Боб Дюк более 20 лет собирает исторические хроники Астории для рубрики «Вода под мостом»

Every Day People: Bob Duke goes with the flow Published 3:05 pm Monday, August 24, 2026 You might say Bob Duke wrote his own destiny. Duke has been what you might call the showrunner for The Astorian’s “Water under the Bridge” for over two decades. It takes up a whole page of newspaper real estate every Tuesday on page B1. The column contains snippets of local historical moments and memories taken directly from the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers. You can read about what happened 10, 50 or 75 years ago, from boat rescues to fires, dahlia parades to soap box derbies. How Duke landed the job is about as good of a story as those he researches and puts in the paper each week. “I saw an ad in the paper,” said Duke. And, fortuitously, he happened to live right across the street from The Astorian. He walked over to apply for the job, “but it was closed,” Duke said. “I scribbled what I wanted to do and put my name on a piece of paper and stuck it in the door.” Duke said the editor called him the next day and said it was “very clever” of him to apply for the job that way, and “I don’t need to see anyone else — you’re hired.” All of the news items are painstakingly researched and gathered by Duke from poring over The Astorian’s archives which are stored at the Heritage Museum. Duke’s efforts sometimes seem magical, especially when items pop up that correlate with goings on in the present. For instance, Duke digs into the historical archives to find corresponding items from the past whenever there is an annual local event. A regatta tale from 10 years ago, the queen and her court from the Scandinavian festival 25 years ago or the end of halibut season from 75 years ago. “I try to match the week,” Duke said. Sometimes, the articles “might not match up — but they’re darn close.” And, even though the stories are pulled from actual newspaper stories from the past, Duke said he steers away from sensational or tragic news clips. “I decided right off I wasn’t going to put in any downer stories … murders … plane crashes. I just can’t bring myself to do it,” he said. Duke said he’s sometimes challenged to find good local stories from the past. “Seventy-five years ago the paper focused on world events.” Duke said he scours the old papers for local stories. “Basically, if it says ‘Astoria,’ ‘Clatsop County’ or anything across the river.” Prior to his current gig as the newspaper’s historical compiler, Duke wrote science columns, about “what you could see in the sky,” first for The Oregonian and later for The Astorian. He and his wife, Janean, also were rangers at Fort Clatsop, aka the Lewis and Clark Historical Park and became tour leaders on Columbia River cruise boats. Duke said everything he’s done has brought him to where he is today. “Something I come away with from our time and explorations here is that this region is a melding of (Oregon and Washington) around the commerce of the river. The Indigenous people had it right here for 13,000 years. … People on both sides of the river then shared the bounty offered by the river.” For Duke, he sees the Astoria-Megler bridge “as a modern way to unite the two states into one region: The Lower Columbia Pacific Region. I try to reflect this when choosing articles for ‘Water Under the Bridge.’