The Elder Statesman

By BILL DUNCAN
The News-Review

Roland Cheek says “The Dogged and the Damned,” was a germ of an idea based on a newspaper clipping about the “Wildman of the Umpqua” that stayed in his subconscious for almost 60 years. He says it is a fictionalized story inspired by the tragic story of a World War II soldier at the Roseburg VA hospital who was suffering from a psychological impairment because of the war. Today, the VA calls it “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” and there is nothing fictional about it.

Cheek tells the story of a character named Pvt. Mikhail Baranovitch, a soldier engaged in Pacific theater of jungle warfare during the 1940s. At that time the Roseburg VA hospital was mainly a psychiatric facilty with bars on the windows and lock down wards. Baranovitch is a psychiatric patient who repeatedly escapes confinement and lives by his wits in the wilds.

Law enforcement agents are bewildered by the task of locating and capturing a fugitive the newspapers are calling the Wildman of Umpqua. Anytime a book includes a familiar location for the  reader, it enhances the read. Cheek does that well in his novel, supposedly based on a true event, but he says:

“I’ll freely admit to altering names. To better fit my purposes within the novel, I have changed places, encounters, circumstances, architecture, characters and even the years and where some events took place,” he said. Cheek said he was a teenager when the story of the Wildman of Umpqua was first in the press. “I was 16, so if my protagonist appears more heroic than the one who actually inspired this tale, it is the way I wanted to see him.” But he adds that even though the book is a novel, “I have tried to create real people in real circumstances. It is a story with a message.”

While he successfully disguises real names, places and circumstances, any old timer in the county will have little difficulty recognizing The News-Review, or its editor at the time of the plot’s setting. The daily newspaper, a newspaper Cheek calls The Daily News is featured heavily in the story. Its editor also figures in as a character and is easily recognized as Charles Stanton, even though Cheek’s character is called “Chalmers R. Station.”

The reporter is named Chuck Little, but the character’s dialog sounded more like Leroy Innman, who was a reporter on the newspaper in that era. On one of his escapes, Baranovitch hides out in a “Swedish Lutheran Church,” which is easily recognized as Faith Lutheran in Roseburg.

Cheek has written an entertaining, fast moving saga with a local touch. Here is just a sample of his descriptions:

”Douglas County is, by Oregon’s standards, a relatively large county…encompassing an entire river valley – 150 miles from the river’s source in the snowcapped Cascade Mountains, to the Pacific Ocean tidewater. Roseburg, its largest community and the seat of county government, lies near the geographic center of Douglas County and is the location of the Federal Veteran’s Administration Hospital, from which Mikhail Baranovitch strayed.”

Law enforcement is both sympathetic to the solider and angry because he is subsisting by stealing food and supplies as he makes his way through rural areas to reach the wilderness. When he is captured, he is returned to the custody of the VA hospital, where a compassionate Dr. Bryce Henderson probes to find the hidden diagnosis of the patient’s mental disorder. “Big Mike,” becomes his special project and he concludes Baranovitch is crazy like a fox.

Cheek weaves into his story places the Douglas County reader will easily recognize. On one of his escapes, Cheek writes:

“By the time Baranovitch passes the hamlet of Riddle, he packed an enormous load composed of bedding, cooking and eating utensils, clothing and food, all pilfered from unattended homes and cabins enroute.” Cheek’s narrative continues. “He also carried an axe in one hand and a Marlin 30-caliber carbine in the other.”

The conclusion leaves the reader disappointed because it offers no solution, but then is there ever a solution to the mental scars of war?

(Bill Duncan can be reached at bduncan@nrtoday.com or by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470.)