=During 2023 football 
season, KLYC pulled Linfield Sports Network internet audio stream and simulcasted Wildcat games. KLYC
is a community partner of Linfield Athletics. The Maxwell Field jumbo
scoreboard KLYC animated banner (click on video above) and KLYC ad (see below) in the Linfield home game
printed programs are part of the sponsorship package.=
By Starla Pointer,
McMinnville N-R/News-Register, May 16, 2023
Stan
Primozich, last year’s McMinnville Man of the Year, prepared to honor this
year’s winner, Gene Zinda, at the Distinguished Service Awards banquet
Wednesday night.
He
lifted a thick sheaf of paper, indicating how many pages would be needed to
list all of Zinda’s contributions over the last 60-plus years.
“Gene
has given so much to this community and to all of us,” Primozich said.
The
same could be said of all the winners honored at the DSA event: Junior Citizen
Deven Paolo; Outstanding Farmers Marv and Georgia Bernards; and Outstanding
Educator Kindra Butler; and Marianne Mills, Woman of the Year.
Woman
of the Year was the final award presented at the banquet, hosted by the
McMinnville City Club. Chelsey Nichol of the City Club summed up the evening by
saying, “I’m thankful to live in a world with Marianne Mills in it … in a town
with all our winners in it.”
The
2022 McMinnville Distinguished Service Awards event followed a tradition
started by the McMinnville Jaycees in the mid-1950s.
After
the Jaycees chapter closed, the DSA program was continued by a committee of
previous winners, then by the Odd Fellows. This was the McMinnville City Club’s
first year as host.
The
evening’s keynote speaker, Dr. Scott Gibson, discussed the role volunteerism
plays in building relationships and community.
Working
together sparks understanding among people, he said. They may have different
political or religious views, for instance, but they are working on a common
goal.
We
need to be open to diverse viewpoints, Gibson said. That will help counteract
the polarization and separation that currently exists in this country.
Anger,
lies, greed and the media try to divide us, he said; we need to combat that
with community, service and friendship.
“We
need to get together and listen to each other again,” he said. “Start by recognizing
the good in people, even if they’re different from us.”
A
longtime member of the McMinnville Lions Club, Gibson called for
“re-energizing” clubs and organizations that perform community service. “Make
service cool again,” he said. “Do something worthwhile while enjoying the
company of others.”
The
DSA winners did that, he said, and others should follow their lead.
Gibson
prepared written remarks prior to the banquet, but almost lost them when a
spill at his banquet table threatened to tear the printed pages to smithereens.
His
notes saved, he opened with a joke about the growing presence of artificial
intelligence. “I’m the last human speaker before ChatGPT takes over,” he
quipped, adding — presumably joking — that computers may even someday take over
his job as a physician who performs cancer screenings.
During
the awards presentation, Primozich listed many of Zinda’s history of
accomplishments: managing Skyline Manufacturing; founding the Rotary art and
wine auction that supported scholarships and Rotary Nature Park; serving on the
McMinnville Water & Light Commission for 15 years and on other boards such
as the McMinnville Downtown Association.
He
also led the Linfield Partners in Progress campaign; expanded the St. Vincent
de Paul food pantry while president of that organization; and started a program
to provide shoes for children at his Windemere real estate office.
The
Man of the Year award came as a “total surprise,” Zinda said.
He
said local residents had inspired him when he came to McMinnville in 1959. “I
learned to give back to the community,” he said.
Woman
of the Year Mills also has a long list of accomplishments in McMinnville, said
Ronni Lacroute, the 2022 winner who presented this year’s award.
A
1972 Linfield graduate, Mills is a longtime educator who started her career at
Amity High School and retired from Mac High after serving as one of the first
female Oregon high school athletic directors. She went on to work for
McMinnville Habitat for Humanity for six years, three as director.
After
retiring from public schools, Mills also supervised student teachers at
Linfield for 10 years and taught pickleball classes. She served on the
McMinnville Public Library Foundation Board and First Baptist Church board,
volunteered at Memorial Elementary School, where her granddaughters go to
school, helped with elections, and other community committees.
As
a P.E. teacher and coach in the 1970s, Mills worked with some of the first
competitive high school sports for girls. “Girls didn’t have access to high-level
coaching then,” Lacroute said. “Marianne committed to providing that for them.”
She
was inducted into the Amity Athletic Hall of Fame in 2016 for those efforts.
As
a counselor, tennis coach and AD at Mac High, Mills was “a leader in a field
where women haven’t always had a role,” Lacroute said.
Mills
said helping girls achieve on the athletic field was very important to her. “It
was so rewarding seeing them have opportunities.”
She
noted how she has kept in touch with many of her former students and players.
“I like people. I valued relationships,” she said. “I think that shines through
in everything I’ve done.”
Friends
were among people who congratulated her after she was surprised to learn she’d
been named Woman of the Year.
A
member of a family with deep ties to McMinnville, Mills grew up in Waldport and
came to Yamhill County for college. She said she’s glad she stayed in the area.
“This
has been a great place to call home. So many opportunities,” she said in her
acceptance speech.
“To
live a rich life, you need to be involved with others,” she said. “I have been
richly blessed to be a member of this community.”
Paolo,
honored as Junior Citizen, has been active in McMinnville, especially in
supporting young people learning about careers in the trades, since he and his
brother, Keath, started Solid Form Fabrication. They host interns and
contribute to Mac High’s career tech programs.
Deven
Paolo also spearheaded the creation of a foundation that provides scholarships
to students who plan to study trades. The goal is for it to give out $20,000
annually.
“College
is not for all, and high schools didn’t have shop classes anymore,” he said of
how he became interested in helping students.
He’s
pleased by the results, he said. “The impact you see … it’s always cool to see
success stories.”
He
recalled his own inspirations for career and community service, including Larry
Judd, who taught drafting and woodshop at Yamhill Carlton High School, and
Coach Dean Heuberger.
In
accepting the DSA honor, Paolo also thanked his family for its support: father
Murray Paolo, who also set an example; his brother and business partner, Keath;
and especially his wife, Randi, and children Kasen, a high school junior, and
Ellia, a freshman.
Young
Educator of the Year Butler is in her fourth year of teaching kindergarten at
Wascher Elementary School in Lafayette.
She
always knew she wanted to be a teacher, she said. Working at the Bear Hugs
preschool as a McMinnville High School student only strengthened her resolve.
“I’m
big on relationships and connections,” she said. “I love to build relationships
with students, and every day I see I’m making a difference in their lives.”
The
Bernards, Farmers of the Year, own and run Bernards Farm west of McMinnville.
They took over the family farm and Wallace Berry Farm in January 2022.
They
grow crops that they sell at farmers markets, supply to restaurants and offer
at a farmstand in the vintage barn on their property on Highway 18.
Bernards
Farm has been selling at the McMinnville Farmers Market for 22 years. Marv
serves on the MDA’s market committee.
He
joked that his role on the farm is “playing in the dirt.” His wife does all the
rest, he said.
The
role women play in farming is too often forgotten, Marv Bernards said. His
mother, Chris, “built Bernards Farm,” which started by selling corn, then added
bedding plants and hanging baskets. Now Georgia “keeps the engines of the farm
running,” he said.
Both
he and his wife said they are honored to be recognized — and honored to be part
of the McMinnville community.
……………..
FRONT PAGE PHOTO - N-R May 16, 2023, print edition: Marianne Mills walks through the crowd of supporters at the Distinguished Service Awards event May 10 to receive her Woman of the Year award. Mills has been a teacher, coach, athletic director, supervisor of student teachers and director of McMinnville Habitat for Humanity, to name just a few of her accomplishments. (Photo by Rachel Thompson/McMinnville N-R/News-Register
Linfielder Odis Avritt graduated in 1963 from Portland’s
Cleveland (Commerce) High School. For Cleveland he competed in football,
wrestling and track & field. He was inducted into the PIL/Portland Interscholastic
League Hall of Fame in 2008.
Odis, Linfield Class of 1968, was profiled the PIL/Portland
Interscholastic League Hall of Fame website “Members of the Month” feature. The
profile which follows was written by Dick Baltus, Wilson High School, Portland,
Class of 1973). Slight edits by
Wildcatville.
High School Honors: Football letter winner; 1st Team
All-PIL; 2nd Team All-State; Wrestling letter winner; Track and Field letter
winner
College Honors: Football four-year letter winner at Linfield
College; 1st Team All-Conference; 1st Team All-Northwest; 1st Team All-West
Coast; Honorable Mention Little All-American
A person can find almost anything on the World Wide Web these days. Photos of dogs, cats and grandchildren. Close-ups of half-eaten cheeseburgers. Tips for cleaning potatoes in a dishwasher (don’t laugh, it worked). Selfies. Lots of selfies. So…many…selfies.
And, if a person digs deep enough, they can
find Odis Avritt (Cleveland 1963) claiming his 15 seconds of fame
in a home video promoting his “famous” chili during a Linfield College tailgate
party. See video: https://youtu.be/yjiC9jQq-Ng
So what if the video has only
been viewed by 106 people (107 now). And who cares if it’s only eight seconds
long, meaning Odis left seven seconds of stardom on the table. Presumably next
to the cheese and onions.
If Odis and his chili needed some
fame they got a small dose of it then, and he’s about to get served up some
more. But odds are Odis doesn’t need any more of it. He isn’t the kind of guy
who sought any in the first place, though he definitely got his share of
acclaim. At Cleveland. At Linfield College. In his long and successful career
in sales and marketing.
Odis competed in four sports in
high school, though he gave up baseball after one year and didn’t wrestle for
much longer. “It didn’t work for me; I don’t know what it was,” says Odis,
before proceeding to give us a pretty good idea what it was. “My coach, Don
York, would always match me with the best wrestler on the team. This guy was a
senior and I was a sophomore and he always tied me up in knots. I didn’t like
that.”
What Odis gained from giving up
baseball and wrestling was a greater focus on his two best sports, football and
track and field. He responded by excelling in both.
But before he did, he was a kid
who grew up playing sports in the streets of S.E. Portland’s Hosford Abernethy
neighborhood. After his father died when Odis was very young, he was raised by
his mother, Elizabeth Washington, whose own story is worthy of being told. Odis
provides a brief excerpt from it:
“She was a very interesting
woman. She started out in nursing, at the bottom rung of the profession. She
wound up getting her LPN (licensed practical nurse certification) from Clark
College in Vancouver, then her RN. Years later, she earned her bachelor’s
degree from the U of O Nursing School. She wound up working 35 years as a nurse
and was the first woman of color to be appointed chairperson of the Oregon
State Nurses Association.”
Even with the steady and positive
presence of his mother, who is “still doing well” at age 95, Odis says he
missed out on the benefits of having a father in his life. “Without having a
father involved, attending my games and things like that, I just went out and
played,” he says. “I didn’t really know anything about the things I could do to
improve.”
Odis was fortunate to have some
good friends to help fill that void, including classmate and fellow PIL Hall of
Fame inductee, Dennis Patera, and his older brother, Norm. “I’d work out with
Norm at the Cleveland track, and others would come over and we’d play flag
football,” Odis says. “He was very much a mentor who encouraged me to keep
playing. It was pretty important to have a person do that for me.”
By the time Odis was a sophomore
at Cleveland, he was already making a name for himself in football and track.
He’d started running track to help improve his speed for football and
ultimately became one of the top sprinters in the PIL.
While the Cleveland football team
had “a tough time” during his tenure, Odis had no trouble making enough of an
impression on his own, as a running back, linebacker and cornerback, to be
named 1st Team All-City and 2nd Team All-State in 1962. He also earned a spot
on the 1963 Metro Shrine football team.
In one memorable game that Odis
considers his best high school performance, he ran for one score and returned
an interception for a second in Cleveland’s upset win over Madison.
Odis had long dreamed of playing
football at the University of Oregon and was disappointed the Ducks never
called while he was racking up high school honors. Washington, Washington
State, Idaho and other schools did, but the interest wasn’t mutual. “I wanted
to play winning football since I hadn’t done it since grade school,” Odis says.
One Saturday in 1962 Odis found
himself in front of a TV watching an NAIA bowl game pitting Linfield against
Pittsburg State. By game’s end, he’d become intrigued by the notion of being a
Wildcat and reached out to one of Cleveland’s assistant coaches to learn more
about the private school with the long history of winning football. After hearing
his coach sing Linfield’s praises, Odis learned Wildcat coach Paul Durham,
coincidentally, was going to be speaking at Cleveland’s senior year sports
banquet (Odis wouldn’t learn until many years later that Durham had taught at
Cleveland before taking the Linfield job).
The two were introduced at the
banquet and by fall Odis was competing for the Wildcats in football and, the
next spring, running track where, as a freshman, he would set the 100-yard
school record of 9.7 seconds. “My teammate broke it a year later,” he says,
just a touch ruefully.
In football, Odis excelled as a
running back and catching passes out of the backfield. His honors included 1st
Team All-Conference, All-Northwest and All-West Coast teams and honorable
mention Little All-American. He was inducted into the Linfield Hall of Fame as
a member of the second Wildcat team to compete for a national championship.
As a senior, Odis won the
Wildcat’s Most Inspirational Player award, an early indication of the
leadership skills that would help him achieve great success in the business
world. After serving as an Army clerk in Viet Nam, landed a sales and marketing
job with a paper distribution company before moving onto jobs with
Weyerhaeuser, Kimberly-Clark and Grays Harbor paper companies. While at
Weyerhaeuser, he earned one company-wide Salesman of the Year award and was
Mill Representative of the Year multiple times.
“All through school, chemistry
was the worst subject I could think of,” he says. “I never thought I’d be
working in a related business.”
By the time Odis retired in 2018,
he had left the paper business but, from the sounds of his retirement schedule,
he forgot to leave the working world. He moved back to a neighborhood in the
Cleveland High district and for more than 20 years has been active in the
school’s alumni association, serving two terms as president, taking charge of a
golf tournament and helping lead fund-raising efforts among his many
contributions.
Odis and his wife, Alicia, share
children from previous marriages. That includes a son, Taylor Avritt, Linfield
Classs of 2011, who followed him onto the Linfield gridiron.
“The most fun I ever had at
Linfield was going back to watch my son play,” he says. “That was in the early
2000s and was the impetus that brought a bunch of my former teammates together
again to tailgate and watch the team play.”
Odis is also an avid golfer and
serves on the PIL Hall of Fame Selection Committee, helping pick men and women
who, like him, have distinguished themselves in high school athletics and,
often, beyond.
“Being inducted was one of the
greatest things that ever happened to me,” says the 2008 inductee. “I never
really thought something like that would happen. My wife and mom and kids all
attended the ceremony with me. It was great to be back in contact with athletes
I’d grown up with or who competed before me — people I might only have had a
little knowledge of before. So to be able to meet them and, in some instances,
develop lasting relationships with them has been great.”
No doubt those people would say
the same thing about Odis. Especially if they’re fans of chili.
#
Photos: Odis Avritt
and Taylor Avritt (both photos from Linfield Athletics) as Linfield football
players. Video (by Wildcatville): Odis Avritt
Oregonian – April 23, 1944 – Instructor Flies During Furlough
The Torch – 1946 – Eastern Oregon State College yearbook –Ted Wilson, a graduating (bachelor of science degree) senior
Oregonian – May 25,
1950 – Prep Patter
Oregonian – Feb. 5,
1961 – Northwest Notes
Oregonian – April 17,
1977 – Perry’s Basketball Camp
Oregonian – April
13, 1982 – 20 years at Linfield, Ex-coach misses competition
