Food Bank Challenge

PGE Retirees have been having picnics since, well, since PGE employees started retiring – which means at least 100 years!  And after a 2-year hiatus (due to reasons totally beyond our control), in August of 2022 the PGE Retirees Picnic was BACK!

On Wednesday, August 24^th, PGE retirees gathered at Tualatin Community Park for an afternoon of food, fun, more food, pickleball, more food, prizes, ice cream – all the while gabbing, jabbering, chatting, and generally catching up with each other!  There was lots of chicken and lemonade plus the food brought by retirees to share.  It was a veritable banquet of goodies and ice cream bars (of which this writer enjoyed the last one immensely).

Picnics don’t organize themselves and the success of this one was due to the extraordinarily dedicated team of Terry and Darlene Judkins, Ted Handris and Sharon Noell, plus the Pickleball expertise of Minhhang Tran and Conrad Eustis.

Back in the day, PGE Pastimers organized picnics in various divisions all over PGE’s the service territory – Willamette Valley at Silverton’s City Park, Trojan, Boardman, Gresham, Salem, and Tualatin to name a few.

Here are a couple of stories about picnics held in August of 1952 from the September 1952 issue of PGE Bullseye (NewsLine’s predecessor).

Evening Picnic in Valley

“Willamette Valley Division Pastimers gathered in the cool of the evening for their annual picnic and report that the vespertine outing was a comfortable success. Held at Silverton’s City Park during the twilight end of August 20^th, the picnic drew a crowd of 100 adults and 50 children and featured much food for large appetites.”

Pastimers Invade Tualatin Shores

“Nearly 1,200 fun-minded Portland and St. Helen’s Division employees, their families and friends, gathered at Avalon Park on the Tualatin River August 9 for a day full of relaxation.  After consuming close to 4,000 bottles of soft drinks, 2,880 ice cream bars, 1,000 boxes of Crackerjacks, 900 cups of coffee and an incalculable amount of their own food, picnickers called the Pastimers-sponsored outing a success.

There were many other delights, however, besides the food.  The annual softball classic saw the West side clobber the East side 21-8; the 28 separate field events featured everything from a penny scramble to a pencil pucker relay, and there was entertainment, swimming, dancing, horseshoes, prizes, and just about everything else that goes into a picnic and comes out fun.

Thanks to picnic chairman Frank Shrives and his committee of 13 for a good time.”

See you next summer!

List of those who attended the Picnic