A cut & paste from this morn's OREGONIAN
There is much joy in Madras
Sunday, November 18, 2007NORM MAVES JR. The Oregonian Staff
MADRAS -- Jacoby Ellsbury nearly lost his cool Saturday morning.
There he was, on an elevated platform in the Madras High School gymnasium, microphone in his hand and mayhem all around him.
Drummers from Warm Springs to his right had just celebrated him with a song. His mother, Margie, and father Jim sat with brothers Matt, Tyler and Spencer just to his left. A long red banner proclaiming the Boston Red Sox 2007 World Series championship hung behind him from one of the baskets he used to fill when he was running and gunning for the White Buffaloes just five years ago.
And everywhere the Boston outfielder looked, there was an ocean of red shirts, Red Sox gear and the friendly faces of people who have known him for years -- people who love him not just for being a Madras kid who did something good, but also a good Madras kid who came home.
One of them.
Ellsbury, in town for a few days to visit his family, paused and took it all in before he spoke. He needed some time to savor the moment.
"I see a lot of familiar faces," he said finally. "I see a lot of friends. And this is truly a dream come true. The parade in Boston was great, but this one was even better."
Prolonged cheer.
"When I look back," he continued, "on living in Madras, going to elementary school, middle school, high school and when I think of the people who helped me along the way, and see all the people on the floor and in the crowd, I feel like I want to tear up."
He didn't, but his hometown gave him every reason to Saturday morning. It was Jacoby Ellsbury Day, and they did it up the Madras way.
The city organized a 15-element parade that took all of eight blocks to complete. Ellsbury sat in a 2003 Corvette and waved to a crowd of people who didn't so much line the streets as they just walked alongside him. Kind of a hometown honor guard.
There were signs everywhere: "Jacoby for President," "Our White Buffalo in Red Sox," "Jacoby, You Knock Our Sox Off!" "Jacoby -- MVP of Indian Country." There were T-shirts of all kinds, including the "Go Jacoby Go" shirts the Elks Lodge No. 2017 made up and wore when they all gathered at the lodge to watch him in the World Series on the big screen.
As the procession passed, Glenn Price, one of the local Elks who wore the shirt and helped organize the day, was moved to think of the last time little Madras was so consumed by an event.
"This is better than the last time we did this," Price said. "That was when Tommy Tucker was killed."
The memory of Pfc. Tommy Tucker, another good Madras kid, is still fresh. Most people around town who were here at the time agree that the broken heart Madras suffered when he was killed in Iraq in June 2006 has not completely healed.
Maybe it never really will, but having Jacoby Ellsbury come home helped a lot.
"It was pretty sad," Price said. "I remember he was missing and I was helping put flags up. There was media from all over the world here. Then we got the word that they'd found his body.
"That was a sad, sad time. This helps. This helps a lot."
Life has been relatively steady in Madras, even leaning a little toward prosperity. The economy is still chugging along a little below the rest of Oregon -- median household income is about $14,000 per year below the rest of the state -- but anecdotal evidence harvested in the crowd Saturday revealed few problems.
Saturday wasn't a day to worry about it anyhow. Jacoby Ellsbury was back in town.
In the gymnasium, he got the full treatment: A greeting from Delvis Heath, chief of the Warm Springs tribe, a six-whereas proclamation from Madras Mayor Jason Hale, and an American flag that hung from the Capitol on Oct. 28, the day that the Red Sox finished off the Colorado Rockies to win the Series.
The 1,100 seats of the gymnasium were filled to the last square -- one by Elizabeth Nelson, a Madras teacher who taught Ellsbury in the first grade in 1990-91. She wore a pink sweatshirt with little handprints from all of her students in that class; the left hand of a 7-year-old Jacoby Ellsbury was right in front.
The floor was full of perhaps 600 people (nobody has ever had to estimate a crowd this size). A handful of kids was selected to ask him questions.
Ellsbury took it all the way he takes everything else -- with the same ease with which he has run down fly balls all over Jefferson County.
He talked carefully and reflectively to the gaggle of media chasing him around town about the bigger meaning of the last year -- and his hometown. He was evidently still decompressing from the weight of his experience.
"The best way," he said, "is to have fun with it. It can overwhelm you, so you make the best of it while you can."
He also remembered that Madras was good to him when he was 18 and nowhere near his college baseball experiences at Oregon State and his professional carpet ride with the Red Sox.
"When I was in college," he said, "I got a lot of letters and e-mail of support from here. It was a big deal when I got that scholarship.
"I know they're not just on the bandwagon, because they've always been here to support me."
Norm Maves Jr.: 503-221-8204;
normmaves@news.oregonian.com
In this day of nothing but bad news, political krap...I decided to post a good story. Hope you guys enjoyed it.. Paul