Some neighborhood newsletters in Portland have gone all-digital. Others, like the Alameda and Irvington neighborhoods, send their offerings via the USPS at significant expense. But for many years, come rain, sun, wind, or snow, Beaumont-Wilshire has depended on a small army of volunteers to hand-deliver our newsletter.
It’s a hardy group. Several volunteers have trudged up steep B-W steps and up and down hills for 30 years or more, including Jan and Tim Gillespie, Jo Frazier, Sally Sincic, and Diane Charlton, recently retired. Some are in their 60s or 70s; some have help from children or grandchildren, like nine-year-old Carter Wade and 11-year-old Abbey Stark.
Between residences and Beaumont Village businesses, the team delivers 2,650 newsletters each issue, says John Sandie, who manages distribution along with Georgina Head. Extras go to the Hollywood Library and to former residents who want to keep up with B-W news.
“It’s very labor intensive,” Head admits. “But when you have a route and run into people, they always say, ‘It’s great, I love it.’ It’s kind of old-fashioned, but I think people love receiving and reading it.”
Just unloading the boxes when the printer delivers copies is hard work, Sandie says, especially now that the newsletter is 20 pages long and printed on heavier paper. “You feel it when you pick up a box.”
But the unpaid gig has advantages: meeting neighbors and time to just be. “From 99-degree summer days to crisp fall weather to cold winter days to the emergence of daffodils in the spring, it all makes me more aware of the passage of time,” says long-time volunteer Jan Gillespie.
For this every-other-month delivery exercise, the neighborhood is divided into 10 sections, each with its own captain who divvies up copies for specific routes. Fifty-four routes make up the territory, and 60 volunteers comprise the regular distribution team. A big pallet of newsletters arrives from the printer at month-end prior to distribution (so, at the end of April for the May-June issue). The goal is to distribute all copies by the second weekend after that, although “Life gets in the way at times,” Sandie says. “We urge folks to let us know if a fill-in is needed to help keep things on schedule.”
This intricate system has been in operation at least since the early 1990s. A new set of color-coordinated route maps and an updated volunteer roster were introduced 12 or 13 years ago by B-W volunteers Serah and Aaron Breakstone. Head manages the spreadsheet of volunteers and recruits new ones as openings occur or to fill in when someone is temporarily unavailable.
Even though times are changing, new volunteers still step up, she says, calling it, “A small way to give back to the community.”
Chris Rauber and his wife moved to Portland and B-W in mid-2022 after many years in the San Francisco Bay Area. He wrote for the San Francisco Business Times and other publications. He was born in Oregon.