NO. 17353 • 17 February 1929 – 13 September 2022
Duty. Honor. Country. The defining motivations of our father and grandfather.
Richard Brownson Keller, 93, died September 13, 2022, due to complications from a fall during his daily walk along the Columbia River Waterfront Renaissance Trail in Vancouver, WA.
Dick was born February 17, 1929, to Ira Charles Keller and Lauretta Taylor Keller in Evanston, IL. The family lived in Winnetka, IL. across the street from New Trier High School until his parents purchased a working farm, Rolling Acres, 30 minutes outside Chicago in Mundelein during his grade school years. Dick lived an adventurous childhood in the outdoors riding his horse, fishing, trapping muskrats, and hunting with his trusty 410 alongside “Inky,” his black springer spaniel. By age 10 he was paid to operate a tractor and was charged with managing 300 chickens. Any misbehaving would result in solitary confinement in the corn crib.
When Ira was promoted to manage the eastern division of Container Corporation of America, the family sold the farm and moved to Philadelphia. Dick was enrolled in Westtown School for 8th grade and was ranked number one academically in the entire middle school. He spent his high school years at Episcopal Academy, graduating with one of the highest academic records in the history of the school and a guaranteed admission to Yale University, which he declined. Dick was on the Episcopal football team which won the league championship and served as goalie on the soccer team.
In the patriotic aftermath to WWII eager to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather (Gen. Charles Keller, Deputy Chief Engineer, AEF WWI, Class of 1890, Order of Merit #2) and his uncle (Col. Charles Keller, Jr., Class of 1930, Order of Merit #4, who served under General Patton in WWII), Dick applied to join the Long Gray Line of the United States Military Academy at West Point. The Episcopal Academy headmaster wrote the following to the West Point Superintendent in support of Dick: “Keller’s personal attributes are unusual; he is a fine-looking boy, upstanding, handsome but manly and full of vitality. He has no inhibitions, no abnormalities; he mixes well and is liked and respected by his associates. He insists on high standards and is revolted by shoddiness or second-ratedness of any sort…”
By achieving the highest score of any applicant on the competitive civil service exam in Pennsylvania’s 9th congressional district by a wide margin, Dick earned acceptance to enter West Point in the fall of 1946 at the young age of 17, joining the class of 1950. Dick excelled at the Academy. Upon graduation with a B.S. degree, Dick achieved Order of Merit #7 in his class of 670 (Cullum #17353-1950), one notch ahead of astronaut and Apollo 8 Commander Frank Borman (first to orbit the moon, and CEO of Eastern Airlines). He finished #2 academically winning 5 department awards as the top scholar in economics, international relations, military engineering, history, and electricity. The next best cadet won just 2 academic awards. Only 2 of the graduates were not commissioned as officers into the U.S. armed services: Dick Keller, owing to recurrent shoulder separations, and Fidel Ramos, who was commissioned into the Philippine Army. Ramos would one day become the President of the Philippines. At graduation a party was held by the Superintendent for graduates and their families that included General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower and Joint Chiefs Chairman Omar Bradley. Dick’s D-1 company served as the honor guard for U.S. President Harry Truman when he visited West Point in 1946.
Disappointed by his inability to commission, Dick decided to ponder his future by seeing the country. He packed up his brand new 1950 Ford 50, a graduation gift from his parents, and went west accompanied by a friend. They worked odd jobs along the way to pay for the trip, camping to save money. They worked on an Iowa road paving crew, picked apricots in Colorado, and packed dill pickles in a Hunt Foods plant in Hayward, CA. After 6 weeks of packing pickles Dick telephoned the Harvard Business School to accept their offer of admission.
In the summer between his first and last years at HBS Dick sold knives door-to-door for Cutco. Flexing his business school muscles, he would scour the engagement notices in the Boston Globe and target the soon-to-be brides with ample cutlery budgets. Dick graduated in 1952 as a Baker Scholar, signifying his ranking in the top 5% of his class. Notable classmates included Amory Houghton (CEO, Corning Glass Works), Samuel Johnson (CEO, SC Johnson Wax), and Dan Searle (CEO of drug company G.D. Searle & Co.). Dan’s nephew Rocky Dixon co-founded Endeavour Capital in Portland, and his grandfather Wes Dixon was an executive of Container Corp. with Ira.
Dick first applied his HBS degree as a trainee for Simpson Logging Company in Shelton, WA. He rotated through jobs in the fiberboard, plywood and door plants, then wound up in the woods as a choker setter. A choker is a thick metal cable that the setter wraps around a large, felled tree in the woods so that a cable skidder could then lift the log to a central area for transporting. The most important trait of a capable choker-setter is to get out of the way once the choker was set to avoid losing limbs or even a life. Dick very nearly lost his, jumping out of the way of a rolling tree just in the nick of time. His final Simpson assignment was as a sales assistant.
In 1953 Dick exchanged his boots for a suit, becoming Assistant to Vice-Chairman of the Board of Georgia Pacific Corporation, a large public company in the forest products industry. He would be based in Olympia, WA and work alongside Gen. Lewis Pick, the former Chief Engineer of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
By 1954 Dick became the first employee of his father Ira’s new paper manufacturing company, Western Kraft Corporation. Their initial facility was to be a paper mill on the west side of I-5 in Albany, OR. It was a technological breakthrough, the first paper mill in the world to use waste wood chips (until that time disposed of in wigwam burners) as raw material. Dick purchased the farm on which the mill would be located and became office manager and project engineer. In his own words Dick was “the chief cook and bottle washer” of the new enterprise.
1954 was a watershed year for another reason: meeting Ruth Elinor Olson. A friend in a neighboring apartment at the King Tower (just uphill from the MAC Club in Portland) was throwing a party for 40 guests and asked Dick to join in the fun. “A friendly girl with a wonderful smile” caught Dick’s eye. She told Dick that she worked at the Swan Island airport as a ticket agent for United Airlines; Dick explained that he worked for Western Kraft. “Oh, the cheese company!” responded Ruthie. “No, the PAPER company,” corrected Dick. A frequent business traveler, Dick made sure he was always in Ruthie’s line at the United counter because she didn’t charge him for extra baggage.
The romance was well underway until hunger and thievery got in the way. After another 11-hour workday, Dick returned to the King Tower and noticed loud noises emerging from the top floor. He went to investigate the source, only to find a wild party hosted by United Airlines with Ruthie in the center of it all. A decision was made to move the party downtown to Jakes, the legendary watering hole with the bullet holes in the framed nude painting left by Jake himself. Dick tagged along, dead tired and hungry. He ordered a chicken dinner, but the kitchen was so busy that his dinner still had not arrived after 50 minutes. Then, on his way back to the table from the bathroom, Dick found what was left of his dinner: a pile of chicken bones courtesy of a ravenous United crew and Ruthie. Dick returned home for some cold cereal and sleep. The romance was off.
A year later, Dick flagged down Ruthie who happened to be driving by in her new VW Bug, and they took up where they had left off. In February of 1957 Dick popped the question, to which Ruthie responded, “Are you sure? I only have a Volkswagen and a Steinway piano!” They were married March 30, 1957, at First Presbyterian Church in Portland, OR. by Dr. Paul S. Wright, with a reception at the Garden Club followed by a honeymoon at Neskowin on the Oregon coast.
Upon moving to Portland Dick continued his involvement with the military. He was originally commissioned a 1st Lt. in the U.S. Army Reserves in 1952; in 1955 he was commissioned as a Captain assigned to the 104th Infantry “Timberwolves” Division, then stationed at the Fort Vancouver barracks. Despite being tone deaf he commanded the 407th band because the busy schedule resulted in more pay for their commanding officer. He was honorably discharged in 1962 as a Captain, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army Reserves.
As the paper mill came online, customers reneged on their promise to buy output, so Western Kraft was forced to build its own corrugated box plants. Dick was the first plant manager of the Beaverton, OR box plant and then rose to the role of general manager in 1957. Over the ensuing decade he would become a divisional vice president in charge of production and sales for all corrugated box, kraft grocery bag and business forms plants, as well as paper mill sales. He personally started the business forms division from scratch. On the home front, trips to the supermarket with Dick always took longer than usual because he would religiously peer underneath grocery bags and corrugated boxes reading the markings to see which paper company had the account.
In 1967 Western Kraft was merged with Willamette Valley Lumber Company to form Willamette Industries, combining the interests of the Keller, Swindells, Clark and Wheeler families into a single public company. In 1970 Dick became a Senior Vice President, and in 1975 was elected a director of Willamette upon his retirement from the company. In his own words, from a single employee, a coffee maker and a cat in 1954, Western Kraft had become national in scope with 70 manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and Mexico. Ranked #368 in the Fortune 500, Willamette was bought out in 2002 by Weyerhaeuser in a hostile takeover, the majority of the value derived from the paper division Dick and Ira started. Today many of the original Western Kraft box and bag plants are owned by International Paper Company.
In 1975 Dick was asked by Ira to run Keller Enterprises Inc. (KEI), the wholly-owned family holding company that included Western Paper Company, one of the largest paper distributorships in the Pacific Northwest. Western Paper Company was sold to International Paper in 1992 and coincided with moving the family company headquarter from Portland, OR to Vancouver, WA. KEI eventually diversified with financial interests in public and private companies, ultimately morphing into HPK LLC beginning in 2001.
Over the last 12 years Dick launched a new career of providing private equity for apartment community developments throughout the western U.S. arranged by Holland Partner Group of Vancouver, WA. He was grateful for the friendship of founder Clyde Holland, and appreciative of the Holland staff for all their efforts in making those investments successful.
Dick went out with his boots on, running the family business until his fall. We are all proud of him for his perseverance and determination. His ability to focus was legendary. His approach to problem solving was “extreme vetting” in the words of his cardiologist.
He was also an officer and a gentleman, old school they call it today. In the words of his primary care doctor Dick was “a unique combination of willfulness and gentleness.”
One cannot, of course, discuss Dick without bringing up Ruthie. Ruthie and Dick were a team. They were inseparable. No child of theirs could ever successfully play one off against the other. Ruthie helped smooth some of Dick’s sharp edges, and provided fun, excitement, love and light during their 65 years of marriage. They never had an argument, at least not in front of the kids. When Dick would tell Ruthie, “Now honey….”, that was as close as it ever came to an open disagreement.
Dick served on the boards of 3 public companies: Willamette Industries, Crown Pacific and Northwest Natural Gas (chairman of the finance committee). On the private side, he was member of the Endeavour Capital advisory board.
Community involvement was also important. Dick served on the boards of the Oregon Graduate Institute (life trustee), Lewis and Clark College (life trustee), the Multnomah County Library Board, Central City Concern, Citizens Crime Commission and the Portland Chamber of Commerce.
In 2000 Portland’s Civic Auditorium was renamed Keller Auditorium following a donation Dick made on behalf of the family in honor of Ira, whose namesake Ira’s Fountain flows just across the street. The fountain was named after Ira for his efforts as the founding Chairman of the Portland Development Commission as well as his inspiration to create the much-loved park.
Dick and Ruthie also established The Keller Foundation to benefit the communities in which they and their descendants live. The foundation is endowed to continue for many generations to come.
A lifelong athlete, Dick enjoyed tennis, golf, squash, racquetball, jogging, swimming, yoga, and target shooting (as the backyard moles and the neighborhood cat found out). He was also an avid pacer, logging miles and miles going back and forth in the house, trying to wrestle important business decisions to the ground. Until his fall he would still walk 3 miles a day along the Columbia River and spend 45 minutes on his elliptical machine. His favorite TV show ever was Louis Rukeyser’s Wall Street Week, and favorite reading material would include Barron’s or a good book on business or military history. After a day of constant motion, Dick didn’t need an invitation to go to sleep. He could “sack out” on a chair, on the carpet or in the passenger seat. But his favorite location to find deep sleep was in Section C, Row K, Seat #1 at the Keller Auditorium during a symphony performance.
Memberships included the Multnomah Athletic Club (68 years, joined 11/1/1954, #10 longest tenure of 20,000 members), Waverley Country Club (64 years, joined 10/31/1958, representing the longest-tenured member and the last to be a member for more than half of their 125-year history), the Arlington Club (57 years, joined 9/14/1958, 3rd longest tenure) and the West Point Society of Oregon. He was formerly a member of Eldorado Country Club in Indian Wells, CA., The Racquet Club and the West Hills Racquet Club.
Dick was preceded in death by his parents and grandson Kincade Wilson Keller. He is survived by his wife Ruthie; son Richard B. Keller Jr. of Vancouver, WA. (Patty); daughter Elizabeth Keller McCaslin of Portland, OR. (Michael) and son Charles Acheson Keller of Paradise Valley, AZ. (engaged to Ellen Andeen). Grandchildren include Charles Taylor McCaslin of Fort Worth, TX. (Allison and daughter Elliot), Kathryn Keller McCaslin of Austin, TX., Frances Buck McCaslin of Miami, FL., 2nd Lt. Patrick Richard Brownson Keller, (Platoon Leader, 1-82 Cavalry, NATO EFP Battlegroup), John Swanman Keller of Boston, MA., Wilson Charles Keller of Tempe, AZ. (Arizona State University) and Charles Acheson Keller II of Charleston, S.C. (The Citadel).
The family would like to express its heartfelt thanks to the following individuals:
Carol Frohoff, Dick’s incomparable corporate secretary and confidant for 30 years; Kevin Kuch, HPK Managing Director and Dick’s auditor and later CFO for the last 23 years; and PacTrust CEO Peter Bechen, serving alongside Dick for 38 years as a family company and foundation board member.
The doctors responsible for Dick outlasting his exercise machines: Dr. Steven Beeson, Dick’s primary care physician, and most recently life coach, for the last 35 years and Dr. Eric Stecker, Dick’s cardiologist for the last 15 years.
For their kind care during his last year, thanks go to Dick’s Angels (Hannah, Marichka, Sharon and Star) of the Visiting Angels; the ER and 7th floor nurses and doctors at Peace Health Hospital; and Liliya ”the angel of mercy” at Prestige Care in Camas who saved Dick and gave our family the opportunity to say goodbye (and her co-workers), and the spectacular team at Peace Health Hospice for their kindness, care and support during Dick’s last moments.
Dick has requested that in lieu of flowers, remembrances be contributions to the West Point Society of Oregon (c/o Kevin Byrne, Treasurer, 7658 SW Skyhar Dr., Portland, OR. 97223), or to the charity of your choice. Letters to the family can be sent c/o HPC LLC, 1701 SE Columbia River Dr., Suite 100, Vancouver, WA. 98661.
A celebration of Dick’s life will be held 2:30 p.m. Friday, November 18, 2022, at Columbia Presbyterian Church in Vancouver, WA. with a reception to follow.
Duty, Honor. Country.