have been handicapped by the weather in July, as reported by the Capitol Journal, Ben Maxwell recalled. During that month, the government thermometer on the 23rd registered 108 degrees, an all-time high. The climax came that evening when an electrical storm rattled windows and frightened children.
• In this year of booming economy, Salem families are building new houses. In a developing residential section of Salem, Sam and Lottie Adolph build a Mediterranean styled home on South Commercial Street. Photographed in 1978 by Bob Koval, and again recently, the house retains its original appearance. It is a Local Landmark in the SCAN neighborhood.
• Two blocks south of the Adolph House, is the Colonial Revival home built by Leland and Mildred Geer. The house was sold to Rollin and Alice Page in the next year. Mrs. Page continued to live here after her husband's death in the late 1940s and the house stayed in family ownership into the 1950s. This is also a Local Landmark and is in the SCAN neighborhood.
• A third Local Landmark in this neighborhood is the Mediterranean Meier House on Rural Street, then at the city limits. Fred Meier purchased it in this year and lived there off and on for the next twenty years, renting it out periodically. In 1946 the house was sold to Harold and Eva Jory who lived there until 1953.
• The Rosecrans House is built on Chemeketa Street by D. A. and Etta Hodge for their daughter Margaret Rosecrans, a widow, and clerk for the State Highway Commission. Mrs. Rosecrans resided here until 1942 at which time it was sold to John and Lela Jerman. Later owners were Linn C. Smith and Lulu Marie (Jerman) Smith. There is also a 1978 photograph. This house is a Local Landmark in the NEN neighborhood.
• A famous pooch, resident of Silverton, died this year. Bobbie, the Scotch collie that was lost from his owner and made his way from Indiana back to his former home in Silverton, is honored in that city where he is buried in a child's casket.