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In case you missed them, here are some of the top stories of the weekend:
Longtime Columbia River High School teacher, coach, state champion and Title IX pioneer Dana Blair has died, Vancouver Public Schools confirmed Friday afternoon in an e-mail to the community.
Blair, the head coach for volleyball for 23 seasons, led the Chieftains to state championships in 1991 and 2000. She also was the head softball coach, leading the program to the championship game in 2005.
After leaving volleyball and softball, she brought her championship touch to the Columbia River bowling team. That squad won a state championship in 2015.
She was teaching physical education this year and was a month away from starting another bowling season with the Chieftains.
In all, she spent 36 years as a teacher in Vancouver.
Read the full story on the death of longtime Columbia River HS coach Dana Blair.
Rae Cheney couldn’t believe that her son had been killed in Vietnam. She recalled her reaction upon hearing the news: “This can’t be true! He’s been in country for 17 days!”
In that short span of combat duty, Lt. Dan Cheney sacrificed his own life to help save the life of a fellow Army helicopter pilot. He was killed on Jan. 6, 1969. During a ceremony Saturday, the Gold Star mother looked back on some of her own personal moments in her son’s Army career.
“I pinned his lieutenant’s bars on his shoulders. I pinned on his (pilot’s) wings. And I laid flowers on his grave.”
Cheney, a 1965 graduate of Columbia River High School, is among 58 Clark County servicemen who were killed or listed as missing in action during the Vietnam War. Their names are on a memorial that was dedicated Saturday on Vancouver’s Veterans Affairs campus.
Read the full story on the Vietnam Memorial dedication.
Just a few months from the start of the 2017 legislative session, a Boeing official says the aerospace giant still has an important story to tell in Washington. Bill McSherry, vice president of government operations for Boeing Co., told The Columbian’s Editorial Board on Friday that Boeing remains the state’s largest taxpayer, largest private employer and the largest payer of tuition through a company program that paid $32 million in 2015 to send its workers to college.
“You know, I think we have not always been the most vocal tellers of our story,” said McSherry. He was accompanied by Kelly Maloney, president and CEO of the trade association Aerospace Futures Alliance of Washington, on a trip through Clark County to meet with business groups and others.
A big part of that story has involved tax incentives. In 2003, and again in 2013, the Legislature approved tax incentives that helped sway the company to keep jobs in Washington. McSherry said those tax incentives have worked, with the number of workers employed by Boeing in Washington rising from 53,000 to 75,000 since 2003. The latest aircraft produced by the company, the 777X, is produced in Washington as a condition of the $8.7 billion in tax breaks given to Boeing in 2013.
“That sounds like a really good decision that has paid off really well,” McSherry said of the tax incentives.
Read the full story on The Columbian’s Editorial Board meeting with a Boeing and aerospace industry representative.
