Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello Oregonians, and welcome to Life and Legislation with Lucetta. If you've ever wanted to get to know your politicians personally or understand what it is they are actually doing, then you're in the right place. I'm your podcast host, Jessica Campbell.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: I'm your state representative for House District 24, Lucetta Elmer.
[00:00:21] Speaker A: This podcast is a place for you to get to know Representative Elmer both personally and professionally. We want Oregonians to feel connected with and educated politics.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: So we're so glad you've joined us on a fresh new podcast adventure as.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: We cover all things about life and legislation.
Hi Oregonians and welcome back to Life and Legislation with Lucetta. If this is your first time finding us, welcome. We're so glad you're here. This is a place where we get to learn about our leaders, get to know them personally, and hopefully just have a better understanding of how our government works and what's going on. Now, normally on these episodes I'm having a conversation with Representative Elmer, but we are taking a little pause and kind of going on a Meet the Mayors tour where I get a chance to sit down with several of our local mayors and get to know them personally, hear about how they became mayor, and hear a little bit about their cities and what's going on currently in their world. So my guest for this episode is Mayor Morris. Thank you so much for being here and joining us. Let's just start by hearing about you personally. Would you introduce yourself to everybody and tell us who you are outside of being the mayor? Mayor of McMinnville, certainly.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: So I am originally from McMunnville, so I lived here my entire life and met my husband in high school. I was 15 when we started dating and we got married at 18 and 19. So I was one month out of high school and got married and have worked in multiple jobs when I was younger. Probably the one that was a real job, my first real job was banking. So I was a supervisor at Benjamin Farm Franklin, which is where Cornerstone Coffee was, which is now a tasting room, and then moved into owning our own business. So we owned Morris carpet cleaning for 35 and a half years, closed it a couple years ago and overlapping with the end of those years, I got a degree in interior design. So I am an interior designer currently practicing, but a lot fewer jobs these days than I used to.
We have a daughter, Katie, and she lives here in town as well with her family. So we're grateful that they're close to us.
So that's kind of me in a nutshell. Yeah.
[00:02:39] Speaker A: And just Listening to your career journey, it sounds like several of the things you did might end up playing into becoming a mayor and just using some of those skills. I mean, designing a home is one thing. Now you're kind of helping to design a city and make sure everyone functions together.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: Right? That's true. Yeah. The banking is helpful, you know, learning, you know. Definitely. I was going to go to college at Linfield. In fact, I enrolled at Linfield to become a cpa. Oh, really? I love numbers because things have to.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Balance, and you would definitely need that leading a city.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: Yes. So that. And then, you know, the design comes into play with the designing city. But also, I was able to design my office there, which was great.
And then just living here my entire life. I know a lot of people. I know how the city works. I know the history, which helps a lot in what I do. Yeah.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Well, so many questions about how you became mayor and what's going on in McMinnville. But before we do any of that, I would just love to give you one minute to give any marriage advice, because my goodness, to meet at age 15 and have a strong marriage for all these years when you married so young. Congratulations. That's really admirable.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: I would say it's probably rare to get married so young and to have it last and to still like each other as much as we still do today. It is. It's very heartwarming that I still have such a great relationship. I would just say that we grew together, and a lot of times people will grow apart, but we were able to. To grow together, and we kind of have different roles. He's a big, wide thinker, and I'm a task. More of a task person.
So we balanced each other out in life and kind of also in our businesses, we work together for those 35 and a half years as well.
So it's. It's worked out good. I mean, everybody has their ebbs and flows of relationships, but very happy.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: Yes. Well, congratulations. We're so glad that you are both together and thriving and part of the McMinnville community. And from my understanding, it sounded like there might have been a moment where you thought about leaving McMinnville, but let's. I think this comes in this story, which is what made you run for mayor. How did you get to this role?
[00:04:46] Speaker B: Definitely nothing that I ever had in my mind was to go politics, which I don't feel like I'm still what I would call a politician and what a lot of people think. But we owned our business. We Own multiple properties that we've worked really hard to get.
And a few years back, we had a lot of crime, so there were some transients that were living along the tracks and coming in our property and stealing multiple things at night, tagging, damaging.
And the accumulation of that was the last thing was fires. So we have a building along the tracks that have some Arborvita. There was a gentleman that set those on fire. And it was not just one time, it was multiple times. And the last time it happened, it was so frustrating. And it just hurts your heart to think you've worked so hard for something and you see that it might go up in flames. Literally.
That was the night that Mike said, we're going to move.
And I said, I've lived here my entire life. I'm not giving up.
I'm going to do what I can to make a difference. I'm going to fight.
So that's when I started the McMunville Community Task Force.
I had an idea that get a lot of people together. And, you know, I was thinking smaller, like a few people.
And I posted on Facebook, which, you know, I look back now, people, when you get frustrated, you do you want other people to see your frustration, good or bad? And I had 300 people within a week contact me. I did not ask any of them. They just reached out, they signed a letter. I had. I didn't know what else to do. They asked, how can I help? Like, I don't know, don't do this. So they signed a letter, and I went to city council with seven other individuals from the community and just said, we're frustrated. We want help.
This is what I'll do is I'll start a task force to look into it. I just want your nod of approval.
And that's how it all started.
I think the task force, I'm not part of that any longer, but at the time, we had some really positive things that we did to make change. And from that is from encouragement. Again, no plan to become a mayor or counselor or anything, just encouragement to run for mayor. And eventually I gave in and said, yes, and here I am.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: And here you are. And at the time of this recording, you've been mayor for about nine months?
[00:07:11] Speaker B: Just about, yeah.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: So it's all still pretty new. It is, yeah. Were there any big surprises?
[00:07:16] Speaker B: It's a lot, I guess. Not really a surprise in the hours. It's just there's so many different things to deal with and a lot of different things that the community doesn't really get involved in as Much. A lot of emails, trying to. To listen to every citizen that writes in and, you know, community nonprofits. A lot of things to do, but I love it. Yeah. And it's really hard to listen to the people that reach out.
[00:07:41] Speaker A: And as we've learned over the last couple of episodes, this is a volunteer position. A lot of our leaders are not paid. And I think that's something maybe not a lot of people know.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: That's correct. Yeah. People ask me that all the time. Well, what do you get paid? And I'm like, I get paid nothing. It is strictly volunteer as well as the counselors. And you have to do it because you believe in where you live and you want to do good.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: Absolutely. And now you gave an example of a time where you were frustrated and wanted to get involved and make a difference in the community.
So often we see that community members are wanting something or have questions about something or maybe are frustrated about something. And to your point, what do we do in this day and age? We post on social media. But there are some better ways of connecting with the leaders. And so I wanted to give you a moment to share with everyone. How can the people of McMinnville learn more about what's going on in the city, follow along, get involved, have their voices heard, etc.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: I'd love to share that because I do want people to have a voice and be involved. So we have city council meetings the second and fourth Tuesday of every month. The public is welcome to attend. In fact, we encourage it. There is public comment at both of those meetings at the first of the meeting, and they just sign up for that. And they can voice their opinion on anything that they would like that's not a matter in litigation or going to come before the council later. And then they can also reach out via email. So the city's broke up into wards 1, 2, and 3. And so besides me, who represents the entire community, each ward has two representatives on the council.
So they can reach out to a counselor in their ward. They could reach out to the council in the ward and myself. If it's operation, they can reach out to the interim city manager, who is currently Adam Garvin. We also have a website. A lot of things are posted on the website. And there are a lot of work sessions that we have prior to council meetings, as well as generally, it's the Wednesday between the two Tuesdays we do work sessions, which, again, it's a time to come and to learn what we're doing. And that's where we're Learning too. So they can kind of learn along with us. Right.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: And is there any sort of newsletter they can sign up for things like that, things that could get maybe emailed to them?
[00:09:59] Speaker B: So there is a newsletter that goes out on Tuesdays and you can get on the website and there is a list of things that you can check that you can get via email. You just get on there, check them and you will get them.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: So you kind of pick the things you're interested in.
[00:10:11] Speaker B: Exactly. So you're not getting things you're not interested in. Yeah, so yeah, absolutely.
[00:10:16] Speaker A: And we'll put all these links in the episode notes for anyone listening so you can click on that and find that easily.
Now there's a big topic that we're going to talk about here in just a moment of something coming up really statewide next month. But I wanted to ask, ask just citywide, is there anything major happening right now? Any big decisions or any hot topics that you want community members to know about?
[00:10:40] Speaker B: So we have a lot of economic things going on in our properties. We have RV Rubber, we have McVinville Landing, we have the Southwest area Plan. Those are all things that. And we have a bond that's going to be on the ballot in November. All things that I would suggest that they take a look at and understand, especially if it's in an area next to them.
And then volunteer wise and to bring the community together. We're having a community service day, a day of service, October 18, which is going to be around the city's birthday.
And it's come as, you know, come ready to work, which is generally going to be pulling weeds or picking up trash. And you're going to meet by the library, but in the city park they'll have bagels and coffee and time to kind of meet each other and then be separated off into different groups to clean up this hand. So it's a good way to come together and just do it casually.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: And what time will that be on the 18th?
[00:11:33] Speaker B: 9 to 12.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: Is that something that kids can participate in?
[00:11:37] Speaker B: Absolutely. And I want to also state that we're doing it in conjunction with Visit macmillanville. They're a sponsor of the group with us and I appreciate all that they've done. Yeah.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Well, sounds like several things going in. You listed several projects or topics and I imagine some listeners might not know what those mean. And so that is why you need to get on these email lists and stay informed and get educated so we can understand this a bit better.
Now, you mentioned McMinnville's birthday Yes. So I was just curious if you could touch on that, because as I understand it, there are three possible birthdays, but we will be celebrating one of them coming up soon for McMinnville's birthday.
[00:12:15] Speaker B: Yes. There is different opinions and of reading back and looking at history, different ideas of what truly is McMunville's birthday, whether it be the day it came, a city, incorporated, registered, etc. So in January, it's planned for January, the council is going to have a work session and listen to all the history and actually come up with a confirmation of what will be here forward. This is what we're going to say is the birthday right now.
[00:12:45] Speaker A: Are all of the dates in question within the same year or are they all different years?
[00:12:49] Speaker B: Different years.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Oh, great. So just.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: So potentially, McMinnville's. I guess one of the options is that McMinnville is turning 149.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: And then what are the other choices? Are they all within a few years of each other?
[00:13:02] Speaker B: One is, I think there's 1876, 1882, I believe. I hate to jump. I don't recall.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: But they're all different. So at some point in the near future, we're going to know McMinnville's birthday.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: Which is so fun.
Now, shifting gears from a fun topic like a birthday to a very serious and a heavy topic, but an important topic.
You and your family were instrumental in helping Representative Elmer and a team of people create a new law for the state of Oregon, and that was the creation of Youth Suicide Awareness Day. And that is coming up around the corner on October 9th.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: And I wanted to allow some time for you to speak to that why it matters, what it is and what it means to you personally.
And then we're going to share with all of our listeners what they can do to help honor that day.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: Yes, it's a little emotional topic for me, but a year ago on October 9, we lost our dear granddaughter Michael and J. Morris, to suicide, which was the worst day of my entire life. But from that, our family has to find a positive outlet. How can we help someone else? We don't ever want another family to go through what we're going through.
We started Love like Michael and nonprofit, but prior to that, Representative Elmer came to our family and said, I'd like to present this. I'd like an Oregon Youth Suicide Awareness Day.
What do you think?
She was picking either Miklyn's birthday or the day that she passed as a way to push that forward. And our daughter didn't want it to be the birthday and have that be around her birthday every year.
So it's the ninth, which is coming up.
Our family, along with some of Mikland's courageous high school friends, spoke and you have to speak to, like, multiple different legislators, senators, but it passed unanimously in the House and the Senate and it became official.
So what we would like to do is, yes, it was on October 9, the day that she passed. And it's going to be a very hard day for us for one year. But it's more than just about Mikalin. It's about any child or any person that's committed suicide in the past remembering them, but it's also about helping so it doesn't happen again. Yes, unfortunately it will. But if we can reduce that number in any way, especially for our youth, we want to do that.
So this year, to celebrate the first day, we have a Out of the Darkness vigil that will be at Discovery Meadows park at sunrise, which will be 7, supposed to be 721 that day.
And we would invite the community that wants to come and remember someone, or maybe they feel like they need to be around people or have them just think about how can they help someone in the future that we'll have donuts, we'll have coffee, we'll have ref Elmer there talking about the bill. We'll have a small prayer and we have a walk. And the walk is going to be surrounded with positive messages.
Again, it's a positive. We don't want it to be a sad day. It will be sad for my family and for people at New Mikalin, but it'll also be a positive way for the community to just realize we have to think about this. We have to think about others. Right.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: It's something that sadly, probably everybody listening has been affected in some way.
Almost everybody I've ever spoken with has had a loved one die by suicide or they've even contemplated it themselves at some point.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: It's wider than you realize. Yeah. Once Michael and passed, I think people had a way to. They felt like they could talk to myself and other family members and the stories that you hear that you would not have heard otherwise. And I'm grateful that the people that tried are here. Yes.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: This conversation really has nothing to do with politics.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: No.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: This is just a conversation about people and life and things that matter. I wanted to just take a minute and encourage anybody listening to pause and send a message to some youth in your life right now. Just send them, I love you. Thinking about you, proud of you.
You're special. You are valued. Just any sort of encouragement. Because one of the things that I hear so often, listening to women tell their stories, which is another part of my job that so many of the those who have any kind of struggle with this, it's not obvious.
You don't see it on the outside. And so parents, teachers, coaches, mentors, friends, family members, neighbors, most of them had no idea that these thoughts were troubling somebody or that this was even a struggle in any way.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: Right. They hide it well when they're struggling.
One thing that I'll never forget a law enforcement officer told me afterwards, or I heard him say is you can ask them. And generally they will tell you if they've thought about it, which I never thought about that before.
I didn't know to ask Miklin, but if somebody has a concern, I thought that was a good thing to know that you could ask them and generally they're going to tell you the truth, which would be good to know. Absolutely.
And yeah.
[00:18:39] Speaker A: How many of us would ever think to ask that question?
[00:18:41] Speaker B: I know in a way you go, if I ask, am I putting that thought right?
[00:18:45] Speaker A: Are you planting a seed?
[00:18:46] Speaker B: Right. And you don't want to do that. But from what I've heard, it's helpful to ask as well. I am definitely not an expert at this. I just have my own family history. Right.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: Which is very personal and very real.
I am so thankful that you and Lucetta came together and I know so many other people as well, to make this for the state of Oregon.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Because sadly it's needed. And I think the goal with your non profit and with this day is that maybe someday we wouldn't need to have this day or we wouldn't need to have that nonprofit.
[00:19:22] Speaker B: That would be the ultimate goal, right? That would be. So, yeah. The nonprofit that we have is definitely grateful to have this day. It will help to be able to promote and to go out and share with, with our youth that you're okay. Your story's not over. Please stay.
[00:19:36] Speaker A: Please stay.
[00:19:37] Speaker B: I love that.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: And in our closing topic, I would love to give you a chance to tell a little bit about the nonprofit and if anybody wants to maybe get involved or support it in some way. I know it's still relatively new, so I'm sure there's a vision for the future, but you can tell everybody about love like Mikalin.
[00:19:57] Speaker B: So love like Mikalin, that term came after Mikalin passed away. A lot of her friends and high school kids went to the Young Life House, which has been Very supportive of our, our family and the kids at the school. And they rode all over the house and we visited the. The Young Life house. I think it was the day or two days after she passed. It just was a way that we felt we could heal a little bit. Sure. And LLM was written on the side of the house and we asked what that meant and it's love like Miklin. And it was so true.
She was a very loving child and so we love that term. And so that's what we have moved forward with for a non profit. And the non profit is to work towards spreading kindness, positivity, and activities that help our youth understand how to grow their strengths.
They have a class at the high school called Sources of Strength. And we've met with those advisors who are amazing people, very kind to us and allowing us to help in some way, whether it be financially, whether we volunteer, but understanding that kids have strengths they need to find. So if they're struggling, they know who to go to. They know what they can do to help. Go over those. You know, we all have bumps in the road. What's the best way to get there and promote just all of those things. And. And we're going to talk to Lines for Life who offer a peer to peer.
So if you call a number if you need help, you're going to talk to someone your own age. They're going to understand what you're going through a little bit better than an adult.
So there's so many things that we want to do, but there's just a little bit of it. If people want to donate to the nonprofit, it is an official 501C3. We do have a Facebook page, a website, and we also have an Instagram page and it's hashtag lovelikemichlin. So.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: And you've given a couple scholarships to some people?
[00:21:58] Speaker B: We have. We were very grateful. We formed a foundation which is separate from the nonprofit, so that scholarships will be lasting longer than we are. And we were able to give two $2,500 scholarships this year to two ladies at the high school, McNimble High School.
And the criteria where we wanted them to go educationally was special needs, which was something near and dear to Mikalin, or mental health, which again is to help the kids in need. So we're very grateful. We plan to do that every year and hopefully at some point expand further than just McNimble High School.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: Yeah, it's amazing. You have a beautiful vision and a beautiful purpose. You have definitely taken your family's pain and made a purpose out of it. You're not wasting that suffering. You are honoring Mikalin and her legacy. And I know that that's something that really affected the whole community. It's hard to drive around without see the LLM stickers and things all over businesses and all over social media. So you, you can see the impact it's having.
[00:23:01] Speaker B: The community has been amazing to our family, to our board and my daughter and son in law and grandson and husband. Our family has been had shown more strength than you can imagine. I'm so proud of my daughter for what she's been able to do. Yes. In such a tragedy.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: Well, in the midst of all of that, you ran for and became mayor.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: I did.
I did.
It was hard. I mean, she passed on the 9th and so that was the end of the campaign and trying to determine whether to stay or not. And it was a family discussion and a family decision. And I remember sitting down and saying, what do you want me to do? What should I do? What's best for the family. And my daughter said, you know, people wanted you to run because they need you and you need to do it.
So I continued and here I am.
[00:23:54] Speaker A: And here you are.
Mayor Morris, thank you, thank you. Thank you for serving our community, for all of the volunteer hours that you put in long before you ever became mayor, and thank you for all the time that you devote to our community now. Thank you for what you're doing to help our youth and hopefully prevent suicide and bring that awareness to everybody that this is a critical conversation we all need to be having. And I hope those of you listening have marked your calendars for not only October 18th to come help out to clean and help with our city, but October 9th to go on this sunrise walk and just be a part of a movement that really, really matters. So thank you again and thank you Oregonians for two tuning in to this episode of Life and Legislation with Lucetta. We hope you got to know one of our leaders better and more personally and have learned a little bit more about the city of McMinnville and what's going on in our community and in this case, our state. We hope you come back next time and join us for Life and Legislation with Lucetta.
