Hector Macpherson Jr.

Following the war Macpherson took over the family dairy farm and became involved with the politics of land use planning over concerns with encroaching urban development of farmland.

Hector Macpherson Jr., known to family and personal friends from his earliest years by the nickname "Huck," was born September 19, 1918, in Corvallis, Oregon.

[7] He began his collegiate career in the sciences but switched majors to the OSC's School of Agriculture after two years of study, graduating with a Bachelor's degree in 1940.

[22] Macpherson would receive a Bronze Star for his work helping to expand the use of the Pathfinder radar navigation program, a technology which proved itself vital to successful operations against enemy oil refineries.

The idea of farming held an appeal to the returning flight navigator and father and son entered into a business partnership in the fall of 1945.

[27] In addition to life on the farm, Macpherson pursued outside interests, including activity in the local Community Club and telephone cooperative.

[29] Macpherson could foresee a similar situation developing in his own area and was interested by the idea, which he was able to promote through his chairmanship of an advisory committee to the Oregon State University Extension Service.

[29] The hearing, at which positive testimony was heard from a broad range of community figures including the head of the Linn Chamber of Commerce, led to an initial appropriation of $5,000 towards the development of a first building code for the county.

During the decade of the 1960s, the population of Oregon grew by approximately 18%, with the vast majority of this expansion taking place in the nine counties of the Willamette Valley in the northwestern section of the state.

[30] Most county governments showed little appetite for land-use planning, however, with sprawling suburban development which dissected prime farmland an all too frequent result of the lack of centralized oversight.

The law, remembered as Senate Bill 10 (SB 10), mandated that every city and county government in the state to adopt a comprehensive land-use plan and to establish "border-to-border" zoning of its jurisdiction by the end of 1971.

[31] SB 10 originated in the powerful Senate Agriculture Committee with farmland preservation in clear view and was firmly supported by Tom McCall, the state's progressive Republican governor, for whom environmental and livability issues were matters of primary importance.

[32] The passage of this legislation made Oregon the first state in the union to universally require local zoning ordinances and the second to mandate comprehensive planning.

[32] Unable to cope with non-compliance on such a massive scale, the Governor's office — which was to take over the task of planning and zoning in the event of failure by lower governmental authorities — was forced to grant extensions en masse.

[38] As a member of the 5-member Consumer Affairs Committee, Macpherson found himself the swing vote in support of the landmark Oregon Bottle Bill, which established a 5-cent deposit on containers for beer and carbonated drinks.

[39] Macpherson's signature legislative achievement would come in the 1973 biennial session of the Oregon Legislature with the passage of the Land Conservation and Development Act, Senate Bill 100.

[43] According to Henry Richmond, former director of the land use watchdog group 1000 Friends of Oregon, rather than liberal anti-growth activists it was Hector Macpherson and a "small group of conservative Republican farmer-legislators" who proved decisive in the battle for the passage of Senate Bill 100: The one who got it started was Hector Macpherson, a dairy farmer who was a member of the Linn County Planning Commission for many years.

[44]Poignant testimony and persuasive speaking is not what passes legislation, however; political compromise, arm-twisting, and parliamentary creativity are what is necessary to get a bill signed into law.

[45] Backed with the strong support of popular Governor Tom McCall, Day's interim committee negotiated a set of compromises which somewhat weakened central authority and made passage of SB 100 possible.

[48] Macpherson declared his candidacy for reelection in 1974 and would find himself facing a young and well-spoken high school teacher named John Powell in the November election.

The year was not a good one for Republicans, with the election coming on the heels of the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in connection with the Watergate scandal.

Moreover, the centrist Macpherson's prominent work on the issue of land-use planning, anathema to many conservative rural voters, undermined his potential base of support, enabling his more liberal Democratic challenger to defeat him at the polls.

[50] One of the boys, Greg Macpherson, would follow in the footsteps of his grandfather and father as an elected member of the Oregon Legislature, in which he served from 2003 to 2009.

At his public funeral, held April 9, 2015, Macpherson was eulogized by Henry Richmond, longtime executive director of state land use watchdog group 1000 Friends of Oregon.