The neighbors who built the McKenzie we love

Jim Baker

Founder, Blue River Community Development Corporation · Finn Rock

Jim Baker founded the organization that became McKenzie Community Partnership and served as its president for much of its first two decades. Under his leadership the Blue River CDC wrote the 2010 white paper for Blue River’s future, served as fiscal sponsor for the Blue River Riverwalk and the community welcome signs, and helped bring Travel Oregon’s Rural Tourism Studio to the valley, where he sat on the steering committee.

Long before that, in the 1980s, Jim led the McKenzie River Guardians in speaking up for the river’s scenic protection. In 2016 he brought Blue River neighbors together to tackle the town’s failing septic systems, an early step toward the water and sewer funding that came five years later.

George Letchworth

Track builder, tourism champion · McKenzie Bridge

George Letchworth led McKenzie Community Track & Field from its start in 2003, when volunteers set out to build an eight-lane track and field complex in Finn Rock for McKenzie students and the whole community. They raised more than $1 million to do it, with the Blue River CDC as fiscal sponsor.

George led the steering committee that brought the Rural Tourism Studio to the valley in 2011 and has long championed cycling as a way to bring visitors to the McKenzie. Readers of McKenzie River Reflections named him Man of the Year in 2005, and the Ford Institute for Community Building named him a Ford Fellow in 2014.

Melanie Brite Stanley

Meyer’s General Store · fire recovery advocate · Blue River · died October 31, 2026

Melanie grew up working at Meyer’s General Store & Liquor Shop in Blue River and took over running it in 2003. The store was the town’s gathering place. On September 7, 2020, as the Holiday Farm Fire approached, more than 150 people came there looking for information, and Melanie helped warn households where to go before escaping with her family. The fire took her home and the store.

In the weeks that followed, she worked with McKenzie Community Partnership to get donated gas, grocery and restaurant gift cards to fire survivors, and helped deliver our Holiday Boxes that December. For the next six years she was a bridge between displaced neighbors and the agencies trying to help them. She was a founding board member of the McKenzie Community Land Trust, a founding member of McKenzie Locals Helping Locals, and served with the Blue River Park and Water districts, the Upper McKenzie fire district and McKenzie Community Track & Field.

She was rebuilding Meyer’s with two affordable apartments upstairs, which she called non-negotiable, and she cheered on generations of McKenzie kids from the sidelines. Her family says they will finish the store. As her niece put it, “She was the glue of the community.”