Isaac Laquedem

R. Lee Johnson: legislator, attorney general, judge, and admiral of the Oregon Navy (1930-2009)

During World War I, the federal government formed a corporation to log and mill spruce for the war effort, calling it the United States Spruce Production Corporation.  In 1920, a transplanted New Yorker named Clarence D. Johnson, who had done well in the timber business in Louisiana, came to Toledo, Oregon, bought the Lincoln County holdings of the federal business, and started doing business as C.D. Johnson Lumber Corporation.  The new company prospered.  When C.D. Johnson died, the business was successfully carried on by his three sons, C.D. (called Dean), Ernest, and Robert.

On August 24, 1951, a United Airlines plane crashed on approach to Oakland Municipal Airport, killing all aboard, including the brothers Dean and Ernest Johnson, who were returning from a business trip east.  A few months later the surviving family members sold the enterprise to Georgia-Pacific.  The surviving brother became a director of Georgia-Pacific and the other family members retired from the timber business.

This left Dean Johnson's sons without a family business to join.  Dean's son Lee, a college senior at the time of the tragedy, finished college and went to law school.  He returned to Oregon, practiced law for a few years, and as other men of means have done, decided to enter public service, winning election to the Oregon House as a Republican in 1966.

Lee Johnson, who died this Sunday at 79, wanted to accomplish more than he could as one of the 60 house members.  A staunch Republican, in 1968 he challenged the longtime incumbent Democratic attorney general, Robert Y. Thornton, in a campaign that set an Oregon record for spending in a statewide race.  A bitter election resulted in a solid victory for Mr. Johnson, but Mr. Thornton challenged the election on the ground that Mr. Johnson had spent too much of his own funds on the campaign and had filed a false report of his campaign expenses.  A trial panel barred Mr. Johnson from taking office, but the Oregon supreme court reversed the decision and allowed Mr. Johnson to take office in May 1969, five months after his term was to have started.

Despite this awkward start, he easily won re-election four years later.  In his two terms as attorney general, he modernized the office and reworked it to operate it much like a private law firm.  His staff started to keep time records and to bill other state agencies for their advice.  He played an active part in implementing Oregon's early public records laws and in general made the office more efficient and responsive to the state agencies that were its clients.  He also had the confidence to keep his address and home telephone listed and available to the public, at least to that portion of the public who knew that the "R." in his name stood for Robertson.

At the end of his second term as attorney general, he was elected to the Oregon court of appeals.  He served part of a term, resigning to become Governor Atiyeh's chief of staff.  Governor Atiyeh later appointed him to the Multnomah County Circuit Court, where he served until retiring in 1995.

He occupied his offices in an unconventional order, and this led to some unexpected rulings.  One day he was hearing a matter involving the public records law, with the contestants arguing about what the legislature intended the law to mean.  His ruling was swift:  "When I drafted that law, this is what I meant."  Later the chief judge assigned him to the probate court, which to that time had been mostly a dreary procession of attorneys coming to the courthouse with routine procedural motions, each of which required a courtroom, a hearing, and a court reporter.  He saw no reason to sit in court for hours to listen to this, and he didn't see why probate lawyers should have to take every motion to court in person, wait for a turn, and then drone into the record, all with their meters running.  So he instituted probate-by-mail, directing lawyers to mail uncontested motions and orders to the court, for him to read and approve or reject.  Other county courts quickly adopted the Johnson system, and it's a rare probate lawyer in Oregon today who actually goes to the courthouse.

His most interesting public office was awarded as a sort of jest.  In 1974 Governor McCall looked into buying a destroyer to enforce the exclusive fishing zone off of Oregon's coast.  When the news broke, Mr. Johnson (then the attorney general) wrote to the governor, asking to become an admiral of the Oregon navy.  (I think he had in mind something like the military duties of a Kentucky colonel.)  "I am frankly tired of being called general," he wrote, "but Oh, to be an admiral of the Oregon navy!" he wrote.  Two months later, at the Republican party's Dorchester Conference in Seaside, he was -- to his surprise and great delight -- informally commissioned as an admiral of the Oregon navy, the first and so far the only.

Lee Johnson didn't get enough credit for what he accomplished, but then he didn't ask for any.  Somewhere among the icons of that lost era of bipartisanship -- McCall, Straub, Hatfield, Redden (and in an impish way, E.D. Potts) -- there should be a little room to remember Lee Johnson also.

Commissioner Alice Corbett orders chicken salad, and tests her guest's composure

Thirty-five years ago, a vacancy opened up on the Multnomah County Commission when Don Clark, then a commissioner, was elected chairman of the commission.  It was up to Mr. Clark and the other three commissioners to fill the vacancy.

The hot issue of the day was whether to build the Mt. Hood Freeway.  It would have run from the stubby ramps on the east end of the Marquam Bridge southeast to a corridor more or less along Division Street, then then roughly parallel to and north of Powell Boulevard until it got to the place southeast of Gresham where Highway 26 turns into an expressway. 

Two members of the commission supported the Mt. Hood Freeway and two opposed it.  They ran through a great number of candidates for the fifth seat, in each case splitting on a two-to-two vote.  Commissioners Don Clark and Mel Gordon voted against the pro-freeway candidates, and Commissioners Alice Corbett and Dan Mosee voted against the anti-freeway candidates.

One day someone suggested appointing Dennis Buchanan to the post.  Mr. Buchanan had been a Portland newspaper and television journalist from 1962 to 1973.  When his name came up for consideration, Commissioner Corbett invited him to lunch, presumably, he thought, to sound out his views on the controversial freeway.  In some panic, because he opposed the freeway and knew that Mrs. Corbett would vote against him if she knew that, he asked a political friend to tell him something about Mrs. Corbett.  "She's very much a lady, and will act that way," said the friend, pungently adding, "But don't be misled -- she knows the difference between chicken salad and chicken****."

They went to lunch. Mrs. Corbett didn't ask about the Mt. Hood Freeway.  She agreed to support Mr. Buchanan, and he was in due course appointed to the vacant seat.  The only hitch, Mr. Buchanan recalls, was when the waiter took their orders.  He doesn't remember what he himself ordered, but he recalls to this day that Commissioner Corbett ordered the chicken salad.  It was all he could do to keep a straight face through the meal.

I like Frank, who is smart enough not to want his old job back

This latest Oregonian story on Mayor Adams's troubles gave me a certain nostalgia for the Frank Ivancie years, though he's unlikely to head north from his home in sunny southern California to reenter our political scene.  During Hizzoner's four years as Mayor, as I recall, the police bureau was quiet, snowy arterials were sanded, and construction on the area's first light rail line started.  Despite the recession that plagued most of his term, he helped recruit overseas businesses to come to the area (NEC, for example).  The City's main public works project of the time, the Portland Building, came in pretty much on time and on budget.  Not a bad legacy.

Schmalz on the slopes; or, Dr. H. Clagett Harding didn't just walk his dog

Whenever it snows in Portland, I recall the late Dr. H. Clagett Harding (known more pronounceably to his friends as Larry) and his family's dog. 

Dr. and Mrs. Harding and their children liked to ski.  They owned a cabin near Mount Hood.  They also owned a dachshund, which they named Schmalz.

If you own a dog, and you ski, what do you do with your dog when you go skiing?  You can leave Fido at home, or at your cabin, or you can do what the Hardings did:  teach Fido, or in this case Schmalz, to ski.  Schmalz learned to ski at age 1-1/2 and remained a skier for most of the rest of his 15 years, heading down the slopes in Oregon, California, and even in Europe.  No snowy winter in Portland was complete without a photograph in the Oregonian of Dr. Harding and his skiing dog Schmalz, schussing down a street in the West Hills. 

Dr. Harding died in 1979, and Schmalz went to the Big Slope in 1981.  Since then I haven't read of any other skiing dogs in the area.  The famous St. Bernards at Timberline Lodge don't ski.  Portland could use another skiing dog, even if only to show our commitment to multimodal transportation.

Steam under the sidewalks

Many of the older buildings in downtown Portland were heated by steam piped from a plant located more or less under the west end of the Marquam Bridge.  The plant was inefficient, became outdated, and closed in 1985.

One side benefit of the steam plant, appreciated only in inclement weather such as today's, was that the distribution pipes ran beneath many of the streets of downtown Portland.  The steam pipes would melt the snow and ice on the streets above, freeing them for travel without the aid of salt or plow.

The plant's site has been filled with offices and condominiums and we can't replace the steam plant at a convenient location.  It did occur to me yesterday, as I edged my way along the icy sidewalks, that when the construction crowd gets its next bailout, it should allocate a few of the dollars to put steam pipes underneath the sidewalks that connect City Hall to the Mausoleum Club, not only as a tribute to the age of steam but for the convenience of the businesses looking for public funds.

Then again, it may simply fall down and spare us the problem of replacing it

On this day in the first administration of Grover Cleveland, Grandfather Farmer was born, a few blocks from the train station in a small town in Kansas.  No planes had flown, no automobiles had been made, and no bridges crossed the Willamette River in Portland.

Over his 93 years he saw cars drive, planes fly, and spaceships go to the Moon and beyond.  More prosaically, he saw the Fremont Bridge added to the other spans that cross the Willamette in Portland, from the St. Johns in the north to the Sellwood in the south.

I can't imagine what innovations of transport I might see, if I should live as long as he did.  I suspect, however, that when I am 93, the Sellwood Bridge will still be awaiting replacement. 

How the Zoo used to name its elephants

The Portland Zoo* has a baby elephant to name.  Instead of inviting the public to suggest names, the Zookeepers have proposed five names with cultural roots in the Southeast Asia range of this elephant's ancestors, and have invited the public to vote among those five.  Voting ends September 11.

The Zoo has invited public involvement in naming its major newborns, but not consistently.  It's had a lot of elephants to name.  According to the Knower of All Things, many years ago when an elephant was to be born, the Zoo staff proposed having a contest and inviting schoolchildren to submit names.  The chairman of the Zoo board said no; he had already picked the elephant's name.  A male elephant, he said, would be named X and a female elephant would be named Y.  Not by coincidence, the names of the chairman's son and daughter were pronounced the same as X and Y.

* I know it calls itself the Oregon Zoo now, but it's still the Portland Zoo to me -- it's a zoo and it's in Portland.  I'm still irritated that it changed its name from Washington Park Zoo, a name that resulted from a contest and was proposed by a 12-year-old named Susan Sachitano who died as a teenager.  A bench at the Zoo honors her memory, without, however, explaining that she had named the Zoo, an oversight that the Zoo should correct.

George Douglas (1924-2008) and the Sauvie Island Golf Course

Once upon a time, in the mid-1980s, a man named (if I remember rightly) McCutcheon approached a farmer and orchardist named George Douglas with a sporting proposition.  "How would you like," asked Mr. McCutcheon, "to sell me 150 of your acres, where I can build a golf course?  I can pay a lot more per acre than what farmland is selling for."  "Fine with me," said Mr. Douglas, and they struck a deal that was conditioned on Mr. McCutcheon getting approval from the county land use people to put a golf course on the Douglas family's farmland.  Once Mr. McCutcheon had his land use approval, he would buy the land, and the Douglases would get their money. 

The only hitch was that the Douglas acres were not just any farmland (land-use-wise), but were in the middle of Sauvie Island, the most protected patch of farmland in Multnomah County.  (Cynics might say that the county protects it not so much for farmers as for bicyclists, but that's a story for a later time.)  Mr. McCutcheon, who was only 25 years old at the time, had the good sense to stay in the background and to ask Mr. Douglas to present his case to the county planning commission. 

Mr. Douglas, who died this week at age 84, had dirt under his nails and a sort of "aw, shucks" air to him, and he had little trouble getting the county planning commission and then the county commission to approve the project.  The county planning staff did ask how much traffic the golf course would generate, and Mr. Douglas, backstopped by one of the local traffic experts, gave some numbers, based on Mr. McCutcheon's projections of how many people would come to Sauvie Island to golf. 

Not too long afterward, Mr. McCutcheon realized that he had made a mistake.  An area of 150 acres was enough for a golf course, clubhouse, and restaurant, but it wouldn't be enough to allow the golf course to host a tournament, because the spectators would need room to stand and their cars would need room to park.  Another 50 acres would do the trick and work quite nicely.

So Mr. McCutcheon came back to the county to ask for permission to make the course 200 acres, instead of 150 acres.  (George Douglas had land to spare.)  In the meantime, County Executive Gladys McCoy had appointed Mr. Douglas to the county planning commission, the body that was to vote on the application.  When the time came for the hearing, Mr. Douglas stepped down from the dais, walked around to the microphone, and presented Mr. McCutcheon's case.  This time, however, the county staff said "no," telling the commission that the traffic study for the golf course covered only golfers and people eating at the restaurant, but didn't make any allowance for spectators.  As Mr. McCutcheon didn't have any evidence that the island's two-lane roads could handle the spectators that would come to a tournament (think about what Scholls Ferry Road is like when Portland Golf Club hosts the Fred Meyer Classic), the county couldn't approve adding 50 more acres for the spectators.

The Knower of All Things says that the planning commissioners later told Mr. Douglas that they were sorry they had to turn him down.  "That's all right," he said, "McCutcheon already bought the 150 acres."  Later on, Mr. Douglas brought in some peaches from his farm and passed them around to the other commissioners and the planning staff.

The golf course was never built, and the land is farmed to this day.  George Douglas enjoyed another 20 years of growing corn and selling peaches.  I haven't heard what happened to the developer.

How to approach a Person Of Standing to make good on a charitable pledge

Eight or ten years ago, the trustees of a local non-profit (let's call it Civic Group Alpha) were going over their list of unpaid pledges and noted that one board member, a Person of High Standing who was not present at that meeting, hadn't paid his pledge, a substantial one in the several thousands of dollars.  The board agreed to discuss at its next meeting how to tactfully approach the Person of High Standing to pay his pledge.

At the next meeting (also skipped by the Person Of Standing), one trustee said, "I'm on the board of Civic Group Beta (another society-laden group), and the Person Of Standing hasn't paid his pledge to us either."  A second trustee said, "I'm on the board of Civic Group Gamma, and the Person Of Standing has a large unpaid pledge to us also.  Not only that, but one of the other board members there is a trustee of Civic Group Delta, and she said that the Person hasn't paid his pledge there either."  Each of these pledges was for several thousand dollars -- at least one was for more than $10,000 -- and caused the various Civic Groups to recognize the Person as a major donor.

Every board has a wag.  The wag on this board suggested that Civic Group Alpha write the Person along these lines:  "Dear P.O.S.:  You generously pledged $X,000 to our group last year, which we haven't received yet.  We'd like to close our books on the year.  We understand that times may have been difficult for you this year, and we'd be happy to work something out on the installment plan if you aren't in a position to honor your pledge in full at this time.  Very truly yours, Alpha President."  The wag then suggested that Civic Groups Beta, Gamma, and Delta send the identical letter on the same day to the Person of Standing, which they all did.

According to the Knower of All Things, the Person Of Standing paid all the pledges by return mail and resigned from the boards.  Where the Person of Standing obtained the funds so quickly is a question they didn't try to answer.

An alternate explanation of Grandfather Farmer's given names

Grandfather Farmer's given names were Frank and James.  Our family believes that his parents named him Frank after his great-grandfather Francis, and James after his two grandfathers, both of whom were named James. 

A few days ago it occurred to me that great-grandfather Farmer, a man of stately and Southern appearance who didn't trust financial institutions, might have had, in the 1880s in Kansas, another reason to name a son Frank James.  I don't think Mrs. Laquedem would agree to name another son Nicholas Leeson Laquedem or Conrad Black Laquedem, but it's an intriguing thought.