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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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Kiewit’s Dick Geary, 79, dies in Lake Oswego

Manager known as skilled, giving

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Ed Lynch still remembers Dick Geary as the fresh-faced, super-smart kid he hired at Kiewit way back in 1957.

Geary, 79, drowned Sunday after a heart attack near his Lake Oswego, Ore., home. But his legacy at Kiewit will long remain for those at the company where he worked for 50 years.

“One of my regrets in my 32-year career — I never had an opportunity to work for him,” said Bruce Grewcock, chairman and CEO of Kiewit Corp. in Omaha, Neb., the parent company of Kiewit Northwest. “He was such a great identifier of talent. Many of our senior managers came through Dick. He loved to mentor young employees.”

Kiewit, an employee-owned firm that is one of the world’s largest contractors, has a Northwest office in Vancouver. Geary worked with several people who became company leaders, including former vice president Dick Colf and senior vice presidents Scott Cassels, Steve Hansen and Mike Phelps. The former Vancouver resident also became a generous philanthropist, contributing to arts and health care organizations in Southwest Washington and Oregon.

Geary’s fascination with construction started long before he became a senior manager at the company.

“When he was young, there had been a construction job right by their family ranch in Oregon,” said Lynch, who retired as president of Kiewit Pacific Co. in 1985. “He used to go and watch the construction and ask all sorts of questions. The superintendent was very accommodating of this boy, and it turned out it was a Kiewit job.”

Through his time working on his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from Stanford University, Geary never forgot what he learned from the Kiewit superintendent. And when it came time to get a job, he knew where he wanted to work.

“At the time, I got this call from a professor who said, ‘I’ve got this kid that wants to work for Kiewit,’ ” Lynch said. “And I did my homework on him, and he was the real deal. So I hired him. And then he became assistant district manager, and when I got promoted from my job, he took that over and became district manager.”

Geary’s first assignment for the company was as an engineer on a highway project in Grants Pass, Ore. And he was superintendent on the Willamette River Bridge in Eugene, Ore., after his work helped secure a bid for the company in 1959.

He became district manager in 1969, fostered Kiewit’s entry into the Hawaiian market in 1981 and was named to the board of Kiewit Sons Inc. in 1988. He became the company’s executive vice president in 1992 and retired from active management in 1998. He continued his role on the board of directors until 2007.

“With him, the wheels were always turning,” Grewcock said. “He took his work seriously, took his family life seriously. He was a real engineer. He loved to get his hands on the work.”

The company likes to circulate a quote that hearkens from Geary, Grewcock added.

“He said, ‘There’s no better feeling than helping managers grow and then seeing them succeed,’ ” Grewcock said. “That was such an important part of his job. He had a big impact on the entire Kiewit organization.”

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Lynch, 94, said he will fondly remember the young man he once hired.

“He grasped the meaning of the technical aspects of our work and knew how to get things done,” Lynch said.

After he left Kiewit’s board, Geary and several other local Kiewit managers turned into great philanthropists, supporting a host of local charities for the arts and medicine.

Among the groups that Geary and his wife, Janet, supported were the Southwest Washington Medical Center Foundation, the Community Foundation for Southwest Washington, Portland Opera, the Oregon Symphony, the Portland Art Museum and the Oregon Health & Science University Foundation.

Elson Strahan, president and CEO of the Fort Vancouver National Trust, said he’d long been impressed with the giving nature of Geary, Hansen and other managers from Kiewit.

“All of the Kiewit folks, they’ve been extremely generous,” Strahan said. “That’s part of their DNA. It’s quite admirable to have that as a company philosophy.”

And that’s something Geary helped to pass on to others at the company, Grewcock said.

“Dick was very generous in lots of ways,” Grewcock said. “I think he tried to foster that, especially in our younger employees.”

Geary had been ill over the past few years, but tried to downplay it, Lynch said.

“He’d been having some health problems,” Lynch said. “He’s not a complainer. Nobody had really known what the problem was.”

The Associated Press said Geary was found floating in Oswego Lake near the 1900 block of Twin Points Road on Sunday morning after suffering a heart attack and falling in the water.

He is survived by his wife of 42 years, Janet; his sons, Arthur Geary and David Garner; daughters Sara Geary Gustafson and Suzanne Geary; 10 grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. His daughter Elizabeth preceded him in death in 2006.

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