By Mary Owen
Gordon Munro was once a self-professed “king of the wallflowers” until he discovered his knack for storytelling.
“My first boss sent me to give a presentation to a city council,” Munro said. “I thought I was going to die. My legs were actually shaking when I got up there to speak.”
After several presentations, Munro decided to do something about his nerves and joined Toastmasters for three years.
“I got comfortable enough that I could stand up in front of people without falling apart,” he said. “Then around 1989, I joined a group of men that met once a month. One of the men taught us to drum. Another man told a folktale.”
Enthralled, Munro shared the ditties word-for-word with his friend, Gwendolyn Endicott, a mythology teacher at Portland Community College.
“This went on for months until finally one night she told me I was a storyteller and that I was coming to her class to tell stories,” he said. “I’ve been doing that ever since.”
Munro will share stories at the 36th annual Christmas Festival at Silver Falls State Park, Dec. 14 and 15, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., in the South Falls Historic District.
Munro’s own life is a story. To put himself through college, he worked four summers at Alaskan canneries, sometimes up to 22 hours at a stretch. After graduating from Oregon State University, he moved to the Portland area. A civil engineer at Kennedy/Jenks, a consulting firm, Munro lives with his wife, Melanie Rae, four horses, two dogs and five parrots on a farm five miles from Silverton.
About eight years ago, Munro began telling stories, folk and historical, at First Friday in Silverton. “Only two people showed up,” he said. “They sat there for two hours.”
The couple, Jim and Erika Toler, asked Munro if he would tell Homer Davenport stories. Although he had never told stories about real people before, he found Davenport to be quite the story. He shared Davenport tales with Dorothy Ramig’s third-graders at Eugene Field School, and began his venture into Oregon’s history. “I now have about 150 stories that are early Oregon history, folk and fairy tales from around the world,” he said.
Munro believes story time is where “mountains are made from scarlet crystals, the wind whispers secrets in your ears, stones hold the wisdom of the ages and trees walk by your side. It’s where shapeshifters roam the land, human beings and animals speak the same language and words become magic.”
A good storyteller leaves room for the listener to enter the story, Munro said. “It’s always interesting that I will tell a story, but each person hears it differently. So I’m really telling dozens of stories at once, which is one of the gifts of stories. They have layer upon layer of meanings.”
