By Jakob Mohr
At the beginning of this process, I didn’t really believe I would actually be able to have a conversation with Gresham’s mayor, Shane Bemis. Once I got approved I knew it was game time. Fortunately, finding online information on a public elected official isn’t too hard. After we scheduled a date to meet, I was excited to tell my friends and family. Some shared their personal experience with the Mayor while others sprinkled in their political opinions.
Then the day came.
I walked to the City Hall seeing youths of various ages enjoying the park, feeling the lively energy of Main Street, and seeing the immense construction of Gresham High School. After checking in at the front desk, I trekked up the stairs, which came naturally from being an intern the summer before, so I had a sense of comfort, but today was different. I was greeted and guided to his office and got to, after much anticipation and prediction, meet the mayor.
I sat down with a story idea about high school students in community service, but got up with a different, yet better, take-away.
Mayor Bemis usually reads history and political books on presidential leadership, but just started reading fiction again and getting into poetry. He stepped away to grab a book of short stories by Ernest Hemingway off his desk, and later sent me a photo of a book, Leadership: In Turbulent Times, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I wanted to see his personality shine through the political correctness manner so there’s no better question then seeing what song he would sing at karaoke night. The answer came easily to him with a smile, “Sweet Caroline,” by Neil Diamond. With his three sons getting older, free time is more happens a bit more than it used to, which means more time for his hobbies: running, poetry (both reading and writing), and he just got back into golf.
A simple Google search will tell you Mayor Bemis was born in Billings, Montana, but it won’t tell you that he first moved to Gresham the day before starting at Gresham High School. “We didn’t have a house. We lived in, or we stayed in, the motel across from McDonald's on Burnside.” It's tidbits of information like this that remind us that Mayor Bemis really is just one of us.
When talking about what his sons think about having a dad that’s also the mayor, he said, “I have a lot of people who came alongside me in the community that pointed me in the right directions, and I know there are a lot of people in this community who are doing the same for these kids, and that’s again what keeps us motivated to do the work we do.”
When I brought up that I was interviewing the mayor, some people commented on him being young, so I want to see if there was something he experienced that he wishes my generation could experience. For his reply, I’ll quote a fitting example he drew out, “For instance, there used to be like three networks on tv, right? Like, when everyone watched the same show in the country... at the same time and then everybody talked about it the next day, but there’s none of that centralization anymore of we doing something jointly at one time.” Mayor Bemis, while young, still remembers a time when technology was relatively new, and at time, newer technology can bring up some issues - which I'll talk about below.
With recommendation from staff and other students, I asked about the future plans regarding the intersection near Hogan Cedars Elementary School and Springwater itself - Palmquist Rd. & Fleming Ave. For readers outside the area, the intersection has traffic congestion, and at times, is unsafe for pedestrians and bicyclists to cross both ways. I’m not going to get into what he said for the plans for this is a article about him not traffic issues, but halfway through the question he jumped up and went to work pulling up a map of the area. As he was turning the tv on, he told me that other employees just put in the new television. He asked his assistant, Ashley Miller, to come back into his office three times to help him set it up. Other than difficulties with technology, this shows humanity and humbleness. It wasn’t what he said that really hit me, but his actions. While it may be embarrassing for many to not be able to operate a simple tv, Mayor Bemis had no shame, and wasn't afraid to ask for help.
To conclude, in the words of Mayor Shane Bemis,“Regardless of your party, regardless of who you voted for, Americans are still good people. And we still want to be in the community and do good things.”
Thank you Shane Bemis, Ashley Miller, and the City of Gresham for the creation of this article and all you do for the community!