PLSO The Oregon Surveyor November/December 2021

8 The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 44, No. 6 Member Spotlight SPOTLIGHT Member By Vanessa Salvia Dick Bryant (Retired) McCullough Bryant & Associates Inc. R ecently, the PLSO’s Central Chapter celebrated Dick Bryant 51 years af- ter receiving his Oregon surveyor’s license. He was Surveyor of the Year in 1996 and awarded a life membership in PLSO in 2005. He has been amember since the early 1970s. Bryant was born on South Whidbey Island north of Seattle. His early career goal was to work for the U.S. Forest Service. That led him to a degree in forest management from the University of Wash- ington in 1958. “Upon graduation, I was immediately drafted and spent two years in the army, a year and a half of which was spent near Heidelberg, Germany,” Bryant recalls. “Shortly before my discharge, I ap- plied and was offered a job with the Forest Service, but couldn’t report to work within their time frame, so that offer was with - drawn and my dream of a Forest Service career disappeared.” That led him to the Oregon Department of Forestry in Coos Bay in 1960. “That’s what got me to Oregon,” he says, “I worked for OSDF for two and a half years. I was then offered a job at the Menasha Paper Mill in North Bend as a log buyer.” Bryant got into surveying when he was contacted by one of his old college buddies, TomMcCullough, who passed away in 2018. “Tom called me one day and we arranged to meet in Coos Bay,” he recalled. “We met and after a cou- ple of shots of Irish whiskey he asked me if I would like to come to Corvallis and go to work for him.” McCullough had recently opened his own surveying/forest consulting business and needed help. Without any surveying ex- perience beyond a junior college class in which he ran a traverse and a level loop around a city block next to the small cam- pus, Bryant was reluctant, but agreed to talk about it. “My job interview was to see if I could set up, turn an angle, and read the vernier of K & E Paragon transit, which I did,” said Bryant. “I’m convinced that Tom would have hired me even if I didn’t know which end of the scope to look through. I think he just wanted a partner. Tom im- mediately sent me to work on a trail job he and his dad had bid on up in the Cas- cades in Washington. The job consisted of constructing a new three-mile section of the Pacific Crest Trail between Snoqualmie and Stevens Passes. No surveying involved, but lots of dynamite.” Bryant moved to Corvallis early in the sum- mer of 1966 andworked for Tomfor about a year before they decided to formMcCullough, Bryant & Associates. They were in business together for the next 11 years, with offices in Corvallis, run by McCullough, and Sunriver, run by Bryant. In the late 1970s, Bryant sold his share of the business toMcCullough and went to work for the Sunriver Development Company, where he attained the position of Vice President of Development and Op- erations. After a couple of years working for Sunriver he was asked to transfer to a similar development called Lakeway, near Austin, Texas, with the title of Vice President of Planning and Development. Both devel- opments were owned and managed by an insurance group. After about four years with Lakeway, he was offered a very prom - ising position as a senior project manager with a large engineering company in Aus- tin, with around 900 employees and offices all over the Southwest. “Big mistake!” says Bryant. “They were a poorly run company, and mostly dependent on land develop- ment. I was there a short time, when oil prices dropped and real-estate tanked. Af- ter nine months, I was laid off due to lack of work. I think the company was bought out or folded a short time after.” No one was hiring so he obtained his Tex- as license and got back into the surveying business. “We were able to survive, but things were not going real well financially,” he recalls. “My wife Cecilia got her Texas RN license and went back to work to help cov- er our expenses.” In the late ‘80s, a former client from Bend called and asked Bryant if Dick Bryant in the Wallowas, taken in late summer 2021.