By Melissa Wagoner What would a celebration of the famous political cartoonist, Homer Davenport, be without a celebration of cartoons? “To that end, the International Cartoon Contest has returned,” organizer, Gus Frederick, wrote in a recent press release. “As in past years, the competition is for ‘political’ or ‘editorial’ cartoons on any topic as long as they are not libelous, […]
A Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign – initiated Aug. 1 by historian, Gus Frederick, and a group referring to themselves as the “Silverton Freethinkers” – has succeeded in raising over $2,500 to fund the digitization of The Torch of Reason, a weekly newspaper published by the Liberal Oregon University from 1896 to 1903. “It was a prominent voice during the ‘Golden Age […]
A Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign – initiated Aug. 1 by historian, Gus Frederick, and a group referring to themselves as the “Silverton Freethinkers” – has succeeded in raising over $2,500 to fund the digitization of The Torch of Reason, a weekly newspaper published by the Liberal Oregon University from 1896 to 1903. “It was a prominent voice during the ‘Golden Age […]
By Melissa Wagoner Did you know Silverton was once home to the first secular university west of the Mississippi? Created in the 1890s by a group of “freethinking” Silvertonians – including Homer Davenport’s cousin, Pearl Geer, and his sister, Alice – the Liberal University of Oregon (LUO) aimed to “impartially cover and stimulate the higher culture and motives of life.” […]
By Melissa Wagoner It may not look like much, but this year the railway bridge over Silver Creek in Silverton – otherwise known as MP 10.6 or simply the Silver Creek Bridge – will turn 100 years old. Built in 1923 by the American Bridge Company, a company that – founded in 1900 in Pennsylvania – not only pioneered the […]
By Melissa Wagoner When Homer Davenport expert, Gus Frederick, learned that the original of one of Davenport’s most famous cartoons was for sale by a private seller out of South Carolina he immediately made an offer. The deal took several months but eventually “Look Who’s Coming” made its way to Silverton. “It showed a barren tree, filled up with a multitude of different […]
By Brenna Wiegand A string of past Our Town stories reflect the flurry of activity encircling the old wading pool in Silverton’s Coolidge McClaine Park. It all started in 2014 when Silverton participants in that year’s Ford Family Foundation Leadership program chose to beautify the wading pool/fountain in Coolidge McClaine as its public service project. Ford Family Foundation offered $5,000 […]
By James Day Native Silvertonian Norm English has published a new novel about his hometown and will be on hand to discuss it at a pair of book signings. Fireflies to Butterflies is English’s third book, and he describes it as historic fiction. “The main character is fictional, but the story incorporates interactions with some real people in Silverton during […]
By Stephen Floyd When The Silverton Appeal was established in 1880, the city was barely older than the paper’s founder, 25-year-old Henry Guild. The Appeal outlasted numerous competitors during its early decades and survived two world wars, the Great Depression, the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, and the advent of the internet. But Silverton’s first and longest-running newspaper […]
By Melissa Wagoner Gus Frederick has always been interested in the art of cartooning. But in 1972, he’d never heard of the famous political cartoonist Homer Davenport, let alone seen any of his art. It wasn’t until a shift at the local cannery, where he met several other cartoon fanatics, that he learned a famous cartoonist once lived in the […]
By Melissa Wagoner Affectionately known as “Homer Days,” the Homer Davenport Community Festival – held the first Friday through Sunday in August (the sixth through eighth this year) – is absolutely unique. An offshoot of the Silverton Arts Association’s, Family Festival of the Arts, held for the first timåe in 1980, the Homer Days festival is the only celebration in […]
By Melissa Wagoner Strawberries have grown wild in Oregon for millennia and were picked in abundance by Indigenous peoples. But even cultivated strawberries have a long history, having been carefully transported, via the Oregon Trail, by Quaker nurseryman Henderson Luelling in 1846. “Silverton has a long history as an agricultural center and strawberries, while not as prolific now as in the […]
By Kristine Thomas A Renaissance man. A historian, photographer, researcher and writer. A go-to-guy. Those are some of the words used to describe Silverton resident Gus Frederick. Now, he has one more title to his long list – Silverton’s First Citizen for 2015. “I was surprised, definitely honored and humbled to be recognized by my community,” Frederick said. However, he […]
By Brenna Wiegand These days when local historian Gus Frederick mentions something that happened in ‘72, chances are it’s 1872. Homer Davenport was 5 then, his parents and grandparents having journeyed to Oregon 20 years earlier. As Frederick researches the family in his insatiable quest for Silverton history and as a major proponent of the annual Homer Davenport Community Festival, […]
By Brenna Wiegand It’s getting so an author needn’t wait on tenterhooks for an acceptance letter or having no say in when his book is released. The tide of self publishing “indie authors” continues to swell – and local authors are bobbing to the surface right and left. “It’s the way to go these days,” Silverton author Eric Rappe’ said. […]
By Gus Frederick And so it has begun. The 2012 election season. On the local level we have no massive budgets for extravagant 24-7 televised coverage, yet the lawn signs are popping up like mushrooms. Eleven Silverton citizens are vying for four positions. Everyone has their own favorites, and so do I. And I’d like to share mine and my […]
Although Homer Davenport is known by most as a world famous cartoonist who poked fun at the high and the mighty in public life, he was more than a political caricaturist.
He’s just doing what he loves, but Gus Frederick’s lifelong passion for unearthing local history could yield a heaping of tourism for Silverton. Over the years, Frederick’s research, multi-faceted as any family tree, has resulted in countless films, articles and books as well as live lectures, dramatizations and the like. Naturally, he’s had a hand in Silverton’s Homer Davenport Community Festival throughout its 30-year history.
The cover of Homer Davenport’s most enduring book, The Country Boy, features an illustration by the author/artist of himself, as a youth, sitting next to his father. This was more than just homage to family. Homer was fully aware that without the lifelong support of his father, he would not have been nearly as successful as he was.
What on earth – and Mars – is Gus Frederick up to now? …And where does he find the time? The latest is the release of his book Silverton, which hits shelves July 25.
Being raised in the relatively prosperous period of post-war America, many of us were lulled into a false sense of stability.
Change, a wise-guy once said, is inevitable. Traditions are born, grow and then often change to fit new situations and new circumstances. The recent unilateral decision to “relocate” Homer Davenport Days (from the first weekend in August to third weekend in July) is a case in point.
