Isaac Laquedem

Equal time for the defense: "Hang In There, Mr. President" (1974)

Richard Nixon inspired not just whimsical songs about the Watergate scandal that brought his presidency to an end, but also songs to rally his supporters.  Henry Tobias wrote this one, which Bernie Knee recorded with accordionist and polka king Frank Yankovic (1915-1998) and his orchestra.  The author wasn't afraid to use the i-word in the lyric:

You've got courage so just reach 'em (Fight! Fight! Fight!)

Let them holler 'Let's impeach him!"  They're wrong, you're right!

It's hard to imagine how the current administration would publicize a song in support of President Trump, as it no longer holds press conferences.  His lawyer Rudy Giuliani could sing it on his behalf, but he's shown a facility for getting his lines wrong.

A look back: Watergate had its own protest songs, including one written by a Congressman

The scandals of the current administration make those of the dim past almost amusing in retrospect.  Even the Watergate scandal and the resulting impeachment effort produced its bits of humor amidst the shadows. One such bit was this whimsical song called "Down At the Old Watergate" by William Hungate (1922-2007), a congressman from Missouri.  He recorded it, accompanying himself on the piano, and set up a phone line where his constituents could call and listen to the recording.  The linked version isn't his own recording - I wish I could find it, as he had it pressed onto vinyl.  It is, however, a reminder of a happier time when partisanship could be expressed through intellect and not just through intolerance.

 

 

 

Esse quam videri: Frank Ivancie (1924-2019) and the changing nature of mayorship

In 1966 Portland's city councilors were collectively remarkable for their years of service, their longevity, and their uniformity.  The five white men on the commission included Mayor Terry Schrunk, age 53, who was midway through his third term, Mark A. "Buck" Grayson, age 58, who was about to start his third term, and Stan Earl, age 56, who was midway through his fourth term.  Commissioner Bill Bowes, age 71, was in his seventh full term - he had been in office since before the Second World War -- but he was not the oldest or most senior commissioner: those honors belonged to Ormond Bean, a venerable 80 years old, who had first joined the council in 1933.

Nothing lasts forever.  In the following six years the council turned over completely.  Mr. Bean did not run in 1966, Mr. Grayson did not run in 1970, Messrs. Bowes and Earl died in office in 1970 a few months apart, and Mayor Schrunk decided, under some political pressure, not to stand for re-election in 1972.  By January 1973 not a single councilor from 1966 was still in office.

The first of the five replacements won Ormond Bean's seat in the 1966 election.  He was a 42-year-old staffer in the mayor's office with a master's degree in education and a professional background as a public school teacher and principal, named Francis J. Ivancie.

Mr. Ivancie, who died last week at 94, is remembered by Portlanders below a certain age mainly for his one term (1981-1984) as mayor of our fair city, when he was a staunchly conservative and not particularly intellectual defender of the establishment.  His conservative politics contrasted sharply with the liberal views of three other councilors.  (No one was ever really sure what Mildred Schwab thought about any issue until she actually voted on it.)  Fifteen years earlier his views contrasted almost as sharply with those of the rest of the council, except that Frank Ivancie was then the lone liberal on the council.

Governing the city has changed since Mr. Ivancie was in office.  We expect our politicians to be scintillating public speakers but also to say nothing that gives offense to anyone.  We expect our politicians to be fast and decisive, but also to build consensus among a long list of unions, neighborhood associations, civic leagues, and people-about-city-hall before they do anything.  Perhaps most difficult for the modern politicians to accomplish, we expect them to budget money instantly for the crisis of the moment, and then complain when they try to raise money to pay for what we have demanded.  (Think of potholes, bridges, congestion, and gasoline taxes.)

If Frank Ivancie was troubled by those conflicts, he did not show it.  Charming and perceptive in small groups, he never seriously tried to learn the skills of oratory or to master public speaking.  He was always willing to listen to the civic-minded, and quick to correct them if they thought that they were giving him not suggestions but instructions.  And he was consummately interested in keeping the budget balanced.  Sometimes that was through revenue (he arranged for a small hydroelectric powerhouse to be built at one of the Bull Run dams to produce electricity for sale), sometimes through promotion (in 1983 he had the Water Bureau bottle and sell Bull Run Water, far ahead of the bottled-water fad), and sometimes through cost control (he pushed the Portland Building through as a fixed-price design-build job and then held the line on requests for budget-busting change orders).  Sometimes it was through raising federal funds: when Interstate 205 was built past the city's Rocky Butte Jail he argued that the freeway passed too close to the jail for safety and advocated for the federal government to reimburse Portland for the cost to build a new jail.  When the money had safely arrived he and others then tried to persuade the federal government that the city could use the old jail a little while longer and put the federal money to a different purpose.  (The feds didn't bite.)

The city government did not always look as if it was working well in the Ivancie administration, but in general it did.  Roads were paved, water was delivered, projects were built on time and on budget, and the daily business of government got done without much fuss.  Mr. Ivancie thought those accomplishments so unremarkable that in his 1984 campaign for re-election he didn't bother to pass out lawn signs or do much advertising.  Dignified in his personal appearance, he rarely stood on ceremony, and was more content to unwind after a day's work with some beer and music at the Euphoria Tavern than in the houses and private clubs of the rich.  His most prominent campaign tag line from his earlier city council races was the relatively modest "I'm Proud of Portland - Frank Ivancie for City Council."  It was esse quam videri -- what is, rather than what seems to be -- that mattered to him.

We may never again have a mayor as conservative as Frank Ivancie, nor one as insouciantly unconcerned with public opinion of his performance.  We might, however, encourage our current crop of leaders to take one political lesson from Mr. Ivancie and to become as concerned with the esse as they are with the videri.

Thomas Jefferson: the bogeyman of the Boston brahmin?

Wendell Phillips, the underappreciated author of the fine phrase that graces our federal courthouse, "The first duty of society is justice," was not necessarily a proper Bostonian - the other Boston brahmins thought him a rabble-rouser, which he was -- but he was among the most elegant and entertaining orators of his day.  He would insert dry zingers among his serious points in support of the abolitionist movement and his lampoons of William H. Seward.  He let off one of his best five minutes after he spoke his famous line, when he criticized Massachusetts for having been "hide-bound in the aristocracy of classes for years after" the Revolution, describing his home state's bygone beliefs in these words:

The five points of Massachusetts decency were, to trace your lineage to the Mayflower, graduate at Harvard College, be a good lawyer or a member of an orthodox church, -- either would answer, -- pay your debts, and frighten your child to sleep by saying "Thomas Jefferson."

The three careers of Dennis Buchanan (1932-2017), and how chicken salad for lunch could have derailed MAX

Fifty-five years ago Dennis Buchanan left his job at the Chicago Tribune to come to Portland, where he took a job as an investigative reporter for the Oregon Journal.  He got the public’s attention with a story on the December 22, 1964 collapse of the John Day Bridge, which the chairman of the Oregon Highway Department termed an Act of God.  Mr. Buchanan found the blameworthy in a less lofty place.  As Mr. Buchanan put it years later, “My articles acquitted God and assigned responsibility to highway engineers who allowed a change order without following prescribed procedures.”  A few years later he moved to KGW-TV, also as an investigative reporter, where he broke a story about auto dealers fraudulently rolling back odometers on used cars, that included interviews with the mechanics themselves.  An affable man with an “aw, shucks” manner who spoke with a subtle touch of Texas drawl, Mr. Buchanan didn’t get the culprits to confess so much as he persuaded them to brag on camera about their skills with a screwdriver.

In his time as a reporter, Mr. Buchanan, who died on December 26, broadened his interests to include urban planning.  He researched and presented stories on the Forecourt Fountain, redevelopment of the Willamette riverfront, billboards, and visual clutter, and as a reporter developed connections with the elected officials and backstage political players of the day.

In 1973 he gave up journalism to become a stockbroker, but had the misfortune to enter the financial world immediately before a recession struck.  As he pondered the silent phones at the office a year later, a seat on the Multnomah County Commission became vacant, and the four remaining commissioners had the opportunity to appoint someone to fill it.

The hot local issue of the time was the Mount Hood Freeway, which would have connected the Marquam Bridge to US 26 east of Gresham, cutting a swath through southeast Portland.  Commissioners Alice Corbett and Dan Mosee supported the freeway; Commissioners Don Clark and Mel Gordon opposed the freeway.  A dozen or so public-spirited citizens applied for the vacant seat, some who favored the freeway and some who opposed it.  Mrs. Corbett and Mr. Mosee voted against every applicant who opposed the freeway; Messrs. Clark and Gordon voted against every applicant who supported it.

It occurred to Mr. Buchanan that he had been more active in Democratic politics than many of the applicants, and also that he’d never said anything in public about the Mount Hood Freeway.  Also, no one was trading stocks.  He had a word with a backstage player who made a few phone calls, and Mr. Buchanan’s name suddenly appeared on Alice Corbett’s lunch schedule.

He didn’t know Alice Corbett, and he asked his friends what to expect.  “Be careful,” one warned him, “she will come across as a lady, and she is, but don’t be fooled by her manner: she’s sharp, and she can tell the difference between chicken salad and chickens**t.”  Mr. Buchanan was prepared to give a noncommittal answer if she asked him what he thought of the Mount Hood Freeway, but he didn’t have to hedge, as she didn’t mention the freeway at all.  (She may have assumed that any stockbroker in pinstripes would of course support the freeway.)  He did, however, struggle to keep a straight face when Mrs. Corbett ordered chicken salad for lunch.

A few days later, after the commission had rejected a fresh crop of nominees on a series of 2-2 votes, Mrs. Corbett nominated Dennis Buchanan to fill the vacancy, he was invited to say a few words about his willingness to serve, and his nomination was put to a vote.  Don Clark and Mel Gordon, who were in on the secret, joined Mrs. Corbett in voting yes, and Mr. Buchanan began his public service.  He soon joined Messrs. Clark and Gordon in a procedural vote that effectively killed the Mount Hood Freeway.  The federal dollars that would have paid for the freeway were redirected a few years later to build the MAX Blue Line to Gresham, made financially possible only because the freeway was cancelled.

After several years of service on the county commission, Mr. Buchanan ran for and was elected as the second County Executive, succeeding Don Clark.  The county’s biggest problem of the time was mid-county, the unincorporated area between Portland and Gresham, in which 150,000 people lived without sewers.  It was the largest urban area in the United States without sanitary sewers.  The county provided police service through the sheriff’s office, and other public services were provided either by a patchwork of agencies or not at all.  In Mr. Buchanan’s view, which he and Don Clark shared, the county couldn’t afford to provide urban services to the area without dragging down the county’s financial structure.

Some more backstage discussions ensued, resulting in Mr. Buchanan presenting to the county commission, in 1983, the famous “Resolution A,” in which the county resolved to get out of the business of providing urban services over the next three years.  Residents of mid-county who wanted police protection and urban-level services would have to annex to Portland or Gresham, and over the next ten years the two cities expanded until they met in the middle.  With city government came city sewers, city water, city fire protection, and the other services that mid-county residents wanted to enjoy but didn’t want to pay for. 

Unknown to the public at the time, when Mr. Buchanan presented Resolution A to the county commission, he had in his pocket an alternative, “Resolution B,” which he intended to propose if the commission rejected Resolution A.  Resolution B said in essence that the county would continue to provide urban services until it went broke.  He gambled that none of the commissioners would want to vote for a resolution that admitted that they were being financially irresponsible, and he was right.

In 1988 the county voters restructured county government and eliminated Mr. Buchanan’s position as County Executive.  He retired from public service, dabbled in private business, and became a poet and a painter.  Unusually among our local Solons, he sought no higher office and he didn’t care if he was recognized for what he accomplished.  He was a model that others might do well to emulate.

Dennis Buchanan’s political life demonstrates that big things sometimes come from small actions.  The next time you ride to work on MAX, imagine how you might be commuting today if, forty-plus years ago when Alice Corbett ordered chicken salad, Dennis Buchanan had laughed.

Asbury Barbur (1861-1941), who told you where you are

Among the anniversaries that passed unnoticed this year was one on November 21, the 75th anniversary of the 1941 death of a Portland city commissioner of the 1920s and 1930s.  You think you don't know his name, but you do, and if you own a Portland house that was built before 1931, his work is on your wall.  He was Asbury Barbur, first elected to the council in 1920.  One of his pet causes was to clean up Portland's system for naming streets and numbering buildings.  I should say "systems" instead of "system," for Portland's naming and numbering plans included not only the elements of the Great Renaming of 1891, but also the systems of Sellwood and St. Johns, annexed to Portland afterward.  (A remnant of the Sellwood system survives in the Clackamas County portion of the Garthwick neighborhood.)

Portland was plagued by similar and confusing street names, such as Tenth Street, North Tenth Street, East Tenth Street, and East Tenth Street North.  Intersections were similarly confusing: for example, from their intersection 42nd Avenue SE ran east-west, and 42nd Street SE ran north-south.  The post office misdelivered 2000 letters a day, and streetsigns often didn't match the streets they were on.

Commissioner Barbur spent 10 years persuading the rest of the council to adopt a single unified system of addresses and numbers.  In 1931 the council, having been cajoled, wheedled, inveigled, and bullied into joining the modern era, adopted the Barbur plan, which with slight modifications is what we enjoy today.  In the Barbur plan, odd numbers were on the west or north sides of streets, even numbers were on the south or east sides of streets, all streets ran east-west, all avenues and places ran north-south, and all boulevards were scenic (he missed the mark on Holgate).  Burnside, the river, and Williams Avenue became the baselines, and we adopted the five quadrants of North, Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, and Northwest as directional prefixes.  Numbers increased by 100 per block and 2000 per mile.  You could tell from an address such as 4010 SE 40th Avenue that it was on the east side of SE 40th Avenue, 2 miles east of the Willamette River and 2 miles south of East Burnside Street.

Few politicians are brave enough to advocate a plan that would inconvenience every registered voter in the city.  Commissioner Barbur took some of the sting out of changing everyone's address by having the city hire a company to manufacture hundreds of thousands of numbered ceramic tiles - the classic black-on-white "Asbury Tile" -- and then hiring crews of the unemployed to go from house to house to install the tiles on the front walls of every building in Portland.  They completed their work in 1933.  If you have an old house within the 1931 city limits, you probably have Asbury tiles next to your front door, courtesy of the city council.

Another part of the Barbur plan was to rename streets, not just to get rid of the duplicate and confusing names that had accumulated since 1891, but to give continuous streets a continuous name.  The most prominent roadway to be renamed was a highway that ran south from downtown, along bits of roadway named Fourth Avenue Extension, Witham Street, and Miles Street.  It's now called Barbur Boulevard, and it honors the man who gave you your address.

Richard See and Paul Gold, the accidental millionaires of downtown Portland

            In 1903 Richard See, age 19, came to America from Frankfurt, settling in New York, where he became a hat buyer for a large department store. Three years later a Russian emigrant arrived in Portland to pursue the American dream. He took the surname of “Gold,” though not because of the legend that American streets were paved with gold. In 1908 his wife Rose and their four small children joined him. A fifth child was born here in 1910 in a house on now-vanished SW Baker Street. Joe and Rose Gold gave their children plain American names – Jack, Paul, Sam, Sarah, and Dave – and raised them in the Jewish and Italian quarter of South Portland, where Joe Gold was a junk dealer.

            In 1921 Meier & Frank lured Richard See to leave New York for Portland, and placed him in charge of the millinery department. Meier & Frank’s hat sales soared when Mr. See carried out his promise to, in his words, “make at least ten trips a year to New York, to give the women of Portland the new styles as fast as they originate.”

            Around 1927 Paul Gold opened his first millinery store with his younger brother Dave. A gregarious man, Paul readily accumulated friends in Portland’s retail community, including Richard See, who was still buying and selling hats at Meier & Frank. In 1941 another friend, a shopkeeper in the Goodnough (sometimes spelled "Goodnaugh") Building at 5^th and Yamhill, told Paul that his landlord was raising the rent and he didn’t know if he and the other Goodnough tenants could pay the increase. By coincidence, at about the same time Mr. See, who was planning for retirement, told Mr. Gold that he had saved some money and didn’t think that government bonds paid a high enough return. Perhaps, if Paul invested some of his money for him, Paul could do better?

            Mr. Gold did do better. “Paul saw what would grow,” his rabbi said when Mr. Gold died in 1981, and so he did, starting with the Goodnough. According to legend, Mr. Gold (pictured at right, foreground) approached the worried Goodnough tenants and promised that if they would pay him three months’ rent in advance, he would buy the building and not raise their rent for two years. The tenants pungled up, Mr. See wrote a check, and soon the Goodnough Building had become the first acquisition of the new firm of See, Gold & Associates. A few months later they bought a second building, the Kraemer Building at SW 2^nd and Washington.

            Pleased with their purchases, Messrs. See and Gold bought more, and eventually gave up the hat business to focus on buying downtown property. In 1944 they were able to buy the Hotel Oregon, at Broadway and Stark, for the amount of the unpaid property taxes. In 1945 they bought the Portland Garage, a parking structure at 5th and Taylor, later acquiring the rest of the block.  They acquired so much real estate that by 1956 the society page of the Palm Springs newspaper could describe them as “realtors from Portland, Oregon.”

            They became famous for never making counteroffers. If you quoted them a price for your building, they would say only “yes” or “no.” Would-be sellers learned to name their best price first. See, Gold & Associates continued to buy downtown property – like potato chips, no one can stop with just one – sometimes trading up, rarely selling. One exception was when they sold the block at 5^th and Taylor to Georgia-Pacific for an office tower, a deviation that Mr. Gold rationalized to his partners by pointing out that the property across the street that See, Gold & Associates owned would go up in value when G-P built its skyscraper.

            Messrs. See and Gold transacted their business from offices in the New Fliedner Building at 10^th and Washington. (It was called the New Fliedner Building because it had replaced the original Fliedner Building in 1907.) Mr. Gold could often be found at a corner table at Danny’s Delicatessen at 5^th and Yamhill across from the Farmers Market, where thick pastrami sandwiches fueled negotiations. In between acquiring buildings See, Gold & Associates found time for other ventures, including buying and operating the Pacific Department Store and Powers Furniture Company. Mr. Gold also flirted with the restaurant business, investing in one of Portland’s first Japanese restaurants and operating a downtown bar called the Harvester.

            Richard See died in 1979 and Paul Gold died in 1981. In their 40 years in business, they had owned buildings, separately or together, on every downtown avenue from 1^st to 11^th and on every downtown street from Salmon to Stark.  Last week the final property was sold, bringing to a quiet close a remarkable 75-year story of Portland real estate history.

            Messrs. See and Gold owed their success to Portland’s postwar growth – the streets of downtown Portland turned out to be paved with gold after all – but also to the happy accident of both being in the hat business. Had Mr. See bought shoes, or had Mr. Gold sold suits, they might never have joined forces to become rich together. Sometimes clothes really do make the man.

The Laquedem Plan to Improve the $10 Bill

Our currency has never honored a politico who achieved the vice presidency but did not serve as president.  We can remedy this oversight and at the same time create a real conversation piece on our currency by redesigning the $10 bill.  Push Alexander Hamilton's picture to the right side, and put Aaron Burr's picture on the left, making this bit of our currency the only one issued with (sorry) duel portraits. 

George Azumano (1918-2013) and the American Dream

Hatsutaro Azumano came to the United States from Japan in 1902 as a teenager to pursue the American dream.  In 1917 he married a recent immigrant from Japan, and in 1918 while living near Front Avenue and Main Street they had their first child, a boy whom they named Ichiro (a common Japanese first name for eldest sons).   Ichiro's parents may have remained traditional even as they pursued business -- Hatsutaro Azumano became a salesman for Fuji  Grocery and Produce a few years later and by 1930 had moved his family from the crowded Front Avenue lodging house to a private house on Williams Avenue -- but within a few years after his birth they had given their son the additional and very American name of George.

A young man with the good old American name of George, born in Portland, Oregon, who graduated from the University of Oregon in 1940 with a business degree, and who went into the United States Army in 1941, might be forgiven for thinking ill of his native country for imprisoning him with thousands of other Americans from 1942 to 1944 in the Minidoka camp simply because of where his parents had been born.  If Mr. Azumano resented his war experience, he rarely talked about it.

Had he wanted to, Mr. Azumano, who died this morning at the age of 95, could have told of the time that the city of Portland prohibited its Japanese-American citizens from leaving their homes between 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m., or of the other governmental restrictions on their lives before the trains left for the concentration camps.  He might have told of being penned in the old livestock yards in Portland with the persistent smell of cow dung in the air while he and his family awaited the trains east to the camps.  Instead, he mostly maintained a serene, and in his later years a stately, manner as he went about his business.

Or, more accurately, his businesses: in 1949 Mr. Azumano opened his own insurance agency, soon adding a travel agency, and grew both businesses over the 40 years that followed.  He also invested his time and money in civic enterprises, establishing scholarships for needy students, serving on commissions, and doing other things to benefit Portland, in a quiet way.  Eventually the awards and recognition followed: service as a trustee of Willamette University, the Order of the Rising Sun in 1982 from the Emperor of Japan, and many others. 

Through his long and remarkable life, Mr. Azumano was proud to be an American.  It says something about a man's character when he can  raise a family, succeed in business, contribute to civic life, help educate the poor, and still be loyal to the government that denied him the rights of his neighbors.  Portland will miss him.

Leon Bullier hits a bridge twice and becomes an officer

Leon Bullier (1895-1971) was one of the first to waterski on Oswego Lake, in the late 1930s.  He was a lively and daring man who treated with insouciance the boating rules enacted and enforced by the Lake Oswego Corporation, owner of the private lake.  One fine day he was towing his daughter, who was waterskiing, when he decided to run his boat under a low and narrow bridge, in violation of the corporation's safety rules.  His aim was less than true and the boat bounced off first one and then the other side of the bridge.  His daughter avoided hitting the bridge only by some fast and clever footwork.

It was not possible to hit a bridge twice in one passage and not have the corporation take notice.  Rather than fine Mr. Bullier or suspend his boating privileges, someone on the corporation's board had a better idea.  The board appointed Leon Bullier the boating safety officer, and put him in charge of seeing that everyone on the lake, himself included, would follow the rules.  For much the same reason, Mrs. Laquedem reminded me, Franklin Roosevelt appointed Joseph P. Kennedy to head the Securities and Exchange Commission.