Meet Bethel’s busiest volunteer

Editor’s note: People are the heart of Lane County — which is why, each Tuesday, Lookout Eugene-Springfield will profile someone who is working behind the scenes to make our community better. If you have suggestions on others we should profile, send us an email.

Name: Lin Woodrich
Age: 72
Occupation: Retired, Active Bethel Community co-chair
Years in role: Six

On Sunday nights twice a month, Lin Woodrich types out her testimony to the Eugene City Council and times herself as she reads it aloud, making sure it doesn’t exceed the 2-minute 30-second limit, and then she prints out a copy.

The next evening, she puts on a fluorescent vest decorated with pins. She stands at the podium in the council chambers, the paper unfolded in front of her. Woodrich, 72, has for six years co-chaired the Active Bethel Community executive board, a west Eugene neighborhood association, and she has become a recognizable figure at council meetings.

Because public comment rules prioritize neighborhood association chairs, she is almost always the first speaker at the microphone during the council’s twice-monthly public comment periods. She says her persistent testimonies have helped put Bethel on the map.

“Before I started doing that, no one would ever show up,” Woodrich said, adding, “It’s just hard out of the city. I mean, we’re not out of the city, but we’re far enough out that we kind of get forgotten.”

Though she won’t say it herself, Woodrich has been called the “mayor of Bethel.” She’s advanced the neighborhood’s first plan in 40 years, formed a local business alliance, organized Bethel’s annual celebration and advocated for residents in the ongoing J.H. Baxter & Co. Superfund site cleanup and public health standards project. 

She receives between 30 and 50 emails a day, she says, and prides herself on always picking up the phone. She meets regularly with the three city councilors who represent the area. Her monthly e-newsletters are widely read. 

“If I wasn’t doing this, who knows? This Bethel plan wouldn’t be happening,” she said. “Somebody has to do it. Somebody has to get up there and push for it.”

Woodrich was born in Eugene and later lived in Alaska and California. She retired at 62 after working for nearly a decade as the national sales coordinator for KEZI 9 News.

Her first step into organizing came after President Donald Trump was elected, when she helped organize Eugene-Springfield Indivisible chapter, and, later, the second Women’s March. In 2018, she saw Tai Pruce-Zimmerman — now the other Active Bethel Community co-chair — working to reactivate the neighborhood association. Woodrich was elected member-at-large.

In that role, she was in charge of events and learned that the annual spring We Are Bethel celebration had been left without anyone willing to run it. She said she’s been planning the event ever since. Last year it drew more than 500 attendees and 60 booths and food trucks.

The next year, in 2019, Woodrich was elected co-chair of the Bethel neighborhood association. Her testimonies on behalf of the neighborhood often concern public safety, including the need for a police substation in Bethel and impacts of crime and homelessness along Highway 99.

The Active Bethel Community and other local groups recently signed a good neighbor agreement with St. Vincent de Paul — a homeless services provider with multiple sites on the corridor — that requires notice of changes or expansions to its facilities and the upkeep of public spaces.

Woodrich said she knows neighborhood association leaders can be NIMBYs (a colloquialism for Not In My Backyard). “Some of them are, there’s no question about it,” she said. But Woodrich objects to the label herself.

“Anyone can ask me anything, and I’ll answer,” she said.

Woodrich also sits on a “core team” convened by Oregon health and environmental regulatory agencies for the cleanup of the J.H. Baxter site, which polluted the Bethel neighborhood for years.

She said advocating for environmental protections showed her the importance of working together, adding that the slow pace of the city’s public health standards project is “ridiculous.” 

“Getting things done is my motto,” she said. “I’m not just a thinker. I’m a doer. I have people that are thinkers around me, and then I do it.”

In her limited spare time, Woodrich volunteers, mentoring three kids at Cascade Middle School, helping with barbecues for the Eugene Bethel Lions Club and doing vision screenings for elementary school students. 

“I signed up for every single school that I could,” she said. “They’re so cute.”

Woodrich said time is her biggest challenge. She wakes up at 6:30 a.m., takes a short nap after lunch, and goes to sleep around 11 p.m. She said her younger sister, who currently lives with her, and her son tell her to slow down “all the time.” 

When deadlines near, Woodrich said she sometimes feels stressed, but mostly her busy schedule affects her hobbies.

Crafts like stained glass and rock polishing gather dust in her house, though she has made time to raise Izzy, the cockapoo puppy she and her sister recently brought home.

“I work way harder doing this than I’ve ever worked,” she said. “Volunteering is a full-time job, and I just put too many things in and I have a hard time saying no. I’m getting better at delegating.”

This story was updated to correct the age at which Woodrich retired.