Running Community Responding To Need In Phoenix, Talent

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor

In the midst of last week's news about devastating fires and burned towns in Oregon, Mike Blackmore made a quick decision to try and do something, even a small thing, to help out. 

He turned to his friends on the Facebook Group "Running Shoe Geeks" and put a call out to collect new or lightly worn shoes that he could deliver to Southern Oregon. 

On Tuesday, Sept. 8, driven by high winds and bone-dry conditions, fires raced through the state's forests and into several communities. Large sections of Phoenix and Talent, just a few miles south of Medford, were reduced to charred ruins. 

An estimated 40-45 percent of students in the Phoenix School District lost homes.

Today, those families need all the help they can get. They are strewn across the valley, taking shelter at the Jackson County Fairgrounds where they can get assistance from the Red Cross, camping in parks, and moved-in with friends and relatives. 

Blackmore, who is also the head cross country coach at Linfield University in McMinnville and a former All-American at Oregon, thought of the runners. 

"I think we need to normalize as much as we can right now for kids in general," Blackmore said. "I've been following the news about the increased rates of depression and suicide for kids 18-24 with COVID and everything going on right now. And these families losing everything they have, now. What's their next step in life?"

Their next step?

It's a question almost too enormous to tackle. 

But Blackmore went after something smaller: Running shoes for the Phoenix cross country team and anyone else who lost them. 

He got immediate replies from members of the Facebook group, which numbers more than 15,000. 

Locally, his own stash and some from friends in Beaverton and McMinnville totaled about 40 pairs of shoes and an assortment of other running gear. A woman in Germany, a former Linfield alum, emailed to say she is packing a box. 

Three running shoe stores across the country contacted Blackmore and asked where they could send shoes. One from Southern California has 50 pairs on the way. 

On Thursday, I hitched a ride with Blackmore and we drove south through nearly 300 miles of Western Oregon -- every square inch of it choked by relentless, hazardous smoke that has engulfed the state for a week. 

On Interstate 5 in the Willamette Valley you could not see the Cascade foothills or the Coast Range through the leaden haze. 

Where the smoke pooled up in higher concentrations -- Eugene and Sutherlin and Grants Pass seemed particularly bad -- you could smell it inside the van. 

We wore masks, for more than one reason. 

Just after noon, we reached Medford and met Ashland coach Hans Voskes and his wife, Joan, in a parking lot on the north end of town. We stuffed boxes into their SUV. Hans, who once coached at Phoenix, is less than two years from a 72-day hospital stay to repair an aneurysm of the descending aorta. 

Voskes is beloved in Southern Oregon and across the state and he's part of the Steens Mountain Running Camp family, which knits together the running communities across Oregon's diverse landscape. (He was E.J. Holland's coach the past four years).

That's how Blacmore knows Voskes and trusts him to make the right decisions with the donations. Voskes will work with Phoenix coach John Cornet to place the right shoes with the kids who need them most. 

The need is great. Donations have been rolling in all week.

"If we can help them begin to normalize asap, that's a start," Blackmore said. "I think the running community wants to see these kids celebrate their own achievements and not have to think so much about what they're going through right now."

There will be time for achievements later. The Oregon high school cross country season is postponed until February. It would have never been able to operate this week, anyway, because of the fires and resulting smoke.

Cornet, who also teaches at Phoenix High, was in a meeting while we were handing over boxes to Voskes. The district is aiming to get school back and running next week but the towns are still regaining electricity and running water. 

We reached Cornet by phone and he told us how we could view the damage in Talent. 

Blackened median strips and fields and trees were evident on the freeway south of Medford, but driving along Talent Road the scene was shattering. Twisted steel and naked chimneys stood above an expanse of charred neighborhoods. Splattered Pepto-pink fire retardant showed the strategic locations where planes dropped chemicals to fight the fire and keep it from advancing into the next neighborhood. 

We took it in, returned to Interstate 5, and headed back north, into the smoke. 

One small effort to do something, anything, with more on the way. 

Note - In a follow up with Cornet, he said the the district has been overwhelmed with clothing donations and currently has all that it can handle at the moment.

As far as our donation Thursday, "Once we get some of that in the hands of the high school XC runners who lost homes, we’ll be determining what other athletes at the high and middle school have needs and get the surplus out," he said. 

District and city officials are starting to look ahead and organize items in a manner in which people can continuously get what they need as time progresses. What the district is asking for, currently, is monetary donations to the Fire Relief Fund via the Paypal account or in the form of gift cards. More info is available at the district webpage at www.phoenix.k12.or.us 

OREGON WILDFIRES INTERVIEWS