CHAPTER 36
Opal Whiteley
By Elbert Bede
Elbert Bede, editor of the Cottage Grove Sentinel and one of the columnists previously considered, has been the Boswell of the amazing Opal ever since she came out of a Lane County logging camp to receive at his hands her first delicious taste of public notice. He first wrote about her as a religious leader of young people, then as a nature student, and when she leaped into sudden and international fame with her diary his brilliant articles were widely published and republished to satisfy the general curiosity about her. She has been the greatest mystery and the greatest sensation of Oregon literature. In this essay, especially written for this book, he has summarized her remarkable and enigmatic career.
About 20 years ago I was reporting a Junior Christian Endeavor convention in Cottage Grove and was astounded when informed that a 17-year-old girl from a nearby logging camp had been elected president. My newspaper instinct told me that here was to be found an unusual human interest story. I sought the girl. Her name was Opal Whiteley.
This was the olive-skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed maid who, a few years later, as the author of The Story of Opal: The Journal of an Understanding Heart, published under the auspices of the Atlantic Monthly, staid beacon light of literature, was to precipitate the literary controversy of the century; was to present in that story a foster-parentage fantasy that drew into the controversy psychologists, scientists, astrologers, psychists, editors, ministers of the gopel, literary critics, and every person who had at any time known Opal; and that brought sorrow and embarrassment to many who believed themselves relatives of this fanciful and imaginative young woman. No other book, with an Oregon locale, no other Oregon author, has claimed so
