Jim Hutchins worked for decades along Bear Creek in downtown Medford, joining with students to help clear blackberries and plant native plants. He died Feb. 24 at age 88.

Jim Hutchins, who for decades worked with students to help clear brambles and plant native plants along Bear Creek in downtown Medford, has died. He was 88.

Hutchins, known as Hutch, and his wife, Carla, founded the nonprofit organization Oregon Stewardship in the 1990s to restore riparian habitat along the creek and at other locations in Southwest Oregon by making use of student volunteers who in turn got class credit and experience in the field — and maybe took home a little pride.

“He just taught so many people to show up on time and work hard,” said Medford resident Sarah Villarreal, who met Hutchins about 10 years ago when she was a sophomore at South Medford High School. “He taught so many people so many things.”

A career landscaper, Hutchins got his hands dirty along with the student volunteers, taking on projects from tree planting to trail building. Along the way, they built Panther Pride Trail, a half-mile-long nature trail paralleling the creek in Bear Creek Park.

Several people who worked with Hutchins commented for this story.

After a bit of work, Hutchins often would take his crew of students out for pizza, according to Villareal.

“He would always go around the table and have us say one positive thing that happened in their lives that week,” she said. “He’d make everyone feel important. He always remembered everyone’s birthday. And names. He always had everyone’s name.”

He would ask the students what they wanted to do in life or what college or trade school they wanted to go to. The kids, Villarreal said, benefited from that support.

Villarreal, who went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in biology from Oregon State University, now tends the nursery at Grange Co-op and is paid to work in the park. She’s on the board of Oregon Stewardship.

“I do hope to be a biologist some day,” she said. “I’m still taking care of Panther Pride Trail. I take care of it every week.”

Hutchins, who died Feb. 24 from cancer, was known for getting things done in a no-nonsense way and with a minimum of conflict.

“It really was a labor of love for him,” said Gary Wheeler, the city’s former mayor. “The kids did get some school credit.

“Some of it was tough love on his part. Some of them weren’t overly thrilled with some of the labor.”

Hutchins typically met monthly with the mayor and city parks directors. Wheeler once surprised him with an award and a proclamation for Jim Hutchins Day.

“He just had a way of getting things done,” Wheeler said. “He was a networker.”

“You’d figure out a way to say yes to him. He really made a difference to the city.”

“The kids were excited about it. They got a lot out of it. And the city benefitted.”

The city contracted with the organization to do the work. The last few years, Hutchins was its only employee.

“We paid him $1,000 a month, which we could never do for a person that wasn’t retired,” said Eric Dittmer, chairman of the board of Oregon Stewardship and a retired Southern Oregon University professor of environmental studies.

Over the years, Hutchins worked with students at high schools in Gold Beach, Myrtle Point, Port Orford, Glendale and Cave Junction as well as South Medford High School. He went to the coast every other week, back and forth, working with the kids there.

“He went through, like, three pickup trucks because of his trips,” Dittmer said.

He referred to Hutchins as “the Johnny Appleseed of riparian restoration.” Plant it and it will grow.

Asked for a story about Hutchins, Dittmer told of the time that Hutchins was scolded by some official for using a bucket to draw irrigation water from Bear Creek, a technical violation of the law.

“It made the front page of the paper,” Dittmer remembered.

The city of Medford later made irrigation water available for the young plants that Hutchins and his students were tending.

The future of the nonprofit is to be determined. Dittmer said the board will meet soon to decide what’s next.

Rich Rosenthal, city parks director, said Panther Pride Trail, which features interpretive signs along its length, is extremely popular.

“He made it an interpretive trail and allowed people to focus their attention on the unbelievable beauty of Bear Creek,” Rosenthal said. “He made it possible for citizens to walk all the way up to the stream bank on Bear Creek. You couldn’t get to it because it was a blackberry mound.

“For all the people who now walk their dogs there, it was Jim Hutchins they could thank for that. He did a lot of this work himself. He had a lot of partners.”

Hutchins was working a full schedule “all the way up to the final month,” Rosenthal said. “Unbelievable endurance.”

Hutchins also worked along Larson Creek in southeast Medford and along Bear Creek near the Lithia & Driveway Fields in the south Medford area.

Rosenthal remembers monthly meetings with Hutchins.

“It was the highlight of the month,” Rosenthal said. “You didn’t necessarily know what flavor of Jim you would get.”

Hutchins didn’t like meetings, but he wanted to check in to provide updates and discuss opportunities.

“It was important for him to communicate,” Rosenthal said. “If there was something that went wrong, he would let me know about it in no uncertain terms.”

Hutchins would sometimes pass along nuggets of wisdom, according to Rosenthal.

“He had, like, four lifetimes’ worth of life.”

Hutchins had a longtime friend he would meet up with now and then, and when they parted they did so with the words ‘another time’ instead of ‘goodbye.’ Rosenthal found that thoughtful and soon he and Hutchins adopted that routine when they parted, including the last time they parted about a week before Hutchins died.

“Another time, Jim,” Rosenthal said.

Dittmer and Carla Hutchins collaborated on a press release about him.

“Jim’s goal was to involve students in hands-on projects to restore streams by removing invasive plants, such as blackberries, and replace them with native species such as willows, snowberry and currant,” they wrote. “Plants were watered and mulched until they were able to survive without care. He was proud of a plant survival rate of over 90%.

“Over the years Jim worked with students in Jackson, Josephine, Curry, Coos and Douglas counties. He was also the unofficial salmon counter in Bear Creek for 30 years. He was most proud of his ability to raise money for scholarships to college or vocational training for students who worked with him.”

Hutchins provided fish counts to the Rogue Valley Council of Governments and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. He counted 404 in 2014, a high, and four in 1999, the low, according to Oregon Stewardship records.

Carla Hutchins said she met Jim in the early 1980s in Southern California during a 6.2-mile uphill running event that concluded with a leisurely walk downhill. She and a friend walked downhill and he joined them.

“I thought he was funny,” she said. “He was very funny.”

At the bottom of the hill, they met up with the friend’s husband, who apparently was a serious type.

“Oh,” Jim told the guy. “They told me they were single!”

Pretty funny, though the guy didn’t think so, judging by the look on his face, according to Carla.

Jim and Carla married in 1985 and had one son together. He was the father of four other children from an earlier marriage. He operated Hutch’s Landscaping in the San Diego area and when they moved to Medford in 1989, he continued with that line of work. They fell in love with the Rogue Valley, where they settled in a rural area outside the city until moving inside about 3 years ago.

“I always thought I wanted a rural environment,” Carla said. “And for him it was steelhead. He loved fishing for steelhead.”

She recalled the time that they were sitting down for a meal with students in Gold Beach when a man walked up to them and told the students, “You’re having breakfast with a legend.”

It turned out that the man, who looked to be in his 30s, remembered getting a lesson from Hutchins in the fourth grade.

“Jim loved his work,” Carla said. “Jim loved working with kids. Jim loved his family. He was just a really happy person. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to keep working.”

“He was a man of faith,” she added.

A few days before Hutchins went into the hospital in late January, he was out on the Panther Pride Trail. A doctor later marveled that he was able to be active, according to Carla.

“He just walked along and he was unsteady and he would pick up trash,” she said, adding that he was scoping out work that needed to be done by others. “He was also handing out hand warmers to the homeless.”

Among his talents, Hutchins was a painter and a poet. One of his watercolors hanging in their home depicts a salmon, with a poem attached. Both are labeled “Transition.”

It reads,

“Transition

Finned Warriors return –

Circling, waiting, resting

Autumn colors replace azure

Remnants of ages past – driven

Sweeping rocks bruised tails

Imprints of renewal

Transition”

–––

A memorial service for Hutchins is set for 1 p.m. March 23 at Ascension Lutheran Church, 675 Black Oak Drive in Medford. After the service, there will be a hike on the Panther Pride Trail.