Activist’s ideals give rise to ideas

Dr. Ralph Crawshaw, father of the Oregon Health Plan, is not afraid to think big

By Ben Jacklet

The Portland Tribune, Aug 5, 2005, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Dr. Ralph Crawshaw recently sent city Commissioner Erik Sten a note in Latin: illegitimi non carborundum.

Roughly translated, it means, don’t let the bastards grind you down.

It’s a useful saying for a tilter at windmills, and a philosophy that the quixotic 84-year-old Crawshaw has been living by for many years.

“That’s my business, windmills,” he says from a corner table at his downtown “office,” the RiverPlace Harborside Restaurant. “Bigger and better windmills.”

Crawshaw has been intimately involved in Portland’s civic affairs for decades, and while he was not a player in the city’s recent attempts through Sten to take over Portland General Electric, he knows what it’s like to take a big idea and try to turn it into reality.

A father of the Oregon Health Plan and a practicing psychiatrist for half a century, Crawshaw also has found time to advocate passionately on behalf of the Bull Run Watershed, which provides Portland with drinking water.

With his white hair and gregarious manner, Crawshaw is a familiar character at RiverPlace Hotel, where the parking staffers immediately recognize his 1987 Oldsmobile station wagon with its fake wood side panels.

“It’s a race between me and the car,” he quips, “to see who will go first.”

But his health seems fine as he devours his clam chowder and steers the conversation seamlessly from ancient Greek traditions of worshipping the gods to architectural concepts derived from studying the 12th century cloister, to the marvels of Portland’s protected source of drinking water.

He has been married to Carol for 57 years. He published his first book, a 646-page collection of essays titled “Compassion’s Way: A Doctor’s Quest Into the Soul of Medicine,” at the age of 81.

Crawshaw’s latest project is a collaboration with Tom Boon, a Union Pacific Railroad engineer who was surprised some years ago after writing a letter to the editor to receive a phone call from Crawshaw saying, “Obviously, you have an opinion. Now what are you going to do about it?”

Boon says he’s learned a lot from Crawshaw: “He’s taught me that an opinion is one thing, but a learned opinion is much more valuable. He’s taught me how to better understand the complexity of how things work.”

Boon and Crawshaw are calling for a Bull Run Wilderness Link, a walking and cycling trail that would connect downtown Portland with the Bull Run Watershed by extending the Springwater Corridor trail up into the foothills of the Cascades. Their plan calls for educational kiosks, a power station redesigned into a learning center and a “wilderness climate observatory” for scientific study of the local effects of global warming.

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