‘She will be sorely missed’

Ask any Camas resident what they love most about their city and the response is likely to include the city’s “hometown feel.”

This month, one of the key people responsible for maintaining Camas’ small-town charm — Krista Bashaw, the city’s longtime recreation coordinator and special events organizer — will retire from her 30-year career with the city’s parks and recreation department.

Those who have worked with Bashaw over the past three decades say she is someone who will not be easy to replace.

“No one is as dedicated to creating community as Krista,” said Ellen Burton, president of the Camas Parks and Recreation Commission and a former Camas mayor and city councilor. “For the past 30 years, (Bashaw) has created, organized and delivered hundreds of events delighting everyone from toddlers to their doting grandparents.”

On May 8, the Parks Foundation of Clark County will honor Bashaw with the foundation’s Florence B. Wager Tributary Award for leadership and service to the community.

‘Losing a lot of history’

Bashaw, 59, left a career in the hotel industry to join the city in April 1995. Camas was still known as a paper mill town back then, and the city’s now-thriving downtown shopping and dining district was a collection of mostly vacant storefronts.

Bashaw was the city’s liaison on a committee that wanted to help attract visitors to Camas’ historic downtown. She said a downtown association — the precursor to today’s Downtown Camas Association — held an annual Christmas tree-lighting ceremony to help draw people to the area.

Bashaw remembers that event growing slowly, using vacant storefronts to host Santa and Camas student performers before eventually morphing into the annual Hometown Holidays event that draws hundreds of visitors to downtown Camas each December.

“That’s the most challenging event to plan,” Bashaw said. “It’s so detailed. It keeps you on your toes.”

In fact, Bashaw said, she has barely recovered from one Hometown Holidays before she has to start planning the following year’s event.

This year, however, Bashaw plans to finally enjoy the event as a spectator.

“I’m looking forward to strolling instead of walking around and talking with an earpiece in,” Bashaw said.

The same is true for all of the events Bashaw has organized since 1995, including the summertime concerts and movies in the parks; the fall Pumpkin Party at Liberty Middle School; the Easter egg hunt that drew a record 2,800 attendees this year; the springtime Camtown Youth Festival; the Tots to Teens Tuesdays in July and August; and the popular Camas Days Kids Parade that helps kick off the Camas-Washougal Chamber of Commerce’s annual two-day Camas Days celebration each July.

Bashaw said she has seen all of these events change and adapt as Camas has more than tripled its population over the past 30 years, growing from 8,500 residents in 1995 to a population of just over 26,000 today.

“It used to be just Camas people who came to these events,” Bashaw said.

Now, the city’s events regularly draw people from across the Portland metro area.

After retiring the second week of May, Bashaw plans to “take one whole year off” and spend more time with her family and pets, including Buddy, a 20-year-old horse she boards at Windy Ridge Farm in Washougal, and Kodiak, a 4-year-old Australian shepherd.

“I want to go hiking with my dog, spend time with my mom and husband, get more exercise … and just get my house in order,” Bashaw said.

But while Bashaw has been planning what she’ll do with her newfound free time, Camas city leaders have been planning how they’ll get along without her.

“We’re losing a lot of history with Krista,” said Port of Camas-Washougal CEO Trang Lam, the city of Camas’ former parks and recreation director.

Budget cuts forced Camas officials to pause their search for Lam’s replacement in 2024, but with a new parks director set to start on May 5, city leaders hope the hunt for a special events coordinator will soon follow.

Members of the Camas Parks and Recreation Commission have said Bashaw will be difficult to replace.

Shoestring budget

Those who have workedwith Bashaw said she has been instrumental in expanding the city’s events despite a lack of staff and resources.

“Krista has spent 30 years creating community by bringing people together, and she has done this on a shoestring (budget),” Lam said. “Krista has recruited and retained over 1,000 volunteers over the years. Some have worked with her for decades. They come back because of her.”

In April, Bashaw coordinated 70 volunteers from local Boy Scout troops and the Washington State School for the Blind in Vancouver to help stuff candy into 12,000 plastic eggs for the city’s Easter egg hunt.

Cassidy Hines, who worked with Bashaw for several years, said the egg-stuffing event is one example of Bashaw’s determination to “work with what she is given.”

“Instead of buying pre-stuffed eggs each year for the egg hunt, she coordinates the return of over 12,000 eggs during the event,” Hines said.

Before the city of Camas decommissioned its outdoor swimming pool at Crown Park in early 2019, Hines said Bashaw used to bring staff and volunteers to the pool to clean the plastic eggs.

“We would come in at the end of the season with our 24,000 egg tops and bottoms, putting them all in the chlorinated pool,” Hines recalled. “We put on our bathing suits and swish them around and collect them all to dry.”

But it wasn’t just Bashaw’s resourcefulness that made the events coordinator so memorable, Hines said.

“She has such strong relationships with what feels like everyone in Camas,” Hines said. “When I used to work with her … we would have to pass out letters to all the businesses and residents of downtown Camas prior to Hometown Holidays with information about street closures and such.

“(Bashaw) knew basically everyone we walked by on the street and would stop and talk with them or pop into businesses as we were walking down the main street,” Hines said. “It always took twice the time, but that is the special part of Krista. She loves to introduce people to each other and build strong bonds, and she remembers everyone.”

Hines said the community may soon notice Bashaw’s absence, especially given the fact that the city has already canceled one popular event, the Camtown Youth Festival in June, due to Bashaw’s retirement.

“I know she will be sorely missed this summer, since there is a lapse between her and her successor,” Hines said.

Kelly Moyer: 360-735-4674 [email protected]