Ki~Say " ,the.DarndestThingsHere's what three students thinkabout the proposed school reforms. 'BY KRISTl TURNQUIST

EVERSiNCE the National Commissionon Excellence in Education released itsreport, "A Nation at Risk," in April, the'

state of America's sehools has been one of thehottest topics around. But amid the increasing-ly politicized discussion, some voices havebeen missing - namely, the voices of thosemost directly affected by education - the stu-dents.With that in mind, we sat down with three

Jefferson High School students last week tohear their thoughts on education. We met insocial studies Instructor Bill Bigelow's class-

, room. It was a fitting location, since all threehad taken classes from 'Bigelow and often citedhim as the kind of dedicated, creative teacherthat, perhaps more than anything else, canmake eduGIltion an eliciting experience fQrstu-dents. 'Andrew Rohn, 17, is described by Bigelow

as "one of the brightest students I've everhad." Unusually articulate, he is often sharplycritical of school and is not shy about express-ing his opinion. He is the kind of earnest,idealistic student who is likely to speak up tochallenge his teachers if he finds inconsisten-cies or faults in a text. He's also interested inthe arts, specifically in writing music.Angela BraxtonvI Z, is a dedicated self-im-

prover, well-adjusted. and working hard to get, the most out of schoo!' Her conversation ispeppered with references to those who' settle

Please turn to page 7

Pr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PHOTOGRAPHY CONTESTWINNERS

A blend of emrepreneurial spirit. ingenuity arid a unique corporateculture are responsible for Tek's success.EDITOR'S NOTE:

With this issue Willamette Week beJ!jns atwo-part 'series on Tektronix. the ijant Beaver-ton electronics firm. While everyone in the met-ropolitan area knows of Tektronix, few here areaware of just what the firm manufactures, andeven fewer have considered the company'senormous impact on the region in the areas 0/labor relations and support for education, aswell as the creation of an environment in whichother high~techfirms have thrived,

In this first part, Business Editor G, PascalZachary looks at the formation of the company, and the values of its founders - which in manyways represented a departure from that of mostOregon firms but were in keeping with an evo-lution occurringwithin the high-tech industry.

, manufacture of oscilloscopes: was outgrowingits small shop on Hawthorne Boulevard inSoutheast Portland. To company founders

, Howard Vellum and Jack Murdock, it wasclear the firm needed to move. But where? Tofind the 'answer, the two men did somethingthat was to become a hallmark of their style:they turned to their employees and asked themto vote on a new site.The story of how Tek, the state's single larg-

est' employer. made its decislen to move toWashington County. where, it occupies a cou-ple of sprawling high-tech campuses, is a tell-ing indicator of what the company would be-come. As a pioneer in the then dimly under-stood world of high technology; Tek was des-tined to emerge as the world's unchallengedleader in its field. employing 15,000 people inthe four-county metropolitan area and payingroughly $500 inillion in' local wages andbonuses annually.From the start, Tek was different. Different

Please turn to page'9'

.'BY G. PASCAL ZACHARY,IT WAS ONE of those typical Tektronixdecisions - off-the-cuff, yet uncanny in itsaccuracy. The year was 1950. and Tek,

then a 4-year-old firm that specialized in the

TIlE.WORLDACCORDING TO

TEKTRONIXContinued from 1not only in the wa.y it treated it$ employeesand developed its products. but different inits attitudes toward the local communityand the political process. As 8 business, itseemed almost to operate in opposition toOregon's traditional economic heavy-weights: lumber. machinery, utilities. andagriculture. Tek's products were not some-thing to be extracted from the land. orpunched out by an assembly Ilne: itS realresources were . the engineers and technl-"dans who produced and designed its com-plex and specialized lnetrurnents. Moreover,as a corporation. it saw its role differentlyfrom that of traditional business power-houses. A collection of individuals. the com-pany was content to leave politics to its "em-ployees. .

As real as the differences between Tekand established industries were. however,. there was .a similarity between them. As inother industries, it was character that madea company - and. more often than not. thecharacter of a' company's founders. In vol-.lum and Murdock. Tek possessed leaderswith a force and vision equal to that of anywho had preceded them in the State of Ore-gon, To understand how Tek has achieved asingular influence in the state. it is necea-sery to look no further than these two n:-en.

After leavin: high schooland estab-lishinga business o/my own.l intend to80 further into the study of radiophenomena. . .• I shaU probablymake some inventions. which if put touse would be of great benefil 10 tnepeople of the world. . •.

- Jack Murdoc~'s teenage diary

"In the Depression," recalls a. mutualfriend of Murdock and vellum, "electronicswas seen as black magic. Not very manypeople understood or had any awareness ofits broad uses."

The forbidding face of radio' - as elec-tronics was euphemistically dubbed - didnot deter either Murdock or Vollum fromexploring if. A grgduate of Portland', F1'IInlc·Iin High in the.mid~1~30s, Murdock was giv-en a choice by .his father. he could attendcollegeor receive a stake. to start a business.Murdock chose the latter and opened a ra-dlo-and-appllence store on Southeast FosterRoad.As someone who could tinker with radios

but wasn't a whiz at fixing them, Murdock.an only son, realized he needed a repairmanand soon hired vellum, who had come intohis store looking for work. A recent gradu-ate of Reed College with, a degree in physics,Vollum had mastered the mysteries of radio.As a teen-ager, a boyhood friend remem-bers, Vollum delighted the teachers at hisformer grammar school. in Sellwood bystringing up a loudspeaker system for theiruse. Then, as a college undergraduate, hebuilt an oscilloscope in his parents' base-

. ment. This measuring instrument, which

graphs the size and speed of electrical im-pulses on a 1V tube, became increasinglyimportant as more and more products reliedon electrical circuitry. By the mid-1960s, theuses for Tek's oscilloscopes included mea-suring jhe heartbeat of an egg embryo. test-ing circuit boards and searching for impuri-ties in steel.

Not long after meeting. the two men be-gan to consider forming a business aroundVellum's oscilloscope. But war forced themto postpone their plans.Vellum was draftedinto the Army and spent four years in theSignal Corps, researching the uses of radarin labs in New Jersey and Great Britain. Ashe noted in a rare interview with the OregonHistorical Society in 1980. he learned a.great deal about designing oscilloscopeswhile in the service. "So J had an cppcrtunl-ty to work in an area of radar which wasvery important and very difficult." he toldLinda Brody, the interviewer. "Of course.test equipment for this sort of thing was notreadily available and we had to make ourown in most cases. The part of the radar setthat I was concerned with was the indicatorsection . . . the thing that the operatorslook' at. That's really a specialized form ofoscilloscope and so the techniques that Ilearned; and the technology that was devel-oped. wax diremly applicable to me and 01-cllloscope design which, of course, was myinterest."

Murdock, meanwhile, had joined the U.S.Coast Guard. and for most of his tour hewas stationed in Portland. He correspondedregularly with Vollum and began planningtheir future business. According to JamesCastles. one of several men Murdock met inthe Coast Guard who was later to work forTek, Murdock "would talk quite a bit aboutthe finn he intended to start, and whenasked about whether he could handle thetechnical side he would say, 'Wait untilyou've met Howard.' "

Castles notes that Murdock and Vollumshared a "shrewd recognition that theymade a fine ream," and that Murdock was inno way overstating Vellum's value. By thewar's end. Vollum was perhaps the leadingoscilloscope designer in the industrialized

world; Tek's initial cectllcscopee, which heboth designed and manufactured. weregreatly superior to Instruments made ~Y Du-mont and RCA, the two leading Americanfirms in the business. "The older companiesdidn't know what hit them," says Jean De-Lord, Tek's research director in the late19505 and now chairman of the physics de-partment at Reed College. "Their engineerswere old. and they couldn't see beyorid their. outmoded designs."

Murdock was not alone in recognizingVellum as an important electronics tnnova-tor. 8y chance. Bill Hewlett, who had found-ed Hewlett-Packard with David Packard in aCalifornia garage in 1938. met Vellum whilehe was in the Army. The Portlander madesuch a favorable impression on Hewlett •who was the engineering genlua behindwhat was to become one of the nation'smost successful pioneer high-tech firms.that he advised his partner, Packard, to hireVoUum. However, Packard declined.

Not that Vollum would have jumped atthe offer, anyway. He was so anxious to startwork on his own business, that Tektronixwas founded a mere half dozen weeks afterhis discharge from the service in November1945:Despite Vollum's innovative oscilloscope

d@lilll1snd the burgeoning po~tw6r demandfor the instrument, Tektronix (the phoneticspelling of the words "technical" and "elec-tronics" abbreviated together) had somerough going in its early years. The compa-ny's first oscilloscope. which probably useda cathode-ray tube built by ReA, was re-leased in 1947. but didn't begin to make aprofit until 1948, By 1950. however. saleshad topped $1 million and the close-knit.steff included more than 100 people. Theopening' of sales offices throughout theUnited States in 1951 helped quicken sales.which quadrupled that year, Meanwhile, thegovernment itself began its long history as aTek customer, purchasing a number of os-cilloscopes to aid in measuring atomic andhydrogen bomb blasts. .

A haven for engineers. Tek.- recalls oneresearcher, was "better than being at a unl-versity" during the 19505. and the company

Yielded a string of significant Improvementsin its oscilloscopes, as well as developing acathode-ray tube (a basic element in bothtelevisions end computers) (or internal use.By 1964. Tek had nearly 5.0Q0 employees.annual revenues-of about $75 million. a bur-geoning campus In Beaverton. and an exten-sive sales network through the United Statesand Europe. An initial public srock offeringthat year, besides increasing public aware-ness of the firm. made rich men out of Mur-dock and Vollum (who then held 52 per cent. of the outstanding stock) and provided awindfall of several million dollars for agroup of 30 veteran employees.

Howard was our guru. . .. - Jean DeLord

In Tek's formative years during the 1950s.engineers were king, and founder HowardVollum - the taciturn engineer who hadthe final say over all designs, product devel-opment and advertising - was' nothingshort of a corporate hero. Brainy and poker-faced. VolIum was a tall man with rusticgood looks who was often shy and nervousin public (he studiously avoids giving news-paper interviews. including with WillametteWeek). Quick with n wry joke, he was relcc-tant to criticize wayward employees: he,found it difficult to flatly tell a person whatwas 'on his mind "I suspect a lot of peoplemisread Howard many times," says WilliamB. Webber, who served as Tek's vlce-presi-dent for administration before retiring in the19705.

Whatever his failings as a manager, Vol-lum was personally warm. Generous withhis time, he was easy to approach and quick10 strike up a technical conversation. Hehad few airs. Though he was respectful ofeducation, he wouldn't hesitate to give anengineering spot to someone without a col-lege degree. "Paper credentials didn't meanmuch to him," Webber says ..

Vollum was the classic enngineer whohad seen an entire firm spring up around his.major innovation (even today nearly half ofTek's revenues come from oscilloscopesales), and it was inevitable that, among Tekemployees at least; his exploits would as-

. sume lerger-than-Hfe proportions. His intel-lect. fat example, went almost unchallengedat Tek, and legends sprang up around it.One veteran Tek employee recalls how heCAmeto learn the risks of second-guessing 8.

decision by Vellum. The employee had justfinilhcd preparing en ad for a new inMru-men I and had brought it to Vollum lor hisapproval. Vellum, who was always nitpick-ing over the ede, took a quick look. did somefast calculations and then pronounced thatthe, specifications for the instrument (dis-played prominently in the ad) were wrong.The ad writer insisted that couldn't be so.explaining that he had copied the specsright off the product, Valium was unmoved."Later I went back to the people who builtthe product ana. sure enough, they had putthe wrong specs on the product:' the em-ployee recalls. "It was the last time I everdisagreed with Howard over an ad."Then there was Vellum's intense pride,

illustrated in an apocryphal tale that pro-vides neat evidence for Tek's long-standingslogan: "committed to' excellence," Beforeforming Tek, while working as a repairman

. Please turn 10page 10

Raise your standard.. .of leaving. .

If you are the sort of person who does not compromise on style,you will find that our Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce is your kind of per-sonal car. From its Pininf'arina body to its seats of fine Italian leathers,the Spider Veloce is a better way of leaving for those who havearrived. . e

RON TONKIN GRAN TURISMQ .203 NE 122nd Ave. / Tel.:255-7560

10

THEWORLDACCORDING TO

TEKTRONIXContinued from 9for Murdock's store. Vellum had repaired awoman's vacuum cleaner. Some years later,so this oft-repeated story goes, Vellum, whowas by then well on his way to amassingmore than $250 million in personal assets,received a phone call from the woman. Sheinformed him that her vacuum had onceagain gone. on the blink and asked if hewould come fix it. Vellum agreed, got. intohis car, and before long the job was done."When 1 fix something. it stays fixed," Vol- .lum reportedly told the woman after de-clining an offer of payment.

Besides illustrating his wry sense of hu-mor, the tale shows Valium's drive fot: per-fection. which had much to do with Tek'ssuccess as a supplier of fine instruments butalso led to some odd in-house projects and aresistance to jumping into the nascent fieldof computers. For year'S, Tek prided itself onproducing nearly everything internally, in-cluding the boxes in which it shipped itsinstruments; it has' only been recently thatTek bas regularly sold components for othercompanies' products. More seriously, whileVollum led Tek into.e range of new areas,including the producticnof speciellzed tele-vision instruments, circuit boards, and com-.puter-displey terminals. the company. tnex-pllcably, never made a move to sell businessor personal computers - despite its hugeengineering capabilities. "Strategically. thatwas a major failing." believes TomBruggere, a former Tek executive who leftthe firm in t 981 to found Mentor Graphic inBeaverton. "It Was one of several factors thathave kept them from ~owing much larger."

lack, incidentally. probably had morethan anyone else to do wiJh many 0/OUr characteristics that we havearound here. He was .always veryfriendly. very open, . : ' We've alwaysbeen on a !irsJ·name basis 7Jnd we've

~;:v=r':1;:f!~~::or!a~~ZSs:::S~~fethics and good business practices.That was imponaru to us. II startedseuing a tone that has continued allthis time, .

- Howard Vellum, in an interview. in 1980 with the Oregon

Hlstcrical Society

Comparcli wilh YQllwm, J~ck Murdock,was more urbane and businesslike and lessthe subject of myth. He is credited with in-stigating. some of Tek's farsighted laborpractices, including the company's profit-sharing plan, whereby the workers' sliceequals that of the shareholders. He is per--haps best remembered for leading companybikes and organizing the an-staff annualpicnics at a time when Tek was stiU smallenough for him to know everyone personal-iy. A wonderful conversationalist, Murdockwas the ideal foil forVoUum. "We'd call himThe Chaplain." recalls James Castles, a"dose.friend of. Murdock and Tek's corporate'counsel for almost 20 years. "No matter who

Saturday, October 229:00 am torz

Call for reservations644·0445

to serve as Tek's chairman, but in 1971" hewas killed when the seaplane he was pilot-ing crashed. He left no familyend few inti-

I mate friends. For a man steeped in psychol-ogy. he was oddly reluctant to get close toothers. "He was always. fearful someonewould take advantage of him," says Castles."He had a complex about that."

With no real heirs, Murdock had instruct-ed that his estate, valued at more than $50million. go towards the creation of a charita-ble foundation. Now worth more than $140million, the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trusthas dispensed $53 million in its eight yearsof operation. r •

he'd talk to, that person went away thinkingJack agreed with everything they'd said."

If Vellum provided Tek with a companyhero - a living model of how a Tek employ-ee should behave - Murdock took it upon.·himself to forge and manipulate.the symbolsand rituals that have come to permeate theTek workplace. Deeply attracted to psychla-try and; the puzzle of human motivation,Murdock. an only child who never married,was a good match for the challenge of build-ing a company from scratch. An avid fol-lower of Karl Menninger, the American psy-chiatrist who ran a research institute in.Tcpeka, Kan., Murdock's interest in workereelt-manegement predated its current popu-larity and contrasted sharply with the typi-cal concerns of most corporate managers inthe J9505,' who mainly relied on their vestedauthority to prompt workers to perform anarrow range of duties. In the still uncertainworld of High Tech. Murdock. who wrote asa teen-ager that "the majority of peoplehave no idea what radio's future holds Jnstore," knew that such a management stylewouldn't take.

Rather than setting up elaborate organi-zational cham and byaentine job descrip-tions. he needed a system that encouragedboth communication and innovation - onethat assumed that individuals were not seek- .ing to avoid work but to reach for their fullpotential. .

· Murdock's faith, which Vellum shared but,· didn't articulate nearly so wen, was ex-'pressed in a number oJ ways at Tektronix.Engineers jokingly boasted tha.t they had.received a ''Tek degree" or called one an-other "Tek products." The work atmospherewas loose: hours were flexible, everyonecalled one another by his or her first name,and Tek equipment was available for useduring an enterprising staff person's off-hours. Most visibly, no on~. had a privateoffice - not even top management.

Murdock's symbols were taken.seriously.They were nurtured and protected; altera-tions occurred only grudgingly. Tek's sur-rendering oC 8 particular cherished symbolillustrates this well. For many years. Tek ran.its own company cafeterias. and as a sign ofthe trust it placed in its employees it left themoney boxes open, so that workers couldpay and make change on their own -,Durlngthe 19505 and '60s the system worked rea-sonably wen. and offered thousands of newTek employees tangible proof that the firm'smanagement style was more than rhetoric.However, by the 1970s, some workers hadbegun stealing from the cash box, and man-agement's patience with the symbol beganto wear thin. "Tek struggled to keep openihos~ change boxes." recatls Maury Mer-rick, a full-lime Tek engineer from 1959 to'1971 and now chairman of the electrical en-gineering department at Portland Commu-nity College'S Cascade campus. "Eventhough' the higher-ups knew Tek was actual-ly losing mcney on the cafeteria operationdue to employee theft, it was a symbol they.were reluctant to give up. As one once toldme: 'We're wilting to lose some money forthe prjvitege of tbis symbol.''' .

Murdock retired from the firm in the early1960s to pursue his growing outside inter-ests, which included downtown real estateand two, airplane. companies. I Ie continued

. .We didn'J have the inclination to bul-

ly peoI* around jus, because. we thinkwe're right. . .

- Earl Wantland, Chief ExecutiveOfficer and President.

Tektronix

It is hard 10 imagine Earl Wentland, a tallman with a folksy manner that calls to mlndthe actor Andy Griffith, trying-to stampedeGov. Victor Atiyeh and the Oregon legisla-ture into giving Tek something it wants.

Not that other corporate chiefs haven'tused tough talk to gain what is euphemistl-cally called "an improved business climate."About 8 year ago, Hyster delivered jiJst sucha threat ~ and followed through on it whenthe state proved unwilling to offer it finan-clal aid. More recently, Douglas Strain,chairman of Electro Scientific Industries. a ..high-tech firm founded here ln the ea~ly19505, commented in a discussion about aproposed sales tax that his: firm would beforced to shift some of its operations out ofstate unless the tax obligations On Oregon'sbusinesses were eased.Wentland, however, is far from the typical

corporate executive. Though he earns$258,000 a year, he drives a Honda Civicstation wagon to work and is listed in Tek's120-page internal phone .book not as presi-dent and chief executive officer but as "gen-eral ~taff".("rm just a worker bee," he quipswhen asked about this}. 1n 'line with Tektradition. he does without a private office,pondering the. future of the firm from a deskpartially hidden behind a plain set of officefloor partitions.Vollum's handpicked successor,' chosen

after vellum had soured. on two previouspotential heirs to the Tek throne, Wantlandis the sort of down-home Oregon boy withwhom Tek's founder can relax. (At 70, Vol-lum is still chairman of the board, and.though he is no longer active in the day-to-day running of Tek, he keeps a desk in thefirm's research-and-development center anda hand in englnee,;ng projeett.) A hi~h-school' graduate who dropped out of -thethen-Portland State College in the mid-'SOsto join-Tek at the age of 23. Wantland. whobegan as a technician, says He has alwaysbeen attracted, to the company's 'unpreten-tious style. As to his position on corporategrandstanding, he need look n:o furtherthan to Tek's founders. "I don't think theyever thought in those terms," he says withcertainty,Wantland's right. Though Vollum has de-

cidedly liberal social attitudes, he has kept.his voice end his money out of politics. This

less true of Murdock. who was a

government-off-our-beck conservative; heand his charitable trust have had links withnational conservative organizations - Mur-dock was, for example. active in the strident-ly conservative National Association' ofManufacturers - but have shown much lestinterest in local politics. As a company, Teknever put political influence high on its cor-porate agenda. When lobbying needed to be

· done, Vollum called on Webber, Tek'a unof-ficial historian and Murdock's right-handman for some years, to speak out in public;.webber is the only Tek executive to haveserved as president of the Portland Chamberof Commerce. Valium, meanwhile. stayedaway from the limelight almost obsessively.

Some suggest that Tek's anxiety aboutpolities stems from a real concern of itsleaders that the company net get snagged inwhat some observers call the "Boeing.trap,"referring to the relationship betwee~ the gi-

~<,!)<fl

TOP EMPLOYI!!RSEmployment per company In the(our-county metropolitan area.

gentle aerospace firm and the Seattle area .-vl'ek has been very conscious of Boeing's· relationship to Seattle for years," notes C.Norman Winningstad, president and chiefexecutive officer of Floating Point Systems

· and a former Tek manager. "Boeing hasbeen kicked about -up there for throwingaround its weight. Tek wanted to be carefulthat the same thing' didn't happen to them.

Boeing has 10~g been Seattle's Dr,Faustus, presenting the port city with some-thing akin to a pact with the devil. For some.time. for imtance, Seattle official. havn triooto annex the unincorporated area on whichsome of Boeing's plant sits in order to wringa fair share of taxes; from it; the firm hassuccessfully resisted these efforts. The com-panyalso helped repeal a controversial stateinventory tax that struck hard at its ownproducts. As one leading politician in Wash-ington State, who asked not to be named •put it: "Boeing can pun a lot of strings.They can make people see things their way."

Far from pulling strings, Tek's leadersseem uninterested in taking advantage ofthe firm's size. "Tek never tried to lean onme for any special treatment or attention,"

ARE YOU GETTING COLD FEET?

WITH ANOSBURN OR LOPI

WOOD STOVE

GET WARM WITHOUT GETTING BURNED

iiiOR

FIREPLACE INSERTON SALE THIS WEEK

AT THE STOVE MART WHERE QUALITY. IS OUR COMMITMENT,AND CUSTOMER SERVICE IS OUR SPECIALTY

Since then, however, Tek's fortunes -and the stare's - have taken a turn for theworse. Though the book certainly isn'tclosed on eitherTek or the local electronics,industry, the past three years have soberedup the industry's biggest fans, and cured'folks of the notion that Tek might expandindefinitely. For the giant - perhaps onlytemporarily - has indeed stoppedgrowing.Sales have been flat for the past two yearsand worldwide employment has been cut bynearly 4,000 from its 1981 high. The compa-ny mainly blames an international recession(or this contraction, but others point to'Tek's sluggish pursuit of a few key markets, and a bureaucratic-laden organization thathas stifled Innovation and promptedsome ofits best and brightest to leave for start-upfirms that offer bigger rewards for success.

This is only part of the story, however. Aswe will detail in a follow-up article, Tek hasan alter ego - the many firms it hasspawned and those ,it has attracted to theregion. Drawing on some of Tek's centralvalues, these firms are a source of economic. vitality for Portland, and a living' examplefor Tek's managers, who are trying to com- .bat the firm's problems by getting back tobasics. "The whole idea {of reorganizing Tekinto smaller units] is to cast off the bureau-cratic tendencies present in a large organi-zetlon," observes WantJand. "To give us thekind of success through innovation that asmall unit seems to breed."

recalls former Gov. Bob Straub, who spentmore than a decade holding statewide officein Salem; "They pretty much stayed out ofpolitics." While in Straub's view this makesTek Us first-class corporate citizen," Win-ningstad isn't so sure: he thinks Tek may bedoing the state a disservice by not speakingout more forcefully (or its own interests.With Oregon starved for leadership, heargues. Tek should be leading, "not abdicat-ing its responsibility to lead."However, Wantland insists that Tek takes

a healthy interest in po-lities. "We speak outin our own way," be responds, "but we're'probably not going to climb on the soapboxvery often." Nevertheless, Tek has recentlybeen "more overt [pcliticeily] than we've ev-er been," says Wantland, who spent severalyears abroad for Tek, setting up its two .Eu-ropean plants and supervising the firm'sjoint venture with Sony. Though neitherWant1and nor Tek .donetes any significantsums to political races, Tek has its own stafflobbyist. who works in Washington. D.C .• aswell as Salem (Tek makes 40 per cent of its.sales overseas and likes to keep abreast offoreign legislation on federal trade). In addi-tion. Tek is by far the largest rum in the 12-member Oregon chapter of the AmericanElectronics Association, which hired its firstlobbyist last year in order to push a morecoordinated government program. (Besidesquickly gutting 8 bill that would have pro-tected workers from- the suspected. hazards

aid to private schools, but the companyhelps public education as well. Recently.Tek promised a consortium of public andprivate universities $3.5 million over a peri .•od of yea rs (to be matched by state funds).and succeeded in convlnelng dozens orsmaller but growing electronics concerns tojoin in the effort. "With_ all the complaintsabout- the lack of state support for technicaleducation, it was' ironic." says Rep. VeraKatz (D-Portland), who sponsored the legis-lation making the high-tech consortium areality. "When it came down to it. Tek wasthe only high·tecp firm to lobby in supportofthe [1982] bill."

You've probably heard this joke:How many people work at Tektronix?50 percent.

- A gossiper in the Tek grapevine

of video-display terminals, the Tek-led asso-ciation successfully supported efforts' tostreamline the state's land-use laws and heldthe line on proposals to raise the personalincome tax..)

Polities may be new terrain for Tek, buteducetlon c- specifically, college training inengineering - is not. both Vollum andMurdock having strongly supported educe-.tion since the late 196Os. Murdock's charita-ble trust is a major donor to a host of re-gional private colleges. Vollum, meanwhile,is credited with ensuring the survival of bothReed College, his alma mater, and the Ore-gon Graduate Center. At Reed, Vollum wasinstrumental in shoring up the college's,dwindling endowment; in the early 19705 heoffered to donate up to 50.000 shares of Tekstock, provided that other donors matchedhis offer. "At a very critical time," notesReed President Paul Bragdon, a Tek direc-tor. "Howard provided support that led to agreatly strengthened college." OregonGraduate Center President Paul Carlson. al-. so a Tek director, tells a similar tale. Thoughhe says Vollum does not want disclosed thesize of his contributions to the private facili-ty that is to serve as a hub for research anddevelopment in Washington County, Carl-son states flatly: "OGe exists today becauseHoward made a fundamental commitmentto us."Tek and its founders give the bulk of their

, It isn't so long .sirtce Oregon's economywas booming. Even though the timber In-dustry was healthy. it couldn't provide jobsfor the burgeoning- population, which grewby 25 per cent in the 19705. Yet by the closeof the decade the state's unemployment rateremained well below, the national average.The reason was 'simple: the decade had alsoseen a stunning increase in Oregon's shareof high-tech jobs. Tek itself had grownfrom a large but still nimble outfit with salesor $150 million and 8.750 workers in 1969 toa bursting-at-the-seams, $1 billion companywith 24,000 employees worldwide in 198Q.

EVERY STOOL ON SALE

HOW TOGRADOLLAR'SWORTH OFHUTFORABOUTSOt

CHOOSE fROM THEWIDE VARIETY OFSTYLESSTARTING AT

$4$5$6

18"\ 24"JO"

NATURAL FURNITURE"Ready to Finish"

800 NEBROAOWAY~ceot,,)M-Silt,1j){)Sun. 12-5'Fri. lij 7

284-0655'

Now There's

"ONEstore for. all your computer needs

ONE'store that gives you personal attention

ONEstore that stands above the rest

Now There's

COM u Tp E R If you heat with a fumace, anadd-on heat pump can cut your heatingbill about in half.. .

That's more than a substantialsavings. And it cools in summer too .

.So; why wait? .Look in the Yellow Pages under

.heat pumps. And call a dealer, today.

The HI souree in the NW for Apple and mMcompatible computers, software and accessories.

~-r\,;iC

626-2623