Excerpts from Chapters
Part I
Beginnings
In 1947, My dad, Edward Orkney, started his first war surplus store in Salem, Oregon, in partnership with another World War II Army Air Corps pilot. The partners experimented with the pricing of merchandise. To save making change on a transaction, each item was priced an even amount. So, instead of a price of $3.99 for example, the price was $4.00! Dad did not repeat this pricing strategy in later stores.
Part II
Our Home
We lived close to the Columbia River, which was about a half mile away, with the Interstate Bridge a few miles further away.. Our house was located on the Columbia River flood plain. While the store had not been flooded in the 1948 Vanport Flood, our house had been. In 1951, when we moved in, there was still dried mud from the flood waters on the floor of the unfinished room on the second floor!
Part III
The Store and Neighborhood
Part IV
Store Growth and Family Change
My father, Edward Orkney’s main focus, from the time he left the Army Air Corps in 1945, was to build a business, and he did. Money and possessions did not seem to interest him much. Instead, it was the challenge of creating something solid that was important to him. Also important to him was that, even after his death, G.I. Joe’s could continue to be a resource to the community, and offer security to the employees who had helped in its creation.
Part V
Edward Orkney’s Story
Another quality my father had was modesty. Bragging was not something he did. A simple statement of the facts was OK, but not drawing attention to oneself. I know that for at least the first 10 years and probably more, G.I. Joe’s did not buy advertising in newspapers or on the radio. Rather, Dad depended on word-of-mouth, or simply the great location of the North Portland store, so close to the Washington/Oregon Interstate Bridge. I believe that Dad not advertising in the early years, was a natural outgrowth of his modesty and basic quietness.
Janna Orkney, Copyright, 2008
Part I
Beginnings
When I was growing up, it was like there were five members of the family. There was Mom, Dad, my brother and me, and “the store.” My mother was Charmian Orkney, my father Edward Orkney, my brother was David, and I was Jan. “The “store,” as we called it, was G.I. Joe’s, an army surplus store that my father started in North Portland in 1952.
G.I. Joe’s grew and grew, from one store in North Portland, to three stores next to each other at that location. While my dad was alive, G.I. Joe’s became a chain and added stores throughout the Portland area, and expanding into Salem, Oregon, in the mid 1970’s, and into Vancouver, Washington, in the mid 1980’s. Along the way, the merchandise changed, and peripheral stores opened and closed or were sold.
There was a shoe store in a Malwaukie mall in 1960, which closed after not very long. I worked there one summer during my high school years. Then there was Jean Machine, started by my brother in the mid 1970’s, selling jeans and tops. The first store was in the front of the original North Portland G.I. Joe's. Jean Machine thrived and grew to a chain of 22 stores, stretching from Olympia, Washington to Eugene, Oregon. And, after Dad’s death, there was also Action Outfitters, which sold upscale athletic shoes and clothes in three locations in the Portland area in the early 1980’s.
What was the genesis of G.I. Joe’s? I guess you could say my father’s first venture leading to the business occurred in 1946 when we lived in Hoquiam, Washington, and I was two years old.
Dad borrowed money from his mother, Mary Orkney, and submitted a bid on down sleeping bags at a government auction. He won the bid. Dad then placed ads in the Portland Oregonian and Portland Journal, and rented a fruit stand in North Portland, where he and my uncle, Miles Munson, sold out the sleeping bags in three days.
My father kept on attending the government surplus auctions at Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base, south of Tacoma. I understand that veterans were given preference in the auction process, and that must have been helpful to Dad, since he was a veteran, having served in the Army Air Corps in World War II.
He continued selling items he won at auction, on street corners or beside roads in the Portland area, but he also sold the merchandise wholesale. He would drive from Seattle to the Oregon/California border, selling to surplus store owners along the way.
Eventually Dad realized, according to my brother, that he could make more money selling from a store, than selling out of his car. And he wanted to be home with the family, instead of on the road.
So, in 1947, Dad started his first war surplus store in Salem, Oregon, in partnership with another World War II Army Air Corps pilot. The partners experimented with the pricing of merchandise. To save making change on a transaction, each item was priced an even amount. Instead of a price of $3.99 for example, the price was $4.00! Dad did not repeat this pricing strategy in later stores.
It seems, while my brother and I were growing up, that we were always surrounded by army surplus. I have a photo of David and me in Salem, when he was 1 year old and I was 3. We are playing in a G.I. pup tent that Dad set up for us in the backyard.
In 1948, we moved back to Portland. We lived in the North Portland area of Kenton, in a small 2 bedroom house a few miles from the Interstate Bridge. Many years later, that house was torn down with the building of the I-5 freeway. But, in the summers of 1948 and 1949, my brother and I splashed in our backyard wading pool. It was, of course, G.I. surplus! It was a yellow rubber raft, with water on the inside instead of the outside.
Around 1948, Dad joined with five others in a partnership in another war surplus store. It was in North Portland, on Vancouver Avenue, where G.I. Joe’s would eventually be located, four years later. The business was housed in a former war hospital tent. While it was relatively inexpensive and easy to put up, it did not provide good security. According to my mother, the tent was broken into by thieves slashing through the canvas roof.
On May 30, 1948, the Columbia River burst through the levees and flooded what was then called the Vanport area, where the store was. Land all around was covered with water, but the store itself was on high enough ground to stay dry. The Red Cross bought out the store’s stock of tents, sleeping bags, and cots, to aid flood refugees, my mother told me.
Eventually, that partnership dissolved, and my parents decided to check out Los Angeles, as a possible place to start a business. We did not stay there long! Dad was a Northwesterner through and through, having been born and raised in Hoquiam, Washington. Soon we were all back in Portland.
In 1951, Dad started his next business, called War Surplus Liquidators. It was located in a hospital tent again, this time on 82nd Avenue, south of Foster Road, in Southeast Portland. I would have been 7 years old, and can vaguely remember it. The entrance had 3 or 4 wooden steps up, with the name written in large letters across the front, the hospital tent peaking many times along the roof line.
Over the door, was a sign with Dad’s slogan, which he continued to use with G.I. Joe’s. “Come in and browse around,” it said, welcoming customers and potential customers. (See photo at www.GrowingUpWithGIJoesphotos.blogspot.com It is on the second page.)
Then, in 1952, Dad heard that a business located on Vancouver Avenue was for sale, where he had been in partnership in the 1948 army surplus store. This time, it was just my Dad, with no partners, who bought the business.
He named it G.I. Joe’s, and that was the beginning.
This new store was again in a hospital tent. The parking lot in front was basic. Instead of blacktop, there were roofing tabs, which were narrow asphalt shingles. They were spread on the ground and clumped together, to form a mud barrier when it rained. And, in the back was the Columbia Slough, which was a deep ditch about 50 feet wide, filled with slow-moving water. Fishermen would come and fish for carp and catfish there.
Back in those days, prior to the I-5 Freeway, the business was well-situated to take advantage of traffic going to and from the Interstate Bridge between Portland and Vancouver. G.I. Joe’s was the first store on the Oregon side.
I believe that this unique location, a few miles away from Vancouver, was one of the major reasons for G.I. Joe’s initial success. With Washington having sales tax and Oregon not, the store had such great appeal for Vancouver residents.
The merchandise included an array of army/navy surplus, which was also a draw. As my brother pointed out to me, there was a lack of consumer goods after the war and quite a demand for government issued items that could be used for outdoor recreation. Today, we would call these items sporting goods, like sleeping bags, canteens, and packs. This merchandise really pulled people in the door.
Cheap cigarettes were a draw too. That was way before any Surgeon General’s warnings appeared on cigarette packs. In those days, smoking cigarettes was thought to be relaxing, with no ill effects. Customers would buy many cartons at a time and employees at the front counter would tie them together with string from an overhead dispenser.
Very soon, the hospital tent was replaced by a small, wood-frame building. There was the G.I. Joe’s sign at the top of the roof ridgeline over the entrance, and a sign advertising the current price of a carton of cigarettes, along with other sales signs on the front.
What I remember about the inside of the store in the early years, were the aisles of bins, filled with G.I. surplus treasures. One bin was filled with small bottles of insect repellent, rather like large bottles of vanilla extract. One Saturday morning when I was 8 or 9, I went to work with Dad. He told me to “neaten” the insect repellent bin. First, I wiped of the bottles. Next, I gathered the bottles that were lying haphazardly on top of each other and stood them up, pulling them into one corner of the bin. I thought I had done such a good job!
Then, my father came by and I got my first lesson in retail. He told me to make sure the bottles were clean, but to mess them up again, so that it looked like there was more merchandise. Cleaning in the store was not at all like helping Mom clean our house!
When I was growing up, it was like there were five members of the family. There was Mom, Dad, my brother and me, and “the store.” My mother was Charmian Orkney, my father Edward Orkney, my brother was David, and I was Jan. “The “store,” as we called it, was G.I. Joe’s, an army surplus store that my father started in North Portland in 1952.
G.I. Joe’s grew and grew, from one store in North Portland, to three stores next to each other at that location. While my dad was alive, G.I. Joe’s became a chain and added stores throughout the Portland area, and expanding into Salem, Oregon, in the mid 1970’s, and into Vancouver, Washington, in the mid 1980’s. Along the way, the merchandise changed, and peripheral stores opened and closed or were sold.
There was a shoe store in a Malwaukie mall in 1960, which closed after not very long. I worked there one summer during my high school years. Then there was Jean Machine, started by my brother in the mid 1970’s, selling jeans and tops. The first store was in the front of the original North Portland G.I. Joe's. Jean Machine thrived and grew to a chain of 22 stores, stretching from Olympia, Washington to Eugene, Oregon. And, after Dad’s death, there was also Action Outfitters, which sold upscale athletic shoes and clothes in three locations in the Portland area in the early 1980’s.
What was the genesis of G.I. Joe’s? I guess you could say my father’s first venture leading to the business occurred in 1946 when we lived in Hoquiam, Washington, and I was two years old.
Dad borrowed money from his mother, Mary Orkney, and submitted a bid on down sleeping bags at a government auction. He won the bid. Dad then placed ads in the Portland Oregonian and Portland Journal, and rented a fruit stand in North Portland, where he and my uncle, Miles Munson, sold out the sleeping bags in three days.
My father kept on attending the government surplus auctions at Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base, south of Tacoma. I understand that veterans were given preference in the auction process, and that must have been helpful to Dad, since he was a veteran, having served in the Army Air Corps in World War II.
He continued selling items he won at auction, on street corners or beside roads in the Portland area, but he also sold the merchandise wholesale. He would drive from Seattle to the Oregon/California border, selling to surplus store owners along the way.
Eventually Dad realized, according to my brother, that he could make more money selling from a store, than selling out of his car. And he wanted to be home with the family, instead of on the road.
So, in 1947, Dad started his first war surplus store in Salem, Oregon, in partnership with another World War II Army Air Corps pilot. The partners experimented with the pricing of merchandise. To save making change on a transaction, each item was priced an even amount. Instead of a price of $3.99 for example, the price was $4.00! Dad did not repeat this pricing strategy in later stores.
It seems, while my brother and I were growing up, that we were always surrounded by army surplus. I have a photo of David and me in Salem, when he was 1 year old and I was 3. We are playing in a G.I. pup tent that Dad set up for us in the backyard.
In 1948, we moved back to Portland. We lived in the North Portland area of Kenton, in a small 2 bedroom house a few miles from the Interstate Bridge. Many years later, that house was torn down with the building of the I-5 freeway. But, in the summers of 1948 and 1949, my brother and I splashed in our backyard wading pool. It was, of course, G.I. surplus! It was a yellow rubber raft, with water on the inside instead of the outside.
Around 1948, Dad joined with five others in a partnership in another war surplus store. It was in North Portland, on Vancouver Avenue, where G.I. Joe’s would eventually be located, four years later. The business was housed in a former war hospital tent. While it was relatively inexpensive and easy to put up, it did not provide good security. According to my mother, the tent was broken into by thieves slashing through the canvas roof.
On May 30, 1948, the Columbia River burst through the levees and flooded what was then called the Vanport area, where the store was. Land all around was covered with water, but the store itself was on high enough ground to stay dry. The Red Cross bought out the store’s stock of tents, sleeping bags, and cots, to aid flood refugees, my mother told me.
Eventually, that partnership dissolved, and my parents decided to check out Los Angeles, as a possible place to start a business. We did not stay there long! Dad was a Northwesterner through and through, having been born and raised in Hoquiam, Washington. Soon we were all back in Portland.
In 1951, Dad started his next business, called War Surplus Liquidators. It was located in a hospital tent again, this time on 82nd Avenue, south of Foster Road, in Southeast Portland. I would have been 7 years old, and can vaguely remember it. The entrance had 3 or 4 wooden steps up, with the name written in large letters across the front, the hospital tent peaking many times along the roof line.
Over the door, was a sign with Dad’s slogan, which he continued to use with G.I. Joe’s. “Come in and browse around,” it said, welcoming customers and potential customers. (See photo at www.GrowingUpWithGIJoesphotos.blogspot.com It is on the second page.)
Then, in 1952, Dad heard that a business located on Vancouver Avenue was for sale, where he had been in partnership in the 1948 army surplus store. This time, it was just my Dad, with no partners, who bought the business.
He named it G.I. Joe’s, and that was the beginning.
This new store was again in a hospital tent. The parking lot in front was basic. Instead of blacktop, there were roofing tabs, which were narrow asphalt shingles. They were spread on the ground and clumped together, to form a mud barrier when it rained. And, in the back was the Columbia Slough, which was a deep ditch about 50 feet wide, filled with slow-moving water. Fishermen would come and fish for carp and catfish there.
Back in those days, prior to the I-5 Freeway, the business was well-situated to take advantage of traffic going to and from the Interstate Bridge between Portland and Vancouver. G.I. Joe’s was the first store on the Oregon side.
I believe that this unique location, a few miles away from Vancouver, was one of the major reasons for G.I. Joe’s initial success. With Washington having sales tax and Oregon not, the store had such great appeal for Vancouver residents.
The merchandise included an array of army/navy surplus, which was also a draw. As my brother pointed out to me, there was a lack of consumer goods after the war and quite a demand for government issued items that could be used for outdoor recreation. Today, we would call these items sporting goods, like sleeping bags, canteens, and packs. This merchandise really pulled people in the door.
Cheap cigarettes were a draw too. That was way before any Surgeon General’s warnings appeared on cigarette packs. In those days, smoking cigarettes was thought to be relaxing, with no ill effects. Customers would buy many cartons at a time and employees at the front counter would tie them together with string from an overhead dispenser.
Very soon, the hospital tent was replaced by a small, wood-frame building. There was the G.I. Joe’s sign at the top of the roof ridgeline over the entrance, and a sign advertising the current price of a carton of cigarettes, along with other sales signs on the front.
What I remember about the inside of the store in the early years, were the aisles of bins, filled with G.I. surplus treasures. One bin was filled with small bottles of insect repellent, rather like large bottles of vanilla extract. One Saturday morning when I was 8 or 9, I went to work with Dad. He told me to “neaten” the insect repellent bin. First, I wiped of the bottles. Next, I gathered the bottles that were lying haphazardly on top of each other and stood them up, pulling them into one corner of the bin. I thought I had done such a good job!
Then, my father came by and I got my first lesson in retail. He told me to make sure the bottles were clean, but to mess them up again, so that it looked like there was more merchandise. Cleaning in the store was not at all like helping Mom clean our house!
(If the story ends here on your computer, please click on "Older Post" below, to read Parts II through V, Dedication and List of Sources.)
Part II
Our Home
My family and I lived close to G.I. Joe’s, just a mile away on Columbia Avenue. It was a mixed area of small farms, a trailer court, a small housing tract, and houses on an acre or less of land.
We also lived close to the Columbia River, which was about a half mile away. Our house was located on the Columbia River flood plain. While the store had not been flooded in the 1948 Vanport Flood, our house had been. In 1951, when we moved in, there was still dried mud from the flood waters on the floor of the unfinished room on the second floor!
Our house was a 2-story traditional, with an unfinished basement, where inventory for the store was kept. In the basement, in addition to Mom’s clothes washer and a ping pong table, were piles of army knapsacks, canteens with holders and belts, stacks of inflatable rubber rafts and ammunition boxes, and other surplus items.
It did not seem unusual. That just was the way it was. And, the smell was just the way it was. Opening the door to the basement from the garage, the perfume of army surplus would waft up to you, or surround you as you went down the wooden stairs.
So, G.I. Joe’s took up space in our home, and took up space in family conversation. Sitting down for dinner together, topics of conversation were not only what all of us had done during the day, but also what the store’s sales had been for the day or week. Dad would tell us what was selling well.
One evening we heard that there had been a huge sale of tarpaulins, which are like pre-plastic covers to keep things dry or rig up as a tent. We celebrated that sale, by naming our new cocker spaniel puppy, Tarps or Tarpsy. She was a sweet dog named after a sweet sale!
The whole family worked for the company. When Dad started it, I was 8 years old. I was about 9 when I started going to work with him on occasional Saturday mornings. Besides “neatening” bins, I would straighten shoes, matching up pairs, and then dust them. My brother had the more challenging job of cleaning cosmoline off of small machinery items, and Mom did the payroll.
David and I also worked at home. G.I. Joe’s carried hardware, as well as surplus. Sitting on the hearth in the evening, our job was to screw nuts on bolts, so that they would be easier to buy. Customers would not have to search through nuts and bolts separately to find matches.
We got paid a penny for each 10 units, or ten cents for 100 nuts and bolts. This was Dad’s way of teaching us that to make money, you had to work. As we were working he would tell us, “Money is stored-up working hours.” David remembers making $1.80 one day, which was one heck of a lot of nuts and bolts to screw together!
The most exciting work David and I did was to sell fireworks in the store parking lot, in a little booth. I think that was in 1956. I felt very grownup, even though we only sold sparklers, snakes and smoke. And, I heard later that we were being checked up on all the time by employees, to make sure that we were doing OK.
A fun thing David and I got to do occasionally was to go along with Dad to the wholesaler to pick up cases of cigarettes and candy to sell. It was special to ride along in Dad’s pickup truck. And, the question we would be asking ourselves was, would we get to have a candy bar?
Dad always wore a khaki shirt and pants to work, just like he was still in the Army Air Corps. When I was little, I did not think about it. I just thought that was what all fathers wore.
David and I knew that our dad had been a B-24 bomber pilot in World War II, and that he had served in New Guinea. We were aware that he had the rank of Captain when he left the service. And, we also knew that he was in the Jolly Rogers Bombing Group, and that the symbol for the Jolly Rogers, on the tail of his plane, looked like a pirate flag. But, instead of displaying a skull and crossbones, it showed a skull with two crossed bombs under it.
He was serving overseas when I was born in 1944. The story is that my dad and crew received a bottle of whiskey in celebration of my birth, and their latrine ended up getting burned down in the fun of it all! Now, how many people can say that an outhouse was burned down in their honor?
That was about all we knew of Dad’s time in the service when we were kids, because he did not talk to us about it. It was not until a few years ago, that an older cousin of mine, Bruce Orkney of Seattle, told me more.
According to Bruce, Dad “flew 52 combat missions and he and his crew returned unscathed every time. That was remarkable; he was very proud of that!” Bruce continued, “He was the squadron leader, as you know, and later the group leader; always the number one plane on all their bombing runs.”
As an adult, my brother David talked to Dad about his World War II service. Dad told him that the Jolly Rogers Bombing Group suffered losses of about 40%, mainly due to adverse weather conditions. When you consider the pilots, flying those heavily laden planes across the empty Pacific to a small island or group of islands, it is amazing the losses of men and planes were not higher.
The crews were not flying with what we take for granted today. They had no radar, no computers to figure out where they were, and only so much fuel to reach their target and return to their base. I ask myself now, how did they do it?
But, as I said, I did not know any of this when I was a kid. My dad was just my dad, and the visible link to his time in the Army Air Corps was his constant wearing of khakis.
One memory I have of my dad, dressed in khakis of course, is of him holding a G.I. flame thrower, the wand in one hand, and the tank in another. He was standing in our back forty, or large grassy field behind our house, shooting flames to put the weeds on fire, in order to clear the field. The grass and weeds did indeed burn up, and thankfully, the house did not.
Dad also came to the rescue of the view-impaired school bus that David and I rode to school, on mornings when we did not walk. In the winter with all the rain, it could get quite steamy inside the bus, and David and I noticed our driver was having a hard time keeping the windshield clear. We told Dad and he brought home, what I guess was a portable G.I. defroster, and we passed it on to our bus driver. However, I wish I could say that it worked as well as the flame thrower!
(If the story ends here on your computer, please click on "Older Posts" below to read Part III through Part V, and Dedication and List of Sources.)
My family and I lived close to G.I. Joe’s, just a mile away on Columbia Avenue. It was a mixed area of small farms, a trailer court, a small housing tract, and houses on an acre or less of land.
We also lived close to the Columbia River, which was about a half mile away. Our house was located on the Columbia River flood plain. While the store had not been flooded in the 1948 Vanport Flood, our house had been. In 1951, when we moved in, there was still dried mud from the flood waters on the floor of the unfinished room on the second floor!
Our house was a 2-story traditional, with an unfinished basement, where inventory for the store was kept. In the basement, in addition to Mom’s clothes washer and a ping pong table, were piles of army knapsacks, canteens with holders and belts, stacks of inflatable rubber rafts and ammunition boxes, and other surplus items.
It did not seem unusual. That just was the way it was. And, the smell was just the way it was. Opening the door to the basement from the garage, the perfume of army surplus would waft up to you, or surround you as you went down the wooden stairs.
So, G.I. Joe’s took up space in our home, and took up space in family conversation. Sitting down for dinner together, topics of conversation were not only what all of us had done during the day, but also what the store’s sales had been for the day or week. Dad would tell us what was selling well.
One evening we heard that there had been a huge sale of tarpaulins, which are like pre-plastic covers to keep things dry or rig up as a tent. We celebrated that sale, by naming our new cocker spaniel puppy, Tarps or Tarpsy. She was a sweet dog named after a sweet sale!
The whole family worked for the company. When Dad started it, I was 8 years old. I was about 9 when I started going to work with him on occasional Saturday mornings. Besides “neatening” bins, I would straighten shoes, matching up pairs, and then dust them. My brother had the more challenging job of cleaning cosmoline off of small machinery items, and Mom did the payroll.
David and I also worked at home. G.I. Joe’s carried hardware, as well as surplus. Sitting on the hearth in the evening, our job was to screw nuts on bolts, so that they would be easier to buy. Customers would not have to search through nuts and bolts separately to find matches.
We got paid a penny for each 10 units, or ten cents for 100 nuts and bolts. This was Dad’s way of teaching us that to make money, you had to work. As we were working he would tell us, “Money is stored-up working hours.” David remembers making $1.80 one day, which was one heck of a lot of nuts and bolts to screw together!
The most exciting work David and I did was to sell fireworks in the store parking lot, in a little booth. I think that was in 1956. I felt very grownup, even though we only sold sparklers, snakes and smoke. And, I heard later that we were being checked up on all the time by employees, to make sure that we were doing OK.
A fun thing David and I got to do occasionally was to go along with Dad to the wholesaler to pick up cases of cigarettes and candy to sell. It was special to ride along in Dad’s pickup truck. And, the question we would be asking ourselves was, would we get to have a candy bar?
Dad always wore a khaki shirt and pants to work, just like he was still in the Army Air Corps. When I was little, I did not think about it. I just thought that was what all fathers wore.
David and I knew that our dad had been a B-24 bomber pilot in World War II, and that he had served in New Guinea. We were aware that he had the rank of Captain when he left the service. And, we also knew that he was in the Jolly Rogers Bombing Group, and that the symbol for the Jolly Rogers, on the tail of his plane, looked like a pirate flag. But, instead of displaying a skull and crossbones, it showed a skull with two crossed bombs under it.
He was serving overseas when I was born in 1944. The story is that my dad and crew received a bottle of whiskey in celebration of my birth, and their latrine ended up getting burned down in the fun of it all! Now, how many people can say that an outhouse was burned down in their honor?
That was about all we knew of Dad’s time in the service when we were kids, because he did not talk to us about it. It was not until a few years ago, that an older cousin of mine, Bruce Orkney of Seattle, told me more.
According to Bruce, Dad “flew 52 combat missions and he and his crew returned unscathed every time. That was remarkable; he was very proud of that!” Bruce continued, “He was the squadron leader, as you know, and later the group leader; always the number one plane on all their bombing runs.”
As an adult, my brother David talked to Dad about his World War II service. Dad told him that the Jolly Rogers Bombing Group suffered losses of about 40%, mainly due to adverse weather conditions. When you consider the pilots, flying those heavily laden planes across the empty Pacific to a small island or group of islands, it is amazing the losses of men and planes were not higher.
The crews were not flying with what we take for granted today. They had no radar, no computers to figure out where they were, and only so much fuel to reach their target and return to their base. I ask myself now, how did they do it?
But, as I said, I did not know any of this when I was a kid. My dad was just my dad, and the visible link to his time in the Army Air Corps was his constant wearing of khakis.
One memory I have of my dad, dressed in khakis of course, is of him holding a G.I. flame thrower, the wand in one hand, and the tank in another. He was standing in our back forty, or large grassy field behind our house, shooting flames to put the weeds on fire, in order to clear the field. The grass and weeds did indeed burn up, and thankfully, the house did not.
Dad also came to the rescue of the view-impaired school bus that David and I rode to school, on mornings when we did not walk. In the winter with all the rain, it could get quite steamy inside the bus, and David and I noticed our driver was having a hard time keeping the windshield clear. We told Dad and he brought home, what I guess was a portable G.I. defroster, and we passed it on to our bus driver. However, I wish I could say that it worked as well as the flame thrower!
(If the story ends here on your computer, please click on "Older Posts" below to read Part III through Part V, and Dedication and List of Sources.)
Part III
The Store and Neighborhood
In the 1950’s, G.I. Joe’s was an especially fun place to visit. You never knew what surprise thing you were going to find in one of the bins. Part of the fun was trying to figure out how you could use your “finds.”
Years later, adults would sometimes talk to me about visiting the store with their fathers when they were kids. They would tell me what a treat it had been, and of special treasures they had found. After listening to these stories, it became clear to me, that to go to the store on a rainy Saturday was an event.
But, I believe it was more than just a fun place. Looking back, G.I. Joe’s represented a wave of the future for the Northwest, because so much of the G.I. surplus was a prototype for recreational sporting goods that had not been developed yet. The products sold at the store obviously were not used by customers for their original purpose, which was military action. Instead, they were used to get out in nature, or in creative ways, like making a wading pool out of a rubber raft.
Also, the store sold more than army/navy surplus, and this made it different from many similar stores. There were always the cigarettes, hardware, and heavy equipment in the product mix, and shoes were added early on. The variety of products made it very hard to categorize the business.
I would say that the area where my family lived the first four years of the store’s existence was very hard to categorize too. There was farmland to the rear of us, and between our house and the business. These were cucumber fields that were crop-dusted by small airplanes, with the mature cucumbers being picked by jail inmates.
Across the street, a dairy cow grazed in a field, which was part of a small, family farm. David and I got to be friends with the kids who lived there with their grandparents for a while. We would go over to the hay-filled barn some late afternoons at milking time, and the farmer was kind enough to let us try milking. These neighbors also raised chickens. That is where we would go to buy eggs.
Next door, there was a dog kennel named the Flo-Bob. These neighbors raised cocker spaniels and that is where we got our darling puppy, Tarps.
I am sure there were all sorts of critters on the land, but what stands out in my memory are pheasants, red winged blackbirds and caterpillars. The adult male pheasants were multicolored and glorious, as they flew across the sky, or searched for food in the back forty. One afternoon, I looked out our kitchen window to the neighbor’s weeping willow tree, and saw that it was covered with pheasants! A number of them were perched in the tree! It looked like a scene on a blue and white plate from China.
The red winged blackbirds, with their distinctive call, could be seen and heard, as they perched on stalks in the slough, on David’s and my walk to school. I loved to see the flash of crimson as they flew from one cattail to another.
As for the fuzzy caterpillars, soft to the touch, they formed a colony in the birch tree in our backyard. However, they proved no match for the G.I. flame thrower.
There were many wonderful things about living in this Columbia River area, but what I did not like were the small sloughs. They ran on one side of the road going to David’s and my school, and on both sides of the road going to the store. These sloughs were 3 or 4 feet wide, filled with turgid, brown water. I was always concerned about the possibility of falling in.
Adding to the area’s mix, was a golf course and the Columbia River Yacht Club, which we passed on our way to school. .
Some schoolmates lived in homes along the river, their yards sloping down to the water. Many of these homes had been flooded in 1948, just like our home. There was also an anchorage with a network of docks below the yacht club. That was a fun place for me to go sometimes, with my friend, Nancy Sells, whose father had a boat repair business there.
But, one place I did not go was to the island in the middle of the river channel, between Oregon and Washington. When I looked across the water, firmly standing on the levee by my school, the island looked like a magic place to me. It was sandy and flat, covered with small trees and bushes. I was just sure if only I could go there, that it would be so special. In my imagination, I even thought that there might be buried treasure.
I finally got to explore the island as a teenager, when Dad got a ski boat that we took out on weekends for a few summers. We went boating and water skiing on the Columbia. It was fun to sit down to a picnic of Mother’s fried chicken on that island or others, but it was not magic and I didn’t find any buried treasure!
Portland Meadows Horse Racing Track was also in our area. At Columbia Grade School, children of people working with the horses would attend the part of the year that the racing was taking place. I even got to present a winning horse with a blanket one Valentine’s Day, but that was when I was a teenager.
So, where my family lived was so different from homogenous housing tracts of today, or the city neighborhoods of the 1950’s. There was farming, raising cows and horses, golfing, boating, and horse racing. Slightly further away, was the Portland Airport and the Air Force Air Base. At the edge of the area, there was cookie and cracker maker, Nabisco, a meat packing plant, and the fun and amazing amusement park, Jantzen Beach on Hayden Island. And, finally, there was one of my favorite places, where I took English riding lessons for a short time, the Columbia Riding Academy, also on Hayden Island.
I like to think that the area we lived in, on that Columbia River flood plane, was like a mirror for G.I. Joe’s. Both store and neighborhood offered such a variety of treasures that could be enjoyed in creative ways. They were both wonderful places and not fancy or pretentious, really “down home.” And, that is the way my Dad was too.
With almost everything around us being named Columbia, it is obvious that the Columbia River dominated the area.
My family, along with other residents on the flood plain, paid a lot of attention to the river and its many moods, especially in the spring. That was the time of the snow melt and spring runoff, when the Columbia ran fast, swelled with new volume. How fast was the melt? How high was the river? How many feet to the top of the levee?
In the late fall and winter, we would keep tabs on the snow pack in the mountains. Would there be a lot of snow this year? What would the temperatures be? Would there be a rapid melt off with a sudden change in temperature?
Obviously, we studied the Columbia and its origins, because it could personally affect us. The 1948 Vanport Flood was too fresh in everyone’s minds. There was an unspoken question in our minds, every spring. “Would the river flood this year?”
But, instead of voicing this worry, we would focus on things that could be measured, like river height, or feet or inches from the levee’s top. That fear of flooding was the downside of living close to the Columbia, before all the dams had been built.
The upside for me was that I became more attuned to nature than if I had lived in a typical suburb. I loved that river, and still do today. Its power and majesty in those days, as it rolled to the sea, is something that is still deep in my heart.
In fact, I find it a little hard to drive up the Columbia Gorge today, and look at the placid river, tamed by all those hydroelectric dams. I know that it is the Columbia’s potential to run fast and gloriously, filled with salmon. That is what I see in my mind’s eye.
As an aside, Mom and Dad took David and me up the Columbia Gorge in order to see Native Americans fishing the traditional way at Celilo Falls. It was awe-inspiring to see the fishermen with their nets and spears, standing on the flimsy wooden platforms above the crashing, roiling water!
I believe that that was the last spring salmon run through Celilo Falls, before the fishing site was destroyed forever. The Dalles Dam, upon it's completion in 1957, backed up the river and inundated the falls and fishing site.
All of us who live in the Northwest, lost a tremendous treasure with the destruction of Celilo Falls. While watching the fishermen back then,, I didn’t understand the significance of what my brother and I were seeing. I am just grateful that my parents had the foresight to take us to witness an important part of Pacific Northwest history. I am also grateful that I got to take part in that last celebration of spring and fishing and renewal, even in the small way of being an observer of 11 or 12 years old.
Today, I think of that roar of Celilo Falls as a hymn to the Creator by the Umatilla, Yakima, Warm Springs, and Nez Perce Tribes, the Native Americans who fished there for generations beyond count. While we may not hear that magnificent reverberation of falling water with our ears any more, it still exists somewhere. And, I believe that those of us who hold the Columbia River in our hearts, no matter who we are, also share in that continued hymn.
In the 1950’s, G.I. Joe’s was an especially fun place to visit. You never knew what surprise thing you were going to find in one of the bins. Part of the fun was trying to figure out how you could use your “finds.”
Years later, adults would sometimes talk to me about visiting the store with their fathers when they were kids. They would tell me what a treat it had been, and of special treasures they had found. After listening to these stories, it became clear to me, that to go to the store on a rainy Saturday was an event.
But, I believe it was more than just a fun place. Looking back, G.I. Joe’s represented a wave of the future for the Northwest, because so much of the G.I. surplus was a prototype for recreational sporting goods that had not been developed yet. The products sold at the store obviously were not used by customers for their original purpose, which was military action. Instead, they were used to get out in nature, or in creative ways, like making a wading pool out of a rubber raft.
Also, the store sold more than army/navy surplus, and this made it different from many similar stores. There were always the cigarettes, hardware, and heavy equipment in the product mix, and shoes were added early on. The variety of products made it very hard to categorize the business.
I would say that the area where my family lived the first four years of the store’s existence was very hard to categorize too. There was farmland to the rear of us, and between our house and the business. These were cucumber fields that were crop-dusted by small airplanes, with the mature cucumbers being picked by jail inmates.
Across the street, a dairy cow grazed in a field, which was part of a small, family farm. David and I got to be friends with the kids who lived there with their grandparents for a while. We would go over to the hay-filled barn some late afternoons at milking time, and the farmer was kind enough to let us try milking. These neighbors also raised chickens. That is where we would go to buy eggs.
Next door, there was a dog kennel named the Flo-Bob. These neighbors raised cocker spaniels and that is where we got our darling puppy, Tarps.
I am sure there were all sorts of critters on the land, but what stands out in my memory are pheasants, red winged blackbirds and caterpillars. The adult male pheasants were multicolored and glorious, as they flew across the sky, or searched for food in the back forty. One afternoon, I looked out our kitchen window to the neighbor’s weeping willow tree, and saw that it was covered with pheasants! A number of them were perched in the tree! It looked like a scene on a blue and white plate from China.
The red winged blackbirds, with their distinctive call, could be seen and heard, as they perched on stalks in the slough, on David’s and my walk to school. I loved to see the flash of crimson as they flew from one cattail to another.
As for the fuzzy caterpillars, soft to the touch, they formed a colony in the birch tree in our backyard. However, they proved no match for the G.I. flame thrower.
There were many wonderful things about living in this Columbia River area, but what I did not like were the small sloughs. They ran on one side of the road going to David’s and my school, and on both sides of the road going to the store. These sloughs were 3 or 4 feet wide, filled with turgid, brown water. I was always concerned about the possibility of falling in.
Adding to the area’s mix, was a golf course and the Columbia River Yacht Club, which we passed on our way to school. .
Some schoolmates lived in homes along the river, their yards sloping down to the water. Many of these homes had been flooded in 1948, just like our home. There was also an anchorage with a network of docks below the yacht club. That was a fun place for me to go sometimes, with my friend, Nancy Sells, whose father had a boat repair business there.
But, one place I did not go was to the island in the middle of the river channel, between Oregon and Washington. When I looked across the water, firmly standing on the levee by my school, the island looked like a magic place to me. It was sandy and flat, covered with small trees and bushes. I was just sure if only I could go there, that it would be so special. In my imagination, I even thought that there might be buried treasure.
I finally got to explore the island as a teenager, when Dad got a ski boat that we took out on weekends for a few summers. We went boating and water skiing on the Columbia. It was fun to sit down to a picnic of Mother’s fried chicken on that island or others, but it was not magic and I didn’t find any buried treasure!
Portland Meadows Horse Racing Track was also in our area. At Columbia Grade School, children of people working with the horses would attend the part of the year that the racing was taking place. I even got to present a winning horse with a blanket one Valentine’s Day, but that was when I was a teenager.
So, where my family lived was so different from homogenous housing tracts of today, or the city neighborhoods of the 1950’s. There was farming, raising cows and horses, golfing, boating, and horse racing. Slightly further away, was the Portland Airport and the Air Force Air Base. At the edge of the area, there was cookie and cracker maker, Nabisco, a meat packing plant, and the fun and amazing amusement park, Jantzen Beach on Hayden Island. And, finally, there was one of my favorite places, where I took English riding lessons for a short time, the Columbia Riding Academy, also on Hayden Island.
I like to think that the area we lived in, on that Columbia River flood plane, was like a mirror for G.I. Joe’s. Both store and neighborhood offered such a variety of treasures that could be enjoyed in creative ways. They were both wonderful places and not fancy or pretentious, really “down home.” And, that is the way my Dad was too.
With almost everything around us being named Columbia, it is obvious that the Columbia River dominated the area.
My family, along with other residents on the flood plain, paid a lot of attention to the river and its many moods, especially in the spring. That was the time of the snow melt and spring runoff, when the Columbia ran fast, swelled with new volume. How fast was the melt? How high was the river? How many feet to the top of the levee?
In the late fall and winter, we would keep tabs on the snow pack in the mountains. Would there be a lot of snow this year? What would the temperatures be? Would there be a rapid melt off with a sudden change in temperature?
Obviously, we studied the Columbia and its origins, because it could personally affect us. The 1948 Vanport Flood was too fresh in everyone’s minds. There was an unspoken question in our minds, every spring. “Would the river flood this year?”
But, instead of voicing this worry, we would focus on things that could be measured, like river height, or feet or inches from the levee’s top. That fear of flooding was the downside of living close to the Columbia, before all the dams had been built.
The upside for me was that I became more attuned to nature than if I had lived in a typical suburb. I loved that river, and still do today. Its power and majesty in those days, as it rolled to the sea, is something that is still deep in my heart.
In fact, I find it a little hard to drive up the Columbia Gorge today, and look at the placid river, tamed by all those hydroelectric dams. I know that it is the Columbia’s potential to run fast and gloriously, filled with salmon. That is what I see in my mind’s eye.
As an aside, Mom and Dad took David and me up the Columbia Gorge in order to see Native Americans fishing the traditional way at Celilo Falls. It was awe-inspiring to see the fishermen with their nets and spears, standing on the flimsy wooden platforms above the crashing, roiling water!
I believe that that was the last spring salmon run through Celilo Falls, before the fishing site was destroyed forever. The Dalles Dam, upon it's completion in 1957, backed up the river and inundated the falls and fishing site.
All of us who live in the Northwest, lost a tremendous treasure with the destruction of Celilo Falls. While watching the fishermen back then,, I didn’t understand the significance of what my brother and I were seeing. I am just grateful that my parents had the foresight to take us to witness an important part of Pacific Northwest history. I am also grateful that I got to take part in that last celebration of spring and fishing and renewal, even in the small way of being an observer of 11 or 12 years old.
Today, I think of that roar of Celilo Falls as a hymn to the Creator by the Umatilla, Yakima, Warm Springs, and Nez Perce Tribes, the Native Americans who fished there for generations beyond count. While we may not hear that magnificent reverberation of falling water with our ears any more, it still exists somewhere. And, I believe that those of us who hold the Columbia River in our hearts, no matter who we are, also share in that continued hymn.
Part IV
Store Growth and Family Change
In 1956, there was one more flood scare for those of us who lived on the Columbia River flood plain. The threat was so critical, that Dad cabled our house to its foundation. He looped heavy cable over the roof and attached it, front and back, to the cement base.
Mom and Dad decided it was best if only Dad stayed in the house while the river was so high. That is when Mom took David and me on one of the most fun vacations kids could have. We drove off to Southern California, to be away from danger, and went to Disneyland, which had just opened the year before.
Meanwhile, Dad remained. If the Columbia were to break through or over the levees, there would not be much warning. So, Dad slept on the second floor, and had a G.I. life raft tied on the roof, just outside the bedroom window. Once again, army surplus came in handy!
With much relief and gratitude, there was no flood that year, and Dad could remove the life raft from the roof.
That was also the summer that we moved from Columbia Avenue, to a home on the eastside of Portland, close to 82nd Avenue. We were near the future site of Madison High School, which was in the process of being built.
Living there was a huge change for my brother and me. For one thing, we had sidewalks. I loved to ride my bike on the sidewalks, because it was so smooth, and we had not had them at our old house. Both Gregory Heights Grade School and Madison were only a block away, making it so easy to get to school. And, there were no more sloughs to walk by on the way
There were a lot of neighborhood kids for David and I to play with, and that first summer on Sacramento Street was so fun for me. Some kids stopped by our new house to introduce themselves, and groups of us would bike around the neighborhood, and play hide-and-seek at dusk.
My brother and I had wonderful friends on Columbia Avenue and nearby, but we did not live close enough to form a bicycle gang. Friends were much more scattered, and there were not so many streets.
Things were changing at G.I. Joe’s, too. About that time, Dad and the store were invited to join World Wide Distributors, based in Seattle. This was a buying group that pooled orders of different surplus stores together, so that they could get a better wholesale price on items. G.I. Joe’s was the fourth World Wide member. The first three member stores were in Washington. They were Yard Birds in Chehalis, Bob’s Surplus in Longview, and Winter’s Surplus in Seattle.
It was fortunate that G.I. Joe’s was a World Wide member, because, in 1961, the army stopped making surplus available, according to my brother. The threat of possible military conflict was stirred up by the building of the Berlin Wall by the Russians. Therefore, Dad was forced to secure all his merchandise from commercial sources.
During that time, Dad did not expand to other locations. Instead he kept expanding the store on North Vancouver Avenue and made it two-story. However, being very cautious, he made the last large addition like a warehouse, so that it could be leased out in case the expanded retail was not successful.
When I was 17 years old, it was in that expanded store that I worked the next summer. A fun part of the day happened when Dad was took the bank deposit up Vancouver Avenue to Walnut Park. Then, either Chuck or Stan, the manager and assistant manager of the shoe department would say, “How’s the weather in Glaucamora?” If the weather was great, that meant Dad was out of the store making the deposit, and out would come the thermoses filled with coffee, from under the counter.
This was all done with great good cheer, so I have to think it was all a game. I liked working there. One reason was that Stan’s daughter worked there too, so we could visit on breaks.
Dad started a policy at the time of hiring high school students to work part-time. This worked out well for the company, because some stayed on after graduation, and moved into management positions as the company grew. Norm Daniels, who became CEO of G.I. Joe’s in the 1990’s, and then bought out the store from my brother in 1998, started working for the company in this way. I believe this was after I had gone away to college.
My favorite item from the store when I was in high school, was an army surplus parka liner, that we called a “bear coat.” It was wonderful! It slipped over my head, and was made of brownish fake fur, with real fur, probably rabbit, around my face when I had the hood on. It was great to wear while slogging in the rain.
Dad loved the challenge of making the store the best it could be. I remember him in the evenings, working on floor layouts for merchandise, while the rest of the family watched TV. And, you could see he worked on it because he loved it, not because it was something he should do.
In 1962, I graduated from high school, and went on to attend Stanford for a year, and then came back to Portland State College for a few years. Two years after me, David graduated, and then attended University of Oregon. In 1965, I became pretty removed from the store, when I married and moved away from Portland until 1978.
It was in this period that Stores Number 2 and Number 3 were built just down the street from the first store, on North Vancouver Avenue. These stores were concrete tilt-up, with very high ceilings, so that they could be turned into warehouses if the expansion did not work. Dad was adding to the merchandise selection at this time. There was a huge toy department at Christmas. And he sold foam rubber for projects, and even fabric for a while.
When I visited Mom and Dad from California, I would always go out to G.I. Joe’s, to see what was going on. Dad and I would lunch at Waddle’s at Jantzen Beach, just like my family used to do when I was a kid. The big difference was that I did not get a bib with a duck on it as an adult!
In 1970, the first branch store was built at 184th and S.E. Stark , in Portland. The merchandise varied for about two years, as the store slowly discontinued selling labor-intensive items, like foam rubber, plastic and glass. It was also in 1970 that my brother David, who had joined the business, started the first jean store, in front of the original store North Portland store.
In 1972, the Oak Grove store opened on McGlaughlin Blvd., and in 1974, G.I. Joe’s opened a store in the Beaverton Mall. This was the first location in a shopping center, and it was extremely successful.
In the fall of 1976, the largest store yet opened in Salem, Oregon, with a selling area of 55,000 square feet. This was a test to see if the company could sell outside the immediate Portland area. The answer was yes.
Shortly after the Salem opening, I came back to Portland to see my dad. In the spring of 1976, he had found out that he had cancer and had immediately started receiving chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
I will always remember that fall visit with him, because it was the last time I saw him, before he went into the hospital. He took me to see the new Salem store, of which he was so proud. At the rear of the store, where trucks full of merchandise were unloaded, I got to see a great example of my dad in action.
There was a trash bin back there, and above it a handwritten sign, saying something like, “Put your trash in here, or else!” Dad ripped it off the wall, wadded it up, and tossed it in the trash. His comment was, “I won’t have anything negative in the store!”
We also went to Wilsonville during my visit, so that he could show me the land G.I. Joe’s had bought for a new distribution center. The company had just purchased a large parcel right off the I-5, with a railroad spur on it. Again, he was so proud of it, because it was a great location from which to move merchandise, to help the company grow.
He passed away later in the year, at 61 years of age.
In my sadness, I could be glad that he had lived to see his company expand to four locations in the Portland area, and on into Salem. And, he lived to see sales of $30 million a year, according to his obituary in The Oregonian. I could be glad that he was a part of preparing for further expansion, with the purchase of land for a new distribution center. And, I could be glad that my brother, David, had worked in the business for a number of years and was ready to take the leadership role in the company.
The main focus of my father, Edward Orkney, from the time he left the Army Air Corps in 1945, was to build a business, and he did. Money and possessions did not seem to interest him much. Instead, it was the challenge of creating something solid that was important to him. Also important to him was that, even after his death, G.I. Joe’s could continue to be a resource to the community, and offer security to the employees who had helped in its creation.
All I can say, today is, “Thanks, Dad.” You and Mom continue to be an inspiration to me. How you, together, built something out of nothing, and had the courage to keep on trying till it worked.
And, I have great appreciation for my brother, David Orkney, who stepped up to be CEO and Chairman of the Board, upon the death of our father. He led G.I. Joe’s through hugely challenging years, with store growth throughout Oregon and Washington, including into the Seattle area.
In 1992, longtime employee, Norm Daniels, took over as CEO, while my brother remained Chairman of the Board. Then, in 1998, Norm led a management buyout and took over as Chairman and majority owner.
And so, the store continued on, with new ownership. Ownership again changed in 2007when Norm Daniels sold the company to San Francisco-based Gryphon Investors, but stayed on as CEO. With the change in ownership, came a change in the store's name. Even though the business had been named G.I. Joe's for fifty-five years, management decided to change it. The name the came up with was Joe's Sports, Outdoors and More.
In 2008, the leadership changed further, and Norm Daniels was replaced as CEO by Hal Smith, former CEO of Bass Pro Shops.
The G.I. Joe's story ended in 2009, with Joe's Sports filing a Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in March. According to the terms of the bankruptcy, the business had one month to find a buyer. No buyer came forward for Joe's Sports, Outdoors and More and the business was liquidated shortly thereafter.
A Pacific Northwest institution was gone, just two years after investors from outside the region bought it.
I believe that the removal in 2007 of the "G.I." from the beginning of the store name, is deeply symbolic. It showed that the new owners and continuing old management, did not really get what the store was about. Customers understood, but top management did not.
It makes me sad.
But, this is way after my time of involvement with the store, and I will put recent events behind me. What I most remember are the fun times, when G.I. Joe’s sold mostly army surplus, and it was my job to “neaten” the bins.
In 1956, there was one more flood scare for those of us who lived on the Columbia River flood plain. The threat was so critical, that Dad cabled our house to its foundation. He looped heavy cable over the roof and attached it, front and back, to the cement base.
Mom and Dad decided it was best if only Dad stayed in the house while the river was so high. That is when Mom took David and me on one of the most fun vacations kids could have. We drove off to Southern California, to be away from danger, and went to Disneyland, which had just opened the year before.
Meanwhile, Dad remained. If the Columbia were to break through or over the levees, there would not be much warning. So, Dad slept on the second floor, and had a G.I. life raft tied on the roof, just outside the bedroom window. Once again, army surplus came in handy!
With much relief and gratitude, there was no flood that year, and Dad could remove the life raft from the roof.
That was also the summer that we moved from Columbia Avenue, to a home on the eastside of Portland, close to 82nd Avenue. We were near the future site of Madison High School, which was in the process of being built.
Living there was a huge change for my brother and me. For one thing, we had sidewalks. I loved to ride my bike on the sidewalks, because it was so smooth, and we had not had them at our old house. Both Gregory Heights Grade School and Madison were only a block away, making it so easy to get to school. And, there were no more sloughs to walk by on the way
There were a lot of neighborhood kids for David and I to play with, and that first summer on Sacramento Street was so fun for me. Some kids stopped by our new house to introduce themselves, and groups of us would bike around the neighborhood, and play hide-and-seek at dusk.
My brother and I had wonderful friends on Columbia Avenue and nearby, but we did not live close enough to form a bicycle gang. Friends were much more scattered, and there were not so many streets.
Things were changing at G.I. Joe’s, too. About that time, Dad and the store were invited to join World Wide Distributors, based in Seattle. This was a buying group that pooled orders of different surplus stores together, so that they could get a better wholesale price on items. G.I. Joe’s was the fourth World Wide member. The first three member stores were in Washington. They were Yard Birds in Chehalis, Bob’s Surplus in Longview, and Winter’s Surplus in Seattle.
It was fortunate that G.I. Joe’s was a World Wide member, because, in 1961, the army stopped making surplus available, according to my brother. The threat of possible military conflict was stirred up by the building of the Berlin Wall by the Russians. Therefore, Dad was forced to secure all his merchandise from commercial sources.
During that time, Dad did not expand to other locations. Instead he kept expanding the store on North Vancouver Avenue and made it two-story. However, being very cautious, he made the last large addition like a warehouse, so that it could be leased out in case the expanded retail was not successful.
When I was 17 years old, it was in that expanded store that I worked the next summer. A fun part of the day happened when Dad was took the bank deposit up Vancouver Avenue to Walnut Park. Then, either Chuck or Stan, the manager and assistant manager of the shoe department would say, “How’s the weather in Glaucamora?” If the weather was great, that meant Dad was out of the store making the deposit, and out would come the thermoses filled with coffee, from under the counter.
This was all done with great good cheer, so I have to think it was all a game. I liked working there. One reason was that Stan’s daughter worked there too, so we could visit on breaks.
Dad started a policy at the time of hiring high school students to work part-time. This worked out well for the company, because some stayed on after graduation, and moved into management positions as the company grew. Norm Daniels, who became CEO of G.I. Joe’s in the 1990’s, and then bought out the store from my brother in 1998, started working for the company in this way. I believe this was after I had gone away to college.
My favorite item from the store when I was in high school, was an army surplus parka liner, that we called a “bear coat.” It was wonderful! It slipped over my head, and was made of brownish fake fur, with real fur, probably rabbit, around my face when I had the hood on. It was great to wear while slogging in the rain.
Dad loved the challenge of making the store the best it could be. I remember him in the evenings, working on floor layouts for merchandise, while the rest of the family watched TV. And, you could see he worked on it because he loved it, not because it was something he should do.
In 1962, I graduated from high school, and went on to attend Stanford for a year, and then came back to Portland State College for a few years. Two years after me, David graduated, and then attended University of Oregon. In 1965, I became pretty removed from the store, when I married and moved away from Portland until 1978.
It was in this period that Stores Number 2 and Number 3 were built just down the street from the first store, on North Vancouver Avenue. These stores were concrete tilt-up, with very high ceilings, so that they could be turned into warehouses if the expansion did not work. Dad was adding to the merchandise selection at this time. There was a huge toy department at Christmas. And he sold foam rubber for projects, and even fabric for a while.
When I visited Mom and Dad from California, I would always go out to G.I. Joe’s, to see what was going on. Dad and I would lunch at Waddle’s at Jantzen Beach, just like my family used to do when I was a kid. The big difference was that I did not get a bib with a duck on it as an adult!
In 1970, the first branch store was built at 184th and S.E. Stark , in Portland. The merchandise varied for about two years, as the store slowly discontinued selling labor-intensive items, like foam rubber, plastic and glass. It was also in 1970 that my brother David, who had joined the business, started the first jean store, in front of the original store North Portland store.
In 1972, the Oak Grove store opened on McGlaughlin Blvd., and in 1974, G.I. Joe’s opened a store in the Beaverton Mall. This was the first location in a shopping center, and it was extremely successful.
In the fall of 1976, the largest store yet opened in Salem, Oregon, with a selling area of 55,000 square feet. This was a test to see if the company could sell outside the immediate Portland area. The answer was yes.
Shortly after the Salem opening, I came back to Portland to see my dad. In the spring of 1976, he had found out that he had cancer and had immediately started receiving chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
I will always remember that fall visit with him, because it was the last time I saw him, before he went into the hospital. He took me to see the new Salem store, of which he was so proud. At the rear of the store, where trucks full of merchandise were unloaded, I got to see a great example of my dad in action.
There was a trash bin back there, and above it a handwritten sign, saying something like, “Put your trash in here, or else!” Dad ripped it off the wall, wadded it up, and tossed it in the trash. His comment was, “I won’t have anything negative in the store!”
We also went to Wilsonville during my visit, so that he could show me the land G.I. Joe’s had bought for a new distribution center. The company had just purchased a large parcel right off the I-5, with a railroad spur on it. Again, he was so proud of it, because it was a great location from which to move merchandise, to help the company grow.
He passed away later in the year, at 61 years of age.
In my sadness, I could be glad that he had lived to see his company expand to four locations in the Portland area, and on into Salem. And, he lived to see sales of $30 million a year, according to his obituary in The Oregonian. I could be glad that he was a part of preparing for further expansion, with the purchase of land for a new distribution center. And, I could be glad that my brother, David, had worked in the business for a number of years and was ready to take the leadership role in the company.
The main focus of my father, Edward Orkney, from the time he left the Army Air Corps in 1945, was to build a business, and he did. Money and possessions did not seem to interest him much. Instead, it was the challenge of creating something solid that was important to him. Also important to him was that, even after his death, G.I. Joe’s could continue to be a resource to the community, and offer security to the employees who had helped in its creation.
All I can say, today is, “Thanks, Dad.” You and Mom continue to be an inspiration to me. How you, together, built something out of nothing, and had the courage to keep on trying till it worked.
And, I have great appreciation for my brother, David Orkney, who stepped up to be CEO and Chairman of the Board, upon the death of our father. He led G.I. Joe’s through hugely challenging years, with store growth throughout Oregon and Washington, including into the Seattle area.
In 1992, longtime employee, Norm Daniels, took over as CEO, while my brother remained Chairman of the Board. Then, in 1998, Norm led a management buyout and took over as Chairman and majority owner.
And so, the store continued on, with new ownership. Ownership again changed in 2007when Norm Daniels sold the company to San Francisco-based Gryphon Investors, but stayed on as CEO. With the change in ownership, came a change in the store's name. Even though the business had been named G.I. Joe's for fifty-five years, management decided to change it. The name the came up with was Joe's Sports, Outdoors and More.
In 2008, the leadership changed further, and Norm Daniels was replaced as CEO by Hal Smith, former CEO of Bass Pro Shops.
The G.I. Joe's story ended in 2009, with Joe's Sports filing a Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in March. According to the terms of the bankruptcy, the business had one month to find a buyer. No buyer came forward for Joe's Sports, Outdoors and More and the business was liquidated shortly thereafter.
A Pacific Northwest institution was gone, just two years after investors from outside the region bought it.
I believe that the removal in 2007 of the "G.I." from the beginning of the store name, is deeply symbolic. It showed that the new owners and continuing old management, did not really get what the store was about. Customers understood, but top management did not.
It makes me sad.
But, this is way after my time of involvement with the store, and I will put recent events behind me. What I most remember are the fun times, when G.I. Joe’s sold mostly army surplus, and it was my job to “neaten” the bins.
Part V
Edward Orkney’s Story
What made my father pursue a dream of having his own store? Why didn’t he return from serving in the Army Air Corps during World War II and go back to college on the G.I. Bill, as so many veterans did? Then, jobs would have opened up to him.
Instead, his dream inspired him to go-for-broke. He was involved with the startup of at least 3 stores that did not work out, prior to G.I. Joe’s. This was not an easy path for a man with a young family to support.
I can only guess what his motivation was, because he didn’t say. In general, men of his generation did not talk about their feelings and dreams, especially to their kids. Instead, they simply set out to be providers for their families and did not talk about it.
For some history, my dad, Edward Malcolm Orkney, was born in 1915 to Mary and Roydon Orkney. His mother, Mary, was very artistic and studied painting in San Francisco and Paris. Dad’s father, Roydon, was a businessman and one who was willing to take risks. They met and married in the San Jose, California area in 1900. Around 1907, Roydon and Mary relocated from San Jose, to the boomtown of Lloydminster, Saskatchewan in Canada, and Roydon started a mercantile store. Eventually, they traveled across the Canadian prairie with their three boys, to Edmonton, Alberta, where Roydon opened another dry goods store. Then, he opened yet another store in the growing town of Edson, Alberta, and the last one he started was in Prince Rupert, British Columbia.
My uncle, Sydney Orkney shared this information with my cousin, Mary Orkney Conlon. What Uncle Syd did not share was how long the stores were in operation and when they were closed. My uncle did say that the Gold Rush in Alaska was quite a lure for my grandfather. He and a business friend decided to go seek their fortune there. Roydon left Dad’s mother, Mary, in charge of whatever stores remained while he was gone.
They did not find gold. Roydon returned and eventually sold the last store which was in Edmonton, and the family moved to Hoquiam, Washington. Hoquiam/Aberdeen was another booming area because of logging, and Roydon opened a general store there.
It was in Hoquiam that Dad was born in 1915, the youngest of six brothers. The stock market crash of 1929 happened shortly before he turned 14. The Great Depression, which followed the crash, and lasted until World War II, really made an impact on him.
One consequence of the Depression was that it was hard for Dad to get a college degree. At least 2 of his older brothers graduated from the University of Washington, and went on to find good jobs. When it was Dad’s time to go to college, he also went to the University of Washington, but had to work full-time to pay for it. He eventually dropped out to look for better-paying work.
Dad joined the Army Reserves in 1941, according to my aunt, Joey Hadfield (who incidentally, owned G.I. Stores in Salem in the 1960’s and 1970’s). After World War II started, Dad‘s service status was changed from the Reserves to the regular army.
Also around that time, my father met my mother, Charmian Munson, in a bookkeeping class in Hoquiam, and in 1942, they married.
In the army my father took the test for Officers’ Training and passed, and he was accepted into the Army Air Corps. He became a pilot and flew 52 bombing missions in the South Pacific, before he returned to civilian life in 1945.
I know that, after the war, the goal of financial security was a major motivation for my father. His difficulties in getting an advanced education and finding good work, as a young adult during the Depression, must have been central in his mind.
Dad’s family history of having his father open a series of at least five general stores, must have also encouraged his dream. I am sure that his father’s example made it seem a possible thing to do.
I have also heard through my family that my father was in friendly competition with his older brothers, especially James. Sadly two of his brothers died in their thirties, Donald in an Army Air Corps glider crash at the end of World War II and Douglas in an auto accident. That left Dad with three older brothers.
These brothers were Woolston, James and Sydney. Woolston, or Cork as he was nicknamed, was a salesman in Los Angeles. Jim and Syd lived in Yakima and were eventual partners in a successful insurance brokerage that Jim and another partner had started in 1937. After the war, Jim also opened a real estate agency, and briefly owned a sand and gravel company. But Jim’s largest venture was hop farming, which he began doing in the early 1940’s. My cousin Bruce Orkney, told me that his father, Jim, was the largest independent hop grower in the Yakima Valley at one time. And, this was when Yakima was the largest hop growing region in the country!
So Dad had the success of his older brothers to look up to and aspire to. I think this gave him the incentive to start his own business. What qualities did he possess that help him in this venture?
The first quality I would point to was his brain power. My dad was very intelligent. He told me he would devour library books when growing up. As my cousin Bruce, wrote to me, “We would occasionally visit Dad’s family and all five of his brothers in Hoquiam. This was in the mid to late 30’s before the war broke out.”
Bruce continued, “It was always fascinating for me to be around these Orkneys. They seemed to always be involved in heated discussions about most everything; world affairs, the economy, business, etc, and especially politics. The conversations were fun and always spirited.”
“I remember your grandmother Mary saying how much Ed enjoyed reading. She pointed to a particular chair where he usually sat, always engrossed in a book. She said he would have a big dictionary next to him and looked up every word he didn’t know.”
This background of heated family discussions must have helped him in business to analyze situations and trends. Also, his constant reading showed a desire for knowledge.
Dad had leadership qualities. Obviously, taking the Officers’ Training Course and going into the Army Air Corps helped develop his potential as a leader. And, as a B-24 bomber pilot in New Guinea in 1943 and 1944, he was squadron leader and then group squadron leader. He climbed the ranks to Captain before his discharge.
Another quality my father had was modesty. Bragging was not something he did. A simple statement of the facts was OK, but not drawing attention to oneself. I know that for at least the first 10 years and probably more, G.I. Joe’s did not buy advertising in newspapers or on the radio. Rather, Dad depended on word-of-mouth, or simply the great location of the North Portland store, so close to the Washington/Oregon Interstate Bridge. I believe that Dad not advertising in the early years, was a natural outgrowth of his modesty and basic quietness.
Dad had a great sense of responsibility for, not only his family, but for his employees. My brother, David, and I were talking recently and he told me something I find amazing. David said that in 1965, Dad invited the Retail Clerks Union to talk to employees about unionizing. This was because Dad wanted them to have good health benefits, which would be available through the union. At that time, there was just one location and not enough employees to get a good insurance plan through the business. While this action was in the employees’ best interests, I wonder how many other bosses would have done this.
Another action Dad took to benefit people who worked for him, was to start an employee stock purchase plan, after the business changed to a corporation in the early 1960’s. I can remember him talking about how he wanted to share the success of the company with those who had helped build it.
My brother suggested to me that Dad’s feeling of responsibility could have originated from his time of serving as a bomber pilot in World War II. First, there was the desire to contribute to a victory in the war, which any member of the armed services must have felt.
But as a B-24 bomber pilot, David thinks Dad felt responsible, not only for the war effort, but also for the lives of his 11 crew members. It was his job to get them back safely from a mission. He was then promoted to squadron leader, and the safety of the crews of the 9 other planes in the squadron became his responsibility, too. And, with the promotion to group squadron leader, that responsibility was again multiplied.
It must have been a natural progression from the Army Air Corps to G.I. Joe’s, for Dad to feel a responsibility for the well-being of people working for him.
Finally, there was my father, Edward Orkney’s appreciation of nature and the outdoors. He grew up in Hoquiam, surrounded by the magnificent moderate rain forest of the Pacific Northwest, even though it was being cut down at a rapid rate when he was growing up. Hoquiam was on the coast, too, at Grays Harbor, so the ocean was part of his childhood. And, his mother Mary’s father had a cabin on Hood’s Canal, where the family would spend summers. They would go clamming for abundant butter clams, or wait for the shrimp boat to come by, with fresh-caught shrimp to sell.
Dad did not hunt or fish, like so many of his customers did. Maybe he did not have time for it because of his responsibilities. But he did go hiking. Mom, Dad, and David and I would sometimes hike up to the top of Multnomah Falls around 1961.
G.I. Joe’s relationship with the outdoors was emphasized in the early 1970’s on the outside of one of the North Portland stores. A huge map of the Columbia Gorge, along with a smaller one of the Mt. Hood National Forest, dominated the wall in front of the parking lot. The business slogan at that time was, “The Outdoor World of G.I. Joe’s.”
In looking back to the beginnings of “the store,” I think my dad, Edward Orkney, had many qualities that helped him create G.I. Joe’s. Some of these qualities were his intelligence, belief in himself, and leadership abilities. He also knew that it was possible to start a business, with the examples of his father and brother going into business for themselves. And, extremely important, he had the constant support of my mother, Charmian Orkney. All of this made it possible for him to continue through many startups and setbacks, until he and G.I. Joe’s were a success.
But, I think that G.I. Joe’s also kept growing because it offered products that matched how people lived in the Northwest. Most people in Oregon and Washington love to be outdoors whether they are hiking, camping, fishing, or hunting. The original army surplus store supplied the goods to do this, like sleeping bags, tents, boots, and knapsacks, which were the prototype of today’s recreational sporting goods.
Dad’s lifelong appreciation of nature helped him to see how these G.I. surplus goods would be popular with Northwesterners.
I also think Dad’s modesty matched a basic Northwest trait. That helped make his presentation of the business work for his customers. He did not advertise in the early days. Customers had to find G.I. Joe’s on their own. Also, employees were not pushy. The store slogan was, “come in and browse around.”
And, browse around, they did. I think customers had fun in the process. I know that I did.
What made my father pursue a dream of having his own store? Why didn’t he return from serving in the Army Air Corps during World War II and go back to college on the G.I. Bill, as so many veterans did? Then, jobs would have opened up to him.
Instead, his dream inspired him to go-for-broke. He was involved with the startup of at least 3 stores that did not work out, prior to G.I. Joe’s. This was not an easy path for a man with a young family to support.
I can only guess what his motivation was, because he didn’t say. In general, men of his generation did not talk about their feelings and dreams, especially to their kids. Instead, they simply set out to be providers for their families and did not talk about it.
For some history, my dad, Edward Malcolm Orkney, was born in 1915 to Mary and Roydon Orkney. His mother, Mary, was very artistic and studied painting in San Francisco and Paris. Dad’s father, Roydon, was a businessman and one who was willing to take risks. They met and married in the San Jose, California area in 1900. Around 1907, Roydon and Mary relocated from San Jose, to the boomtown of Lloydminster, Saskatchewan in Canada, and Roydon started a mercantile store. Eventually, they traveled across the Canadian prairie with their three boys, to Edmonton, Alberta, where Roydon opened another dry goods store. Then, he opened yet another store in the growing town of Edson, Alberta, and the last one he started was in Prince Rupert, British Columbia.
My uncle, Sydney Orkney shared this information with my cousin, Mary Orkney Conlon. What Uncle Syd did not share was how long the stores were in operation and when they were closed. My uncle did say that the Gold Rush in Alaska was quite a lure for my grandfather. He and a business friend decided to go seek their fortune there. Roydon left Dad’s mother, Mary, in charge of whatever stores remained while he was gone.
They did not find gold. Roydon returned and eventually sold the last store which was in Edmonton, and the family moved to Hoquiam, Washington. Hoquiam/Aberdeen was another booming area because of logging, and Roydon opened a general store there.
It was in Hoquiam that Dad was born in 1915, the youngest of six brothers. The stock market crash of 1929 happened shortly before he turned 14. The Great Depression, which followed the crash, and lasted until World War II, really made an impact on him.
One consequence of the Depression was that it was hard for Dad to get a college degree. At least 2 of his older brothers graduated from the University of Washington, and went on to find good jobs. When it was Dad’s time to go to college, he also went to the University of Washington, but had to work full-time to pay for it. He eventually dropped out to look for better-paying work.
Dad joined the Army Reserves in 1941, according to my aunt, Joey Hadfield (who incidentally, owned G.I. Stores in Salem in the 1960’s and 1970’s). After World War II started, Dad‘s service status was changed from the Reserves to the regular army.
Also around that time, my father met my mother, Charmian Munson, in a bookkeeping class in Hoquiam, and in 1942, they married.
In the army my father took the test for Officers’ Training and passed, and he was accepted into the Army Air Corps. He became a pilot and flew 52 bombing missions in the South Pacific, before he returned to civilian life in 1945.
I know that, after the war, the goal of financial security was a major motivation for my father. His difficulties in getting an advanced education and finding good work, as a young adult during the Depression, must have been central in his mind.
Dad’s family history of having his father open a series of at least five general stores, must have also encouraged his dream. I am sure that his father’s example made it seem a possible thing to do.
I have also heard through my family that my father was in friendly competition with his older brothers, especially James. Sadly two of his brothers died in their thirties, Donald in an Army Air Corps glider crash at the end of World War II and Douglas in an auto accident. That left Dad with three older brothers.
These brothers were Woolston, James and Sydney. Woolston, or Cork as he was nicknamed, was a salesman in Los Angeles. Jim and Syd lived in Yakima and were eventual partners in a successful insurance brokerage that Jim and another partner had started in 1937. After the war, Jim also opened a real estate agency, and briefly owned a sand and gravel company. But Jim’s largest venture was hop farming, which he began doing in the early 1940’s. My cousin Bruce Orkney, told me that his father, Jim, was the largest independent hop grower in the Yakima Valley at one time. And, this was when Yakima was the largest hop growing region in the country!
So Dad had the success of his older brothers to look up to and aspire to. I think this gave him the incentive to start his own business. What qualities did he possess that help him in this venture?
The first quality I would point to was his brain power. My dad was very intelligent. He told me he would devour library books when growing up. As my cousin Bruce, wrote to me, “We would occasionally visit Dad’s family and all five of his brothers in Hoquiam. This was in the mid to late 30’s before the war broke out.”
Bruce continued, “It was always fascinating for me to be around these Orkneys. They seemed to always be involved in heated discussions about most everything; world affairs, the economy, business, etc, and especially politics. The conversations were fun and always spirited.”
“I remember your grandmother Mary saying how much Ed enjoyed reading. She pointed to a particular chair where he usually sat, always engrossed in a book. She said he would have a big dictionary next to him and looked up every word he didn’t know.”
This background of heated family discussions must have helped him in business to analyze situations and trends. Also, his constant reading showed a desire for knowledge.
Dad had leadership qualities. Obviously, taking the Officers’ Training Course and going into the Army Air Corps helped develop his potential as a leader. And, as a B-24 bomber pilot in New Guinea in 1943 and 1944, he was squadron leader and then group squadron leader. He climbed the ranks to Captain before his discharge.
Another quality my father had was modesty. Bragging was not something he did. A simple statement of the facts was OK, but not drawing attention to oneself. I know that for at least the first 10 years and probably more, G.I. Joe’s did not buy advertising in newspapers or on the radio. Rather, Dad depended on word-of-mouth, or simply the great location of the North Portland store, so close to the Washington/Oregon Interstate Bridge. I believe that Dad not advertising in the early years, was a natural outgrowth of his modesty and basic quietness.
Dad had a great sense of responsibility for, not only his family, but for his employees. My brother, David, and I were talking recently and he told me something I find amazing. David said that in 1965, Dad invited the Retail Clerks Union to talk to employees about unionizing. This was because Dad wanted them to have good health benefits, which would be available through the union. At that time, there was just one location and not enough employees to get a good insurance plan through the business. While this action was in the employees’ best interests, I wonder how many other bosses would have done this.
Another action Dad took to benefit people who worked for him, was to start an employee stock purchase plan, after the business changed to a corporation in the early 1960’s. I can remember him talking about how he wanted to share the success of the company with those who had helped build it.
My brother suggested to me that Dad’s feeling of responsibility could have originated from his time of serving as a bomber pilot in World War II. First, there was the desire to contribute to a victory in the war, which any member of the armed services must have felt.
But as a B-24 bomber pilot, David thinks Dad felt responsible, not only for the war effort, but also for the lives of his 11 crew members. It was his job to get them back safely from a mission. He was then promoted to squadron leader, and the safety of the crews of the 9 other planes in the squadron became his responsibility, too. And, with the promotion to group squadron leader, that responsibility was again multiplied.
It must have been a natural progression from the Army Air Corps to G.I. Joe’s, for Dad to feel a responsibility for the well-being of people working for him.
Finally, there was my father, Edward Orkney’s appreciation of nature and the outdoors. He grew up in Hoquiam, surrounded by the magnificent moderate rain forest of the Pacific Northwest, even though it was being cut down at a rapid rate when he was growing up. Hoquiam was on the coast, too, at Grays Harbor, so the ocean was part of his childhood. And, his mother Mary’s father had a cabin on Hood’s Canal, where the family would spend summers. They would go clamming for abundant butter clams, or wait for the shrimp boat to come by, with fresh-caught shrimp to sell.
Dad did not hunt or fish, like so many of his customers did. Maybe he did not have time for it because of his responsibilities. But he did go hiking. Mom, Dad, and David and I would sometimes hike up to the top of Multnomah Falls around 1961.
G.I. Joe’s relationship with the outdoors was emphasized in the early 1970’s on the outside of one of the North Portland stores. A huge map of the Columbia Gorge, along with a smaller one of the Mt. Hood National Forest, dominated the wall in front of the parking lot. The business slogan at that time was, “The Outdoor World of G.I. Joe’s.”
In looking back to the beginnings of “the store,” I think my dad, Edward Orkney, had many qualities that helped him create G.I. Joe’s. Some of these qualities were his intelligence, belief in himself, and leadership abilities. He also knew that it was possible to start a business, with the examples of his father and brother going into business for themselves. And, extremely important, he had the constant support of my mother, Charmian Orkney. All of this made it possible for him to continue through many startups and setbacks, until he and G.I. Joe’s were a success.
But, I think that G.I. Joe’s also kept growing because it offered products that matched how people lived in the Northwest. Most people in Oregon and Washington love to be outdoors whether they are hiking, camping, fishing, or hunting. The original army surplus store supplied the goods to do this, like sleeping bags, tents, boots, and knapsacks, which were the prototype of today’s recreational sporting goods.
Dad’s lifelong appreciation of nature helped him to see how these G.I. surplus goods would be popular with Northwesterners.
I also think Dad’s modesty matched a basic Northwest trait. That helped make his presentation of the business work for his customers. He did not advertise in the early days. Customers had to find G.I. Joe’s on their own. Also, employees were not pushy. The store slogan was, “come in and browse around.”
And, browse around, they did. I think customers had fun in the process. I know that I did.
Dedication
I dedicate this telling of my growing up with G.I. Joe's
to my three children, Jamil, Sam, and Laurie, so that
they can know a little bit more about their grandfather.
I know that Dad would have been proud of them, of how
they grew up and what they are doing with their lives.
I also dedicate it to all the kids who had such fun
going to G.I. Joe's looking for treasures,
especially in the Army Surplus days.
Blessings,
Janna Orkney
July 2008
Comments? Please email JannaOrkney2@yahoo.com
to my three children, Jamil, Sam, and Laurie, so that
they can know a little bit more about their grandfather.
I know that Dad would have been proud of them, of how
they grew up and what they are doing with their lives.
I also dedicate it to all the kids who had such fun
going to G.I. Joe's looking for treasures,
especially in the Army Surplus days.
Blessings,
Janna Orkney
July 2008
Comments? Please email JannaOrkney2@yahoo.com
Sources
1. My Memory
2. Conversations with my brother, David Orkney, and aunt, Joey Hadfield, in 2008
3. "Ed Orkney and G.I. Joe's," by Jan Orkney, December 16, 1980. This was a paper I wrote for Kimbark MacColl's History of Portland class at Portland State University. MacColl is the author of at least 3 books of Portland history.
4. Interviews for the above paper:
A. With my mother, Charmian Orkney Halligan, October, 1980
B. With my brother, David Orkney, October, 1980
C. With G.I. Joe's Vice President at the time, Norm Daniels, November, 1980
5. Article, "Spawned in Tent, Oregonian to Chalk Up $4-Million in "73," from The Sporting Goods Dealer Magazine, December, 1973, Pages 87-90
6. Article, "A Big Volume Specialty Retailer," from Camping Industry Magazine, March 20, 1973, 2 pages
7. Article on G.I. Joe's from the Vaugn Street Journal, August 28, 1980
8. For Dad's service in the Army Air Corp., http://www.jollyrogersweb.com/
2. Conversations with my brother, David Orkney, and aunt, Joey Hadfield, in 2008
3. "Ed Orkney and G.I. Joe's," by Jan Orkney, December 16, 1980. This was a paper I wrote for Kimbark MacColl's History of Portland class at Portland State University. MacColl is the author of at least 3 books of Portland history.
4. Interviews for the above paper:
A. With my mother, Charmian Orkney Halligan, October, 1980
B. With my brother, David Orkney, October, 1980
C. With G.I. Joe's Vice President at the time, Norm Daniels, November, 1980
5. Article, "Spawned in Tent, Oregonian to Chalk Up $4-Million in "73," from The Sporting Goods Dealer Magazine, December, 1973, Pages 87-90
6. Article, "A Big Volume Specialty Retailer," from Camping Industry Magazine, March 20, 1973, 2 pages
7. Article on G.I. Joe's from the Vaugn Street Journal, August 28, 1980
8. For Dad's service in the Army Air Corp., http://www.jollyrogersweb.com/
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