I’ve been thinking … A Town Without Pity

By Jim Heffernan

If you remember this song, you’re old.  It came out in 1961 when I was a Freshman in High School.  There were lyrics, but all I remember is the chorus, “It isn’t very pretty what a town without pity can do.”  In my head, it’s Gene Pitney’s voice I hear.  You don’t want to hear what it sounds like if I “sing” it.

The fiasco with this year’s Tillamook High School Girls’ Women’s^* Basketball Team is what jarred the image from my mind.  I’m afraid this town I’ve loved for nearly 5 decades is becoming “a town without pity.”

Basketball of any gender is a great sport.  When my wife played basketball, the rules trapped her in the defensive half-court and she was not allowed to shoot baskets.  She spent hours shooting basket at the regulation-height hoop in the driveway of her home.  She got good. At it.   She’s still bitter about the rules she played under back then.

For those of you unfamiliar with the situation in Tillamook, here’s a recap.  In December 2024,  players complained about how the head-coach treated them, the head-coach was suspended pending investigation by school district, pre-season began with players coached by assistant coach, players win their first 5 games and are ranked #2 among 4A schools, school determines head-coach “poses no threat” and is re-instated, 9 of 11 refuse to play for head-coach, assistant coach resigns and JV coach resign, and season ends because Tillamook did not have enough players to field a team.

I find it absolutely appalling that School District 9 would so willingly end the season for the players on the flimsy reasoning the coach “poses no threat.”  Shouldn’t the fact that 9 of the 11 players wouldn’t play for him tell them something?  Not in a “town without pity.”  Here, we blame the victims.

What I’m seeing is a school administration that has adopted its own “cancel culture” and had no qualms about treating the players “without pity”.

Every school board begins with everyone reciting the school board mission.^** Squelching and coddling our students does not serve the mission.

This is not the first time I’ve seen a “cancel culture” in action at School District 9.  Last summer, School District 9 removed the book, ”How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” from the curriculum of the 10^th Grade English Honors class.   It’s a book written by Julia Alvarez, a distinguished author of 24 other books and winner of the National Medal of Arts in 2013.  ^***Julia spoke in defense of the very book the administration withheld from 10^th graders.  Her eloquent defense of her book is available below.

The reason we have a “cancel culture” at School District 9 is a peculiarity of our special elections when we elect our school board members.  Without the voices of the national media urging us on, we don’t vote.  65% of Tillamook County voters did not vote in the last special election, 70% did not vote in the special election before that. It’s not like we have to brave the elements and wait in lines to cast our votes, our ballot is delivered to us and all we have to do is mark the ballot and mail it.  35% of us to decide what happens for everybody.  Simple math dictates that if you can fool 18% of the voters, you win.

That’s what happened and that’s how a “cancel culture” reigns at School District 9.

The next special election comes up in May.  Please let’s all vote and vote to remove the “cancel culture” from School District 9.

Justin Aufdermauer, Ryan Lewis, and Jeanie Christiansen are the “cancel culture” board members who cancelled Tillamook High School Girls’ Women’s^* Basketball for 2025 season and ”How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents”.

We can send them home in May by not voting for them.  Mail the ballot this time, keep Tillamook from being “A Town Without Pity”.

As always, discussion welcome at codger817@gmail.com

I do not exercise copyright, feel free to share.

*I use Girls’ Women’s because of my personal belief that girls become women by the time they reach high school. I’m afraid most boys are boys all their life.

^{**  ”}The mission of the Tillamook School District is to prepare our students with academic, artistic, and social skills necessary to become contributors to a changing world.”

^***Here’s Julia Alvarez (the author of the How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accent) talking about the story our “cancel culture” school board couldn’t abide.

Just as an example: I read an article in which a reporter explained that some parents were upset with the book’s “scene with a pedophile.”  This phrase makes it sound as if there is an actual sex scene between an adult and a small child.  In fact, the story, “Trespass,” focuses on a shocking encounter in which a young immigrant girl has a very upsetting encounter with a “sexual offender,” who basically “flashes her” and she runs off terrified.  Her mother calls the police but the young girl is only just learning English and can’t explain what happened.  Now, that’s hardly “a scene with a pedophile.” And the horrible thing for the young girl is that she is disgusted and terrified (as were the concerned parents) but unlike them, she has no power, she has no words, she can’t describe it, she is silenced.

Silenced by her lack of English in the story, and now, silenced by those parents who say her experience is pornographic. 

As an educator, I would welcome the opportunity to use a story like this to talk with students about the power of words and stories to convey to others those awful moments when we are bereft, helpless, and need to share our story in order to feel human again.

Students are facing these kinds of challenges in their lives all the time!  And one of the great things about literature is that it provides them with a way of talking and feeling and assessing experience within the safe confines of a story and a classroom.  Keeping all these issues out of the classroom only leaves our young people with no way to understand, feel, defend themselves against these situations when they happen in “real life.”