[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 185 (Wednesday, December 10, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2355-E2356]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             REFLECTIONS ON THE LIFE OF NED LOOK--1917-2008

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                          HON. EARL BLUMENAUER

                               of oregon

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, December 10, 2008

  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Madam Speaker, I was introduced about 40 years ago to 
Ned Look. I was a college student at the time and we were organizing a 
campaign on this goofy idea to allow young people to vote. Very 
quickly, a number of the arrows pointed to Ned Look as somebody I 
should sit down and talk with in order to understand how the community 
worked. Even then, Ned was an institution. He was well known in the 
Portland City Club and a leading member of the Portland Development 
Commission, spearheading redevelopment and the Civic Auditorium. He was 
a tireless volunteer, somebody who drew strength from civic activities. 
He was a busy guy. At that time he was still a banker, but he had the 
time to sit down and talk through whatever was on your mind, giving you 
a sense of the community's vitality. It was a marvelous experience for 
me, learning not just about a campaign, but about the community I grew 
up in. I found I didn't really know much about my community until I had 
a chance to interact with Ned.
  At that point, Portland had two big banks, several corporate 
headquarters, a couple of timber companies and utilities. and a single 
phone company. ``Tech'' meant Tektronix. There was a core of community 
members who made contributions, who moved with civic and political 
activities; Portland even had two political parties at that point. Ned 
was conversant and connected with them all.

[[Page E2356]]

  A reformer, Ned was obsessed with the notion of coaxing more value 
out of government investment. At that point, city-county consolidation 
was all the rage. It had happened in other parts of the country--
Indianapolis, Nashville, Davis--and Ned was part of the civic drumbeat 
that was going to bring city-county consolidation to Oregon. We were 
going to take the largest city and the largest county in Oregon and 
merge them to create all this extra efficiency. It was a brilliant plan 
supported by all the powers that be and the newspapers--and it lost 
two-to-one at the polls. But typical of Ned, he was convinced that 
something else was at work here, that we could do better. and he wasn't 
going to give up. He was part of the effort coming out of the City Club 
and other hopeless do-good organizations that envisioned and ultimately 
led to the creation of Metro, the only directly elected regional 
government in the country--a one-of-a-kind idea that is so good that no 
one else in the United States has seen to replicate it in the last 30 
years. This was typical of Ned and his energy and his involvement.
  Ned was always in the vanguard of the community foundation movement 
around the country. I had vaguely heard about community foundations 
from a friend of mine in Cleveland, Barbara Rossin, who helped set up 
the Cleveland Foundation. But it was Ned who made it happen in Oregon; 
it wasn't just his profession. it became part of the expression of who 
he was. It became larger than life.
  When I think about the changes that have taken place in our community 
in the last 40 years. I recall that we didn't have any organizing 
principles then; we didn't have large companies. But we were able to 
establish a framework in the community that encouraged people to get 
things done. We organized around a community foundation, but it went 
far beyond that. Today, you see the evidence of these efforts from the 
caliber of people are much more connected and reaching out and making 
things happen in a more entrepreneurial way. Just as we're the only 
city in the United States with a directly elected regional government, 
we are unique in the way we go out and solve problems. And much of this 
unique quality is due to people like Ned Look. There simply are not a 
lot of people like Ned in any city, nor have there ever been.
  The Harvard University sociologist Robert Putnam wrote ``Bowling 
Alone'' a few years ago, exploring changes in our society by asking 
why, if there were more people bowling, there were fewer bowling 
leagues. His book got a lot of attention, and appropriately so. But his 
second book. ``Better Together,'' which focused on the resurgence of 
citizen participation, didn't get quite the attention it deserved. He 
has a whole chapter about Portland; he called it ``The City that 
Meets.'' Now, I know that all this ``meeting'' drives many of you 
crazy--especially those of you who try to do business here or get 
anything done in civic organizations--but we are inclusive, we reach 
out to one another, even as we work in different patterns. These are 
the qualities Ned Look expressed better than anybody I've ever met.
  For years. we've had a parade of people who come to Portland looking 
at what we do and how we do it: Portland State University, streetcars, 
land use, even bicycles. They see the development patterns that have 
strengthened our neighborhoods and restored vitality to our community. 
We can show them our plans and talk about our government structures; we 
can talk about how we have constructed light rail and street car--but 
the single ingredient that is hard to express, the one that is more 
essential to that success than anything else, is our people. Ned was 
always there, front and center at the City Club, ready to give me 
advice, whether I was speaking or not. His antenna was always out; he 
was always gravitating toward conversation, eager to be involved. Ned 
was the personification of why, in the words of Professor Putnam, we're 
``better together.''
  Thank you, Ned.

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