Rejection results in murder-suicide

The tiny town of Echo was rocked by a murder-suicide in July of 1908 after a popular young woman of the town refused the affections of her grandfather's hired man.

Elsie Kenison, an 18-year-old recent graduate of Echo public school and a popular resident of the town, had been spending time in early July with B.R. Stoffel, a 24-year-old hired hand working for her grandfather, W.W. Whitworth, on the family farm. Rumor had it that Kenison told Stoffel she was not interested in pursuing a further relationship with him.

On July 23, 1908, at about 9:30 a.m., Kenison was in the house with an 8-year-old neighbor girl. Stoffel entered the bedroom where Kenison was working and shot her through the mouth with a .38 caliber pistol, the bullet passing through her body and out through the window screen into the yard. Kenison slumped to the floor across a chair and was dead within minutes.

Stoffel fled the house, tossing the pistol into a rocking chair on the front porch as he ran away across the low hills north of Echo. The neighbor girl, who was not in the room when the incident happened, entered the bedroom and saw Kenison on the floor. She ran to the barn to tell Kenison's grandfather about the shooting.

Within moments the neighbors had been notified, and a posse of about 40 men was organized by Marshal Hoggard of Echo to track Stoffel down. Stoffel had about 20 minutes' head start on the trackers, but Hoggard expected to run the suspected killer down without much trouble.

While the citizens of Echo were searching the sage brush-covered hills north of town, Stoffel circled around the foothills and returned to the Whitworth barn. Shortly before noon, two hours after killing Kenison, he hanged himself from a beam.

Several members of the posse had lingered behind to keep watch on the farm, and one happened to peek through a crack in the barn. He saw Stoffel's body and, thinking the murderer was holed up inside and heavily fortified, the man shot through the crack, hitting Stoffel's corpse. The defenders rushed into the barn to find they had shot a dead man.

Runners were sent to notify the posse of Stoffel's suicide. An order for bloodhounds from Walla Walla was canceled. Umatilla County Sheriff Til Taylor and a deputy had joined the chase, and called the county coroner to preside over the bodies. Letters found in Stoffel's pocket included one from Kenison, which told the man that she could not love him.

Umatilla: from boom to bust and back

The city of Umatilla, located at the confluence of the Umatilla and Columbia rivers in northeast Oregon, was once a boom town serving the throngs of people traveling from Portland to the gold fields of Idaho. Established as a transfer stop for miners and supplies from the river to the inland route in 1862, Umatilla Landing was first platted in 1863, just after the establishment of Umatilla County.

The town quickly grew to a population of 1,500-1,800 permanent residents, and as many or more transients moving along the Portland-Umatilla-Boise route, the shortest way to get supplies to the gold fields. Umatilla Landing from 1863-1867 featured trading stands, a drug store, hotels, dance halls, feed stables, barber shops, blacksmith shops and 22 saloons, along with many other stores. Six stores averaged sales of $200,000 a year, and about 95% of the payments were in gold dust.

By 1864 the town had a mayor, a marshal and a town council, and Umatilla was designated the county seat in 1865, when the first school was also built. A stage route established in 1864 hauled supplies from Umatilla to the foot of the Blue Mountains, and from there John Hailey and his partner William Ish took the goods by saddle train to Boise, serving 15,000 miners in the Boise area.

Chinese passing through the area also established a village two or three miles below Umatilla.

In the winter, when the Columbia River iced over, the permanent residents spent their days ice skating, playing games and practical jokes, dancing and waiting for the return of the steamboats. The first steamers to arrive each spring were packed so tightly with passengers that the officers and deck hands could barely get around to do their jobs.

The decline of Umatilla was as sudden as its expansion. Alternative routes to the gold fields were developed in 1866, and Umatilla's trade evaporated quickly. With the establishment of other, larger cities the county seat was moved to Pendleton in 1868. And when the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads linked in 1869, the Portland-Umatilla-Boise route traffic dried up. Umatilla's population dropped precipitously. 

Travel writer Theodor Kirchhoff stepped off the steamboat at Umatilla in 1872 to find the town he had known was gone. Instead of harness bells jingling while hundreds of muleteers' whips cracked, Kirchhoff witnessed the wind howling around empty buildings with shattered windows, blinding clouds of dust, sand flats and sagebrush, and a population of 100. "From the opposite shore of the river, a few miserable Indian tents glumly watch the city sink into ruin," Kirchhoff wrote in his account.

Today's Umatilla, however, has rebounded nicely. The construction of McNary Dam from 1947-1954 brought an influx of new residents, but it was the opening of Interstate 82 in the late 1980s that put the city back on the map. The growth of Hermiston to the east and the Port of Morrow to the west have helped reestablish Umatilla as a crossroads community along the Columbia.

The history of Umatilla County's first boom town was placed in the hands of a newly formed historical society in 1993. The Umatilla Museum, featuring 157 years of the city's ups and downs, is located at 911 Sixth St.

Hermiston man flies B-17 once more

Patrick Martin's hands wrapped around the wheel firmly, and his feet moved to familiar spots on the rudder pedals of the B-17G after climbing into the co-pilot's seat and buckling in on July 15, 1994. The 72-year-old quickly glanced over the gauges, then at the horizon again, his instincts taking over as the plane soared over Oregon's Coast Range.

He's 22 again, and it's April 11, 1944. Capt. Patrick A. Martin, United States Army Air Force, is on a final bombing run over Rostock, Germany, with the 335th Squadron, 95th Bomb Group, 8th Air Force. 

Martin was bounced out of the service in 1954 due to a reduction of forces, something for which he never forgave the Army Air Force. A La Grande native, Patrick settled in Hermiston after leaving the service and went to work for Union Pacific Railroad. He retired in 1986.

Martin was able to relive to his first professional love — flying — thanks to family friend Barbara Hansen. Martin's family wanted to get him in the air again after he was diagnosed in May of 1994 with inoperable cancer of the pancreas, and had decided with his wife Doris that he would forego chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

Hansen helped line up a B-17G owned by Evergreen Ventures Inc. that was scheduled to appear at the 1994 U.S. Bank Rose Festival Airshow in Hillsboro. Sue Petersen, the coordinator of the World War II planes for the show, called Martin and asked, "How would you like to fly in a B-17 again?"

Evergreen pilot Bill Maszala watched Martin's eyes as he took control of the plane. "You could tell he was back in time," Maszala said.

After 5 minutes at the stick, Martin banked the plane around on a gentle 180-degree turn and gave the seat back to co-pilot Greg Klein, then stood behind the seat and watched every move the pilots made until landing.

"It was more than everything I wanted it to be," Martin said, gazing at the plane once they were on the ground again. "It was just like something I'd done before. I recognized the feel of everything. My eyes went right to the gauges. I just know I could take it off and land it."

Patrick Martin died May 20, 1995, at the age of 73.