Richard Tallant Carruthers

Richard Tallant Carruthers was born on June 16, 1928, at the old Columbia Memorial Hospital in Astoria, Ore. His father was Richard Tallant Carruthers Sr., a descendant of a pioneer family that came across the Oregon Trail in 1852, and his mother was Mary Maurine Buchanan, the daughter of Municipal Judge John Andrew Buchanan.
Richard attended Astoria public schools, but left school at the age of 16 to attend St. Johns College in Annapolis, Md. Then he joined the Navy, where he spent his hitch aboard the USS Chipola, a Navy tanker. He traveled twice around the world before being discharged to the reserve as a Storekeeper Third, and later went back on active duty as Station Keeper for the Naval Reserve Surface division that met under the grandstand at the U.S. Naval Academy. He served a total of seven years in the USN, USNR, and USN-R.
He finished his education at Willamette University in Salem, graduating in 1955 with a bachelor’s degree in history. In an upper-division history class, he found himself sitting across from a striking dark-haired girl of nineteen, Nancy Ann Holcomb. He couldn’t help but notice that she was doodling sailboats and, realizing she couldn’t be “all bad,” he caught her eye across the seminar table.
Nancy was a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ. With her encouragement, and that of his friend Mark Hatfield, Richard surrendered his life to Jesus Christ, accepting Him as Lord and Savior, and began a lifetime of following him. The two were married in June of 1956, and settled in Hammond to start their family.
Richard joined his father in the family business, Bioproducts, intending to help out for a year or two before moving on — and stayed there for the next 31 years. He worked all aspects of the business until the death of his father in 1965, when he became president and CEO. In 1968, he was named Oregon Small Businessman of the Year, receiving the award from Sen. Wayne Morse.
In 1979 he was able to return to Willamette’s Graduate School of Administration to earn his master’s degree, graduating in the same ceremony as his daughter, as she earned her bachelor’s degree.
While at Bioproducts, he took an active part in local government, serving first on the Hammond Town Council, and later as mayor. During his tenure as mayor, he was elected president of the League of Oregon Cities. He served briefly on the Warrenton Council, and in 1988 was elected to the Clatsop County Commission, where he served as chairman during the first year of the Home Rule Charter.
While his children were still young, he built the family’s first boat, and from then on boating was a way of life. Richard belonged to the Astoria Yacht Club and the U.S. Power Squadron, where he taught safe boating and navigation classes for many years, and also served as commander of the Lower Columbia Power Squadron. After his retirement, he and Nancy spent summers aboard their boat in the San Juan Islands. Their big adventure was taking their boat all the way around Vancouver Island in 1989.
He was a longtime supporter of the Columbia River Maritime Museum, and worked with Rolf Klep in the early days of planning and fundraising. He was a founding member of the board of trustees and an early chairman of the board. After many years on the board, he was named trustee emeritus, an honor of which he was very proud.
He liked to see good things happen, and had a gift for launching projects he believed would be beneficial. He enjoyed working with others and letting them take ownership. While on the Hammond Town Council, he led in the creation of the Hammond Mooring Basin. As chairman of the county commission, he originated and established the Columbia River Estuary Study Task Force (CREST). As a trustee of the Maritime Museum, he launched the Sailing Gillnetter Project, which saved an iconic local fishing boat from extinction. He served on the board and as a president of the Conservative Baptist Men of Oregon, and was instrumental in the creation of Camp Tadmore.
After his retirement from running Bioproducts, he started his own management consulting company, Enterprise Advisors. He especially liked working with nonprofits, such as the Oregon Historical Society and the Seaside Chamber of Commerce, and sometimes did not charge for his services. He was the author of several important papers on management, including “Treating Profit as a Cost of Doing Business,” published in Advanced Management Journal, “Marketing City Services,” “Reality Based Planning,” “A Strategy Matrix,” and others.
He had a great many hobbies and interests. He raced sports cars in the 1950s, was a ham radio operator and an early adopter of computer technology. He created sculptures in stone and clay, and compiled well-researched genealogies of ancestors who also organized and preserved family stories and photos.
He was an avid reader (he always had stacks of books beside his chair), and a member of Mensa. He loved to teach new things to his children, and they have fond memories of impromptu roadside geology lessons, fossil hunting and rock hounding outings, late-night astronomy sessions, knot-tying lessons, creating tiny model ships in bottles, and learning to sail. He could fix almost anything.
He was active in his church, and taught Sunday School for many years. He always had a well-thumbed and annotated Bible next to his chair. The epitaph he chose for his gravestone reflects the hope his faith gave him: “Seek not for me, I sail to meet the day.”
He is survived by Nancy, his wife of 58 years; his sister, Carol Lambert and her husband Joseph; three children, Stephen and his wife Meg, Jennifer Alles and her husband Douglas, and Michael and his wife Naomi; eleven grandchildren; and five nieces and nephews. He will be dearly missed by all.
A memorial service will be held on Saturday, Nov. 1, at 2 p.m., at the Columbia River Maritime Museum.