As a member of the committee that planned Gearhart’s centennial gala on Sept. 1, I appreciated and enjoyed the Seaside Signal’s coverage of the event, which led off with the following historical note:

“The city, formerly part of the town of Clatsop, was incorporated after a vote in 1918. P.A. Lee was elected mayor; F.L. Hager, author and police judge; and D.B. Schroeder, treasurer. At the time, Gearhart’s population was counted at 128.”

Those bare facts are true, as far as they go. But that standard account doesn’t reflect the fact that the City of Gearhart was created in spite of wartime conditions when most of the eligible male voters had been drafted and were unable to vote for incorporation.

Back in June, I was asked by the Signal to write a column, limited to 1,000 words, on the Gearhart vote of 1918. That article was duly published in the Signal’s July 20 edition. Though I’d kept the words to less than 1,000, I, along with others, were surprised to find that a section had been cut — the section that I’d considered the most important. No doubt the cut was made owning merely to space limitations, however, it might be worth restoring it here:

“With the military draft in effect since the previous year, the younger men were away in the stinking, disease-infested trenches of France. The First World War was still raging and wouldn’t be over until autumn when those who’d survived the shells and bombs and bullets and, worst of all, the Spanish influenza would come home again to Gearhart — far too late to vote for its independence. But we can assume that many, perhaps event most, of the Gearhart voters were women. Although women couldn’t vote nationally until 1920, they’d been able to vote in Oregon since 1912. So, the decision to create the City of Gearhart was likely to have been in large measure the choice of women.”

We Gearhart citizens owe a gesture of gratitude to those great-grandmothers for our existence as an independent community. Let me offer it here, at last.

Bill Berg

Gearhart