booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

Morton, even smaller towns where timber was all there was. This time, Gardner found
many allies in the Legislature, which provided funds for worker retraining and economic
development, including money for new infrastructure. In 1991, the lawmakers extended
unemployment benefits and offered assistance with rent and mortgage payments. Still,
there were “too many food banks and not enough family-wage jobs,” the governor said,
shaking his head during a visit
with his friend Jim Coates. The
former Weyerhaeuser millwright
headed a food distribution
network in Hoquiam that was
struggling to meet demand. “I’m
fed up with the feds,” Booth told
a community awards banquet
in Aberdeen, adding that
Oregon Gov. Barbara Roberts
was equally exasperated with
the Bush Administration. “They
express their concern over
endangered birds by turning
themselves into ostriches,” the
governor said. “They should give us back control of our timberlands and let us manage
them under a regional authority.” Fundamentally a free trader, Booth reversed course as
the timber supply situation grew more dire and called for limitations on log exports, even
though it would cost the state upwards of $60 million a year in lost revenue.
In his farewell State of the State Address in 1993, Gardner said he felt compelled to
share an epiphany from his last visit to Grays Harbor. “There are plenty of trees left in those
forests,” he said, “but no longer many jobs. Supply, demand and environmental issues have
conspired against Hoquiam. I’ve been there many times, most recently this past fall, just
after a permanent mill closure put another 600 people out of work.”
He told of speaking at a high school assembly. “When I looked out at those young
women and men, just embarked on adulthood, full of hope for their future but perplexed
and scared by what was happening to their parents, I was moved. I told them that nothing
is permanent – not even the town where they had been born, or the woods and the mills
that gave it life. I told them that while their parents and grandparents had lived good and
productive lives in Hoquiam, that same life might not be available to all of them. I advised
them to look ahead and not cling to the past. I urged them to continue their education
and to look, perhaps, beyond Hoquiam, beyond the mills they could see and the trees that
surrounded them toward the more prosperous economies on I-5. I thought it was a pretty
good speech,” Booth told the legislators. “It was honest and it made sense. It had hope. It
Booth talks with Hoquiam High School students. Many of their parents were
impacted by the logging restrictions. Kathy Quigg ©The Daily World (Aberdeen,
WA) 1992 Reprinted with permission.
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