January February 2018

Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org 15 PLSO Conference What is your proudest moment as a surveyor? My proudest moment as a surveyor is a bit of a long and involved story and it is part two of the speech I gave when I received my Surveyor of the Year award, but if you would bear with me, I promise there is a point to this. When I grew up in mostly rural settings, I fully admit I was a bit of a Neanderthal about gay and lesbian rights. It was just sorta what you did living out in the country and there were essentially no gay people around that we knew of to form an opinion about one way or another. They were simply an easy boogeyman or target to validate our own sense of self-worth and superiority. It seemed to work for me that the gay community was a nebu- lous group with an agenda, everything worked out until karma came and bit me in the butt. My youngest daughter Ma’ire is and always was a lesbian. Believe me, I didn’t want her to go down that path in the way that I knew she would experience a lot of abuse and hatred from people who never knew more than one thing about her. We tried pray- ing the gay away and binge watching the Walton’s, but nothing seemed to work. Of course, I still loved her and I always will. She is my daughter after all, yet I still got to watch her absorb all this abuse and continue to thrive. I decided that it was not right to sit back and watch the oppres- sion of a minority, so we bought an ad in the Portland Gay and Lesbian Phone Book with the hopes that we might eventually be able to offer assistance to some members of this commu- nity. (We were the first surveying company to ever advertise in their phone book and we may be the only surveying company in the nation that does advertise in this type of phone book.) Several months after we placed our ad, we had an inquiry from a member of the gay community who asked for our help. Jeff was 19 years old and gay. His dad had died in a car wreck when he was 12 and his mother died of inflammatory breast cancer when he was 17. He inherited a house in Lake Oswego and enough money to go to school and live off of the proceeds of their estate for several years. He was a devout Christian and after two miserable years of loneliness, invited his partner to move in with him. Jeff was articulate, smart, and I cannot say enough about his obvious high-quality character. His back-door neighbor was a South American bigot who took every opportunity to abuse Jeff and his partner. Every time he went into his back yard, the neighbor would come out and tell Jeff that God hates fags and that homos are destined to burn in hell. (Sorry for the offensive language but I think it is too import- ant to the story to replace it with a sanitized version.) Jeff built a fence as a physical barrier to abate the abuse, and his neighbor tore it down. He rebuilt it and the neighbor tore it down again so Jeff called the police. The Lake Oswego police said it was a civil matter because the angry South American claimed the fence was put up on his property and they said they wouldn’t do anything until a survey was done. So, we did a survey and set the corners and Jeff rebuilt the fence within his property boundaries (it was on his property the whole time). Of course, his neighbor tore down the fence once again. (If you’re counting, this brings the total up to three times.) You really have to wonder about the type of person who feels the sacred words of God justify the abuse of the oppressed while missing that whole ‘Love thy neighbor’ thing. I am not a Biblical scholar, but I am pretty sure that committing crimes to abuse your neighbor may be a frowned upon activity among the divinely inspired, but that is just me. Jeff phoned the City of Lake Oswego police department once again, and the City told him once again that it was a civil matter and they wouldn’t do anything about it unless things escalated. Escalated? Like what? The crazy neighbor assaults my client? Aren’t you supposed to deter crime before it happens? That pretty much ripped it for me. I phoned the best land litiga- tion attorney I know and since she owed me a favor and I bent her arm a bit, she agreed to help Jeff pro bono. We met with the attorney, started the paper work for a temporary restraining or- der and arranged a meeting with the Lake Oswego Police Chief and a Lake Oswego City council member on site. The Council Member and the Police Chief both admitted that the police ac- tion so far had been woefully inadequate and that the City of Lake Oswego needed to revamp their policies in dealing with this type of chronic abuse and harassment. By getting involved and championing another individual’s rights, we managed to get a city and a police department to change their policies, and to the City’s credit, they changed things dras- tically to ensure that all the City’s residents were treated equally, with certain inalienable rights endowed by their creator. I think this case exemplifies the nobility of the surveying pro- fession. We are here to defend the bona fide property rights of individuals. We mark a spot on the ground with a perma- nent monument and say to the owner, you own the property to this place here. Your rights are being preserved to this point so enjoy the benefit that your land has to offer to the fullest. Of course, attorneys will also advocate for clients, but we are still bound within the constraints of the truth. The attorney may try to make an argument beyond the boundaries of a person’s property, but we are bound by the facts and evidence. We will guard our client’s property rights, but we also ensure that our client’s do not encroach on the property rights of others. Our profession gives us the bounty of being able to be protec- tors of other’s rights and in doing so, we can demonstrate our true nobility. What a wonderful profession that we are given these opportunities. Being a part of this truly noble group is what I am most proud of.  x Let’s not forget we need to understand that surveying is a practice. Practice, as in we are still learning and still improving.