Bond proves full measure of support

clipped from www.registerguard.com Joelle — that’s what she goes by — is the reigning Mrs. Oregon, the first African-American to win the title. “I haven’t been excited about this pageant stuff,” George says. “Takes too much time and money. But she points out I’m the one that got her into it. When she was a little girl in Portland, some lady in our neighborhood wanted to know if she wanted to be in this pageant, and I said OK.” This all got me thinking about how these inter-generational relationships depend, in part, on a willingness of one person to support the other — even if the endeavor at hand leaves one of them cold. As George’s golf outings did when Joelle was a little girl. He’d have her tag along as he and his buddies played at public courses in Portland. Rain. Sleet. Cold. You name it, they played in it — and she watched in it. “I may have been miserable,” Joelle remembers, “but I never complained.” And hooted and hollered when her father would win.