Russellville Lives GC

                                                                                      Gerry Caldwell

The Oregonian newspaper in 1991 published a picture of Oregon Governor Barbara Roberts watching a CNN TV report showing Desert Storm General Norman Schwarzkopf visiting an army postal station with an American soldier.  The caption read:  Oregon's Governor asks, "Who's that General with Gerry Caldwell?"  That may be apocryphal but maybe not.  Gerry Caldwell knows a lot of people and a lot of people know Gerry Caldwell. 

Born in 1940 and raised in Portland, Oregon, Gerry experienced the city's 1940's Jim Crow rules for African American citizens when Black musical superstars would perform in Stumptown but were refused lodging there.  They instead were housed in private homes in Northeast Portland and on one enchanted evening Gerry's parents hosted Lionel Hampton. 

You could call Gerry gregarious, but you just couldn't call him tall.  So at Washington High School he satisfied his love of football by becoming the team's manager.  It set a lifelong pattern of making friendships while making himself an indispensable player wherever the action was.  After high school one day he was downtown when the sky opened to a cloudburst so intense that Gerry ducked into the first doorway he could find to escape the deluge.  It turned out to be an army recruiting station and the start of 28 years of service in the regular army and reserve units.  He found himself in Vietnam advising Vietnamese troops before the actual beginning of American combat engagement.

While stationed in Japan, Gerry went with some buddies to a Lionel Hampton concert and got seats down front.  At the end of the performance a runner came to say Lionel wanted to see him backstage.  After all those years he remembered Gerry from that home stay.

He was in the Reserves when he got a job with the First National Bank as a bookkeeper and became friends with the bank's president.  That friendship led to his becoming the first Black manager of a branch in Portland.

Gerry considers a top highlight of his life to be the parade he put together from scratch for the 1977 Trail Blazers after they won the NBA national championship.  The First National Bank was a team sponsor and when it came down to the last two games and it was apparent Bill Walton's gang might actually pull it off, the need for a parade became clear,  The bank president told the Blazer management and Portland's mayor that if anybody could organize an overnight parade it was his man Caldwell.

He got an 18-wheeler flatbed truck from the Rose Festival's Starlight parade and cut red tape with the help of his friend the police chief to park it overnight near the train depot.  He got a high school jazz band with the help of a  school band director friend.  He got a friend connected with  Raz Transportation to bus the bandsmen back from the parade's end.  He pulled it all together and Portlanders lined the streets and went nuts cheering their team.  Hey! Who's that guy sitting on the flatbed with his legs dangling off the end?  

Forty years ago Gerry was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and now lives with his wheeled chair. But oh what memories he has of all those friends who shared his ride on that magical merry go round, grabbing the brass ring on every circuit.

  

A Sentimental Journey Part II

Together again after 31 years, Bill Landers and Karen Mauldin remembering generations of student strivers to whom they brought comfort and joy in the classrooms of America.

A few dings on the fenders and a couple of suspect timing belts but plenty of Premium High-Test in their tanks.    Look out world.

A Sentimental Journey

 

Slipping away to go back down the starry midnight trail to the enchanted forest of old memories is something all of us no-longer-young citizens do from time to time.  We're allowed.  Making that trip in real time rarely happens but a few weeks ago it did for me.  I sold my Jostens sales territory to Brian Coushay 31 years ago and recently he invited me to lunch where he told me of a special gathering of old and new Jostens representatives (reps) that would take place in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. It was to honor the retirement of Karen Mauldin.

Karen Mauldin.

 In the fifteen years I ran a Jostens territory, Karen and I developed a friendship that had a dimension beyond the purely business dealings. Lots of laughs and then one day when I got old I decided to retire.  And who flew in from Minnesota on her own dime for my retirement party?  Yeah, the girl herself.

I, like every salesman who has ever worked for Jostens in the last 44 years,  knows Karen as the Queen of the hive who ensures that when the annual accounting is made, every comb is overflowing with honey.  To understand the respect the sales reps have for her you need to know Jostens mission statement: it is organized to recognize student achievement in the high schools of America. Products associated with graduation. Apparel with school identification.  Class rings.  Academic award certificates. Athletic awards. Everything designed to connect the individual student to the school.

In this kind of operation lots can go wrong. Size, color, wording and on and on.  The plants depend on the reps to send in accurate specifications for each individual. And the plants are not allowed to make errors even if human beings design and produce the individual products in plants scattered around different parts of the nation. And each plant has people like Karen Mauldin who control the levers that route the individual products to the right school to the right student.

 Karen Mauldin spent 44 years as the liaison between the plant and the sales reps and she made that crazy circus work: the clown car discharges its load just before the elephant picks the car up and the man on the flying trapeze  grabs the swing in the nick of time.  That interaction between Karen and the hundreds of reps was an annual wild buffalo stampede that tested the minds and the physical endurance of all parties concerned.

But every year, somehow, it worked and every Jostens rep knew that girl in Minnesota juggling the active chainsaws was a big part of why it worked. And the positive effect it had on their settlement check. So, on August 8th in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho a group of reps brought Karen out to a foot-stomping, shouting celebration of her retirement.  War stories were told and she was forced to admit the truth to the rumor she kept a dartboard in her home to which she would affix pictures of certain reps and power launch her darts. Then the presentation of an Apple watch from her NorthWest cult members.

I don't travel a lot these days but I wouldn't have missed that Hidey-ho in Idaho for a million bitcoins.

Russellville Lives RH

                                                             

                                                              Robert Hensel

Let's see, will it be easier to tell you what Bob Hensel hasn't done in his life or what he has done? First you need to know that he and Apple's Steve Jobs share one characteristic regarding their work ethos: perfect is the only acceptable standard.  And Bob is nicer to people than Steve was.

He carries the Methuselah gene, a gift from his parents at the time of his birth in 1946,  making him a young 75 today.  His paternal aunt checked out at 103. It's approaching Bob's third year at Russellville Park and his ownership of two parking spaces in the east garage will tip you off to how his interior timing belt is programmed.

See, Bob Hensel is all about machinery, whether it's a piece of equipment the size of a railroad boxcar that is designed to make multiple thin threads or a device to stamp out microphones the size of a grain of sand.  How about his collection of six vintage Volkswagens to which he gave loving care and took to car shows where he won a roomful of trophies?  Is that a toothbrush he's using on those wheel spokes?

Bob will confess to not being Albert Einstein in elementary and high school, but he did enjoy his wood shop and metal shop classes.  Particularly metal shop. When he graduated in 1964 the first thing he did was travel to Europe and spend 10 weeks riding a bicycle on a 1,000 mile adventure with a diverse group of cyclists . While in Europe he was notified that he must register for the draft and he knew Vietnam was not his cup of tea. So he signed on to a six-year enlistment in the Air Force Reserve where he was classified as an aircraft engine mechanic.  It left him time to get a job as an apprentice machinist where he acquired more skills to add to his personal tool chest.  The war in Vietnam ended as did his hitch in the reserves, so he moved around to a lot of different jobs before enlisting in the United States Air Force and reserves where he served for 22 1/2 years. 

Those years in the Air Force gave him opportunities for learning high tech computer application and aircraft maintenance.  Using the G.I. Bill at the end of his enlistment he entered college and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Technology in Manufacturing.  Those post-Air Force years were a parade of jobs working with different companies as his expertise evolved, building and installing complicated machinery.  Bob's affinity for making high-tech machinery behave took him all over the world, from England and Germany to the exciting industrial culture of Hong Kong.  His "been there" pins fill a map of planet Earth's industrialized nations.

Now Bob Hensel's relaxed second life at Russellville is devoted to the search for the perfect cars  to occupy those two  slots in the east basement garage and to his enjoyment of building incredibly complicated models of houses and machines, from cars to helicopters.  Walk by his #245 apartment and look at the model car he built displayed on the shelf outside his door.  All wood.  Tiny little parts that move.  All put together with precision by that master machinist inside the apartment, plotting his next acquisitions of perfect machines.  

  

Russellville Lives RG

                                                        

                                                                     Roy Garbarino        

                    Here is a fact: Roy Garbarino's life as a business man was hugely successful.  Here's another fact:  If Harvard Business School were to do a case study of Roy's success it would drive them nuts. And therein lies a tale.

Roy is 91 and looks much younger.  Works out every day and since the 1950s has walked to the moon and back so always stayed trim with good posture.  He's been an inmate at Russellville since 2019.  As a young man he was an indifferent student in school but his grades were still OK.  Graduating from high school in Gresham, Oregon in 1949, Roy had no master plan for his life's journey.  The winds of war were blowing in from the Korean peninsula and creating a draft in America, so Roy and three of his buddies dodged it by enlisting in the U.S. Air Force.

After the war he found himself a 25 year old civilian without a clue as what he should do with his life. No job. Broke. So he says to himself, "Maybe I should get married."  A pattern is forming here. Not the best decision under the circumstances but an excellent result: 58 years together with a family of one son and two daughters.  But, with a new wife, it was apparent that employment was a prime objective and so Roy started cold calling on different craft unions, looking for an apprentice job. He scored with the electrician's union and was on his way to becoming a certified electrician.

Roy worked for four years at Wacto Electric before deciding to leave with two other Wacto employees to open their own shop.  They could not have picked a worse time to get their new venture -- The Electric Group -- off the runway and flying.  The American  economy in 1983 was in the dumpster but the saving factor for the trio was the relationships they had made with three large companies while at Waco. They took those companies with them when they left. Another questionable decision that led to a rich reward.

Roy and Ed Danill bought out their third partner and continued on with a rock-solid handshake that resulted in their company operating with a harmonious management that never went in the red. At no time did they have a written business plan but the confidence their client base had in their reliability fueled a continuing successful expansion.  Roy is self-deprecating about his decision making but the proof is in factual results. Like buying a $10,000 share in a less than five star golf course near Boring, Oregon and seeing it evolve into a giant winner.  His long fascination with the go to the moon or go to the bread line  stock market has also been rewarding for him. He ditched his old broker after she advised him to 86 his McDonald's and Costco portfolios and started flying with his own wings.  There was always turbulent air but far more smooth landings than crashes. In Roy's lifetime obsession with poker it's the joy of playing that provides the main reward while the chips coming his way have their own special zing.  And let's mention golf which Roy describes as the evil stain on his soul.  His more than decent eight handicap testified to his lifelong dedication to the sport, as do his 12 holes-in-one ("Hit a million balls," Roy says, "and some of them are bound to go in a hole.")

If Roy decides to open Garbarino College he will probably tell his students (after he banks their tuition payments), "Don't bring notebooks and pencils to class because we'll just talk about the importance of doing what seems comfortable at the time.  Take the rest of class off.  See you next week." 

Roy's resume is not too bad for a guy who never got a Harvard MBA and who made a nice living twisting wire and changing light bulbs.   

                                                                                                               

Russellville Lives. MB

                                                        Second Lives

Those of us who have elected to live in this community of the no longer young share one common characteristic: we all lived former lives that involved coping with the seemingly endless challenges that adventure posed.  As we adjust to the new challenges of our second life, it might be interesting to learn of those first lives of our current neighbors.  However those first lives went, the excitement of the game touched us all.  We will check with some neighbors here.  

                                                    Marty Boettcher

 Marty's engagement with life is way, way beyond normal.  Maybe it's because in her 90-year slog through this vale of tears she has confronted each medical insult, each family tragedy, each cruel assault on her mental faculties with a courageous grace that can only be accounted for by an extraordinary spiritual will.  Through it all she has made the Biblical Job look like little Johnny Sunshine.

Born in Dayton, Oregon in 1931, the family moved to Portland after her father's death in 1940.  She attended high school at the Catholic Immaculate Academy. In 1948 Marty spent a day in the sun with friends and came home with what she thought was a sunburn on her back.  It wasn't a sunburn, it was encephalitis, a rare virus that is spread by ticks or infected insects or, in some cases, by the body's own immune system. She almost died.  It started a lifelong ordeal of recurring seizures that sometimes brought her to death's door.

But she survived and dedicated herself to a life of service.  The detailed accounts of her missions would fill volumes but here's a CliffsNotes (remember those college days? Who needs to actually read the books assigned when there are CliffsNotes?) summation of Marty Boettcher's cavalry charge to where there is a need for social adjustment:

After high school and classes at Clackamas Community College and Portland Secretarial School, Marty served on the Clackamas Election Board, eventually becoming chairman.

After the tragic drowning death of her son in Johnson Creek she worked with other volunteers to improve the entire watershed. And it was in that watershed in 1907 that the Bell Rose rail tracks were laid and trains ran on it until the 1990s. The tracks were removed and it became the 36-mile Springwater Trail, all the way from southeast Portland to Boring, Oregon.  Marty worked with the organizations that made it all happen.

Perhaps her most dramatic contribution to the national political culture was her role in bringing to life  the seminal Oregon vote by mail system.   For years Marty worked with other volunteers in low-turnout elections where all day long there would be maybe one or two voters show up.  The precinct volunteers'  constant complaints to the election board resulted in the creation of what became the Oregon vote by mail system. The fraud-free innovation gave citizens an easy way to choose their political representatives. 

From her earliest childhood the Catholic church has been an important influence in her daily life and she takes an active role as a member of the Altar Society at Christ the King Catholic Church in Milwaukie.  That is in addition to a dozen more charitable organizations where she is actively involved. 

Many residents in this stack of hallways we call home have led remarkable lives, but the harsh truth is, we are not all created equal.  In this dangerous jungle where we spend our lives, some seem to have a mysterious inner fire,  a resilient core that carries them through the bitter times of adversity as they continue accomplishing grand deeds.

Marty Boettcher is one of those.

Meet Ray Niehaus

    If you want to know anything about Russellville Park,  just ask Ray Niehaus because after living here for 16 years, if he doesn't have the answer for you then you don't need to know the answer.  For instance, ask Ray: Did the Overton dining room used to have a big circular coffee table in front of the  fireplace that featured an album containing pictures of the residents?  Ask him: Was there once a dance floor in one corner where the more agile residents would trip the light fantastic?

 Ray: "Yes."

Hey, Clyde, guess the age of that guy over there reading The Oregonian in front of the elevator.        Clyde: "I don't know, probably late 70s, early 80s."  Sorry, Clyde, no cigar. Ray Niehaus was born in Quincy, Illinois in 1928.  Do the math.  After 13 years and starting his education in a Catholic elementary school, Ray's family moved to Portland, Oregon, where Ray entered Central Catholic High School. 

 As the heaviest running back on the football team (152 lbs.) he was given the role of fullback in the T formation where he struck terror in the minds of the linebackers of the opposing teams..  He also pitched for the Rams' baseball team. America was still fighting World War II in June of 1945 when Ray graduated six months before his 18th birthday.  He had always wanted to learn to swim so instead of going to a local pool he joined the Coast Guard where the only water he ever experienced came from his daily shower.

After leaving the Coast Guard at the end of the war, Ray entered a seminary.  After five and a half years he decided the cloistered life was not for him and he left. Some time later he called his brother and asked if he and his wife knew of any young ladies in the parish with whom he might become acquainted. They gave him two names: Mary and Prudy. Mary, an Italian beauty who might have been a clone of Gina Lollobrigida, also owned a car.  Cry your eyes out, Prudy. Ray knew he had chosen well and soon the wedding bells were ringing.  Years later, Mary accused Ray of pursuing her because of her car and Ray had to admit it didn't hurt. Their lives were brightened when Tori, Matt, and Mike came along.  After retiring from teaching, Mary and Ray found their way to Russellville Park in 2005 where they had a happy 13 years together. Tori is a retired nurse and Ray says he could not have made it without her help.

His time in the seminary gave Ray a solid education in Latin and in his lifetime of teaching it became one of his subjects along with English and counseling.  At Madison High School where he spent most of the teaching years he also coached Junior Varsity baseball One day a couple of boys were scuffling in the hall and Ray stepped in to break it up by putting his arms around their shoulders which resulted in all three of them tangled up on the floor.  "Okay," Ray told himself, "That's it for me. Stopping fights is not in my pay grade." 

Ray never had doubts about his choosing the classroom as his life's work and it gave him deep satisfaction to see his efforts light fires in young minds.  Even when one of his Latin students raised his hand with a question after Ray had delivered a long explanation of a complicated grammatical construction. The student wanted to know how the Romans built roads.  Ray couldn't speak for a minute or two wondering how the hell that kid got into a Latin class?  The next week the kid was gone, still wondering about those roads.  Once during a counseling session with a young lady who was transferring to Madison from Grant High School, she told Ray, "I want to come to Madison so I can get my shit together."  Again, Ray says to himself, "Okaaaaaaaaaaaaa." 

If you see Ray reading The Oregonian in front of the elevator and are curious about Roman chariot road construction, ask him.  He'll enlighten you in Latin and tell you how wide to make the lanes.  If you're just trying to get your stuff together, keep going.