You might think that Dr. Ed McAninch and his family moved around a lot during his 40 years as a family physician in Camas. After all, Ed and Edith McAninch have had five different addresses.
Yet they never did move.
That was a side note McAninch shared during a recent interview in his home on Edgehill Drive. The Columbian’s story on Tuesday focused on the Legion of Honor medal he received a couple of weeks ago from a representative of the French government.
During the conversation, the World War II veteran mentioned how Camas growth affected his neighborhood. The house overlooking the Columbia River had three different rural-route addresses over the years.
While it’s hard to believe now, “It was a rural route until the 1960s,” he said.
Eventually, fire officials systemized the city map to speed up their emergency responses. The road in front of his house became Endicott Street.
Which got McAninch to wondering: Why name a street in Camas after one of the earliest governors of Massachusetts?
(That would be John Endicott, a 17th-century colonial figure, by the way.)
Their response? “We need an ‘E.’ ”
That’s because his property is nestled between Couch and Fargo streets, they told McAninch.
But they were happy to reconsider, and said they would go with “whatever ‘E’ you guys can agree on,” McAninch recalled.
There were only three houses on the street at that point, so coming to an agreement didn’t take long: particularly when McAninch found just what he needed across the river.
“I looked at a map of Portland,” where McAninch said he came across Edgehill Place.
“Bingo!”
Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.
