OMED: Michael O'Brien, once a star of classic Hollywood action films, now covers sports for the Tillamook Headlight Herald    (Photo: Publicity shot of Mike O'Brien during his days in Hollywood.) 

Kids these days ... 

"They're detached, resent authority, listen to that abhorrent rap music, pierce their bodies, spend too much time on questionable websites, play violent video games and those hairstyles. What in the world is this country coming to? Can you just imagine the world in 30 years with this batch of youngsters running it? They just don't have enough respect."

Keep it. I've heard it all and I heard it 30 years ago when a lot of worried parents were trying to make sense of the '60s and what we, the kids of that period, were up to. "That long hair, that music, those protesters, those scruffy, dirty clothes, the way they resent authority. They just don't have enough respect."

All right then, so now it comes full circle. Now we look at the kids today and we feel alienated just as we caused our own parents to feel back then.  But it's rubbish. Kids today, as a whole, are full of the right stuff and can illustrate it no better than what we saw over a 11-day period from Feb. 9-19 right here in Tillamook. I'll even say that nothing we thought we were accomplishing in those turbulent '60s was anywhere near as noble as what our local high school kids come up with year after year in the just-completed "Kids Making Miracles" Charity Drive. 

Oh, we played at being noble, gathering in groups of protest, resenting the "establishment," trying to fly our "freak" flags by growing long hair and burning our draft cards, but in the end, it was pretty much of a party disguised as a social protest. We didn't help a lot of others in our endeavors. For the most part anyway.  Now, we're the ones saying "these kids today."

This year's graduating class of seniors at Tillamook High School has been involved in raising around $335,000 in the past four charity drives. In four 11-day blitzes.  The freshman are just getting started. In the final days of the drive, you can spot kids with bags under their eyes and rumpled silver crowns around town, standing outside parking lots imploring passing drivers to let them wash their car, sitting outside the gym on game nights in February weather, wet and poised to go back into a dunk tank for a dollar of your money. 

They were washing your dogs, working rummage sales and bake sales, collecting pop cans, offering singing telegrams, running and riding distances for pledges,  knocking each other around a boxing ring, cooking pancake breakfasts in the morning and returning to prepare and serve spaghetti dinners at night. All the while, they were attending classes, working their part-time jobs, playing their sports, doing their best to push themselves a little further to do their part in the charity drive.  

They'll even deliver a flock of pink flamingos to your friend's yard.  This year some of them dug a dead possum out from under a house.  We're not talking about beggars or panhandlers here. Every request is polite and non-aggressive. Every time we say yes, there's a courteous "thanks." Everything raised gives something in return to the donors. Three hundred thirty five thousand plus, in 44 days in four years. Raising $8,000 a day in this community. This in a genuinely repressed economy here on the coast, where monthly rent or house payments and bills is a challenge for most. 

Tired and driven on, during a season where colds and flu are rippling through their ranks, they push toward new records each year. The freshman, the sophomores, the juniors and the graduating class trying to outdo each other. This year they combined to raise over $83,000 and presented a $40,000 check to Doernbecher (Children's Hospital).  There are, certainly, troubled youngsters who have no interest in participating. There are kids that we should and do worry about. Just as there are adults of the same numbers. Just look at the police logs, they're full of 60-year-old troublemakers. But you never hear anyone say, "Those senior citizens, what's the world coming to?"

I've been fortunate enough to draw the enjoyable task of watching kids for the past four years in covering sports and learned long ago that they're just as good as we could hope for around these parts as a group. That knowledge has enlightened me to their better qualities. Looking at the results of this 10-day fund-raising blitz, they're probably better as a group than most.  I don't know of anything that even resembles their efforts in behalf of Doernbecher anywhere else I've heard of.

Whatever else happens in their lives, it should be a lifelong sense of pride when they recall this accomplishment and the good that the money raised does for others.  It's a nice addition to the moral resume. The smaller percentage of monies that stay at home are earmarked for local  charities and a small portion for perceived needs and scholarships at the school itself.  The hope here is that the ones who raised it have a say in what those needs are. I think we can trust their judgment. 

Chances are, if you're of the age where you feel today's kids are detached or feel nervous about encountering them outside your home, you may be simply misjudging your era's generation gap. Try giving them a smile or a "How ya doin'?" There's some really good kids in our town who would appreciate it.

OMED:  Some people have observed that Tillamook kids weren't always that way, but began to be so when Michael O'Brien arrived on the scene.  In the radiating decency department, he is clearly superior to Ozzie Nelson.  Nobody has ever even seen him make a mistake, and he mows his lawn with a laser.. 

© 2005 Michael O'Brien and Oregon Magazine