Some of them died on European battlefields or in the Pacific. Combat in Korea and Vietnam claimed more lives. In the last dozen years, conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan expanded the roster of wartime fatalities.
For about 575 families, the names on Clark County’s Veterans Memorial represent a loss that can’t be measured. They are the husbands and fathers, brothers and sons, uncles and cousins who went off to war and never came back.
CAMAS — Emotions ran high Saturday as local educators shared some of their struggles and concerns for their students during a town hall meeting with Sen. Ann Rivers, R-La Center and Rep. Brandon Vick, R-Felida.
About 60 people gathered in the Camas Public Library meeting room for one of two community events organized by the legislators. The purpose of the meetings was to discuss issues with the education budget and recent teacher walk-outs.
Some tempers flared while others shed tears as they talked about their classroom experiences. Most people voiced frustration over standardized testing, overflowing class sizes, dwindling budgets and increasing health care costs.
A man who law enforcement officials say has been squatting in a Washougal-area house appeared in Skamania County Superior Court on Thursday on allegations that he sold the home’s fencing.
Brett Marquiss, 22, has been staying at 201 Aberdeen Drive, a country-style house in rural Washougal. Over the last few months, neighbors have complained and called police about vehicles racing around the house, trash piling up outside and residents firing guns after hours, according to documents filed in Superior Court.
“The property has definitely been mistreated,” said Skamania County Chief Criminal Deputy Pat Bond. “The neighbors were upset, and rightfully so.”
Marquiss, along with his brother Michael and some other people, began squatting at the house sometime after the former renters moved out and the house was vacant, Bond said. People have been arrested on warrants at the house, he said.
That’s the number of local library checkouts a best-selling novel totaled last year in CD, eBook and digital audio formats.
When the Fort Vancouver Regional Library District recently compiled its 2014 list of most-circulated titles, it underscored the popularity of several books and authors across a range of technologies. It also showed how publishers have responded to library patrons who want to read a book on a computer screen or listen to an audio version.
The library circulation list includes more than 20 “most popular” titles, sorted by literary category, age group and format. Some titles showed up more than once; so did several authors who have an avid following among their readers — particularly younger ones.
As the 25th anniversary of Gettysburg approached, the commander at Vancouver Barracks went to Portland to relive that pivotal battle.
Gen. John Gibbon and a dozen or so of his officers, including some fellow Civil War veterans, entered an exhibition hall in 1888 to see “The Battle of Gettysburg” — a painting that was about 350 feet long. It was the 19th-century equivalent of an IMAX movie, and the virtual-reality entertainment system of its day.
And among all those thousands of combatants painted on canvas, Gibbon could show his Vancouver Barracks companions where he was on July 3, 1863: There! He’s astride a horse, the sword above his head pointing the way forward, as his soldiers blunted the Confederate assault known as Pickett’s Charge.
Even for someone who had participated in that epic three-day battle, it was a sight to behold. Gibbon had seen another version of the painting in 1883 in Chicago and had shared his impressions in a letter to Henry Hunt, who had commanded the Union artillery at Gettysburg.
