Wes Lematta built a life that soared

It was a whirlwind courtship, with a whirlybird getaway.

In December 1962, Wes and Nancy Lematta were married in a Northeast Portland Lutheran church.

They then skipped across the street to the elementary school yard where Wes had parked his helicopter for the quick flight to Vancouver, kick-starting their honeymoon.

This was no ordinary guy, the second of four sons born to Ed and Hilda Lematta, offspring of Finnish immigrants who had fled North Dakota in 1934 for a fresh start in Brush Prairie.

By that wedding day, Nancy saw in Wes what others would.

Here was a gracious, often humble man devoted to family and his workers, but also a rugged competitor with the knack to anticipate the future.

Many in the large crowd that gathered in Vancouver Jan. 9 to celebrate the life of the helicopter giant, who died last month at age 83, had heard Wes’ own term for success: “luck of the Finns.”

It was well-earned “luck.”

Jim Lematta, youngest of the four brothers who had helped work the family’s dairy on 119th Street, where the original farmhouse remains, said Wes’ inner drive simmered.

“He was very competitive, in some ways,” said Jim, 70, a member of the board of directors for Columbia Helicopters, which the Lemattas founded together.

“He liked to ride motorcycles. Every time he got a new car, he had to race one of my brothers down that road, on 119th,” Jim said. He remembers a hot, sticky day when the clan was stacking summer hay in the barn, and Wes shouted, “Hey, I can beat you in pushups,” and the impromptu contest was on.

Wes had been intrigued by flying since he fought for the U.S. Army in World War II. By the 1950s, he and his brother Bill were long-distance truckers working the Portland-Los Angeles route. And a radio report about helicopter pilot training rekindled his desire.

Wes signed up for training in McMinnville, Ore. Before long, his instructor tipped him to a Stanley Hiller chopper for sale in New Mexico for $22,500.

It was brother Ed, the oldest, who urged Wes to seize the day. Ed and his wife raised most of the money through a profitable service station they ran in Otis, Ore., near Lincoln City.

That was April 1957. For the next decade, Wes scratched out every dime he could with the Hiller and, soon, other craft.

He relentlessly promoted helicopters, still mostly a novelty. He made headlines plucking sailors off a sinking ship near Coos Bay, Ore., and for pulling two waterskiers from Portland to Astoria. The real cash came from such gigs as hoisting trapeze artists, ferrying Santa Claus, showering pingpong balls on car lots.

And, above all, selling public rides: at county and state fairs, Oregon’s Centennial Exhibition in 1959, to anyone willing to pay $3.50 for a five-minute thrill.

Wes, his first wife, Charlene, son Jeff and daughter Jill lived in southeast Portland near 122nd Avenue and Stark Street. And, yes, he commuted by air.

“The police would come and say, ‘Do you have a permit to land this thing (at home)?’” Jeff recalled. Wes replied that none was required. Well, there’s been a lot of wrecks out there by gawking motorists, the police said.

Often, Wes would drop the children with the grandparents, still in Brush Prairie.

“Not many kids fly to their baby sitter,” Jeff said. If the rides grew familiar, they remained intense. With a jaw-dropping view and pulsating, piston-powered engine, “There’s not a carnival ride that will shake you more than that,” he said.

Business sputtered, on into the 1960s. Wes and Jim, by then a licensed pilot partner, got through by pulling dockworker shifts or driving truck. Along the way, Wes’ marriage ended, the kids settling in Alaska.

Nancy entered the scene clear-eyed. She knew Wes would be gone for long spells, and was content to be a homemaker.

But Wes cultivated strong talent and by the early 1970s, Columbia surged. He had foreseen the edge in using large, twin-rotor craft for helicopter logging, especially in rugged forest terrain where road building was difficult and environmental sensitivity was high.

The logging helped balance one-time projects. Wes moved the company to its current Aurora, Ore., headquarters, and it captured world renown for its can-do service.

In his down time, Wes was a warm father to three children he and Nancy had, in rapid order: Betsy, Marci and Bart. They enjoyed simple pleasures, like trips to the coast and a favorite campsite on the North Fork of the Lewis River.

Marci, now 44, treasures those memories. A little later, Wes was piloting a Jet Ranger with the whole family aboard, with a school friend (and the family kitten, in a shoebox), to the San Juan Islands for a more upscale boating vacation.

“I knew we were the luckiest kids in the world,” Marci said.

By the late 1980s, Wes and Nancy built a big log house on the Columbia River waterfront near Vancouver. It was strictly a tax-saving move from Oregon, but the two reached out to help his new-old community.

They co-sponsored an “I Have a Dream” college scholarship program and donated to the Humane Society for Southwest Washington, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Southwest Washington, and other local groups.

They gave $3 million to a Providence Cancer Center research lab in Portland to honor Jill, a cancer victim, and endowed a $1 million Oregon State University forestry professor position.

They remained big Republican donors, posing with both President Bushes in private but also avoiding the limelight.

Wes battled many ailments, but nearly until the end kept his hand in business affairs.

“He could just see the future, what was gonna go and what would be successful,” said Marci, who works in Columbia’s marketing department. “He would spend money and get things, he’d get it and purchase it and utilize it,” she said, perhaps in makeshift fashion until the right time and use emerged.

His people skills also helped Columbia soar, said Nancy, who now heads the company’s board of directors.

“One thing that stood out with Wes: It didn’t matter if it was an executive, or some guy in the shop or sweeping the floor, he always treated them the same,” Nancy said.

That intimacy stoked high emotions at the Jan. 9 tribute in Vancouver, which drew more than 800 guests.

“People showed up from the ’60s and ’70s,” Jim said. “So many of these people, because of what Wes pioneered — oil-drilling, construction, (power transmission) line work — they came to pay tribute, because it was him that gave them employment all these years.”

For Jeff, watching three impressive twin-rotor Columbia choppers converge on Esther Short Park to hover stoically above the crowd rekindled memories.

“As kids, you could hear Dad coming home,” he said.

Indeed, Wes has come home, for good. He was laid to rest in the family plot in Brush Prairie’s Bethel Cemetery, next to his mother, father, brother Bill, sister, Mabel, and her husband, George.

Many thoughts merged as the three huge craft departed.

“When those helicopters pulled away, one by one, there wasn’t a dry eye,” Jim said. “It was pretty remarkable.”

Looking up, Jeff couldn’t help but chuckle to himself. “Dad would say, ‘It’s nice, but it’s a nonrevenue project. Let’s pull some logs up out of this park, or get out of here.’”

Howard Buck: 360-735-4515 or howard.buck@columbian.com.