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Finding Star Trek, Seinfeld and American Royalty on the Oregon Coast

By Andre’ Hagestedt

Wheeler

(Wheeler, Oregon) – Loads of oddities happen to me on these runs up and down the coast with startling regularity. Covering 180 miles of coastline, from Florence to Astoria, is nutty enough. But these trips add whole new meaning to “living on the edge of the continent” at times. It’s often a lot more than a business trip, a photo expedition or editorial fact gathering run. It can be truly kooky.

That’s part of the wonder if it all, however. The coolest things can cross your path.

It’s August of 2005: Things are a little nuttier than usual. On this particular month, this includes the meeting of royalty. It was two kinds of royalty, really. One was blue blood in the historical American sense. Another was a local woman who starred in two of my favorite shows of all time, the “Star Trek” franchise and “Seinfeld.”

Late one night, I wander into the Sea Shack in Wheeler. There, Willow Bill (a perennial bit of local color) is conversing with some fetching woman. I eventually wander over there to chat with them all, and find out this lady is in town from Colorado, having just been in Washington to help dedicate a new park in honor of Lewis & Clark. It turns out, she's a seventh-generation descendent of William Clark - a bit of royal bloodline she was both blessed and cursed with.

There's a whole very personal side to this story, as impressive as this relationship is to one of our most beloved historic figures. This causes history groups and geeks to make quite a fuss over her - which is both good and bad. Imagine: being a sort of Britney Spears of the historic scene, with the equivalent of history buff paparazzi hounding you periodically (but without the shaved head and exposed body parts). Yet at the same time, it's not a bad thing to be honored by many, even if it isn't for anything you actually did - but instead were born into. And she does enjoy the historic significance of it all.

Nehalem Bay: there are rumors of a paranormal thing here called the "Wheeler Moment," where interesting serendipitous coincidences happen frequently

She - and I'll keep her anonymous - has quite the love/hate relationship with it all. She finds out I'm media and is really quite unpleasant about that at times, assuming I'm looking at her in some journalistically predatory way, even winding up insulting at moments. Well, I guess here I am writing about it in this article. But really, I just found her and her situation interesting.

Her brother won't deal with any of the pomp and circumstance. He has nothing to do with the celebrations of Lewis & Clark, while she really does love and understand it. She also tells me she grew up in an elementary school named after Clark. While in fifth grade, her teachers didn't believe her that she was descended from the school's namesake.

She also complains about the sexist nature of some of the celebrations: how many times she was not allowed to march in one parade or another because she was a female descendent of Clark, and not a male.

Apparently, not all of Lewis & Clark's progressive spirit lives on into the 21st century, and not all the keepers of the legacy of the Corps of Discovery acknowledge the last 100 years of social progress.

Liz Cole, now a N. coast resident, as she appeared in a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode

The next day, I'm goofing around Wheeler again, and wander into Peg Miller's shop (our shopping columnist, in case you forgot). And lo and behold, a north coast icon of mine is standing there: actress Megan Cole, who played small parts on "Seinfeld," "ER" and two of the Star Trek series. Megan lives here these days, and I've been obsessed with the idea of proving it was the lady from the "Suzie" episodes of Seinfeld whom I heard talking outside a Manzanita grocery two years ago.

That fact was clarified for me a long time ago, but all of a sudden I walk into Ekahni Books and there is Megan! I'm a huge Seinfeld fan, and an even bigger Star Trek fan, so this was like my two seriously geeky sides meeting right here in Wheeler, on a sunny, hot August afternoon.

I greet Peg, and turn to Megan (also known as Liz) and say: "and you're Liz Cole, aren't you? I LOVE your work on Seinfeld."

I am all of a sudden nervous and star-struck, so I more-than-half expect her to smell my fear and treat me like another Hollywood stalker. Instead, she's immediately gracious and says "thank you." Introductions are made by Peg, we all chat leisurely, and at some point it really hits me whom I'm talking to, and I get nervous again, stutter and say some stupid things. I'm simply awestruck. She was so cool in Seinfeld, and the Romulan character she played in the last two episodes of "Deep Space Nine" was also quite memorable - mostly because I so deeply mourned the impending loss of that series as it came to a close. It was like meeting someone I'd cried in front of once (because, yes, I'm such a geek I did indeed cry at the end of DS9….I cried like a little girl).

I gloat about these brushes with greatness for days. I left out the crying-like-a-girl part, however.

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