Mission's living legacy (article)

Mission’s Living Legacy … from the Collins Family

Rosewood from Brazil, mahogany from Panama, cherry from Chile, red pine from Peru. The northern wall of the Collins Room is lined with strips of exotic woods – from the Americas and around the planet. Teak from Sumatra, rosewood from India, Afzelia from Zimbabwe, camphorwood from Japan. What do these woods signify in this fifteenth floor conference room in The Interchurch Center in New York? How do they relate to the mission of the World Division of the General Board of Global Ministries?

Woods from Angola, Costa Rica, Cuba, Liberia, Taiwan, Mozambique. These are among the more than 80 countries in which The United Methodist Church is in mission. There is a story here – a vital connection to be made. For the Collins family, the story is like a giant tree in the forest whose growth is told in annual rings, over generations. For United Methodist missionaries – after lives often at risk and always full of hardship and sacrifice – the story culminates in a security as comforting as a wooden rocking chair in a sturdily built house before a crackling wood fire.

Two paintings on the south wall of the Collins Room evoke the outdoor setting of the story – the Collins Almanor Forest in northern California, where the Sierra Nevada joins the Cascade Range. It is a biodiverse forest, home to pines, firs, and cedars ranging from slim saplings to 300-year-old trees that are 6 feet in diameter. It is, says a brochure, “a conservation forest that supports and celebrates its bald eagles, black bears, rubber boas, blue herons, and California spotted owls …” It covers 94,000 acres – and a 54 percent interest in 75,000 of those acres funds the pensions of World Division missionaries in the United Methodist Church.

—Alma Graham

In 1994, the trees harvested from the Collins Almanor Forest brought $2,990,000 to the World Division of the General Board of Global Ministries for missionary pensions. Total World Division income for the year amounted to $36,100,000. Of that amount, $3,757,000 – just over 10 percent – came from World Service, representing local church apportionments from across the United States. Meanwhile, more than 8 percent came from a single source: California trees. It came as the consequence of a bequest made by Everell Stanton Collins over half a century ago.

A Bountiful Bequest
The short version of the Collins story began between 1928 and 1932, when Everell Stanton Collins served as a trustee of the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Board of Foreign Missions – predecessor of the Board of Global Ministries’ World Division. In that capacity, Collins learned of various foreign mission needs and felt divinely directed to help the Board meet them. The way he chose was to make a bequest to the Board of Foreign Missions of what turned out to be a 54 percent undivided interest in 75,000 acres of northern California timberland. The income from the timber was dedicated to the foreign missions pension fund by the Missions Board with the approval of the Collins family.

Though E.S. Collins died in 1940, the provision he made in his will lives on. The aggregate of gifts flowing from the Collins Almanor Forest from 1947 through 1994 comes to an astounding $60,105,000.

Teddy: The Seed is Planted
Such notable benevolence does not come out of nowhere. It emerges from context. The Collins legend goes back at least one generation – to E.S. Collins’ father, Truman Doud (“Teddy”) Collins.

Teddy was born on a farm in Cortland, New York, on March 7, 1831. While still in his 20s, he took a keen interest in timberlands and sawmills. Starting out in the lumbering business in Pennsylvania in 1855 – with help from four partners, whom he soon bought out – he had acquired substantial holdings by the mid-1860s.

The 1860s saw Teddy make several commitments that were to shape the Collins family’s future. On April 26, 1864, in Freedom, Pennsylvania, he married Mary Stanton, a 28-year-old school-teacher who had been raised as a Methodist. Two years later, Teddy joined the Presbyterian Church in Cortland, New York; and the Collins’ only child, Everell Stanton Collins, was baptized there. But not long after, the family moved to Beaver Valley, Pennsylvania, where Teddy and Mary embraced Methodism. What a difference to Methodist missionaries Teddy’s change of affiliation was to make!

The year 1887 also proved to be pivotal. It was then that Teddy acquired timberland around Ostrander, Washington. Starting in 1890, he had his son head up the Ostrander operation. Western investment in California and Oregon would follow, but Teddy devoted most of his attention to business in the East.

Throughout his life, Teddy was notably generous with his church and markedly frugal in his own lifestyle – his conviction being that a rich person should live like someone who is poor. Beginning in 1902, he gave $10,000 a year for 10 years to what was to become the Collins Institute for the Underprivileged in Calcutta, India. When he died in 1914 at age 83, a family eulogy praised him as one who “loved God and loved to give his money to worthy things.”

E.S.: The Forest Grows
Though born in the East like his father, Everell Stanton (E.S.) Collins was to shift his focus to the West. He began to learn the value of money at age 13, packing shingles for 3 cents an hour. While he was still in his teens, his father began grooming him for a lumbering career. As a youth, he worked as a raft hand on the Allegheny and Ohio rivers, invented and patented some sawmill machinery, speculated in real estate around San Diego, flirted briefly with the search for gold in Mexico, and taught himself engineering and bookkeeping. In 1888, his father reined him in and made him a sawmill manager in Pennsylvania.

Two years later, E.S. went west to run his father’s sawmill in Ostrander, Washington. It was losing money, and Teddy offered him a half interest in the mill if he could make it a success. By 1914, when his father died, E.S. had turned Ostrander Railway and Timber Company into a multimillion dollar business. It had become famous for the production of the longest and largest timbers on Earth.

It was in Ostrander that E.S. met Mary Laffey, whom he married in the West Kelso Methodist Church on February 7, 1899. Three children were born of this union: Alton Laffey Collins, Grace Esther Collins, and Truman Wesley Collins. Though a loving father, E.S. was strict with his children – never overindulgent. All three children sailed through to college graduation, and Truman added an MBA from Harvard.

Inheriting his father’s flair for timber and land deals, E.S. is said to have worked 18 hours a day for 25 years without a vacation. Fruits and nuts were staples of his diet. For exercise, he walked to work, climbing nine flights of stairs to reach his office.

E.S. also upheld his father’s commitment to the church – both through monetary contributions and by teaching Bible classes. He made major world mission gifts to the Peking Academy in China, a boys’ home in North Africa, and the Bareilly Theological Seminary in North India. He was also a passionate supporter of the prohibitionist movement.

His concern for community betterment expressed itself in support of the YMCA, in the development of boys’ camps, in gifts of land for beachfront parks in Oregon, and in substantial endowment and building funds given to Willamette University and the College of Puget Sound – both Methodist-related institutions. He also remembered Allegheny College, Boston University, and Ohio Wesleyan University in the East.

During the 1930s, E.S. guided the family fortunes from his headquarters in Portland, Oregon, while Alton ran the Ostrander, Washington, operation and Truman looked after the family lumber interests in Pondosa, Oregon. When E.S. died at age 74 on December 18, 1940, Oregon Governor Charles A. Sprague spoke at his funeral. “He regarded himself as a steward of his fortune, ” Sprague said. “He indulged in no extravagance or ostentation.”

We know now to what an extraordinary degree his good stewardship survived him. Like his trees, it continues to grow in his great bequest to the Methodist Board of Foreign Missions.

Truman: Stewardship Continues
All three children of E.S. and Mary Collins shared a commitment to philanthropy and took significant roles in family enterprises. But it was Truman Wesley Collins who, in 1940, assumed primary responsibility for the family businesses and for carrying out the provisions and intent of his father’s will.

Truman prepared himself well for the responsibilities which would come to him. At Willamette University, he majored in chemistry. After completing his MBA degree at Harvard, he studied engineering at the Oregon Institute of Technology (1925-26). During World War II, he served in the US Navy, rising to the rank of Lt. Commander. As time went by, he held the position of president or vice president of about a dozen different family-owned corporations. Like his father, he also supported civic and educational institutions, including the Boy Scouts, the YMCA and YWCA, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, and the Medical Research Foundation of Oregon.

On March 12, 1943, Truman married Maribeth Wilson, the daughter of a Methodist minister. Between 1948 and 1964, they had four children: Timothy Wilson and Terry Stanton (twins), Cherida Lynne, and Truman Wesley Collins Jr. (Unfortunately, Truman Sr. never saw his namesake; he died exactly three months before his youngest child was born.)

In 1943, Truman was directing lumber operations in Chester, California. There, the newly established Collins Pine Company built a sawmill that began production on March 31 – less than three weeks after Truman and Maribeth were wed. Two years earlier, the company had begun the selective harvesting of trees from the Collins Almanor Forest.

In Chester, Truman took forest stewardship to a higher level. “He envisioned a new kind of forest operation,” wrote Tom Kenworthy in The Washington Post – one “that would ensure a perpetual supply of timber for a mill that would never close, centered around a stable community in which Collins Pine would be a beneficent, paternal presence.” Truman’s local leadership was publicly recognized in 1962 when he was honored as Portland’s “Citizen of the Year.”

Truman Wesley Collins was only 61 when he died in Portland on February 23, 1964.

Family Values
The values espoused in the late nineteenth century by Teddy and Mary Collins continue to mold Collins’ family attitudes and guide behavior as the twenty-first century looms. Through the generations, family members chose spouses whose values were compatible with their own, and the parents effectively transmitted these values to their children.


	Forest Manager Bill Howe in the Collins Almanor Forest. These trees are a livving legacy for the missionaries of the World Division of the General Board of Global Ministries.

Collins’ values have also been passed on to company employees. Collins Almanor Forest Manager Bill Howe has said: “We believe in being prudent stewards in a long-term, sustained way. I would hope that 100 years from now this forest would look very similar to the way it looks today.”

Usually it was a woman who entered the family by marriage. But in the case of the third-generation daughter, Grace, the Collins spouse was a man named Elmer R. Goudy. A lawyer, Goudy took up the presidency of the Collins Pine Company upon the death of Truman W. Collins in 1964. When Elmer Goudy retired, his and Grace’s son, Alan, become president. James E. Quinn is president and CEO today.

The Collins wives have distinguished themselves in many ways and are notable for their longevity. Mary Laffey Collins lived to be 100. Grace Collins Goudy celebrated her 94th birthday in 1995. And Maribeth Wilson Collins continues to be exceedingly active in family affairs 31 years after her husband’s death. In one of her roles, she serves as president of The Collins Foundation.

The Collins Foundation
In 1947, Truman W. Collins’ vision resulted in the creation of a foundation whose purpose was to make grants for “charitable, religious, educational, and scientific purposes within the State of Oregon.” Truman’s mother, brother, and sister were also founding trustees. The story in Genesis 41 in which Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dream about “seven years of great plenty” followed by “seven years of famine” informed Truman’s thinking. His idea was to conserve resources in good times so that good works could be supported even when times were bad.

Since 1948, The Collins Foundation grants have grown a thousand-fold increasing from $5,000 at the beginning to $5 million in recent years. Today, the trustees hope to stimulate contributions from other donors by offering challenge grants or matching grants. They also try to fund innovative programs that other foundations might avoid. For example, in 1972, The Collins Foundation provided a $20,000 grant – to be matched on a dollar-for-dollar basis – to fund a $40,000 experiment: putting 51 patients from the Oregon Mental Hospital into a wilderness adventure experience. Among the many positive results was the fact that a boy who doctors had thought would be hospitalized for at least five years was released in less than five months.

A paragraph from The Collins Foundation report sums up the family’s stewardship philosophy: “We are all of us here in this life for but a short time. And each of us … is a trustee of our time, our children, our businesses, our homes, and … the land and freedoms that have been handed down to us by those who came before. Each of us has the responsibility to husband what has been given to him or her in trust, so that it will not have been diminished while in our care …”


	Attending the dedication of the Collins Room at The Interchurch Center in New York in Januarty 1962 were (left to right) Dr. Eugene Smith, Head of the Division of Foreign Missions, Mr. Truman Weslely Collins, Mrs. Maribeth Collins, and Bishop Lloyd C. Wicke, then president of the General Board of Global Ministries.

The Collins Almanor Forest
In the course of a phone conversation, I asked Maribeth Collins what accomplishments have brought the family the greatest satisfaction. She was quick to mention the management of the Collins Almanor Forest. This forest is managed on a sustained-yield basis – what Sierra magazine called “reaping the interest on the forest rather than depleting its principal.” When cutting was begun more than 50 years ago, the forest contained 1.5 billion board feet of timber – enough wood to build 150,000 houses. During the past five decades, loggers removed 1.7 billion board feet – yet the forest today contains almost as much wood as when logging started.

Beyond sustained yield, the company’s management plan calls for environmental sensitivity. There is no clear-cutting, or removing all the trees from a tract of timber at one time. Instead, says marketing vice president Wade Mosby, the company “leave[s] the healthiest and most vigorous trees, while cutting those that are diseased or whose growth rates have peaked.” Thus the forest’s Ponderosa pines, Douglas firs, and incense cedars are varied in age as well as in species.

Other differences in practice reflect the Collins’ philosophy of conservation – the careful balance maintained between logging for profit and maintaining the ecosystem’s health. Logging roads are not sited close to streams. Lots of woody debris is left to enrich the soil of the forest floor. And “snags” – dead or dying trees – are left standing to shelter nesting birds and cavity-dwelling animals.

Since 1945, Collins Pine has carefully monitored 576 one-acre “growth inventory plots.” Each tree in these plots is numbered and is measured once every 10 years. Using this data, foresters can judge overall forest growth rates and plan the harvesting of about 35 million board feet of timber a year. An industry analyst says the company’s “forest management is impeccable.” In fact, it’s so good that it has garnered praise from both loggers and environmentalists!

In 1993, the Collins Pine Company gained a new distinction. Scientific Certification Systems (SCS) – a not-for-profit environmental assessment company based in Oakland, California – appraised the Collins Almanor Forest Operation with regard to three categories: sustainability of timber resources (score, 86), maintenance of the forest ecosystems (score, 81), and socioeconomic benefits to the surrounding community (score, 89). Business Ethics magazine called the study “a standing ovation for Collins Pine,” and the head of the SCS evaluation team praised “Collins’ commitment to focus on the quality of what remains after logging, rather than simply the amount of timber removed …” With the favorable assessment, Collins Pine become the first company in the United States privileged to certify its wood as being “from a State-of-the-Art, Well-Managed Forest.”

The concern of Collins Pine extends beyond the forest to the people who make forest work their livelihood. A resolution adopted by the Plumas County Board of Supervisors in 1993 saluted the company on its fiftieth anniversary as “an outstanding employer that displays a concerned and caring attitude toward its employees.”

At the start of the sawmill’s second decade, it provided most of the money for the Chester United Methodist Church, officially organized on January 31, 1954. Almost 40 years later, on November 14, 1993, the church received into membership Truman Doud Collin’s great-grandson, Terry Stanton Collins. Terry has since taken up the office of Church School Superintendent, and a fifth Collins generation – Craig and Marc, ages 10 and 6 – is being trained in Christian stewardship. Their generation will be the next to inherit the Collins’ greatest legacy, the gift of giving.

The Collins family’s forest management and Christian stewardship have been nourished in some rich soil. Roy Keene of the Public Forestry Foundation summed up the Collins philosophy of conservation and concern for the future when he said: “They focus on what they leave rather than what they take.”

Robert Harman, Deputy General Secretary of the World Division, reports that a study of major mission boards found that United Methodist missionaries have the best compensation plan, including retirement, of any denomination. Earning little, risking much, sacrificing all, United Methodist Missionaries know – as they spread the Gospel around the world – that security awaits them at the end of the journey. There is a vital link between the perpetuity of the Collins’ investment in human lives of service and the continuity of that service, in an unbroken line, from one generation of missionaries to the next. It is in this way that growing mission is not unlike growing a forest.

—A.G.

—William C. Sanford
New World Outlook
Sep.– Oct. 1995