Note: Eugene businessman, lauded for his optimism and drive, leaves a legacy of dedicated work

Sen. Ron Wyden carries this last image of Eugene businessman Randy Pap, who died of a heart attack at his home in Eugene on Thursday.

Pap is smiling and pumping his arm and saying: "We've got to do it. We've got to do it," Wyden said Friday. "It's reverberating through my being now."

A lifelong Eugene resident, prominent businessman and actor on the state stage, Pap, 58, is remembered by friends and associates as relentlessly positive, phenomenally effective and absolutely tenacious.

He drove his grandfather's business from a local equipment sales operation to a seven-state conglomerate. He threw himself into the service of his alma mater and helped raise nearly $600 million for its buildings.

As a state transportation commissioner, he helped the state figure out how to use public bonds to pay for highways. The result was the massive $1.3 billion, 10-year bridge repair and replacement project that has remade Interstate 5 in recent years.

At the helm of United Way of Lane County's campaign in 1990, he set what seemed at the time an impossible $1 million goal. And then he achieved it.

"He was the most positive person, the most upbeat. He was a joy to live with. He was just a joy," said Susie, his wife of 34 years. "I want everyone to know how wonderful he was and how much he cared about this community."

Building a business

Pap - the third in a family succession at Pap Bros. - grew up crawling around on the big machines and doing odd jobs at the store his grandfather launched in 1938 and his father took over after returning from duty in Europe in World War II.

Randy took a position in the business in 1972, after earning a degree in finance from the University of Oregon. He started in the parts department of the Pap dealership in Redmond.

He later said he took to heart his father H. Dean Pap's aphorisms: that a businessman has to earn the respect of his customers and his employees. And that a community is like a bank: It requires deposits as well as withdrawals.

Randy Pap took the reins of the business (actually a ceremonial sword his father gave him) in 1985. At the time, 60 to 65 percent of the company's focus was supplying the timber industry, which was in a steep decline.

Pap set out to diversify the business. He added multiple product lines such as Hyster, Bobcat, Ditch Witch, John Deere and Hitachi industrial equipment as well as the Flightcraft aviation business. Today, Pap's forestry-serving divisions are no more than 20 to 25 percent of the total.

The new, broader Pap Group has 2,000 employees at 60 locations in seven states reaching from Alaska to California. And Pap told The Register-Guard in a recent interview that he could foresee the operations doubling again in the next five years.

With old UO fraternity brother Bob Fenstermacher and his brothers and sister, Pap founded LibertyBank, the largest private commercial bank in Oregon with about $1 billion in assets. Other holdings in the Pap empire include Sanipac, a garbage-hauling and recycling firm; and Ecosort, a recyclable goods processing company.

How did he do it?

"He reached out and lifted people," said Brian Obie, former Eugene mayor and Pap friend and business partner for 30 years. "He has a great ability to recognize talent and motivate people. That's where it starts. The (company) leadership and employees are joined at the hip when they set out to accomplish something."

Pap's life was marked with achievement after achievement after achievement, Fenstermacher said, adding that the one Pap would cite as his greatest was his three sons, Ryan, 33, Christian, 30, and Jordan, 29.

Pap didn't ask his sons to join him in the family business, but all three eventually did, Christian Pap said Friday.

"From an early age, Dad told us: This is one option among millions you have in your life. It was not mandatory. It was not expected. It was what we chose to do with our lives," Christian said.

In the coming weeks, Susie and her sons will work out the succession for the business.

Pap Group will be fine, Obie said. "These boys are talented. They learned at his side. They're very, very capable."

Building a university

Randy and Susie Pap met at a UO football game on homecoming weekend in 1971. He gave her his fraternity pin after the UCLA game, she remembers. Ever after, the university was the scene for many family memories, be they homecoming games or just strolls through the campus.

For Susie's 50th birthday, Randy surprised her by naming a room in the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art after her. The Athletic Department named a soccer field after Randy.

The couple were ferocious Duck football boosters. They held one of two double suites at Autzen Stadium. They were in a group of benefactors that built a posh locker room for the football players.

"He's one of the nicest people," Coach Mike Bellotti said Friday. "He and his family have gone out of their way to support us in every way, shape and form. He's a guy we could count on to be there. ... He was a behind the scenes guy. He didn't require anything, he didn't demand anything."

Pap was on the UO Foundation Board of Trustees for a decade. He helped raise $600 million for the university, telling the newspaper: "If you believe, you can make it happen."

Just last week, Pap was running a capital campaign steering committee meeting in Portland, university President Dave Frohnmayer said Friday.

"He was just full of good cheer, and everybody was up and excited. Randy was a great cheerleader. He was always on the optimistic side of things. So his positive and forceful and generous image is really very fresh in my mind," he said.

But the university was only one of Pap's community pursuits. He was on the board of The Nature Conservancy of Oregon and of the Oregon Trail Council of Boy Scouts of America, and he served with numerous nonprofit organizations.

"He had a ton of energy, and he had a passion for life. If he could go without sleeping just to keep working and playing he would," Ryan Pap said.

Building roads

Pap' also had a passion for pavement. He served seven years on the Oregon Transportation Commission. He spoke in favor of Eugene's street repair measure that voters approved this week.

"A healthy transportation system can attract business and improve the quality of life for our residents. We must invest in our transportation system if we are to continue to reap its benefits," he wrote in an opinion piece for The Register-Guard.

Pap was a pragmatist when it came to politics. He supported Republican President George W. Bush. But he also was a major contributor to Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski. He hated the federal inheritance tax, but he opposed some of Bill Sizemore's tax-cutting measures. And he was a major campaigner for increased operating levies for Oregon schools.

Wyden, a Democrat, counts himself among Pap's close friends.

"Randy was a vintage Oregonian," he said. "He represents the best in our state. He always stood for what would help our whole state. He asked: How could we make this a better place for everyone?"

Pap also fought to keep a 20-year plan to build an urban highway across west Eugene alive but ultimately was disappointed when the project was killed by Eugene progressives.

Pap was a Eugenean through and through, friends said. He attended Edison Middle School and South Eugene High School. He knew the town and loved it. "He had a never-ending positive attitude about what Eugene can be," Obie said.

Building a family

Pap took endless pleasure in his children, Susie said. He coached them in soccer, flag football and junior high football. He swam and golfed with them.

"He just enjoyed talking to them and figuring out their thought processes - what high-schoolers think about liberals and conservatives. It's just interesting to him to listen to them. He found it fascinating to just be with the boys and now their wives and then our six grandchildren."

A year ago, Pap bought a cattle ranch with 300 head near Prineville. Pap got himself a cowboy hat and took to branding cattle and bailing hay.

He brought his six grandchildren out to the ranch and took them on adventures on a Bobcat riding machine to look for antlers, bones and feathers. He was teaching his eldest grandson, Charlie, 6, how to play chess.

Life wasn't always easy for Pap, his sons said. He was diagnosed with cancer of his lower intestine in 1997 and wasn't expected to live nearly as long as he did, Ryan said.

Randy Pap fought multiple recurrences, growing frail at times, but he remained indefatigable.

Ryan said his Dad would take satisfaction in cheating the cancer that tried to kill him.

"At the end of the day, it was his heart that failed and it wasn't the cancer. I know he's looking down from heaven right now saying, 'Guys, I beat the cancer.' It makes my mom and my brothers smile. A little ray of sunshine. He didn't let the cancer get him."

Rob Moseley and Greg Bolt contributed to this report.

Randy Pap

Born: May 20, 1950, in Eugene

Education: South Eugene High School, University of Oregon

Family: wife, Susie; sons Ryan, Christian and Jordan and their

families; Pap is survived by his mother, Shirley, who was women's

editor for KEZI-TV; his father, H. Dean, died in 1996

Business: chief executive officer, The Pap Group

Pap is smiling and pumping his arm and saying: "We've got to do it. We've got to do it," [Ron Wyden] said Friday. "It's reverberating through my being now."

"He reached out and lifted people," said Brian Obie, former Eugene mayor and Pap friend and business partner for 30 years. "He has a great ability to recognize talent and motivate people. That's where it starts. The (company) leadership and employees are joined at the hip when they set out to accomplish something."

"He's one of the nicest people," Coach Mike Bellotti said Friday. "He and his family have gone out of their way to support us in every way, shape and form. He's a guy we could count on to be there. ... He was a behind the scenes guy. He didn't require anything, he didn't demand anything."