Pe Ell Sun Keeps West County Readers Informed

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For the past 10 years, Eddi Nelson-Peterson has been the publisher of the Pe Ell Sun. She’s also the newsletter’s editor, designer, advertising executive and circulation director.

“It’s not a professional paper,” she jokes, but the publication still means a lot for residents on the west side of Lewis County. 

Twice a month, 350 copies of the newsletter-style paper make their way to a half-dozen or so businesses in town, including Kettle Creek, the coffee shop and antique store run by Nelson-Peterson. The Sun is usually made up of four pages of printer paper stapled together, but it’s a wealth of information for people living in Pe Ell, Doty and Dryad. 

The June 29 edition of the Sun gives a schedule of Independence Day festivities, alumni sports games at the high school, chimney cleanings by the local fire district, school calendars, town council minutes and information on back-to-school supplies.

“You get on Facebook, and people will say, ‘I have a question,’” Nelson-Peterson said. “Well, pick up the latest issue of the Pe Ell Sun.”

Nelson-Peterson, who lives in Doty, started producing the paper in 2008 after its founder, Faye Webster, decided she could no longer handle the workload. She’d come to rely on the biweekly publication and wanted to keep it going.

“I thought at first, ‘I’ll never be able to do that,’” she said. “It’s actually pretty easy.”

That’s because the news mostly comes to her. Residents email in additions to the newsletter, but just as often, they just drop them off at Kettle Creek. Early Tuesday morning, a local walked in and handed over a flier about the farmers’ market.

“There’s my front page,” Nelson-Peterson said.

It hasn’t just been a one-woman show. Kristi Milanowski, who contributed poetry to the Sun when Webster was its editor, began running her own column when Nelson-Peterson started running the paper. “Kristi’s Korner” fills a page with sports updates, birthdays, anniversaries, death notices and well wishes to readers with health issues. 

“If it wasn’t for her, there would definitely be a lot of missing information,” Nelson-Peterson said. “I couldn’t do it without her. She makes the paper.”



Milanowski, a town council member in Pe Ell, also contributes freelance writing to the Pacific County press. Keeping up with the goings-on of the town’s residents is rewarding work, she said.

“If I don’t know them, I know who they are or who they’re related to,” she said. “Since it’s a small community, it’s a little more personal.”

Both women said Facebook has been an important resource in finding events and updates for the paper, but the Sun also serves older people who might not see that information on social media. Milanowski mails five copies of each issue to longtime residents who no longer live in Pe Ell, and Nelson-Peterson said former neighbors who now live in nursing homes in Centralia or Chehalis always enjoy it when they can get their hands on the Sun.

“People really miss it,” she said. “They want to know what’s going on as far as whose birthday it is and whose anniversary it is. … It makes them feel like they haven’t moved too far away.”

Another role of the Sun is to help publicize community fundraisers — for Fourth of July events, local sports teams and people in need. 

“I think it’s important that we keep up with our neighbors, and if someone needs help or assistance with a fundraiser, it’s important to keep (the community) in the loop,” Milanowski said. “It’s a very close-knit, generous community.”

The Sun is run as nonprofit, and readers can pick it up for free around town. The $25 a month it collects from its 10 or so sponsors helps pay for the use of the industrial printer it’s produced on at the town hall. Whenever the paper has surplus money, it’s donated to a community group or family in need.

After 275 editions, Nelson-Peterson and Milanowski haven’t run out of things to cover. Both say they plan to keep the Sun going for a long time.

“For a small town, there’s a lot going on,” Nelson-Peterson said. “You never look at the Pe Ell Sun and say, ‘There’s nothing in there.’