Park-living pair shuns publicity

PORTLAND — A man and his daughter who were discovered after living for four years in the depths of a Portland city park have disappeared again.

The story of the pair — found in the park clean and healthy, the girl well-spoken and educated — spread nationwide, especially after Port-land police Sgt. Michael Barkley found the two a new home.

But the man, known only as Frank, was uncomfortable with the publicity that accompanied their story, and feared that television-news helicopters were circling in the sky above his new home.

If there were helicopters trying to find the pair, they didn’t belong to any of Portland’s news stations, according to news directors. None of them tried to track down Frank and his daughter, Ruth, from the air.

Barkley told the Oregonian newspaper that their departure was more of a flight than a disappearance. Last Monday, Frank and Ruth gathered their belongings from the mobile home, expressed their thanks to the owners and left.

“I have a feeling they have gone under again,” said the Rev. Ronald McCallum, pastor of Emanuel Lutheran Church in Cornelius, which the pair had been attending. “They’re trying to stay private. And if they stayed in Forest Park for four years, they could be almost anywhere.”

The father and daughter were discovered in late April by runners in Forest Park. They told police they had lived at their camp, dug into a hillside, for four years, and that the daughter had been home-schooled using thrift-store encyclopedias.

A physician and state child-welfare investigators found no evidence of abuse, according to police reports examined by the newspaper.

Their story prompted people around the country to donate money, about $6,500 in total. Barkley said it is impossible to know if Frank has withdrawn any of it.