Queen of Troutdale Sharon Nesbit retires her Outlook column

Brit Allen
Brit Allen
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May 12, 2023
May 12, 2023

In journalism, you’re taught to ask “who, what, where, when, why and how?” For Sharon Nesbit, her go-to question for years has been “Well, how did that start?”

Now, after more than 50 years, Nesbit is officially fulling retiring from the industry, taking the funny and insightful anecdotes she wrote about in her weekly column with her, but not before we at The Outlook got to interview her about her career and ask: “Well, how did that start?”

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To know her is to love her

With the news that Sharon Nesbit would retire her column, and therefore her longtime association with The Outlook, several past and present Outlook staffers and community friends shared anecdotes about her.

"It was around 1986, when I was the editor of The Outlook, when I asked Sharon to begin writing a weekly column in addition to her history column. I told her it would be Sharon Nesbit at large in the community, which wasn’t exactly how it turned out. Nonetheless, she started writing a column that soon became a must-read for Outlook subscribers. Over the next four decades, several generations of Outlook readers followed the adventures of Sharon, her dearly missed Hubs, No. 1 and 2 kids, the Bearded Defender and then onto the two grandchildren, the travels in Maude, her battles with the East Wind, her epic trips to Hawaii. Sharon would make you laugh and cry in the same paragraph. She was and is a fabulous storyteller, the finest of writers. She loved working for a community newspaper, but her writing was always better than nearly anything you could find elsewhere.

"She has loved community journalism because of the intimacy it provides with readers. Beyond her personal stories, Sharon’s columns often celebrated the lives of people she’s known in Troutdale, Gresham and all of East County. I can remember more than once getting a call from a reader with a story to tell, but they would only tell it to Sharon.

"Hopefully, Outlook readers will continue to enjoy any archived columns that the newspaper chooses to publish. I figure she’s written nearly 2,000 columns and each of them had something worthwhile to say."

-- PMG President Emeritus Mark Garber

“Sharon has the confidence, wisdom and intelligence to approach anyone and make a connection. She can tell a story about a farmer with as much aplomb as she does historians and grieving parents. She brings her humor to bear to disarm. She is the best journalist I have ever worked with. I was a green college graduate, a sports writer with one year of experience thrown into writing news stories at The Outlook when I met her in 1996. She spared no one’s feelings. She would look at you and say exactly what was on her mind. ‘People don’t pass away, they die,’ I remember her telling me. She was right. Our newsroom has been much less fun, with an emptiness without her presence. However, she gave us 37 years of her off-beat, but always incisive look at the unique world of East County and beyond.”

-- Tiffaney O'Dell, PMG Central Design Desk editor

"I came to work at The Outlook as its news editor in 2008, and as luck would have it, my desk was positioned adjacent to Sharon’s.

While setting up my work area on my first day, a short woman -- resembling my mother -- walked nonchalantly into the newsroom, as if it was something she had done hundreds, if not thousands of times. I later learned that her entrance into my life was not unusual for the woman who knows how to make an entrance.

Moving to her desk, Sharon stopped, paused, then turned her attention in my direction, looking at me up and down, sizing me up. As I recall her facial expression, it was not unlike the unimpressed countenance of a queen meeting a naughty underling.

And then she began to speak:

“Hello, I’m Sharon Nesbit,” she said. “You must be the new news editor.”

“That’s me,” I answered with the chipper tone of a guy with a new job.

After another short pause, Sharon continued:

“I want to make a few things clear,” she began. “I come when I come. I go when I go. I do what I want. Don’t ever tell me what to do. If you don’t like that, I would prefer it if they would just fire me, anyway. If you can agree to that, we’ll get along fine.”

And for the last 14 years, I have enjoyed every moment of knowing this wonderful woman, who is the truest and best definition of a 'community news reporter.'"

-- Gresham Outlook Executive Editor and Publisher Steve Brown

"Sharon Nesbit has been a presence in my life since I was twelve or fourteen years old. I believe my first memory of her was in what we called the family room of our home on the banks of the Sandy River in Troutdale. She was there to gather some piece of information from my father, who at the time was the mayor of Troutdale. Notably for me, she made time to visit with this gawky teenager. That was the first time I heard her infectious laughter, and I have never forgotten it.

Later, as a local teacher looking to enhance our sometimes bland curriculum, I saw her make those same kind of connections with my students every time she consented to a field trip or classroom visit. Students are mesmerized by this woman named Sharon Nesbit who dares to be naughty – yet 100% 'correct' – in front of them. Side note: She must have been a real handful when she was young.

Bottom line, it doesn't matter what the age of her audience, Sharon makes connections with people."

-- Len Otto, friend and fellow Troutdale historian

"I was in my mid-30s when I joined the staff of The Outlook in Gresham; one of about three 30-somethings who joined the newsroom almost simultaneously. Sharon, the doyenne of that newsroom, could have been miffed about so many reporters, wet behind their ears, stomping on her turf. But she was generous to a fault.

She also had an unquenchable sense of humor for the nuttier portions of the newspaper gig. It is a fact that the most thick-skinned, hardboiled journalist will take joy in reading about dumb criminals. The dumber the better. And none ate these press releases up with such gusto as Sharon Nesbit. “Hey! Look at this one!” she’d sing out, followed by peels of laughter. “No wonder they caught this guy! What a moron!”

Then she’d get down to writing her column, which almost always focused on the depth, breadth and diversity of the citizenry in East County. Stories that revolved around the innate goodness of people, or on their service to the community, or charming anecdotes about their lives.

Then she’d go back to howling about the dumb-criminal-de-jure."

-- Dana Haynes, PMG Editor in Chief

Brit Allen

Reporter

Brit Allen is a reporter based in Sandy, Ore.

Queen of Troutdale Sharon Nesbit retires her Outlook column

Brit Allen

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