Bulletin E-Edition:
Hiking, writing, music – Witty just loved it all
1958 – 2008
By Ben Salmon / The Bulletin
Published: November 18. 2008 4:00AM PST| order photo
Friends remember Jim Witty, The Bulletin’s outdoors writer, as a friendly, easygoing guy who’d strike up a conversation with anyone.
The Bulletin file photo
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Jim Witty, The Bulletin’s outdoors writer for the past eight years, died of an apparent heart attack Monday morning at his home in Bend. He was 50 years old.
In an interview, Witty’s wife, Lori, said she was getting ready to go to work at Bend-La Pine Schools’ administrative office at about 7 a.m. Monday when Witty fell off their bed, struggling to breathe. Bend police officers and Bend Fire Department paramedics arrived on scene and began treatment, but soon gave Lori Witty the bad news.
“They came out and told me … that they tried everything,” she said. “All indications are that it was a massive heart attack. It didn’t matter what I tried or they tried. It was just his time.”
Witty was a native of Southern California, where he graduated from Hemet High School in 1976 before getting his bachelor’s degree in journalism from Cal Poly state university in San Luis Obispo in 1982.
His journalism career spanned more than 20 years and several Western states, including stints at the The Hemet News in California, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in Hawaii and The Daily News in Longview, Wash. He joined The Bulletin as an environmental and natural resources reporter in 1999 before taking over the newspaper’s outdoor recreation beat in 2000.
An avid outdoorsman
Witty’s love of the outdoors stretched back as far as his brother, John, can remember.
John Witty, 60, lives in Redmond and is a staff attorney for the High Desert Education Service District. On Monday, he recalled a time when his family lived in the California foothills and his mother, Edna, called him home because she couldn’t find Jim, who was 2 or 3 years old at the time.
After sprinting home, John found Jim at a tricky spot in a nearby canyon. The family rescued the boy, but the experience was a harbinger of things to come.
“He’d gotten himself out across a really steep place, and it kept getting steeper and steeper, and finally he got to the point where he was just kind of glued to the hillside,” John Witty said. “He ran out of trail, and that was probably his first experience following a trail and getting somewhere that he didn’t intend to be, which he’s practically made a career of.”
Witty’s job perfectly merged several of his interests, Lori Witty said. He was a talented and creative writer who loved meeting people and hearing their stories, and he always made time for getting outside, she said.
“He loved the environment. He loved being outside. He loved fishing and camping, and he loved nature. He tried to get out every day, and he’d actually have a problem sleeping if he couldn’t get out. It was a perfect fit with his writing,” she said. “Besides having this God-given gift for writing and pulling you into his stories and making you want to see what he was seeing, Jim had this way of … seeing magnificence in the smallest things.”
His power of observation was a key tool, Lori Witty said. On Sunday night, a doe and a buck found their way onto the Wittys’ east-Bend yard, and Jim watched a jogger run by unaware of the nearby wildlife, she said.
“Jim said, ‘Look at that. That guy’s so intent on what he’s doing he didn’t even notice that right here on the side of the street is this doe and four-point buck,’” she said. “He was the one who’d be out there and notice everything. This man could paint a postcard looking at a weed.”
For years, Jim Witty worked with Deschutes National Forest trails specialist Chris Sabo to update The Bulletin’s readers on the status of local recreational trails. Sabo has been sending out forest-related updates for two decades, and several years ago Witty took the information and started turning it into the popular “Trail Update” that runs each week in the paper’s Outing section.
Over the years, Sabo reached out to Witty whenever the Deschutes forest wanted to communicate with the public. It was easy to recognize Witty’s love of his natural surroundings, Sabo said.
“Writing about the outdoors was in his blood,” he said. “That’s my sense.”
‘A passion for music’
For many, Witty’s outdoorsiness defined him. But he was also an avid music fan and musician who listened to acts ranging from Bob Dylan to local bands. Just last week, he visited Summit High School during lunch hour to watch We Are Brontosaurus, a trio of teens that includes one of his best friend’s son, Owen Quon.
Owen’s dad, Mark Quon, met Witty in 1973 during their freshman year of high school in Whittier, Calif. The two connected through their shared admiration for the music of David Bowie, and once Witty moved to Hemet, Calif., they’d spend their evenings hanging out and jamming, Quon said.
“We’d go out and get a six-pack of beer and our guitars and we’d drive out to the desert and just drink beer and play guitar in the car all night,” he said. “That continued on even till this year.”
Through a soft chuckle, Quon called Witty a “struggling guitar player” who nonetheless loved the instrument. He also played harmonica and was a “pretty darn good” singer, said John Witty.
“To be honest,” Quon said, “we’d go out and play and … we’d go through our repertoire of the songs that we both knew, but after a while, he would just close his eyes and sing and just hold this guitar and not play. He just had a passion for music.”
Quon, 50, who owns a graphic design and public relations firm in Bend, said Witty gravitated toward twangy music as well as rock ’n’ roll. Besides Bowie, he loved Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, John Prine, and so on.
“Music just got him pumped up,” he said. “He was always excited to be around it.”
‘A nice guy’
Most of all, his friends and family remember Witty as a friendly, easygoing guy who could strike up a conversation with anyone. His sister-in-law, Joan Witty, noted that he called his mother and his youngest son daily. Mark Quon’s wife, Linda, called him a “positive spirit.” Former colleague and fishing partner Andy Whipple recalled his “great sense of humor.”
Robert Speik, a friend of Witty’s for more than a decade, said he had “a knack for expressing his love of life and the great outdoors in … ways that made you smile.”
His brother, John, put it simply: “I would imagine there were a lot of people who met him, and I would think that most people thought, ‘Gee, this seems like a really nice guy,’” he said. “All I would say is I knew him all his life and that’s absolutely true. To the core, he was a nice guy.”
A last great weekend
Nice guy. Outdoorsman. Music lover. An easy conversation. Jim Witty packed all that and more into his final weekend, his wife said.
On Friday night, he met the Quons at Silver Moon Brewing & Taproom for a beer, and then went and played music (including, of course, Bowie’s “Space Oddity”).
On Saturday, he watched his beloved University of Southern California Trojans whip Stanford University on the football field.
And on Sunday, he hiked around the Badlands region east of Bend — one of his favorite destinations — with his oldest son, Kevin, Kevin’s girlfriend, Jennifer, and their 7-week-old daughter, Alexis, who was Witty’s first grandchild.
“The thought crossed my mind that (his) last weekend, he did all the things that he loves,” Mark Quon said. “It was a great weekend for him.”
Lori Witty concurred.
“I’m really grateful that yesterday he was out at the Badlands,” she said. “That’s where he loved to be. That’s what he loved to do.”
Jim Witty is survived by his wife, Lori; two sons, Kevin, of Bend, and Danny, of Pasco, Wash.; one stepdaughter, Kelly Haluska, of Bend; one granddaughter, Alexis, of Bend; his mother, Edna, of Redmond; a brother, John, of Redmond; and a sister, Deedee Sihvonen, of Park City, Utah.
He was preceded in death by his father, Vince.
A celebration of life and a memorial service for Jim Witty will be held at 3 p.m. Friday at Aspen Hall at the north end of Shevlin Park in Bend.
Ben Salmon can be reached at 541-383-0377 or bsalmon@bendbulletin.com.
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