Stark Dillard

Stark Dillard was born January 22, 1894, in Lynchburg, Virginia. His education was comprised of eight years of grade school. But his success and accomplishments led to his being awarded an honorary doctorate in 1971 from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

In his early career, he was employed as a salesman with Alling and Cory. In 1916, he co-founded Caskie-Dillard Paper Company in Lynchburg, and in 1926, he founded Dillard Paper Company in Greensboro. Both companies became successful paper distributors. Mr. Dillard pioneered distribution relationships with many mills that, prior to that time, had sold their paper directly, without benefit of local distribution.

A strong personality, Mr. Dillard exhibited broad industry knowledge, crossing both the printing paper and industrial paper environments. He was recognized for his skills in hiring and motivating leaders and salespeople. He took Dillard Paper to employee ownership (ESOP) long before it became popular. Due to his leadership, Dillard Paper eventually grew to a net worth of $110 million in 1991, when it was sold to International Paper Company.

Mr. Dillard founded “Art on Paper,” a continuing collection of contemporary American artists, now owned by the University of North Carolina. This collection is still supported by the company and is used to promote the use of paper in art as it travels around America on loan to various institutions.

Mr. Dillard also founded the Printing Industry of the Carolinas, a PIA affiliate and served as president for the first two terms.

He married Alice Walker and they had four children, daughters Walker Kirby and Dorothy Burns, and sons Spotswood and David.

Mr. Dillard died on December 25, 1975.

Robert Flowerree

Robert Flowerree was born on January 4, 1921, in New Orleans, Louisiana. He earned a bachelor of arts degree from Tulane University in 1942. After graduation, he joined C.D. Johnson Lumber Company and held key positions until the company was acquired by Georgia-Pacific (GP) in 1951. Mr. Flowerree was manager of the Toledo, Oregon, mill at the time.

Active in timber research, Mr. Flowerree is credited for his plan of utilization and reforestation, working with GP’s founder, Owen Cheatham, to use second growth timber for production and to cut trees to make room for younger ones. This practice, controversial at the time, continues today.

He was instrumental in GP’s rapid growth during the late 1950s and 1960s. Acquisitions included Coos Bay Lumber, Hammon Lumber, Crossett Lumber, National Box & Specialty Company, and Oshkosh Corrugated Box Manufacturing Company. In 1963, Mr. Flowerree was named executive vice president of pulp and paper, and the company added Puget Sound Pulp and Timber, Hopper Paper Division, Vanity Fair Paper Mills, and St. Croix Paper Mills. This marked the company’s entrance into the tissue business. Later in the 1960s, they added Kalamazoo Paper, Port Hudson, Louisiana, and Hudson Pulp and Paper Corporation, Palatka, Florida.

Mr. Flowerree was named president of GP in 1975 and was elected chairman of the board and chief executive officer in 1976. He retired in 1984.

When asked to give his advice to young managers, he said, “…operate the plant like it is your money, not somebody else’s in Atlanta. You have to be real sincere about working for the stockholders and treating your jobs like you own the company. If people do that, they will succeed.” Regarded as the very backbone of Georgia-Pacific through the early years, Mr. Flowerree continued to influence the company until his death, May 1, 2006.

Mr. Flowerree and his wife, Elaine, have three living children, John, Ann, and David. A fourth son, Robert, died in 1985.

Jack Keller

John (Jack) Keller was born on November 9, 1918, in Appleton, Wisconsin. After attending grade school and high school in Appleton, he graduated from Appleton Business College in 1938. He received additional schooling in 1949 at the College of Advanced Traffic, and in 1950 from the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) Law School. He passed the bar exam and was admitted as an ICC practitioner.

In 1939, Mr. Keller joined Kimberly-Clark Corporation, working in traffic management. He established the motor carrier operations division and encouraged the corporation to procure airline equipment for corporate air travel service. Working with Kampo Transit, he helped create operations for handling and removal of sulfite waste liquor from pulp manufacturing for use in the road binder roadway program in Wisconsin.

Mr. Keller served in the U.S. Army from October 1942 through April 1946, enlisting as a private in the 9th Army. He served in the European Theatre through war’s end on May 8, 1945, as master sergeant major of the 548th Field Artillery Battalion. Mr. Keller authored the history of the battalion, which was published in Europe in 1945. He was discharged honorably, having earned several battle stars.

In 1951, Mr. Keller joined Kampo Transit, Inc, as vice president/general manager. He left the company in 1953 to found J.J. Keller & Associates to service regulatory problems for the paper industry and transportation services generally. The organization was incorporated in 1958 and continues to provide regulatory consulting and publishing nationwide. He served as chairman of the board until his death in 2007.

Today (2001), J.J. Keller & Associates has over 800 associates and employees and a cash flow in excess of $160 million. The corporation offers over 4,000 products and services to meet customer needs, including compliance publications, regulatory forms and supplies, software Internet services seminars and workshops, and consulting services.

In the 1990s, the Keller Foundation, Ltd., was established, and a donor-advised fund was created at the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley region, Inc., which, by the year 2001, had $5,500,000 in commitments and donations.

Mr. Keller was a life member of the Interstate Commerce Commission bar, past director of Delta Nu Alpha, past director of Associated Bank, and past appointee to the Ninth National Bank Region Advisory Committee. In addition, he was a member of the Fox Valley Traffic Club, and a life member of both the American Legion and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.

Jack and his wife, Ethel, had three sons, Robert, James, and Thomas.

George Weyerhaeuser

George Weyerhaeuser was born July 8, 1926, in Seattle, Washington. He graduated with honors from Yale University in 1949 with a bachelor of science degree in industrial administration.

He joined Weyerhaeuser Company in 1947, initially working in the woods as a logger. Then in 1949, he began working in the company’s pulp mills at Longview, Washington. He transferred to Springfield, Oregon, lumber manufacturing operations in 1951 where he progressed from foreman to assistant manager and then to wood products area manager in 1954.

In 1957, Mr. Weyerhaeuser was named assistant to the executive vice president at corporate headquarters in Tacoma, Washington. He was appointed manager of wood products in 1958 and was elected to the board of directors in 1960. He was appointed executive vice president for wood products and timberlands in 1961, followed by executive vice president for all manufacturing and timberlands operations in 1964.

In 1966, Mr. Weyerhaeuser became the company’s chief executive officer and ninth president. He served as chief executive officer until 1991. He became chairman of the board of directors in 1988 and continued in that role until his retirement in 1999.

Mr. Weyerhaeuser was an advocate for addressing environmental aspects of forest management well before it became popular. He sponsored a strong sustainable forest management ethic at Weyerhaeuser, with an emphasis on rapid replanting following harvest; improvements in forest growth and yield; and measures to protect water quality, soil productivity, and wildlife habitat. Tree farms and high-yield forestry practices that Weyerhaeuser Company pioneered have set the standard for private forest management through the forest industry.

During his career, Mr. Weyerhaeuser was a visionary in improving his company’s utilization of raw material, including use of wood residuals to manufacture composite panel products; biomass fuels; and recycled fiber for pulp and paper manufacturing. As a firm believer in the benefits of free trade, under his leadership, Weyerhaeuser Company became the leading exporter of forest products to the Pacific Rim and was the first to establish a strong forest products trade relationship with China.

Mr. Weyerhaeuser also served as a director of The Boeing Company; Chevron Corporation; and SAFECO Corporation. He was a member of The Business Council and Washington State Business Roundtable.

He and his wife, Wendy, were married on July 10, 1948. They have four daughters, Leilee, Susan, Phyllis, and Merrill; and two sons, George, Jr., and David.

Charles Boyd

Charles Boyd was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, on November 27, 1871. He was a student at Lawrence College in Appleton from 1888 to 1893. While there, he sold paper bags and writing paper to local merchants, which earned him the nickname “Paper Bag Cholly.” While selling a purely functional product, he saw the possibilities of paper with aesthetic appeal, and upon graduation, he sold fine papers for Moser Paper Company, Chicago, and then for George Whiting Paper Company, Menasha, Wisconsin and Whiting-Plover Paper Company, Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

In 1905, after twelve years of apprenticeship, he founded Charles S. Boyd Paper Company in Kaukauna, Wisconsin, to produce a line of sized and super-calendered cover paper. In 1907, he established The Appleton Coated Paper Company. Halftones, which require a smooth printing surface, were just coming into wide usage. Mr. Boyd could see the necessary up-grading of paper leading to volume production of coated paper. Although the original capital raised was $14,100, the investment capital was tripled by the following year.

The decision to produce coated paper displayed Mr. Boyd’s shrewd awareness, learned in the Kaukauna operation. He understood the challenges of competing with integrated mills producing sized and super-calendered paper. The developments of more precise printing demanded higher quality printing surfaces. His solution was coated paper.

Prior to the 1930s, paper mills were unable to make coated paper in an single operation. Most of the paper sold during the first ten years of operation was on special order, mostly solicited by Mr. Boyd himself. This period was called the “jobber brand era.”

Appleton Coated Paper Company became peëminent among non-integrated coating mills, manufacturing the widest range of specialty coated paper anywhere. When on-machine coating was developed in the 1930s, Appleton Coated met this challenge by concentrating on specialties. When technical programs and procedures called for resources beyond those available in the plant laboratory, they were submitted to the Institute of Paper Chemistry, of which the company was a member.

In 1953, Appleton Coated started developing a process to implement carbonless paper, an invention of National Cash Register Company, Dayton, Ohio. Appleton Coated’s research department, headed by Tom Busch, solved the very difficult coating problem in one year, problems that two other major companies were unable to address, and soon became NCR’s major supplier of carbonless paper. NCR bought Appleton Coated in 1970, and in 1978, sold it to British American Tobacco Industries, London, England, who teamed it with the Wiggins-Teape Group Limited, England, a former NCR licensee. In early 1990, B.A.T. spun off Wiggins-Appleton, which became part of today’s Arjo Wiggins Appleton, France. AWA is one of the world’s largest paper manufacturing and distributing organizations.

Mr. Boyd died on January 28, 1952. He and his wife has a daughter, Martha (deceased), who married William Siekman, chairman emeritus of Appleton Coated Paper. The Boyds have two grandchildren, Charles Boyd Siekman, Appleton, and Frances Siekman Romero, whose husband is governor of Guanajuato, Mexico.

Börje Steenberg

Börje Steenberg was born August 6, 1912, in Stockholm, Sweden, where his father was inspector of schools. He received his education in Sweden up to and including his doctorate from Stockholm University.He started his career at Royal Institute of Technology, where he was assistant professor of physical chemistry from 1939 to 1943 and associate professor until 1945. In 1946, he was named head of the paper department of the Swedish Pulp & Paper Research Institute (STFI), a post he held until 1968, when he became head of the Institute. In 1947, Dr. Steenberg was named full professor of paper technology at the Royal Institute of Technology, the first at that level emeriting, in 1979. He served from 1968 through 1974 at FAO Rome, first as director of Forest & Forest Industrial Division and then as assistant director general.

In his academic and industry career activities, Dr. Steenberg covered all aspects of papermaking research and development, from the forest to finished paper and wood products. He was consulted on the building of more than 20 paper machines He developed the concept of “paper as a visco-elastic body,” which not only led to an understanding of the physical properties of paper but also to means of controlling these properties when paper is being made. He also developed a screening theory and screening system designs which have been applied worldwide to improve quality and lower the cost of cleaned stock.

Dr. Steenberg is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences and the Royal Academy of Forestry and Agriculture; a member of the Finnish Academy of Engineering Sciences; the Italian Academy of Forestry; International Academy of Wood Science; New York Academy of Sciences; 50 year member of ASC; TAPPI; PAPTAC; and SPCI. He was secretary from 1953 to 1959 of IUPAC division, Paper and Board; and served as chair and advisor to a number of FAO conferences (United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization).

He has written more than 120 publications and has given formal papers at numerous conferences worldwide. He holds several patents relating to the paper industry. His honors include the TAPPI Gunnar Nicholson Gold Medal; SPCI Ekman Medal, Sweden; Mitscherlich Medal, Germany; and he was given an honorary doctorate of forest science in Sweden. Equally impressive, four of his former students have been awarded the TAPPI Gunnar Nicholson Gold Medal: Stockman, 1985; Bergstrom, 1991; Wahlstrom, 1992; and Wahren, 1998.

Dr. Steenberg married Dr. Elisa Hald on October 15, 1940. They have two children, Kjell and Ann.