Dick Dahlin '65 is modest about his talents, but the fact is that his rise to the executive suite in the company that once was Crown Zellerbach (and is now Cavenham Forest Industries) was stunningly fast. Now retired from Cavenham as vice president and general manager of Northwest operations, at the tender age of 55, the energetic Dahlin leaves a reputation for trying to find better ways to do things--even improving things that didn't seem to need improvement.

"I became a change catalyst," he says. "I seem to have a need--I don't know exactly what it is--a driving need for change. I left a record of good changes behind me." Perhaps he gets that trait from his father, Verus Dahlin, whose creative efforts to get an education led him to the Oregon State School of Forestry at the age of 26--and finally to graduation at age 72.

Verus Dahlin had only an eighth-grade education. He'd dropped out of school to work on the family farm. His Swedish-immigrant father had insisted on it. Later, assuming his education was over, Verus Dahlin got a summer job working for the Forest Service on the Mapleton Ranger District, not far from his family home near Florence, Oregon. "The district ranger there inspired my dad," says Dick. "He turned him on to the possibility of greater things."

Verus began to dream of being a forester. But a forester needed a college education. Verus didn't even have a high-school diploma. He traveled to Oregon State and began knocking on doors. Rebuffed several times, he finally persuaded college officials to let him in, conditionally. He would have to prove himself, they said.

"Dad had a tough time in college," says Dick Dahlin. "Here he was with an eighth-grade education, and he was twenty-six years old, and he'd never been out of western Lane County in his life." But term after term, studying hard, he succeeded.

On the eve of graduation, according to the family story, Verus suffered a bitter disappointment. He was called into the DeanÕs office and informed that he lacked several required credits. They were credits that most students received simply for having finished high school. But Verus had never set foot inside a high school. So he didn't graduate with his class.

It was a blow, but in 1935 Verus got a job with the Forest Service anyway. Eventually he fulfilled his lifelong dream of becoming district ranger at Mapleton, following in the footsteps of his mentor. "So it never made a difference in his career," says his son. "But it always bothered Dad that he didn't have that degree. He just felt something was unfinished in his life."

Perhaps because of his own sense of incompleteness, Verus insisted that all four of his children go to college. "It was just something understood, inevitable, like death and taxes." Dick and his two brothers all chose OSU. "It seemed like the natural place to go. We used to joke with Dad that he should come down and take classes with us, finish up his degree. But he was working and raising a family, and he never had the time."

In the late 1970s, Dick's younger sister, Mary, looked into her father's history at OSU. Verus was in his 70s and long since retired. His daughter asked President Robert MacVicar and Dean Carl Stoltenberg: what did her dad need to do to finish this thing? The dean and the president agreed that his 32 years in the Forest Service would serve as an adequate substitute for the few credits he lacked. In 1978, Verus Dahlin, in cap and gown, walked in the commencement exercises. He'd waited a long time, but finally he had his college degree.

After graduating in Forest Management in 1965, Dick Dahlin was hired right out of school by Crown Zellerbach. When he accepted a forest engineer's job at Vernonia, Oregon, Dick's father was delighted--his old teacher and mentor at Oregon State, Clarence Richen (Forest Management '35), was Crown's vice president for timber. 'My dad told me, 'You'll never go wrong working for Clarence Richen.'"

After three years in the Army, where he served in Vietnam, Dahlin rejoined Crown and began his rapid rise.

"I had about 12 different moves . . . I was single then, and pretty nimble. I was looking for opportunities, getting promoted pretty fast, and I was willing to take the transfers." His reputation for creative problem-solving was rising, and it got him some tough assignmentsÑnone tougher than trying to save two faltering sawmills in northwestern Oregon.

That was in 1981, when the whole industry was on the skids. "Stumpage was high, lumber prices were low, and sawmills were just getting squeezed," he says. The mills eventually were closed. "I felt I had failed," says Dahlin, but the company evidently thought otherwise, for it promoted him to regional manager for Northwest timber operations at the Portland headquarters, with responsibility for about a million acres of company timberlands.

Dahlin stayed with the company through the next tumultuous years as it was taken over in a corporate raid in 1985 and, as Cavenham Forest Industries, underwent a strenuous downsizing. These were turbulent, traumatic, but exciting times. "I was under more pressure than I had ever known. I never dreamed, back at OSU, that I'd be in this kind of environment.'

The stresses continued as the company was purchased by Hanson PLC in 1990. In 1996 Hanson sold the companyÕs assetsÑ1.85 million acres of timberlands in the Northwest and South along with five sawmillsÑfor $2.1 billion. Many former Cavenham employees went to work for Willamette Industries, which purchased some of Cavenham's timberland and a sawmill. But not Dahlin. "There was no need for another executive at my level," he says, "and I wouldnÕt have taken an offer anyway. I was ready to move on."

Working for Cavenham was a unique and satisfying experience, says Dahlin with evident pride. "The company was a rare combination of exceptional people, culture, and accomplishments. I feel a deep pride in having had a major part in the development of CavenhamÕs organization, from its creation through the sale of its assets and the winding up of its business. It was certainly the fulfillment of my own professional dream."

Dahlin is an active OSU alumnus, serving on the OSU Foundation Board of Trustees. He just accepted a position on the College of Forestry's Dorothy D. Hoener Memorial Fund committee, filling the role of his father's old friend Clarence Richen, who's retiring. Dahlin and his wife, Phyllis, have generously supported OSU causes, including the Forestry Legacy scholarship fund and the Valley Library.

Dahlin and his wife, an interior designer, are building a new house on their farm near Scappoose. For the time being they are living in the barn, in a nicely appointed but cramped upper apartment. With a trace of his former corporate urgency, Dahlin frets at the slowness of the construction. "The house was supposed to be done in May," he says, "and here it is August . . . and our son [Mike, OSU Horticulture '96] is getting married in November."

He doesn't know where his path will lead from here, and that doesn't bother him. "I've done a little consulting, and maybe I'll continue with that. I don't want to work for another big company, unless it's the right situation. I'm just having a lot of fun right now."