McKay looking forward to revisiting Mac
May
17, 2016 McMinnville, Ore., News-Register
By
STARLA POINTER of the News-Register
Floyd
McKay not only lived through a key period in Oregon political and social
history, he also reported on it.
McKay,
a McMinnville High School and Linfield College graduate, covered politics for
The Oregon Statesman newspaper in Salem in the 1960s and early 1970s, when
larger-than-life figures such as Govs. Tom McCall and Bob Straub were shaping
Oregon’s enduring environmental legacy.
He
continued covering Oregon’s growth and change as a commentator, analyst and
documentary producer for KGW-TV in Portland through 1986, occupying the same
high-visibility post McCall had used as his springboard for the governorship.
Along the way, he chronicled such legislative landmarks as the Bottle Bill, the
Beach Bill and SB 10 and 100, which laid the foundation for Oregon’s pioneering
land use program.
His
work kept him close to the action. And he later spent two years in the very
heart of that action, serving as Gov. Neil Goldschmidt’s first press secretary.
“In
some ways, I was the recipient of much good luck during that time,” said
McKay, who has just released “Reporting the Oregon Story: How Activists and
Visionaries Transformed a State,” published by the Oregon State University
Press.
McKay,
who is the author of two earlier books and an array of scholarly articles, will
return to McMinnville this week to talk about his book and his working life.
“I’m really looking forward to coming,” said McKay, who now makes his home in
Bellingham, Washington.
Except
for a few reunions, he hasn’t been back. He’s been close, though, as one of his
daughters works at the Montinore Estate winery and makes her home near Forest
Grove.
McKay
will speak Wednesday, May 18, at Linfield. His free talk is slated for 7:30
p.m. in the college library.
He
also will address a public luncheon meeting of the McMinnville Kiwanis Club at
noon Thursday. The reservation period has closed, but the proceedings are being
videotaped for future airing on public access cable TV channels 11 and 29.
McKay
remembers McMinnville as little more than a modest farm town. But it also
served as the county seat, and that helped attract business and professional
interests, he said.
While
in high school, he covered sports for the News-Register and dreamed of becoming
a journalist. He chose Linfield’s journalism program for its proximity.
“It
didn’t work for me to go away,” he said. “I had to live at home.”
The
choice was a good one, he said, as it ensured him “a good liberal arts
education.”
It
also gave him a chance to meet his future wife, fellow student Dixie Johnson
McKay. They married when he was a senior and she a sophomore, and settled into
an apartment on Ford Street.
After
graduating in 1957, he landed a job with the Springfield News.
In
1960, he joined the staff at The Oregon Statesman, morning predecessor of the
Salem Statesman Journal. And he was assigned to its political beat in 1964,
just as McCall and Straub won their first statewide offices and began
contemplating runs for governor.
“I
had the rare good fortune of being there when the print medium and its message
were at a high point in their 20th Century histories,” he writes in “Covering
the Oregon Story.”
He
stayed close to the action in his remaining years with the newspaper, then
moved on into television. The self-described “pack rat” kept his files, which
would later help him relive the period with great accuracy.
His
observations came in handy two decades later, after he went on to earn his M.A.
and Ph.D., switched from reporting to teaching and joined the journalism
faculty at Western Washington University in Bellingham. And not just for his
new memoir, but also for the assistance he lent to Oregon Public Broadcasting
specials on first the Bottle Bill and later the McCall legacy.
McKay
now holds emeritus status at the university, but has continued to remain
involved in journalism.
He
used to write a column for the Seattle Times and continues to write one for an
online news agency in the Bellingham area. He also does interviews for a
monthly radio program, “The Chuckanut Radio Hour,” which he described as a
takeoff on “Prairie Home Companion.”
He’s
learning how to market his book. Copies of “Covering the Oregon Story” will be
available for purchase and signing at his speaking engagements in McMinnville,
he noted.
“Reporting
the Oregon Story” offers a comprehensive look at the innovative policies and
changes that occured in Oregon from the early ‘60s through the ‘80s. Some of
the more notable milestones were the Beach Bill, which kept the coastline open
to the public, without superhighways, private beaches or ugly commercial
developments, and the Bottle Bill, which discouraged littering by imposing a
refundable deposit on beverage bottles and cans.
Later,
the author focuses on land use issues and key political decisions in the
Portland area, which helped made the city and state national models for
controlling urban sprawl and protecting farmland. Those decisions resonate yet
today, he said in an interview last week.
“I’ve
often thought, without that, it would have been very difficult for Oregonians
to build the wine industry,” he said. If it weren’t for those decisions, he
said, houses rather than vineyards would now cover Yamhill County hillsides.
“People
love views,” he said, “but because of land use protection, they are preserved
for vineyards, orchards and organic farms.”
McKay’s
book looks at the key leaders, as well: McCall and Straub, along with an array
of their contemporaries.
He
said others have developed and published full biographies. His mission, he
said, was to provide an intimate, inside look at the players and the processes
that created the unique “Oregon Story.”
“It
is also a story of Oregonians who worked together, often crossing lines of
party and geography, to build the components that made Oregon special,” he
writes in the introduction. “It wasn’t always pretty and sometimes we failed,
but the basic structure and philosophy remain half a century later.”
McKay’s
use of the term “we” shows how personally important his reporting days in
Oregon remain to him.
He
went on to serve as an aide to Goldschmidt, earned a master’s at the University
of Maryland and doctorate at the University of Washington, and teach journalism
through his retirement in 2004. But he never forgot those years in Oregon,
which shaped both the state and the young reporter covering that state.
