La Grande writer Dorothy Fleshman's columns gathered in second book

Dorothy Fleshman’s columns have outlived the moment they were first printed. Gathered into a second book, Dory’s Diary reads less like a simple publication and more like a long-running civic record of La Grande, a place she has watched through decades of change.

A columnist who wrote across eras

Fleshman first wrote for The Observer in 1945, then filled in again during the 1960s, which places her work inside a much longer local timeline than a typical author profile. That span matters because her columns do what newspapers often do best in smaller communities: they catch the everyday details that later become history.

Her own writing shows that continuity clearly. In a January 3, 2023 column, she described finishing a new book after "a long struggle in writing and preparing a new book for publication," and reflected on the costs and importance of keeping the printed word alive. She also noted that the column had appeared in the Baker City Herald, extending her voice beyond one newsroom and into another corner of Eastern Oregon readership.

La Grande is the setting and the subject

The book’s value grows out of the town it documents. La Grande emerged in the 1860s and expanded sharply after the Union Pacific Railroad arrived in 1884, becoming an important railroad division point and county-seat trade center in the Grande Ronde River Valley. That history is not just background. It explains why a writer like Fleshman could spend a lifetime observing a town where commerce, transportation, public safety and family memory were always closely connected.

The newspaper record around her reinforces that sense of continuity. Eastern Oregon University Library maintains The Observer archive with permission from The Observer and EO Media Group, and that archive reaches from 1901 through 2024, with earlier runs of the La Grande Morning Observer from 1897 to 1920 and the La Grande Evening Observer from 1935 to 1959. Few local communities have that kind of paper trail, and fewer still have a columnist whose work fits so naturally inside it.

What longtime readers will recognize

Fleshman’s columns carry the kind of names and references that anchor a town’s shared memory. In an August 12, 2021 column, she said she was turning 95 on September 10, 2021, and recalled that she had been reporting for the daily Observer and the E.O. Review weekly newspapers in the 1960s and 1970s. That same column identified her sister, Betty (Swart) Alexander, as La Grande’s first female police officer, a detail that links the family story to the city’s changing public institutions.

The 2021 column also named former local figures, including Lois Thurber, Ted Clausen, Ray Snider, Bob Wickam, Roland Shaw, Bruce Weimer, Warren Miller, Bill Grimm, David Florea, Dave Lester and Bob Price. She paired those names with references to the old downtown fire and police stations, giving readers a map of the civic center as it existed in another era. For anyone who knows La Grande’s streets, that kind of detail turns a column into a memory ledger.

A book that preserves more than nostalgia

Dory’s Diary has appeared occasionally in The Observer and the Baker City Herald, and that circulation pattern is part of its significance. The book is not just a retrospective on one writer’s career. It is a reminder that local newspapers once functioned as the town’s daily archive, and that a columnist could record school routines, public offices, family names and street-level change with the kind of intimacy no outside history usually captures.

That is why Fleshman’s work resonates beyond literary circles. Readers who have lived in Union County for decades may see their own childhoods, parents or neighbors in the people she names, while newer residents can use the columns as an orientation to the community’s deeper structure. La Grande’s identity has been shaped by railroads, public institutions, downtown blocks and family ties, and Fleshman’s writing preserves that texture in print.

The result is a book that functions as local history without trying to pose as one. Dory’s Diary shows how La Grande has changed, how it has held onto parts of itself, and why a columnist who wrote across generations can remain part of a town’s living record long after the original newsprint has faded.