In 1986, I was fresh out of college working as an advertising copywriter with no thoughts whatsoever of working in conservation or leading a nonprofit organization. That June, I was watching a friend graduate from Columbia Bible College in Columbia, South Carolina, when the Southern Baptist Black preacher giving the commencement leaned forward on the podium and bellowed, “Your life is but a moment between two vast infinities. What are you doing with your moment?”
I was taken with his words, but they really didn’t sink in until a few years later as I was still working at that same ad agency in Michigan but had risen from copywriter to creative director. I was with our agency’s leaders driving back from an advertising pitch that our agency president had blown and wouldn’t admit. When asked how many minority staff the agency employed, our president hemmed and hawed and finally lied. By a lot. The car ride back to the office was quiet until the president asked who might know Black people who would be willing to sit in empty offices and pretend to work there when the potential client took a tour of our office. The preacher’s words from years before came roaring back to me: what are you doing with your moment?
Within months, I left advertising for the nonprofit world and it wasn’t too long after that that I found myself on my first day as interim director of Friends of the Columbia Gorge. I never would have imagined such a long-term relationship as I had never worked at a job for more than four years. I had also never run an organization and while I liked the Gorge, I didn’t love it (that would come later). But I was enamored with the origin story of Friends. I was fascinated by Friends’ founder Nancy Russell, a woman equally comfortable rubbing elbows with Portland’s wealthiest citizens as she was plotting litigation strategies with young environmental warriors. The organization was small but mighty—it had already achieved its greatest legacy in ushering through the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area.
But the staffing side of Friends needed some TLC. I inherited six staff and only one had been there longer than one year. Salaries were low and benefits were almost nonexistent. I spent the next several years trying to both “get the right people on the bus” and making Friends a place people wanted to stay. With good people who cared about the Gorge on board, we began taking on higher-profile issues and winning, from stopping casinos and destinations resorts to removing dams and coal-fired power plants. The public’s attachment to the Gorge grew and many Gorge residents who once saw the Gorge legislation as a stick to be used against them now saw it as shield, protecting them from sprawling development from the west.
With a growing organization and growing support, we started to take on projects that would have been unthinkable when I started, such as launching Gorge Towns to Trails and our land trust. The result has been that Friends has now become a backstop for Gorge protection, preservation, and stewardship. We are sometimes advocates, sometimes litigators, sometimes land buyers, and sometimes partners and allies. We continue to change, adapt, and grow but never lose sight of our North Star.
We’ve also navigated some of the most challenging years I’ve ever experienced recently with the pandemic and George Floyd murder and their collective aftermaths. Many of our staff and board now look and think very differently than staff and board from decades ago. I couldn’t be more heartened by that. For Friends to thrive and prosper 50 and 100 years from now, it must reflect our ever-diverse world. It’s imperative.
I feel very blessed to have 25 years under my belt with Friends. And I know now that if that same preacher asked me today, what are you doing with your moment, I could look him in the eye and say “exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.”
Explore some of Friends’ major accomplishments and milestones during Kevin Gorman’s 25-year tenure as executive director here.