The University of Idaho Argonaut

Search goes on for city councilman 

 

John Dickinson, Moscow city council president, is missing and feared dead after a car accident Sunday night near The Dalles, Ore.

Sgt. Julie Wilcox of the Oregon State Police said searches of the river and land around a bridge spanning the John Day River on Interstate 84 have failed to find Dickinson or a body. The former University of Idaho professor and local patron of the arts is suspected to have either jumped or been knocked off the bridge after stopping to help Joanne Sutton of Portland, who had swerved to avoid debris and whose 1999 Plymouth Neon was blocking the slow lane of the freeway. Dickinson’s Mini Cooper was struck by a 1969 Pontiac Firebird operated by David Grant, also of Portland, at the time he disappeared.

Though authorities have no witnesses or evidence to prove that Dickinson ended up in the river, Wilcox said, it is by far the most likely option.

“There is one chance in a million that for some reason he left the area,” she said. “But that’s not consistent with his character.”

The search has become a recovery operation, meaning authorities are searching for a body, and the last active search happened Wednesday, when officers towed a side-scan sonar system around the river for several hours. The device, which searched the bottom of the river, turned up nothing.

The search has left many in the Moscow area anxious for news. Joseph Hopper, a UI junior studying radio and TV production, has shared a house with Dickinson for almost two years. He said he and his fiancée, junior art and design major Teva Palmer, are taking care of the house while they await word.

“I want to think that he’s still alive, but based on the circumstances, I don’t see how he still is,” Hopper said.

Moscow Mayor Nancy Chaney praised Dickinson’s service for the city. The councilman was elected council president at this year’s first meeting three years into his four-year term.

“John developed a well-deserved reputation as being a creative thinker, a peacemaker,” Chaney said. “He’s the person who always can find joy in elements of life. I think that rubbed off on all of us.”

Any replacement on the council would be appointed by Chaney, she said.

“It’s certainly a challenge to contemplate all that,” she said. “There’s no replacing John.”

Dickinson was heavily involved in Sirius Idaho Theatre and was producing the group’s next play, “Touch,” a romantic drama about an astronomer set to run in about two weeks. Andriette Pieron, one of the group’s board members and a close friend of Dickinson, said the play will continue.

“That show, ironically enough, is about a woman who has disappeared. It’s an extremely touching show and out of all the ones we’ve produced, it’s the one John liked the best,” Pieron said. “This was going to be John’s biggest show. We’re going to do it in his honor.”

Oregon authorities, including the Sherman County Sheriff’s Office, OSP troopers and the Army Corps of Engineers — who run the nearby John Day Dam — will continue to search for Dickinson as weather permits. The body could either be hung up on debris at the bottom of the river or have been swept into the Columbia River, Wilcox said.