Building a Better Mousetrap From their giant manufacturing facility in Newberg, Oregon, Ken and Joan Austin own and operate a friend to dentistry known around the world. By George P. Edmonston Jr. Photos by Dennis Wolverton

Sometimes, if conditions are just right, adversity becomes the wellspring of triumph. Just when everything seems at the very bottom, with no place to go but up, a light will shine through that leads to great things, born out of a human spirit that has seen enough of failure and shouts, "I will finish last no more!"

By their own admission, this is the story of Oregon Staters Ken and Joan (pronounced "Jo-anne") Austin, or at least the beginning of their story. It was in 1963 that Ken had arrived at their home in Broomfield, Colo., with the news he had just lost his job, another firing in a string of seven dismissals he had suffered since graduating as an engineer from Oregon State College in 1954.

Ken had been employed at a Denver dental manufacturing company called DENSCO, where he had served as chief engineer. But there had been disagreements all along the way. Ken saw additional things the company could be doing to help the dentistry profession, and his employers told him his concerns were "not in his job description." Something had to give and that something, it turned out, was Ken Austin.

Dear to Joan’s heart is the house her parents lived in for 27 years. Located within walking distance of the A-dec administration building, it has been lovingly restored by the Austins.

Joan, to whom he had been married since June 1953, remained calm at her husband’s latest news, even though she knew they were now, in her own words, "displaced in Denver." All the usual worries began pouring in. They owned a big house, and she worried about how they were going to make their mortgage payment. She was concerned about how they would manage the finances of the young family they had recently started. She wondered if and when her husband would ever again find a meaningful career after so many terminations.

For a paycheck, any paycheck, Ken answered an ad in the newspaper by Kelly Temporary Services and was quickly hired as a temporary draftsman, a "Kelly Boy" or "Rent-a-Pencil," he said today with a respectful smile. To celebrate, the young couple decided to go on a picnic and use the time together to talk about the future. The bottom had been reached, they both admitted, and it was time they did something to get themselves out of their bad situation.

Creative ideas started to flow. Ken began working evenings in the basement of their home on a new design for the air-powered oral evacuator dentists use to suction out the mouths of their patients during treatment. He felt, and Joan agreed, that he had developed the better mousetrap, a more efficient evacuator dentists would welcome with open arms. Maybe, just maybe, they could use the new device to start a company. Joan again agreed and told Ken that until things got going, "we can live on bread and beans if we have to."

As they sat there in the Colorado sunshine enjoying their picnic lunch, they promised each other something else. They were going home — home to Newberg, Ore. Win or lose, it would be back home. From the bottom to the boardroom.

Thirty-seven years later, Ken and Joan Austin co-own the largest privately owned dental manufacturing company in the United States — Austin Dental Equipment Company or "A-dec." With sales now topping $150 million in more than 100 countries, the 934-employee company commands more than 40 percent of the national dental equipment market and has garnered almost every prestigious award possible in its industrial niche, including the Medallion for Entrepreneurship in 1997 from the business fraternity Beta Gamma Sigma and the 1996 National Entrepreneur of the Year for Industrial/Commercial Manufacturing award from Ernst & Young, NASDAQ and USA Today. Over the last 10 years, Oregon Business Magazine consistently has ranked the company as one of the state’s best places to work.

Ken and Joan discuss dental chairs awaiting final assembly on their way to Virginia Commonwealth University. A-dec supplies dental equipment to 52 of 53 dental schools in the United States.

The Austins unassuming manner belies their position both in Newberg, a growing community of 18,000 on the banks of the Willamette River in the center of Oregon’s wine country, and at Oregon State University, where they have emerged as two of the school’s most influential Oregon Staters of the 20th century.

But visit them in their offices in the administration building at A-dec, Inc., and you’ll see the process by which they rose from the bottom to the boardroom.

Some clues can be garnered from the top of a filing cabinet Ken uses to display several scale model trucks and cars, revealing his fascination for all things mechanical.

Then there are the walls behind their desks, each covered with many of the personal honors and awards the two have earned over the last 20 years, both individually and as a team. For Ken, these include OSU’s E.B. Lemon Distinguished Alumni Award, the American College of Dentists Award of Merit, induction into the National Academy of Engineering, an Honorary Fellowship in the International College of Dentistry, Rotary International’s Service Above Self Award and membership in the OSU Engineering Hall of Fame.

Joan’s awards include "Oregon’s 1992 Woman Who Has Made A Difference" Award from the International Women’s Forum, the Astra Society Award and recognition by Oregon Business Magazine in 1993 as one of "100 Who Lead." Because of her major contributions to the growth and development of A-dec, Working Woman Magazine recognized the company in 2001 as one nation’s "Top 500 Women-Owned Businesses."

Honors received jointly include OSU’s highest recognition, the OSU Distinguished Service Award, Willamette University’s Glenn L. Jackson Leadership Award, the American Dental Association’s Distinguished Service Award, honorary doctorates in science (for Ken) and humanities (for Joan) from George Fox University, the Aubrey R. Watzek Award from Lewis & Clark College, and the Distinguished Service Award from the American Dental Trade Association.

Dental drills stand silent on an A-dec factory display.

In addition to leading the company that bears their name, Ken and Joan preside over numerous offshoots of the business, including A-dec International, A-dec Trading Company of Australia and A-dec Dental UK. Joan also serves as president of Austin Industries of Newberg, a varied business concern ranging from real estate sales to the management of the many filbert orchards the family owns. Ken is vice president. Revolutionizing an industry
Often referring to himself as a "tinkerer," Ken Austin has 38 active patents registered to his name, many of which have revolutionized the way dentists care for their patients.

"Ken led a revolution of change in dental equipment," explained A-dec technical adviser Karen Waide in a special anniversary edition of the company’s employee magazine On-Dec, published last year. "His vision brought about freedom in how dental equipment could be smaller, efficient in delivery, and provide flexibility to operatory space."

Although the oral evacuator (used to clean a patient’s mouth between applications) was not new technology to the dental industry when Ken began tinkering with the device in the early 1960s, by 1964 he had perfected a similar and more efficient air-powered system than was the industry standard, eventually using it to launch a company that would become a dental equipment empire. Later, a second product, a small air-operated vacuum, which eliminated the mechanical and service problems associated with older and larger motor-driven systems, became the world’s first successful air-powered saliva ejector.

Moving from patients to the dentist office itself, subsequent Ken Austin inventions established what today is known as "sit-down dentistry."

In 1965, Ken and Joan marketed the "Dec-Et," the first miniature control unit designed specifically for sit-down dentistry by providing instrumentation positions within easy reach of a seated doctor. That same year, Austin developed the Tray Cart as a complementary component to Dec-Et, offering a seated assistant a stable work surface for instrumentation and supplies.

In 1968, A-dec developed an automatic handpiece control system called the "Auto-Trol," the world’s first all-air, modular automatic handpiece control system. In 1969, Austin introduced the modern-day, sit-down dental unit and two years later co-designed the first integrated dental cabinet unit for the dentist office.

"Mobile" dental equipment was also a key to the early success of the company. Joan explained this in a January 1999 article published in Alaska Airlines Magazine.

"When we started the company, no one was making mobile dental equipment," she said. "Chairs and movable work tables that could be adjusted to any height and for left-handed or right-handed dentists — these were new and dentists could see the advantage. Until then, they had to work standing up."

A-dec today operates from a constantly expanding "campus" of 11 buildings encompassing more than 500,000 square feet spread out over 100 acres on the northeast side of Newberg.

Employees enjoy profit sharing and an impressive retirement package, making the company one of Oregon’s best private sector employers. Ken and Joan are particularly proud of the fact that A-dec supplies virtually every dental school in the United States with the equipment needed to train tomorrow’s dentists and has been particularly aggressive in providing jobs to students and graduates of OSU. Raised on hallowed ground.

George Kenneth "Ken" Austin Jr., 70, grew up on a farm on the south side of the Willamette River. But it wasn’t just a house, barn and fields. To his family, it was and is hallowed ground, starting with his great-grandfather, Henry Austin, who migrated to the Willamette Valley and Newberg in the mid-1800s.

After marrying the daughter of Henry Hobson (one of the town’s founders), the elder Austin became one of Newberg’s most successful entrepreneurs. He owned a variety of businesses, including a bakery, blacksmith shop and hotel. When his first wife died, Henry Austin married Barbara Eberhardt. The George Eberhardt family had traveled west in 1855 as one of the last families to traverse the Oregon Trail. After settling down, they acquired 750 acres next to the Stokely L. Jones donation land claim on the fertile river loam that borders both sides of the road leading east to Champoeg State Park in the Willamette Valley’s French Prairie region.

Ken Austin having fun with a Benny Beaver likeness, a cardboard blowup from an old newspaper article presented to him as a gift by OSU’s Austin Family Business Program.

Barbara Eberhardt, Ken Austin’s grandmother, received one-fifth of the family’s land (there were five Eberhardt children) and that is where the Austin family farm still stands. Ken and Joan’s daughter, Loni Austin Parrish, lives with her family adjacent to the original George Eberhardt-Austin home and has bought back about two-thirds of the original 750 acres, including land OSU archaeologists have discovered once held buildings owned by the Northwest Fur Trading Company in the early 1800s.

Joan Austin was born in Glenwood, Minn., and moved to Oregon as a small child with her parents, Herman and Esther Zemke. For a time, her father worked in the Kaiser Ship Yards along the Willamette River in Portland, and the family lived in what is now known as the historic Vanport community. Later Herman moved his family to Dundee, then Newberg. He worked for Tektronics, while Esther was employed in what Joan describes as "agricultural harvesting." Joan attended local schools, graduating from Newberg Union High School in 1948. Prior to meeting Ken, Joan worked in the insurance industry and had plans to one day open her own business.

The tinkerer and the Rod Shop
It was while growing up on the family farm that Ken first began tinkering. An only child, with his nearest playmate more than a mile away, he considered his father, Ken Austin Sr., his "best buddy" and the man who influenced him to begin working with his hands.

At age 7, an interest in things mechanical began to manifest. His dad had presented him with a Maytag gas-powered washing machine motor, a gift that was to be the young man’s introduction into the world of the internal combustion engine. Later, a similar model showed up on a Newberg High School shop project powering a self-propelled lawnmower he had built for his mother. "It beat the hell out of pushing one," he says with a smile.

By 14, he had opened his own business on his parent’s farm. Simply called "The Rod Shop," it was a place to help friends and neighbors needing farm and car repair, welding and custom metal work. The shop would remain open until his graduation from Oregon State College and subsequent enlistment in the Air Force.

A former Shell Oil executive who returned during the Depression to care for the family farm, Ken Sr. was an accountant by trade but passed down his abilities with a wrench to his young son. But it wasn’t just his father’s genes for things mechanical that he inherited. His grandfather on his mother’s side, Garret Van Winkle, was an inventor of sorts. A victim of polio earlier in life, Van Winkle had trouble getting around but used his disability to provide reasons for innovation, not despair. He created one of the city’s first riding plows, as well as a dumbwaiter system in his home.

Although Ken grew up during the Depression, he never considered himself particularly poor. Even though he was required to help his mom and dad around the house, he now characterizes himself as a spoiled child.

He concocted elaborate schemes to get out of work, telling his mother he couldn’t do dishes because his father needed him in the barn, then, after working a few minutes in the barn, telling his father his mother needed him at the house. Almost with tongue-in-cheek, he credits running from barn to house and back again for his later success as a sprinter, first at Newberg High School, then later at OSC, where he competed in the 440-yard dash. As a college sophomore, Austin received a student-athlete grant that helped him continue his studies.

Many years later, after he and Joan had become successful manufacturers, this small tuition "gift" represented the impetus for their desire to help support Beaver athletics. "That was our very first stepping up to the plate and calling the athletic department and asking, ‘How can we help the school?’" he said.

Ken and Joan have always taken a special interest in the work of their employees. Here, Ken watches the seat of a dental chair in production.

As a student living through the war years following the attack on Pearl Harbor, his competitiveness and drive shone through. With conflict raging in the Pacific and across Europe, the self-described "industrious, competitive kid" organized scrap iron drives and outdistanced his cohorts in knitting the six-inch wool squares the Red Cross sewed together to form the afghan pullovers distributed to hospitals around the country. His ambition resulted in his being awarded a 4-H scholarship to OSC in 1942 to attend a week-long summer session for 4-H members.Off to Corvallis.

After the war, Ken headed to Corvallis and Oregon State College, enrolling in the College of Engineering’s industrial administration course. He also took with him his penchant for tinkering. Ken believes he probably had a leg up on other engineering students because his rationale for designing something was always with the ultimate goal of actually constructing it.

His personal credo of "dream it, design it, draw it and do it" seemed to him the antithesis of the typical approach of engineers who tend to draw up plans only to turn them over to someone else to construct. "An engineer doesn’t really know the ‘how to do it part,’" he emphasizes, adding that ultimately his desire was always to transfer the lines on his blueprints into metal.

And yet his acumen for turning ideas into reality was also somewhat of a curse. He admits that even today, he’d rather tinker than study and says he didn’t absorb his education through books and participating in traditional classroom work. In particular, George Cox, head of the OSC’s industrial administration program, developed reading and conference courses that allowed him to learn outside the regular curriculum.

"I thought he should be encouraged to pursue what he was doing," said Milosh Popovich, ’39, ’41, a retired OSU professor who while chair of OSC engineering had Austin in classes. "Actually, I was fascinated by what he was doing."

What he was "doing" involved his love affair with cars, as he attempted to modify a six cylinder Ford engine for greater efficiency through fuel injection and high compression pistons. Popovich admits Ken Austin didn’t earn "great grades" because he seemed more "interested in creating things." He adds that once OSC’s professors recognized a student had talent, even though the individual may have an unorthodox learning style, they "would bend over backwards" to help the person meet his or her potential.

Ken’s personal collection of 18 vintage cars and trucks includes this completely restored Gilmore racing car from 1934.

The engine was eventually placed under the hood of a Ford Model T body fitted on a Model A frame. Photographs from a November 1955 edition of Speed Mechanics magazine shows OSU Professor W.H. "Bill" Paul, ’24, ’35, gathering information on the engine’s performance using a dynamometer, with Austin at his side. The small six cylinder engine created 200 horsepower — unheard of in those days of low-compression, low-tech power plants — and was clocked at nearly 103 mph in the quarter mile.

The car won third place in the competition coupe class at the 1952 Portland Motor Show. It won the Engineering Grand Award in competition with 104 other cars at the Queen City Speed Show in Seattle that same year. (He has built a replica, the original having been sold to a succession of owners.)

One feature of the engine, a fuel injection system that consisted of a pressurized line feeding gas through a tiny bore directly adjacent to the intake valve, would constitute his first patent application.

But to construct the parts he needed for his creation and for the project he was using to earn college credit, Ken again would have to rely on his teachers. Professors Ed Myers and Jim Smith became his advocates by risking their own positions to help him gain access to machinery he needed to complete his work. "The rule of the school was no personal projects," he remembers.

"I thought I was doing what was natural," he says of his passion and quest for innovation. He acknowledges, however, that his Oregon State professors made the difference between success and failure. "I would have flunked out of OSC had it not been for their efforts on my behalf," he shares. When he wasn’t underneath a car wrenching or working a metal lathe late at night, he was active as a member of Delta Tau Delta fraternity. Don Guinn, ’54, a fraternity brother and fellow engineering student, remembers Ken spending a lot time working on cars. "He spent more time in labs with his hands than he did with books," Guinn says. Benny Beaver, romance and the Air Force.

Ken also holds a special place within the history of Beaver athletics. When he failed to win the job as "yell king" of the rally squad, the man who won, Bill Sundstrom, asked him if he would appear at athletic events dressed as Benny Beaver. As such, Ken Austin was the first student in school history to pose as Benny for an entire football season.

His stunts and antics delighted the crowds that packed old Bell Field, located for more than 50 years on ground that today is occupied by the Dixon Recreation Center. One such stunt involved sneaking up behind game officials and shooting a revolver (loaded with blanks) at penalty flags thrown against OSU. The normally stoic referees took it all in stride. "Oh, they laughed, they really laughed," Austin remembers. "Whenever there was a sports event, he was right in the middle trying to work up enthusiasm for the team," adds Jim Poirot, ’53, a classmate, fraternity brother and fellow member of the OSU Engineering Hall of Fame.

Austin also found time for romance. When childhood friend Don Fair stopped off in Newberg during leave from the Air Force to visit his girlfriend, Joan’s sister Lenora Zemke, Ken agreed to loan him a car if Fair would get him a date with Joan. Fair and Austin married the Zemke sisters in a double wedding in June 1953. "I think if it wasn’t for me, there wouldn’t be an A-dec," Fair says today with a chuckle.

Ken finished both his course work and car in time to graduate in April 1954 as an engineer. He also received his commission as a second lieutenant in the Air Force and was immediately assigned to bases in Mississippi and Texas. In addition to flying, he also served as a radar controller. But his prowess in the shop soon caught up with him, and the next thing he knew he was supervising a crew responsible for repairing generators for the radar site. After a tour in Korea, he put in time as an aircraft maintenance officer in South Carolina. A succession of jobs.

After the Air Force came a succession of seven jobs in eight years. Some ended badly, but all added to Austin’s mechanical and design prowess. He was creative, he remembers, but not very considerate of his fellow workers ... or his employers. "I thought my ideas (were) better than anybody else’s," he admits.

First there was a fledgling Beaverton company called Tektronix where he worked summers as a sheet metal worker, a welder and then on the development of the cathode ray tube. However, his passion for efficiency — finding a better way to do things, joined with an unwavering knowledge that he was right — put off his co-workers and boss. It was suggested he look for work elsewhere.

His next position was with a company that adapted Navy surplus landing craft engines for civilian use. Then he landed a job at a foundry as a sales engineer, as well as designing and building parts in the shop. When a friend’s company was awarded a contract by the Air Force to design and fabricate a crew seat for a space vehicle, he asked Ken to help out. The company was REM (Research Engineering and Manufacturing) of Portland, and the seat was to be used for the Air Force for its "Dinosaur" project. With the contract completed, REM folded, and Austin was off to another Portland company called Power Brake Equipment.

It was to be a life changing decision

Although most of Power Brake Equipment’s business was creating air brake systems for large truck makers like Freightliner and Kenworth, the company also operated a subsidiary that made dental equipment. The variable-speed air control for dental drills PBE manufactured employed the same technology it had developed for air brakes on big trucks. Soon, Ken Austin was in charge of the dental equipment division.

"I did go into ‘dental’ very reluctantly," he says. "I didn’t like going to the dentist. Basically, I thought it was painful, dirty and not the most glamorous profession in the world." Not glamorous ... true. Fodder for a future industry? Absolutely.

The new direction his life would take began innocently enough. When the University of Oregon Dental School (now part of Oregon Health & Science University) had a problem with its dental equipment, it was Ken Austin who would be assigned to work the account. With that experience, he began creating a niche for himself.

"It opened up a whole new world for me," he remembers. "I had found my calling. There was never an end to the creativity I could put into the job."

His accomplishments at Power Brake Equipment eventually led to a job with DENSCO. While there, he learned about oral evacuation systems that helped replace the need for patients to have to spit into a ceramic bowl to clear their mouths during treatment. But, by his own admission, his lack of tact and impatience for inefficiency soon returned him to the ranks of the unemployed. No matter. Austin believed he could improve on the design of the DENSCO vacuum system and began working on his own device in the basement of his Broomfield, Colo., home. He and Joan also began discussing an idea that would one day become A-dec.

"I built a better version of something that was already being used," he said. "Mine was smaller, less expensive and more reliable." Soon he applied for a patent on his new oral evacuation system, and things began to move quickly. On Sept. 20, 1964, the design was complete. Three days later a prototype was assembled and tested. By Nov. 9 the Austins had orders for the new suction device from the nation’s largest dental manufacturing company, S.S. White, of Philadelphia. The company marketed the system under the name "AVS #1 by A-dec, distributed by S.S. White." A-dec is born.

With contract in hand, Ken and Joan returned home to Newberg, setting up their new "headquarters" in a 400-square-foot Quonset hut. The modest size of the facilities led the Austins to refer to the place as working "butt to butt in the hut." With the additional aid of a $2,000 loan from a local dentist, A-dec was in business.

By February 1965, Ken Austin’s design had been refined, tests completed and a first model constructed. S.S. White sent A-dec a check for $10,000 as prepayment on a purchase order, and the Austins quickly used the money to buy materials, machinery and other items necessary to begin the fledgling business. They also promised themselves they would build their business around two guiding principles: seizing opportunities and doing the job better than their competitors.

When they sensed dentists needed a portable unit that had all the necessary tools right at their fingertips, the "Denta-Cart" was created. When the Department of Defense needed a dental unit that could be contained in a portable case, A-dec constructed one and today supplies nearly all of the dental units used by America’s armed forces. The same holds true for colleges of dentistry.When Marquette University wanted a special unit that students could unplug from an air supply and store in their lockers, A-dec created one. Now the company provides equipment for 52 of the 53 dental schools in the United States.

The Austins credit much of A-dec’s success to integrity and fostering good relationships with their customers and employees. "This is a people company," Joan says. "We focus on the long term and build relationships based on trust — from our community, employees, and dealers, to our suppliers and (finally) the dentists."

Ken Austin’s difficulties working with people early in his career made it all the more important to manage his company and its employees with a gentle hand and a "working together" attitude that seizes opportunities and solves problems. "You have to treat the people you’re associating with like family," Austin has learned over the years he has been in business.

And he has put this insight to good use in the company. The transformation and commitment of putting employees first has earned A-dec the distinction of being known statewide as one of Oregon’s best places to work. The company has received state and national awards for marketing, handicapped employment and productivity improvement. Co-founder and company manager

Today, Joan’s official title with A-dec is executive vice president and corporate treasurer (Ken serves as president), and she is both co-founder of the company and co-owner. Since the beginning, she has directed her efforts toward managing the administrative, personnel, financial and legal areas of the company. Ken has focused his attention almost exclusively on the engineering and manufacturing phases of A-dec’s operation.

In addition, Joan serves as an active member of the A-dec management team and executive committee and meets weekly to direct the operations of the company. Her leadership abilities are known nationally. In 1987, she was appointed an adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco for Small Business, and in 1988, she was selected by the Foundation for Women’s Resources as one of 100 outstanding women leaders nationwide to participate in the "Leadership America" program.

Despite her immense success in her profession, Joan says she will step aside when the time comes. "It would only make sense to have someone younger come on (eventually)," she says. She adds that the rise of their business to the pinnacle of the dental manufacturing industry caught both Ken and her by surprise. It was not their intent when they began the company in 1964. "We had no idea at all. We just wanted to make sure that Ken was happily employed, and we had three square meals a day," she says with a laugh. An Oregon State family.

In addition to being a co-equal contributor to the growth of her company, Joan has been very visible on the OSU campus for more than 25 years. She has served on the Board of Governors since 1976 and was chairwoman of the OSU Foundation from 1995 to 1997. Today, she remains a key participant in Foundation strategies and activities. Her relationship with the university began in 1976, when she was asked to serve on the OSU Board of Directors. "Prior to that, I worked mostly at the company. When I was asked by Oregon State to serve, I decided I would, and this was the start of my outside involvement," she says.

Despite her close relationship with OSU, Joan has never attended the university. She’s glad nonetheless to serve OSU and is proud that all her children and their spouses are OSU alumni: son G. Kenneth Austin III (also known as "Ken") graduated from OSU in 1977 in business administration; his wife, Celia Strickland Austin, is a 1976 graduate in home economics; daughter Loni Austin Parrish is a 1981 alumna in liberal arts; and Loni’s husband, Scott Parrish, graduated in 1981 with a degree in business administration.

"So we’re really an Oregon State family," Joan says with considerable pleasure.

Joan’s accomplishments in the business world parallel her successes at OSU. She says her proudest accomplishment to date is the role she played in creating the university’s cultural and conference center known as the LaSells Stewart Center. It was the first OSU building constructed without state funds. Joan and others raised in excess of $10 million from individuals, alumni, board members and others, guided construction of the building, then turned it over to the state.

A humble woman more prone to work behind rather than in front of the scenes, Joan also takes credit for the creation of OSU’s Austin Family Business Program. The idea was spawned during a trip to Hawaii to attend a family business seminar. The couple returned home, and she immediately went to then OSU President John Byrne’s home to stump for the idea of creating an Oregon State program designed to promote the survival of family businesses.

"It is to aid and assist family business owners to make sure their business continues after they’ve retired and passed on," she explains, adding that the program, begun in the 1980s, is now considered one of the best in the country. "Mom and pop businesses get so involved in the day-to-day activity of staying in business, it’s sometimes difficult to plan for when the owners aren’t around anymore."

"I could not have done what we’ve done alone," Ken admits, adding that Joan created a well-respected employee retirement plan in 1970 that continues today. This, together with her work with employee relations, is one of the reasons the company is rated as one of the top places in the state to work. A generous couple.

"Ken and Joan Austin are quiet, sincere and very personable," Ken’s classmate Jim Poirot shares. "They have a heartfelt interest in other people and believe that everybody has value and that the job of their company is to motivate and develop the skills of people to meet their capabilities. They are very giving people — always willing to give their time and their resources to others who can benefit."

Examples of this giving trait, oftentimes with Joan in the lead, are everywhere. The Austins give regularly to the Newberg school system, including the necessary support needed for students to take an annual trip to the Portland Art Museum. Through a grant to the Oregon Symphony, the orchestra gives a free annual performance for the town and A-dec employees at George Fox University. In the mid-1980s, they started a substance abuse facility near the A-dec campus that today is known as the Hazelden-Springbrook facility, which has helped thousands of men and women from all over the country start on the road to recovery. Both the Austins have been longtime supporters of the Newberg Library. Current philanthropy in their hometown includes the donation of land for a new elementary school, a new athletic complex for George Fox and support of the Newberg Head Start program.

The Austin name is a familiar one to higher education in Oregon, particularly at George Fox University in Newberg and Linfield College in nearby McMinnville, where both Ken and Joan serve as trustees. At OSU, they gave generously to the construction of the CH2M HILL Alumni Center, funded the Austin Auditorium in the LaSells Stewart Center, helped fund the Valley Library renovation and the Merritt Truax Indoor Athletic Facility, and inspired and created the aforementioned Austin Family Business Program.

"OSU ranks high in our priorities," he says and adds how important it is that he and Joan "give something back to the school that helped us become what we are." The man who since childhood has been able to visualize concepts before others, the woman who dreamed in her early womanhood of owning her own insurance agency, thank OSU for helping develop within them an entrepreneurial spirit that continues to this day.

"It’s nice," they both say. "We don’t get excited about having our names on things, but we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished at OSU and what we’ve helped others to accomplish both here at home and around the state." OSU.

Gary Allen, editor of the Newberg Graphic and a 1985 graduate of OSU in technical journalism, helped in the research and writing of this story. George Edmonston Jr. is editor of the Oregon Stater.