Boy Scouts share historic sense of place.

Byline: Bob Welch / The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran 2/3/2006): The headline on Bob Welch's column Thursday on Page D1 contained an error. Cub Scout Pack 20 is seeking approval from the city of Eugene to designate the Willakenzie Grange building a historic landmark.

Local history isn't always easy to sense around here; about the time you're figuring out what a "game farm" actually was, for example, a housing development pops up to further obscure your look back.

But you feel history when you walk into the 93-year-old Willakenzie Grange, about a block east of the Coburg Road Dairy Queen on Willakenzie Road. You smell it in the slight mustiness. See it the wainscoting and foot-thick wooden beams holding the place up. Hear it in the silence.

Sen. Wayne Morse once held court in these walls. Mark Hatfield, an Oregon governor and longtime U.S. senator, spoke here, too.

But, mostly, the memories in this two-story shiplap box are the stuff of ordinary people eating, discussing, singing, quilting, voting, canning, lobbying, acting, worshipping and learning, such as in 1956 when Judge Ford spoke on "juvenile delinquency" - in 1956? - followed by Harry Hendrickson's Hawaii slide show.

Now, comes a most unlikely group to lobby for the nearly century-old building to be given Historic Landmark Designation by the City of Eugene: Modern-day Cub Scouts. Kids for whom ancient history can be an X-Box game that was cool yesterday but passe today.

Specifically, Pack 20, which holds its meetings in the building and whose Cubmaster, David Kemp, figured the project would, at the least, be a way of saying thanks for the free space.

`This is something that these kids are going to look back on and think, `That was meaningful,' even though they might not feel it that much now,' says Kemp.

Make no mistake; this is a top-down project. As first-through-fifth-graders, the Scouts are less interested in a century of human history in this place than in the Grange's photos of waist-high pumpkins. But the Scouts have been more than bystanders.

When Kemp, as part of a 27-page report he compiled, got a University of Oregon architecture student to do a site plan, the Scouts took turns holding the tape measure.

They've done paint jobs. Cleaned up the grounds. And listened as Kemp, 43, enlightens them on the connection between Scouting and the Grange.

"It's ironic, but a lot of Scouts' goals are the goals of the Grange," he says, "community service."

Granges - there are still 205 in operation in Oregon, 24 in Lane County - began shortly after the Civil War, mainly to be political advocates for rural communities.

Willakenzie, Eugene's first Grange and still in operation, began in 1913, the lot purchased for $250 and the building built for $1,730.

Eugeneans who know the city's streets will recognize many of the charter members: Ayres, Gillespie, Harlow.

In 1931, the Grange donated 152 quarts of fruits and vegetables to Doernbecher Hospital in Portland. In early 1941, with England at war with the Germans, members sent "Bundles for Britain."

As the years and decades passed, the Grange became less of a rural hub than an architectural anomaly, a 1913 building lost in suburbia.

Which is one reason Kemp sought - and got - permission from the Oregon State Grange to see if the building might qualify for historical designation.

Kemp is hopeful the city will approve the designation, which will give the Grange certain protections - and increased visibility.

"Granges are important to our history because they're not only old - 50 years is our basic criteria for a historic landmark - but reflect the growth and social fabric of a community," says Kurt Yeiper, the city's principal planner.

Whether Willakenzie survives as a "working" Grange is another matter; it has only 29 members, down from 168 in 1934.

But regardless of the Grange's future, Kemp and Pack 20 are hoping to preserve its past.

"The Grange and its simple look represent an era of history you don't see much around here anymore," says Kemp.

Exactly why we should preserve what little of it we have.