The Year in Review

Will Keller, formerly of Odessa and now residing in Okanogan, was presented with an Outstanding Award for Stewardship at the annual meeting of the Society for Range Management. Keller, employed by the Natural Resource Conservation Service, has been a member of the Society for 33 years.

An active-shooter drill involving Odessa Police, Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office personnel, Town of Odessa personnel, Odessa volunteer firefighters and EMTs, hospital personnel and school district students and staff was held to help prepare the community for the eventuality of such an occurrence. Some school students were evacuated to the community center, while others remained in their classrooms in lockdown.

Roland Singer was named Deputy of the Year by Lincoln County Sheriff Wade Magers.

Odessa Air Service, the town’s newest business, hosted a Meet and Greet luncheon at Any Occasion Banquet Hall to which the entire community was invited.

An attempted child abduction from a park in the town of Sprague made the national news.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Ecology, upon performing a routine inspection of Odessa’s shutter biodiesel plant, found it necessary to perform a major cleanup of toxic chemicals that had been left at the plant by the previous operators.

Casey Schlomer was named Miss Odessa for 2015.

Cole Kissler, Brad Johnston, Elizabeth Larson, Chance Messer and Thorson Wehr won prizes at the Mid-Columbian Regional Science and Engineering Fair held in the Tri-Cities.

Motorcycle enthusiasts began arriving in Odessa for two weekends of racing.

The Livestock Producers Cooperative Association’s meat processing plant at Odessa’s industrial park reopened following a shutdown of several weeks due to cash-flow shortages.

The Odessa Golf Course clubhouse began offering lunches and dinners from its small kitchen under the direction of Danielle Hardung and Suzie Deife.

The Desert 100 motorcycle endurance race was held on Wes and Faye King’s property southwest of town. The Odessa Chamber of Commerce sponsored a hospitality tent that netted the organization more than $7,000.

The Friends of the Pool Walk-a-Thon raised $3,000 for maintenance and operation of the Odessa Aquatic Recreation Facility.

The Spring Fling events drew many people into town, including several hundred who attended the quilt show held in the school gymnasium.

Dan Read was hired as the school’s new superintendent, following retirement of Suellen White.

After raising the necessary money, the Harrington High School band took a trip to Disneyland, where they also performed.

Two fund-raising community events filled the same weekend, the Memorial Healthcare Foundation’s Wine-tasting and Auction in Odessa and the Cruisin’ Harrington event in that neighboring town.

The Odessa High School chapter of Future Business Leaders of America won the Lead2Feed Leadership Challenge, in which $25,000 went to a charity of their choice and $20,000 in Apple computer products went to the school.

Those who departed in 2015

January: Edith M. Roloff.

February: Linda Kay Burghard, William L. Myers, L. Geraldine Goetz.

March: Neil N. Lobe, Leroy W. Kuest, Michael B. Walter, Carolyn E. Goetz.

April: Paul J. Kuch, Veda Virginia Mills Lucas.

May: Cecil Gene Pfeifer, Richard A. (Rick) Goetz, Kenneth G. Melcher, Melissa D. (Weishaar) Ray.

June: Zachary Andrew Zagelow, Matthew W. Bren, James Ralph Lathrop, Ronald W. Hardt.

July: Tracie Renken McMurtrey, Richard Miller, Gertrude Weber Glanzman.

August: Lola M. Davis, Betty Ellen Watters, Amy Jo Schauerman Giese, J. Michael Connolly, DeWane S. Buddrius.

September: Ray Quilici, Laura Hardt, Ronald S. Peterson, Jean B. Parr.

October: Herbert V. Zimbleman, Terence Markus Gross, Robert J. Ruff, William (Bill) Nixon.

November: Ronald George Walter, Virginia Fiess, William T. (Bill) Smith, Nellie Quilici, Jefferey David Hardt.

December: Russell Thorson, Nancy Elizabeth Liner, Judith Ann Iverson, Elizabeth Jane Graves Gabe, Richard Laney, Gloria G. Wraspir, Herschel Heimbigner, Shirley M. Swartz, Clark Miller, Scott Heimbigner.