By Fred Delkin - Editor, Oregon Magazine

Citizen Kane seems to be alive and well in the Rose City.  Yet being a media mogul is only a small part of what Dr. Robert Pamplin, Jr. manages to accomplish.  This 59-year-old scion of a timber empire has found the time, and uncommon energy, to earn eight college degrees including two doctorates, teach at the college level, become an ordained minister, endow prestigious collections of native American and Chinese artifacts, co-author 13 books, create a 422-acre historical theme park on his ancestral lands, restore and develop an Oregon ghost town, administer a bunch of unrelated businesses as well as creating and overseeing a growing communications empire. 

Pamplin’s relatively new media exercises include the twice weekly Portland Tribune newspaper, the city’s KPAM news/talk radio and five other stations, and Community Newspapers Inc., encompassing a dozen Portland metro area weekly newspapers.

Although making money has been his passion since he was a collegian, it’s sharing the wealth that has placed Pamplin in the national forefront of philanthropy.  The R.B. Pamplin Corporation, which he established with his father (the retired founder of Georgia-Pacific Corp.) awards millions of dollars annually to various charities, and maintains a policy of donating 10% of annual pre-tax profits to a wide range of recepients.  There’s a lot of moolah there, since the corporation rakes in the take(approaching one billion per annum) from 18 southern textile mills , the local Ross Island Sand & Gravel, United Tile and Pamplin Communications, which includes the aforementioned media operations, plus 23 Christian Supply retail stores (whose shelves are stocked with products from Pamplin Entertainment and Pamplin Music). 

The list goes on

Pamplin business enterprises also include Columbia Empire Farms, a complex of several agricultural properties producing hazelnuts, berries and cattle converted to value-added products sold through Pamplin-owned Your Northwest retail outlets (patterned after the Made In Oregon store chain, whose former principals now work for Pamplin).  Chateau Benoit winery is a recent Pamplin acquisition.

 Pamplin’s grasp of capitalism began, he says, with his father reading him the Wall Street Journal and annual reports before he reached his teens.  The younger Pamplin parlayed a $160,000 nest egg from his grandmother into a $1 million personal net worth at the time of his graduation from Lewis & Clark College.  The current Pamplin Corporation and its myriad offshoots was organized when Pamplin Sr. retired from Georgia-Pacific. This Fortune 500 conglomerate bills itself as “providing the basics for daily living,” and who’s to argue with that slogan when you realize the Pamplin products include food, wine, concrete, textiles, news, entertainment and  retail outlets purveying the packaged goods, books, films and recordings.

Find ‘em and fund ‘em

The peripatetic Robert Jr. now employs over 8,500 folks in his various enterprises.  He says his business philosophy is quite simple:  “hire the best people and empower them to succeed.”  Fiscal success still eludes the young operations at The Tribune and KPAM, but there seems to be plenty of Pamplin money muscle to keep flexing until profit is reached.  KPAM is already an esthetic success, having earned the prestigious Edward R. Murrow award for news journalism.

In addition to seeking profits, Pamplin is into building monuments.  The latest is Pamplin Historical Park and National Museum of the Civil War Soldier which occupies land in Virginia that has been in the Pamplin family for two centuries.  Virginia ties are also maintained via annual Pamplin scholarships awarded to students of the over 300 high schools in the state.  The Pamplins, father and son, are both graduates of Virginia Tech University.

Preserving the past

Closer to his Portland home, the younger Pamplin has initiated the restoration of Shaniko, a central Oregon ghost town that was a thriving rail hub for shipping sheep and cattle in the 19th century.  Historic artifacts are a definite Pamplin passion.  He and his wife Marilyn are trustees for the Pamplin Collection of Chinese Antiquities and the Pamplin Collection of American Indian Art.  Portions of these collections are occasionally used as traveling shows, but are permanently displayed in a museum built on the Pamplin Twelve Oaks ranch near Sherwood. 

The ranch is quite a showplace.  Barns, Columbia Empire product processing facilities, fields and orchards are complemented by a 50-acre fish pond shimmering among lush woods, formal gardens with Northwest, Italian and Japanese themes, a chapel where Dr. Pamplin delivers weekly sermons and a rustic log dining and entertainment lodge with stage and auditorium.

Reviewing all that Pamplin has accomplished, you can imagine a big ‘S’ on his chest, the one designating “Superman.”  I suppose it could also stand for “success”, a subject that Dr. Pamplin insists is “not the accumulation of wealth, it’s sharing your talents with society and moving forward together.” 

An avalanche of awards

Dr. Pamplin has earned a glittering array of awards for his service to communities.  He and his wife were dubbed “Oregon Philanthropists of the Year” by the National Society of Fund Raising Executives, he holds the Aubrey Wetzel award for “Contributions to the Pacific Northwest” and the Oregon Historical Society’s Thomas Jefferson Award for “Preservation and promulgation of Oregon’s heritage.”   This past year he was entitled
“Portland’s First Citizen.”

The man is driven to accomplish (he’s averaged the establishment of one new company per year over the past decade), but he declares he has never considered politics.  “I want to share my beliefs, not force them on anyone!  It is incumbent to share what you have: dollars, talent and emotion…life is all about people and helping them flourish.”

Robert Pamplin Jr. lives what he preaches and Oregon is a better place for it.  If this Citizen Kane had a “Rosebud” you can be assured he’d want every kid in the state to own one.