I was born October 5, 1942, in Detroit, Mich., to my dear parents Oscar Thomas Nelson and Dorothy Ruff Stein Nelson. I have taken great joy in my two younger sisters: Cynthia Rocchi (John; Waterbury, Conn.) and Suzanne Dickson (Robert, dec.; Westland, Mich.). In Detroit, I met and married my beloved life partner and dearest friend Richard (Rick) Botzler in November 1963 at Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church with a large group of family and friends attending our wedding.

Over the years, Rick and I have felt fortunate to raise five responsible and caring children: Emilisa Botzler-Rodgers (Jimmy); Tin Botzler; Dorothy Davis; Sarah Kennon (Tim); and Thomas Botzler (Lisa). Rick and I have been blessed with several dear grandchildren and great-grandchildren who have been an incomparable delight to us: Ashley De La Concepcion; Tim Kennon, Jr. (Abbey); Thomas Kennon (Jenny); Taylor Kennon; Katie Ogle; Joshua Ogle (Erin); Karie Partridge (Dexter); Jade Marie Newell (Darryl, div.); Tyler A. Blackburn; Aaron M. Blackburn; Tiana Rodgers; Olivia Botzler-Washington; Nathan Botzler; P.J. Rodgers; Nelson Botzler-Washington; Andrew Davis; Kali Sky, Claire Marie, Harlem and Milo; Lilly; Olivia; Adeline; Sawyer; John Roy, Amy and Cecelia; as well as numerous cousins, nieces, and nephews.

Over the years, I have enjoyed special friendships at Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & School (Detroit, Mich.); at Divine Shepherd Lutheran Church (Ann Arbor, Mich.); at Grace Good Shepherd Lutheran-Presbyterian Church (McKinleyville, CA); in the Arcata Interfaith Gospel Choir (Humboldt County); in the Humboldt County Council on Adoptable Children; at the Humboldt County Office of Education and at Humboldt State University; in the Bilingual McKinleyville Ecoclub and at Morris Spanish Immersion School (as a Grandparent Volunteer); in Peace Corps Mexico; in Jalpan de Serra, Querétaro, Mexico; and in the Latino community in Humboldt County. My special friends have included: Óscar Estrada and family, Querétaro, Mexico; Jo Ann Marsh, West Bloomfield, Michigan; Sue Lee Mossman, Trinidad; Mary Nethery, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Heidi Nieden, Neuendettelsau (Nürnberg) Germany; Ariko Sekine, Tokyo, Japan; and Marisol Madriz, McKinleyville. I have felt deeply grateful for the care, concern, and commitment of my loving parents; for each of my remarkable grandparents; and for my many dear aunts, uncles, and cousins. I am grateful to Holt Adoption Services (Holt International) and Lutheran Children’s Friends Society for their support in our adoptions.

I earned degrees in Education at Wayne State University (B.A., 1964; Detroit, Mich.); at Humboldt State University (M.A., 1979; Arcata); and at the University of Southern California (Ph.D., 1989; Los Angeles). I worked as a Curriculum and Staff Development Resource Teacher in Multicultural Education at the Humboldt County Office of Education in Eureka and later as a Professor at Humboldt State University in Arcata, teaching courses in Multicultural Education, Education in Society, Pedagogy, and Teaching in Higher Education. I also served as the Interim Associate Dean for HSU’s College of Professional Studies in 2006-2007. After retiring from HSU in December 2007, Rick and I served as Peace Corps Volunteers for two years in Querétaro, Mexico (2009-2011).

Throughout my personal life, I have firmly believed that God’s Love is revealed in the life of Jesus Christ and that I must endeavor always to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly” (Micah 6:8). Both personally and professionally, I have been a strong advocate on behalf of children and youth. I have sought to strengthen the educational opportunities and life chances for all and to encourage international friendships, peace, and understanding. I have valued multiculturalism, multilingualism, and the study of world religions. I have been committed to promoting respect for diverse cultures, languages, and religions. I have supported youth-leadership programs focused on sustainable development based on the belief that well-educated and fair-minded youth can have a lasting impact in solving environmental, social, economic, and political problems in their communities and world.

In 2020 I was diagnosed with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) and experienced it slowly depriving me of my capacity to live a normal life. Finally, as an octogenarian who experienced a rich and full life, with no significant unmet goals, I departed this life on April 16, 2023. I am grateful to my family, friends, medical support teams, and CurePSP for their support.

A family graveside internment was conducted for me at Trinidad Cemetery in Trinidad. Those who wish may make memorial contributions in my memory to the Humboldt Area Foundation (HAF) Youth Leadership Fund, CurePSP, Hospice of Humboldt, or to a charity of your choice.

A celebration of life will be held for Sally at the Moonstone Beach House, on Sunday, May 28, 1 to 5 p.m.

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I’ll be lying on the sofa in the evening, shot glass of Jägermeister alongside, reading the latest story de jour — usually something sciency (my love) — and some factoid will call out to me. Here’s the latest bunch:

The right answer

Cunningham’s Law states that the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer, since people are more interested in criticizing others than helping them.

Homestead Act

After the 1862 Homestead Act, which gave settlers title to a quarter square mile of land if they remained for five years, over half quit before their time was up, victims of drought, debt, loneliness and “prairie madness.”

Military spending

The US spends more money on its military than the next ten biggest military powers in the world, while maintaining over 800 bases worldwide.

Carbon emissions

The clothing industry accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions, and is responsible for 20% of the world’s wastewater. (Airlines contribute 2.4% of global carbon emissions.)

BP

The American Heart Association recommends that everyone should aim for blood pressure below 130/80.

Diabetes

Over a quarter of 65+ year olds in the U.S. have diabetes, usually type 2.

Waistlines

Post-menopausal women having normal (between 18.5 and 24.9) Body Mass Index with waistlines over 35 inches have a one-third greater risk of death from cancer or heart disease than those with under 35 inch waists.

Greyfiveys, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Fives

The height of the Washington Monument is 555 feet 5 inches; its base is 55 feet square; the windows are 500 feet from the base. 

Illegal crypto

According to CNBC, the volume of illicit cryptocurrency transactions in 2021 was less than 0.1% of all transactions.

One less child

Emissions savings in “equivalent” tons of carbon dioxide:

• going car-free = 2.3
• avoiding one round trip across the Atlantic = 1.5
• eating a plant-based diet = 0.8
• drying clothes in air = 0.2
• having one fewer child = 60

Printing

In the 45 years following the publication of the Gutenberg Bible in 1455, the number of books created on printing presses in Europe exceeded all hand-copied books up to that time (over 20 million).

Voyager 1

The most distant human-made object, Voyager 1, launched in September 1977, is over 15 billion miles away. The spacecraft’s signals are increasingly weak as its three plutonium batteries lose power—with luck, it will keep transmitting until 2030.

Psychedelics and God

In a 2019 study involving nearly 4,000 participants who ingested psilocybin, LSD or ayahuasca, more than two-thirds of those who identified as atheist before the experience no longer identified as atheist afterwards.

This past February, Suzanne Ward’s doctor removed a growth from her eardrum and sent it off to the lab for analysis. (That’s not her real name; we’re using a pseudonym to protect her privacy.) 

Ward was anxiously awaiting results when, on March 4, she received a letter from Traci Ober, area risk manager for Providence St. Joseph and Providence Redwood Memorial Hospital. A courier driving patient pathology samples through severe winter weather had been in an accident eight days earlier, the letter said. The injured driver had been taken to the nearest hospital. Their vehicle wound up in a ravine, along with all the patient samples they’d been hauling.

“We believe your pathology specimen may be located in the courier vehicle at the bottom of the ravine,” the letter to Ward read. “If your specimen was preserved in formalin and the container is intact, it is possible, once the vehicle is rescued, the Hospital can perform the ordered testing.”

That never happened.

Ward didn’t hear anything more from Providence for nearly three weeks. When finally she did, via another letter from Ober on March 27, the news wasn’t good. A third-party retrieval company had gone to the site of the crash, accompanied by a member of the hospital’s “Laboratory Leadership Team,” and together they “spent the day attempting to locate the pathology specimens from the vehicle” without success.

To this day, neither Ward nor her doctor know what type of growth he removed from her eardrum, and because he excised the entire thing, there’s nothing left to be biopsied and analyzed.

“All I have are pictures of what he removed,” she told the Outpost in a recent phone conversation. She said her doctor was beside himself when he learned, after the fact, that her biopsied tissue had been sent south, along with other patient samples, to a lab in Santa Rosa, where they would have been processed and placed onto microscope slides before being sent back to Eureka for diagnosis. 

With Hwy. 101 closed due to winter weather conditions on Feb. 24, the day of the crash, the courier, who was contracted through a national medical logistics company called MedSpeed, had taken the narrow and remote State Route 36.

Chuck Petty, the former pathology manager at Providence’s Eureka lab, said numerous other patients must have been seriously impacted by this incident.

“I can’t imagine that there were just pathology specimens in this load, because they were taking blood specimens and culture specimens every day in the same courier runs,” he said in a recent phone interview. 

Those types of specimens can be collected again fairly easily — by redrawing a patient’s blood or re-swabbing a wound. But other types of samples require invasive procedures, “like a lung biopsy or something deep in the body,” making it “a major deal for the patient to go through to be re-biopsied,” Petty said. And in cases like Ward’s, where there’s nothing left to re-biopsy, the only thing to do is watch and wait, which can be risky.

“Consider this: It could be a malignant melanoma, which could go into the bloodstream and then go throughout the body,” he said. “So if they missed a malignant melanoma, it could be disastrous for the patient to just watch and wait.” 

Ward still doesn’t understand how this could have happened. 

“None of it jives,” she said. “How can [my sample] be lost? How does this happen?” 

Until recently, all of the hospital’s pathology lab work, including microbiology and histology, was performed locally, at a laboratory located across the street on Harrison Avenue. But over the past two years, under the leadership of executives at Providence’s headquarters in Renton, Wash., laboratory services for St. Joseph and Redwood Memorial hospitals have systematically gotten outsourced to Providence-managed facilities in Napa and Sonoma counties. 

Former St. Joseph Hospital employees interviewed by the Outpost say the February car accident that caused so many patient samples to be lost was a predictable risk under these new procedures, and they say this centralizing of services with distant health care facilities has led to increased turnaround times and lower quality lab work, which can have major implications for patient outcomes.

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Providence, which merged with St. Joseph Health System in the summer of 2016, has grown into one of the largest not-for-profit health care systems in the country. It now operates 51 hospitals and more than 800 clinics across the western U.S. In each of the last two years Providence’s operating revenues exceeded $27 billion, and according to the New York Times, the organization runs its own venture capital fund with $10 billion in investments while avoiding more than $1 billion a year in taxes through its nonprofit status.

Rod Hochman, the president and CEO of Providence Health & Services, told an industry publication in 2021 that “‘nonprofit health care’ is a misnomer.”

“It’s tax-exempt healthcare. It still makes profits,” he said, adding that he considers shareholders his community.

Unfortunately for that community, the organization’s financial outlook has taken a bad turn recently. Providence posted a net loss of $6.1 billion last year, making for an operating margin of negative 8.8 percent. Last month the organization’s credit rating was downgraded for the third time in three weeks.

Providence is not an outlier in its management style. In recent years, the health care industry has undergone unprecedented consolidation, both in California and across the country. The California Health Care Foundation (CHCF) says this trend harms consumers by creating higher health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs. And it’s worse in places like Humboldt County. 

“When rural hospitals are absorbed by large health systems, neither their financial stability nor performance are improved,” CHCF market analyst Kristof Stremikis observed in 2020. 

In emailed replies to questions from the Outpost, Darian Harris, chief executive of Providence in Humboldt County, said the February car crash was the first time lab specimens have been lost in such a way, and he added that Providence “exhausted all feasible opportunities to retrieve these lab specimens on behalf of our patients.” 

“This included, but was not limited to, securing a specialized third-party retrieval company to support in our efforts. … [and the use of] specialized equipment to support an extended search,” Harris said.

“We are deeply sorry for any interruption of care the courier’s car accident may have caused our patients and their families,” he continued. “We immediately contacted patients informing them and provided guidance on engaging their providers to next steps for their care.” (This despite the fact that it was eight days after the incident before Ward received notice and nearly three more weeks before she was informed that the samples remained missing.)

Harris did not say how many patients’ samples were lost and, citing patient privacy, he said, “[W]e can’t share the specifics of the tailored way providers advised patients of the most appropriate next steps for their continued care.” 

As for the decision to consolidate lab work to facilities located several hours away, Harris described it as a centralization within the “broader Providence family of organizations,” a move that “allows us to keep access local by partnering with our sister facilities in Northern California in lieu of patients having to leave our community for this service.” 

In other words, if the lab work didn’t get sent four hours south, patients would likely have to make that drive themselves. But why is that the case when lab work was performed locally for decades?

According to Harris, the decision was made “in response to the chronic workforce shortage of caregivers with the specialized expertise in this lab modality, specifically in rural and remote areas across the country like Humboldt.”

Petty says that’s simply not true. “The pathology department was completely staffed until January of 2022 when I retired,” he said.  And the reason he retired when he did, he said, is because it had become clear to him that Providence wanted to close St. Joe’s pathology unit. “I told my manager several times, ‘I will not stick around to watch you dismantle my department,’” he recalled

‘I will not stick around to watch you dismantle my department.’
-former pathology manager Chuck Petty

Petty, who began working at St. Joseph Hospital in 1981, said consolidation is a fundamental component of Providence’s corporate-style management, and the writing was on the wall from the beginning.

“When Providence bought St. Joseph in the summer of 2016, all the managers went to an online seminar, and [Providence executives] stated at the time that their model was to centralize all services that could be centralized — so, laboratory and other things like that, that don’t have to be done onsite,” Petty said. “So we knew at some point that was going to happen.”

The Outpost also spoke with a former employee of Coastal Pathology Medical Associates, which long operated out of the Humboldt Central Laboratory on Harrison Avenue, across the street from St. Joseph Hospital. That’s where pathology specimens were sent for nearly 40 years — until last summer. The employee asked to remain anonymous to avoid professional repercussions, so we’ll refer to her as Jane Wilson.

She remembers that the Providence-St. Joseph merger was sold as a “strategic alignment,” but in her view it was “100 percent a takeover” by Providence, and things at the hospital have since changed for the worse.

“I was there when it was [run by] the Sisters of St. Joseph,” Wilson said. “It wasn’t perfect but I look back on those days now as being idyllic. The sisters — we still had nuns up here — they actually cared about the community and the employees and the physicians. … We always had nuns on the board. They weren’t here full time … but they absolutely were here every month for board meetings and you felt their presence. They’d say, ‘We can’t just dump homeless people. Can we come up with a solution to not dump them on the street?’” Wilson said the nuns functioned as organization’s conscience, “like Jiminy Cricket.”

Wilson said there weren’t any alarming changes immediately after Providence took over, but after a couple of years things started to shift. First it was small stuff, procedures related to IT and purchasing, for example. Then the signs were changed, adding “Providence” to the front of the hospital, and staff was told that the hospital would no longer have a CEO but rather a president.

The last time Providence negotiated a new contract with the pathology group, Wilson said, compensation got tied to turnaround time, which was a change. But initially she wasn’t overly worried.

“It was like, okay, we’ve always had 24- to 48-hour turnaround times, so, sure, we can do that. And I’m not kidding, like, a month later they [Providence] were like, ‘We’re going to be consolidating the laboratories.’” This meant that histology would no longer be performed by someone in the local lab; instead Wilson would have to wait for samples to be shipped to Santa Rosa, thinly sliced and placed on microscope slides before getting sent back to Eureka for diagnosis.

To her this made no sense. “I’m like, ‘How does that work? How do I meet turnaround time?’” she said. “There’s literally no way for me to maintain a 24- to 48-hour turnaround time if that [sample] is getting driven down to Santa Rosa once a day.’” 

‘Waiting 24 hours to get results is hard; waiting a whole week is not good. Waiting a week is kind of soul defying.’

She also sympathized with patients. “I’ve had a breast biopsy before,” Wilson said. “Waiting 24 hours to get the results is hard; waiting a whole week is not good. Waiting a week is kind of soul defying.” 

Harris, in his emailed statements, defended the new system. “Our turnaround times relative to these services are within industry standards,” he said. “All services we provide to our community have the patients’ best interest in mind and we are driven by providing the highest level of care to our patients.”

He added, “The care that is currently being offered by Providence in Humboldt is a product of creative partnerships and innovative thinking to advance care locally.”

Petty, on the other hand, argued that Providence’s consolidation model may work well in metropolitan areas like Seattle and the North Bay, places where Providence has several hospitals within a 50- to 100-mile radius. But it hasn’t worked out for Humboldt County, with its remote location and often unreliable roads.

“It just didn’t work the same as they expected based on their model of sending [specimens] to a centralized laboratory,” he said.

Like Wilson, he had a great relationship with the hospital’s previous owners, the Southern California-based Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, which, like Providence, is a Catholic nonprofit health group. But Petty was concerned about the new management.

As with Wilson, Petty said nothing too alarming happened during the first few years after Providence took over, “but in the last two years they really started moving things. So, in June of 2021, the first part of the laboratory to move was microbiology. They moved it to Napa, Queen of the Valley Hospital.”

An outside courier service was hired to make two runs per day between Eureka and Napa, and according to Petty, the three Eureka-based clinical laboratory microbiologists, who until then had been under contract with Providence, were given a choice between moving into “a regular clinical laboratory scientist job in the hospital” or being laid off. It wasn’t much of a choice.

“They had been working strictly as microbiologists for so many years they felt uncomfortable going back into the general labs,” Petty said. One of the three chose to retire and the other two got laid off, all but obliterating the hospital’s microbiology unit. (A single employee remained, tasked with setting up cultures and streaking them onto plates, according to Petty.)

Next to go were the histology technicians, the lab workers tasked with preparing thin slices of tissue to be analyzed by pathologists.

Julia Minton is a labor organizer and member representative with the National Union of Healthcare Workers, which represents employees at St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka and Redwood Memorial Hospital in Fortuna as well as workers at Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa and Petaluma Valley Hospital in Sonoma County.

‘This is a pattern of consolidation. … It’s happening across the whole industry but especially with Providence. It’s part of their business plan.’

“The sense from the histology techs [in Eureka] since early in the pandemic was, ‘They’re winding this department down,’” Minton said, though she added that the employees were never told that directly. “The concern there was that this is a pattern of consolidation of services. It’s happening across the whole industry but especially with Providence. It’s part of their business plan.”

Early in the pandemic, the histology techs saw the writing on the wall, according to Minton. “They felt like their employer didn’t want to fill [vacant] positions. I’ve seen this time and time again, where Providence says, ‘It’s the labor market.’ And there are genuine issues across the industry, but they’re also not doing due diligence to fill these positions.”

Petty said that after he retired last January, both of his remaining histology techs went out on stress leave. “That’s when the short-staffing started,” he said.

One of those former histology techs, who we’ll call Iris, told the Outpost that hospital management repeatedly denied that they had any intention of closing the lab, right up to the day when the remaining techs were notified that they were being laid off.

“They kept claiming they had no intention to shut down the lab, but all of the decisions being made pointed in that direction,” said Iris, who worked at the hospital for seven years. “They wouldn’t replace equipment; they wouldn’t replace staff; they wouldn’t invest in the department. … Long before we ever went on medical leave they were clearly divesting in the department.” 

Petty said this trend is what convinced him to give his boss an ultimatum, saying he refused to stand by while his department was dismantled. Asked why he felt it was so important to take that stand, Petty replied, “Well, because I saw the quality declining.”

He’s been to the labs in Napa and Sonoma counties. Napa’s is state-of-the-art, he said, and Sonoma County’s is decent, “but it’s very small, and their ability to absorb our workload and still maintain good turnaround time seemed questionable.”

According to Petty, Providence didn’t provide any new staff members at the Santa Rosa lab when Humboldt County began sending its pathology samples down there. Once the work shifted to that lab, Petty said, “turnaround time went from 24 to 48 hours to five to seven days. And the quality went down.”

How does lower-quality lab work impact patients?

“Well,” Petty said, “potentially it could have an effect on the pathologist’s ability to diagnose a cancer because the quality of the specimen preparation was not good. The stains were not as clear as they used to be because they were putting a lot more tissue through without changing the stains as frequently, so they would get depleted after time. It was just not good pathology. [But] it was good economically for the parent organization because they were saving money on the staff.”

Wilson said she finds the whole situation sad. She ran down a list of St. Joe specialists lost to attrition over the nearly 20 years since she moved to Humboldt County. “We had three nephrologists; they have none now. We had two rheumatologists; now, none. I think we had three or four more general surgeons. They’re down to one neurologist. They had four or five OB/GYNs; now they basically have [Dr. Deepak] Stokes.” 

The number of pathologists and oncologists has also declined, and many of the hospital’s specialist positions are now filled with locums, a situation Wilson characterized as “this revolving door of semi-incompetents,” adding that these temporary workers rarely stay in the area for longer than six months.

“I don’t think they care that we’re losing specialists,” Wilson said of Providence. “I think it’s revenue optimization. … I think they want us to be a feeder hospital to Santa Rosa. I don’t think they want specialty care up here at all. … They can just basically let us go to the dark ages.”

Bob Just, chief executive of Providence Medical Group Northern California, strenuously denied these charges. He noted that Humboldt Medical Specialists, founded in 2009, is now part of Providence.

“Through our combined efforts over the past 14 years, we have either recruited or retained over 150 physicians and advanced practice clinicians in the community,” he said in an emailed statement. “Without PMGNC support, there would be very few physicians left in the community and the hospital would be struggling to keep its doors open. The reality is that we have and continue to improve access to care and coverage of the hospital in recent years despite the nationwide physician shortage.”

Harris concurred. Asked if there are any plans to further consolidate services offered at St. Joseph Hospital he replied:

Health care is rapidly changing. Any service decisions we make as an organization will always have our Mission and patients’ best interests in mind. However, we are not immune from the economic and global workforce challenges that are impacting health care across the country, especially in remote and rural locations like Humboldt County. 

As an organization we are constantly evolving so that we can adapt to the needs of our community, now and in the future. At present, Providence has no plans to limit services. In fact, we have been successful in adding physicians and other providers in service lines like orthopedics, cancer, and neurology.  

Additionally, the St. Joseph Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program is graduating another cohort of Family Medicine physicians this June, adding to the provider base here on the North Coast.  

Our goal is to continue to remain a vibrant and forward-thinking health care organization that provides our community with best-in-class care that is in alignment with the community’s needs and our ability to furnish that care.

But from Petty’s perspective, things are moving in the wrong direction.

“A lot of good people have been leaving,” he said. Rattling off a few, he said the head of chemo-oncology left, as did “a bunch of managers.” The head of the emergency department stepped down into a nursing role. The head of surgery has changed several times.

Petty observed that it has been a difficult time to work in health care in Humboldt County. The COVID-19 pandemic took a huge toll on frontline workers, who were forced to manage isolation wards along with patients, friends and family who could be hostile.  Health care workers were also impacted by the Public Safety Power Shutdowns initiated by PG&E in recent years. Hospital workers went on strike in 2019 to protest chronic understaffing.

“It’s just a very traumatic time,” Petty said. 

Wilson said there’s a silver lining to the problems at St. Joseph and Redwood Memorial: a “burgeoning” of improved services at Mad River Hospital in Arcata and Sutter Coast Hospital in Crescent City. “They are growing and doing well because people don’t want to deal with the bullshit of turnaround times,” she said.

Petty believes that things didn’t need to happen this way, that Providence executives could have chosen a different path but instead sacrificed the quality of care for local patients in an effort to maximize profits. 

“It’s just my opinion that this was planned all along,” he said.

Children who grew up in Eureka in the 1920s were about as likely to experience the joys of sucking on a piece of ice as a child in the Mojave Desert. But there were a select few of us living on Brett Street (now 14th Street), who, for several years, enjoyed this rare treat every summer. How could such an unlikely pleasure happen in Eureka — and anyway, who needed ice in the center of the cool fog belt?

Well, it happened this way! Amos Christie, while a college student at the University of Washington from 1920 to 1924, spent his summers delivering ice for the Eureka Ice Company in a Model T pickup to various customers such as the Union Labor Hospital, the Humboldt County Hospital, Rosaia’s Fruit and Vegetable Market, Lazio’s fish wharf, the saloons on Second Street, and several “lady-of-the-night” houses. After all, a girl had to have a little ice for her customers’ drinks in the seclusion of her workshop.

When Amos Christie wasn’t going to school during vacation he became Eureka’s favorite ice man. Here he is with his leather apron and upturned collar—a fad of the day in (1922).

At the Union Labor Hospital the ice was used to make ice cream for the patients on Sundays, and Amos was the one who hand cranked the freezer. He fell into this chore naturally since he lived there, sharing a single room (No. 27) with his mother during the summer vacations. His mother, Mrs. Edna Christie, was the dietician for the hospital and always saw to it that the patients had a little to eat on Sundays.

Delivering ice often took him down Williams Street to Brett, where he was somewhat of a hero, partly because he was always good for a piece of ice, and partly because he was a college football player: he played for the University of Washington and on teams which went to the Rose Bowl twice.

About the same time, another football player. Red Grange, was gaining fame. He delivered ice in his home town in Illinois, so Amos was called “Eureka’s Red Grange,” although he was a tackle and Red Grange was a running back.

On Saturday evenings he occasionally went shopping downtown with his mother, and, of course, encountered a few of his lady-of-the-night customers who always recognized him and gave the friendly nod. His mother probably never understood the connection.

Amos Christie went on to become a physician, graduating from the University of California Medical School in 1929. After residency training in pediatrics at the University of California Hospital, postdoctoral fellowships took him to Johns Hopkins, Babies Hospital in New York City and the Harvard School of Public Health. Early in World War II he was Associate Director of the American Red Cross in Washington, D.C. In 1944 he became professor and chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine where he made his greatest contributions to the medical world. It was here that he and his colleagues unraveled some of the mysteries of Histoplasmosis, a fungus disease which looks like Tuberculosis by x-ray.

It was here that he trained many great pediatricians, many of whom went into practice and others remained in the academic world. At one time 16 chairmen of departments of pediatrics had been trained at Vanderbilt by Amos Christie and his staff. Several became Deans and one became a Nobel Prize laureate.

So,if your son wants to be an ice man, don’t knock it! One of Eureka’s most illustrious natives started off that way!

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Dr. Robert Quinn, a native Eurekan and now head of Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, School of Medicine, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., 37232. 

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The story above was originally printed in the September-October 1982 issue of The Humboldt Historian, a journal of the Humboldt County Historical Society, and is reprinted here with permission. The Humboldt County Historical Society is a nonprofit organization devoted to archiving, preserving and sharing Humboldt County’s rich history. You can become a member and receive a year’s worth of new issues of The Humboldt Historian at this link.

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Today is the grand finale of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, and we’ve got a doozy of a guest. Please welcome Alessandro Capicchioni, the majordomo of all things Eurovision in San Marino!

Topics on the table: Our hometown champions the Piqued Jacks, and their flameout earlier this week. That time Flo Rida repped San Marino on the Eurovision stage. Mostly: Why don’t Americans “get it”?

You ready for this? The Eurovision final stages will be broadcast live in the United States starting at noon, on the Peacock streaming service. For Italian speakers: Our friends in the enclave have a free stream for you here. Keep your eyes peeled when the nations start announcing their votes — you just might see a familiar face!

Let’s take a moment to honor each of this year’s finalists. Please read names of the following countries aloud, in a solemn voice:

• Austria.
• Portugal.
• Switzerland.
• Poland.
• Serbia.
• France.
• Cyprus.
• Spain.
• Sweden.
• Albania.
• Italy.
• Estonia.
• Finland.
• Czechia.
• Australia.
• Belgium.
• Armenia.
• Moldova.
• Ukraine.
• Norway.
• Germany.
• Lithuania.
• Israel.
• Slovenia.
• Croatia.
• United Kingdom.

Now, our conversation with Signor Capicchioni. Video above, rough machine transcript below.

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JOHN KENNEDY O’CONNOR:

Welcome to what I’m very sorry to say, and very sad to say, is the last of our San Marino Conversations. Three interviews we’ve been having this week while I’ve been here in this beautiful European nation, this microstate nestled in the heart of Italy. And for our last conversation I’m very happy to welcome Alessandro Capicchioni. Did I say that right?

CAPICCHIONI:

Yes.

O’CONNOR:

Because I usually get it wrong.

CAPICCHIONI:

Yes.

O’CONNOR:

Now, Alessandro is the head of delegation for the Eurovision Song Contest for San Marino. Now I’ve been very honoured to be invited to be here this week because I have a very small, very small part in the show tomorrow night. But sadly San Marino will not be participating in the grand finale this year. This must be very disappointing for you after all your hard work.

CAPICCHIONI:

Yeah, but we’re used to it. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last time. We just passed three times in our Eurovision history, which is not very long, but still it’s 14 years long. So, and we are the micro-state taking part, the smallest country and the country without friends, without neighbours. So it’s very hard for us to be in the final. We know it, we go and we are prepared to it, we are prepared to everything and we are prepared to joy when it happens.

O’CONNOR:

And you will still though come back next year, you aren’t disappointed and think, oh what’s the point of this? There is a real reason for San Marino to participate on this great international stage.

CAPICCHIONI:

Of course, that is a great opportunity for us to be very international. We are a landlocked country, Italy is surrounding us. We share the same culture with Italy, so we are often confused with Italians. And that’s a great opportunity for us to stand out as an independent country, as an independent television. And we also we have the full liberty, freedom to decide how to take part with an internal selection, with an international selection. So it’s up to us. It’s a huge opportunity. So once we confound our choices, then we’re happy.

O’CONNOR:

Now our audience in Humboldt County and in the city of Eureka — and also we cover Del Norte County as well — I know they really got behind San Marino in this year’s contest because we had this rest of the world vote this year. But the EBU, who organized the contest, they do seem to be making a big effort to push the contest in the US, but I’m not seeing that it’s getting any traction. Why do you think the US really could never understand what Eurovision is all about?

CAPICCHIONI:

Well, yes, I have never really thought about this but probably the United States have a different music culture and a different approach to music in television. This could be the reason. The Eurovision Song Contest is something very particular that is born in Europe and has grown up since like 56, I think, so it’s many years and it is particular and it’s unique. I don’t know any television that does national programs as Eurovision. Eurovision exists only a union of television, of European televisions. So that might be the reason. I mean Eurovision is so particular, so unique that it’s difficult to export its format outside the country.

O’CONNOR:

Now there was an attempt last year — the American Song Contest was launched on NBC and by all accounts, I don’t know if this is accurate, it was a disaster, was the word that was used. Apparently it was the most unsuccessful entertainment format NBC had ever used, which is very worrying. And again, I wonder why. I felt that you have this conflict in Europe, so it’s a competition, you know, the Dutch and the Italians and the British and this matter. But interstate, I don’t feel you have that between New Yorkers and Californians.

CAPICCHIONI:

I see two levels. The first level is how many states are composed in the United States.

O’CONNOR:

Well there’s 50 states but they also have territories like Samoa and Puerto Rico. So there’s something like 58. 

CAPICCHIONI:

First, at the first level, you have the competition among the states. So 50 states potentially fight against each other to have one single performer winning the internal selection, the national selection, which is already international because we’re talking about 50 different realities. And then this performer, after such a long way, has to go to Europe and fight against 37, 38, 40 more nations. It’s a long way. Second, the music that is played on Eurovision is not often recognised by the market.

O’CONNOR:

That’s very true.

CAPICCHIONI:

Apart from Rosaline last year, from Armenia with the song Snap, which exploded over the platforms. But I don’t remember a lot of songs.

O’CONNOR:

Success.

CAPICCHIONI:

Yeah, but there could be a problem because American music industry is leading the world, basically, and you have the highest number of stars, probably. And will these stars take part in that selection to compete with a strange music done by half-unknown European countries like San Marino or like Azerbaijan?

O’CONNOR:

Well, that almost happened in the American Song Contest because they did have Michael Bolton, and they did have Macy Gray, two huge international stars. Macy Gray got knocked out in the first stage and the contest was won by this very young Korean girl from Oklahoma so it was all a bit strange. But many American artists have actually taken part in Eurovision Song Contest.

CAPICCHIONI:

This is true.

O’CONNOR:

And probably the most famous of all was Flo Rida, the rapper. Yes, I remember him. Which country did he represent? It was us. It was San Marino. This is incredible. How did Flo Rida get to be representing San Marino in Eurovision?

CAPICCHIONI:

I told you, we have the freedom to choose how to take part, that’s amazing. Well, I can’t remember really precisely the details, but it’s been that he was thinking what is it, and we got in touch with him and we proposed him and he said, yes, why not? And there was first the song, he updated the song, he wrote part of the song, and then he came to Rotterdam and he sat with us in the green room after the performance. It was amazing.

O’CONNOR:

It was incredible, it brought the whole show alive I thought because it was the last performed song — there was Sunit who’s an amazing artist doing her thing and then suddenly exploding onto the stage was Flo Rida and I actually said I think they’re gonna win in the end.

O’CONNOR:

There was a Chicago guy, Jimmy… I’ve forgotten his name, sorry. He represented San Marino as well, but he sang with a San Marino singer. Yeah, but… Jimmy Wilson.

CAPICCHIONI:

Yes, he was living in Germany. He moved to Germany some years ago, so he spoke perfectly German. And then he met the producer, he was with us that year. But yes, he was American, was perfect American, definitely yes. Well…

O’CONNOR:

I’m disappointed you didn’t make the final this year but of course we will be watching tomorrow and we will enjoy it. I think many people in Humboldt County will be watching the show this year as well, if only just to see me because I have the most important part in the show.

CAPICCHIONI:

You’re more than welcome to say they vote for San Marino. It’s a honour for us.

O’CONNOR:

No, it’s an honour for me and I really appreciate it. Alessandro, it’s been an absolute delight. I do want to thank your colleagues at RTV for inviting us into this beautiful studio, all the cameramen here as well. This has been amazing. Thank you for hosting us for a Humboldt Conversation. It’s a pleasure. For a San Marino Conversation. And thank you for joining us. Join us again. I’ll be back in the US on Monday and I look forward to seeing you there.

Joel John Roberts, born in Eureka, April 16, 1939. Peaceful passing May 9, 2023 at St. Joseph Hospital.

Joel was a local longshoreman for 35 years in Eureka local 14, until he retired.

Survived by his wife of 63 years, Priscilla Ramsey Roberts, grandson Mathew John Roberts and Mathew’s sons Darian and Bentley; his sister Roseann Straw and her daughter Jeannie Rush of Mad River; cousins Wesley Fulton of Arcata and his sister Titia Fulton, of Campbell, Calif.

He was preceded in death my his parents, Albert and Kathleen Johnson Roberts and two sons, Kenneth and Dennis Roberts.

Mathew recently married Jessica Roberts and became stepfather to Jessica’s four daughters. Finally, girls in the family. 

Visitation is on Saturday, May 13, 2023, 2 p.m. at Paul’s Chapel in Arcata. Sorry for the lateness of this timing. Private burial Ocean View Cemetery.

Give our boys a hug. I love you, Priscilla.

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Press release from Cal Poly Humboldt:

Today, California Governor Gavin Newsom shared a revision of his administration’s proposed state budget for 2023-24 fiscal year.

As highlighted in the CSU Statement on Governor’s May Revision 2023-24 Budget Proposal, the May Revision maintains the $227.3 million ongoing funding increase to the CSU that was included in the Governor’s initial budget proposal. Newsom’s plan also includes a new approach to funding a portion of the investment in Cal Poly Humboldt’s polytechnic transformation.

Under this proposal, Cal Poly Humboldt would still be able to deliver the critical projects needed to support enrollment growth, expand access to affordable housing, and build infrastructure for new programs.

The proposal calls for shifting $201 million in General Fund support for Cal Poly Humboldt infrastructure projects to bonds issued by California State University. In exchange, the state will provide $16 million in new, ongoing funding to cover the cost of servicing the debt for polytechnic infrastructure projects. This proposed change is related to one-time funding, and does not impact the ongoing polytechnic funding of $25 million.

The issuing of state revenue bonds is a standard process in the CSU to support infrastructure projects. Currently, for example, Cal Poly Humboldt is strategically using system revenue bonds to fund part of the new Student Housing Project at St. Louis Road.

In 2021, Gov. Newsom and the state legislature approved $458 million ($433 million in one-time funding and $25 million in ongoing funds) to help support the polytechnic vision.

Funding from that historic investment was allocated to launch academic programs. It was also allocated to fund extensive infrastructure improvements and new facilities that directly support student success and retention and allows Cal Poly Humboldt to build out new programs and enhance current academic offerings.