Dick Teutsch and Barbara Jennings: Terwilliger Plaza Members

Meet Your Neighbor

Sep 16

Dick Teutsch and Barbara Jennings

Dick: I was born in Miles City, Montana, although when I was a year old, we moved to the Boise Valley. I grew up on a small dairy farm near Eagle, ID, which was about eight miles west of Boise. While now it’s considered a suburb of Boise with a population of 30,000, when I lived there the town had a population of about 300.

Barbara: I was born in Grosse Pointe, a suburb of Detroit, MI and lived there until I went to college at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Then you relocated to the east coast.

I married soon after graduation and moved to Cambridge, MA where my husband was attending law school. I had graduated with a degree in dental hygiene and was hired to teach both thru the Boston Public Schools and Tufts University.

What brought you to Boise, ID?

It was 1969 and the Vietnam draft was still quite prevalent. You had to be twenty–six years old to be non-draftable. My husband was twenty-five years old when he graduated from law school. Many of us at that age lived our lives around draft deferments if we didn’t agree with the war. At the time, one of the draft deferable job options was being a state Supreme Court clerk anywhere in the United States. So, we packed everything in our car and drove to Boise, where he had been offered a law clerk position.

Dick, your career path took you to Seattle, WA.

After I graduated from college in 1969, I took a job in Seattle with Price Waterhouse, a big international accounting firm. Two years later my wife and I decided to move back to Boise. There I went to work for a small firm, which eventually merged with a larger firm. It was then, that a colleague and I started our own accounting firm in 1979.

Barbara, during this time you were juggling working and raising your children.

I had been working, although it was difficult to find a job that could align with the complexities involved in raising three children. I went back to school at Boise State University for business administration. Just as I was close to finishing my course work I was offered a job in a large corporation. Computer systems were just being introduced into businesses and there would be entire rooms dedicated to these huge computers with companies writing their own programs. I worked as a documentation specialist as a liaison between the programmer and the end user.

How did the two of you meet?

Dick: We met in divorce court.

That’s a new one, please elaborate.

It was 1981. I had known Barbara’s husband because we were both active in the Chamber of Commerce and other civic activities, and I had met Barbara informally over the years at functions. Separately from that I was going through the process of a divorce. I didn’t know it at the time, but Barbara and her husband were also in the process of getting divorced. And my lawyer was the lawyer for Barbara’s husband.

Barbara: The judge was trying to accommodate Dick’s lawyer and my soon to be ex-husband’s lawyer to present both cases on the same day. At that time, in Idaho, if you filed for divorce you had to be the party showing up.

Dick: It was just the two of us in court. Neither of our exes were present.

Dick, you made a bold move after that.

We each finalized our divorces just before Christmas Eve, and I decided to call Barbara to see how she was doing. We had a really nice talk. Then I thought, alright here I go – and I said, “you don’t happen to be free for New Year’s Eve, are you?” And she was. That was our first date, and we were married 11 months later in November of 1982.

Barbara: We were never getting married again.

Dick: It took us a while to reconcile that, but we eventually did.

Barbara, this then led to an unexpected career change for you.

After Dick and I married, I switched gears to take on a much larger job - raising our blended family of seven kids who ranged in age at that time from seven to 18 years old. A lot of kids and no one was in the same grade at school. Working a traditional full-time job just wasn’t possible.

So, Dick and I decided to buy an ice cream store in downtown Boise. It was our favorite ice cream store and one day Dick said, “you know, we could do this.” Dick still had his accounting practice going full steam while working the accounting side of the ice cream business. This was an option for me to have flexible hours even though the store was open 7 days a week, twelve hours a day. We owned and ran it for 5 years.

Dick: It was similar to the Salt & Straw concept. Barbara and her crew of fifteen teenagers made the ice cream in those 3-gallon buckets. The local newspaper always came out with the best ice cream in Boise, and our place, The Ice Cream Works was consistently number one during those years.

Then you decided to relocate to Oregon.

Dick: In 1989, I decided to go back to graduate school for business management and sold my accounting practice. In fact, we both decided to go back for a master’s and enrolled at the University of Oregon.

Barbara: I initially went back for history, but because I was also working I couldn’t line-up my work hours with my class schedule. So, I shifted over to urban planning, where I could take courses once a week in the evening or late afternoon and still work. You can see that my trajectory was continually influenced by trying to make things fit into my life circumstances and responsibilities.

Entering into the urban planning program also introduced you to strategic planning.

Strategic planning was a new concept at the time, and something I was very interested in exploring. A requirement of the program was to do an internship, and the department was working with a local nonprofit that worked in the area of domestic violence and rape. My internship with them was focused on elevating their strategic planning process. After the internship I was asked by the nonprofit to stay on as their Executive Director, which I did for a year. During this time, we implemented changes in their approach to external funding structures with a focus on becoming more collaborative and representative of the community when seeking grants and demonstrating impact.

Dick, why a master’s in business management?

I realized after 20 years as a CPA, that I wanted to expand. I put myself on a five-year plan to change professions. After a while – and with gentle nudging from Barbara to start the clock, I thought I might want to be a professor, so I decided on business management in a master’s and PhD track. While we were students I taught at the University of Oregon. I also taught at Pacific University for two years, and then the Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology.

What was the Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology known for?

OGI was started in the early 1980’s when Tektronix and the older tech firms wanted a way for their technical people to have access to continuing education. At the end of the 1980’s OGI was offering graduate and doctorate degrees in disciplines such as electrical engineering, computer science, and biology. Then Intel and other high-tech firms suggested that they start a business program for their engineers who were running multi-million-dollar departments. So OGI started a master’s program in business. I got brought in to teach corporate finance and taught there for about three years. It was the best teaching experience you could imagine. Most of my students had up to ten years of work experience and were hard working students. I learned as much from them as they learned from me.

You still had your accounting clients.

While I was in graduate school I kept my favorite clients from Boise, mostly physicians. Coincidentally they had asked me to help them with their investments, and when I got back to school I decided to become a registered investment advisor.

During this time period, after graduation you moved to Portland.

We moved to Portland when I was teaching at Pacific University and OGI. I was still working on my dissertation and doing tax work for my clients, and Barbara was working at Portland State University. We formed a registered investment firm and in 1994 we decided to focus on our firm, Arcadia Investment Advisors. Barbara quit her job at PSU, and we began working together full time. I eventually let go of my desire to finish my dissertation, so I am recognized as an ABD (all but dissertation).

Barbara, what were you doing at Portland State University?

I took a job in the development office. It was a wonderful opportunity to work at Portland State when Judith Ramaley was president. Her vision for Portland State to be an urban university and turn outward to the city to bring city leaders and businesses into the student experience was dynamic and exciting.

What led you to leave PSU and join Dick at Arcadia Investments.

Our investment firm was growing rapidly. This was before there were software platforms that could help run your company. It was the beginning of the computer age, the World Wide Web was just entering the conversation. I knew from my past professional experiences that I had the business expertise to contribute.

From the early days, you both seem to have been fueled by an entrepreneurial spirit.

Barbara: A lot of it goes back to blending together a family of seven kids.

Dick: That was our biggest entrepreneurial challenge. And building a business that became a family business. We now have a son, and a daughter-in-law working with us, and one of our grandsons recently joined the firm. It’s incredibly rewarding.

What brought you to Terwilliger Plaza?

Dick: In 2016, I had a health issue with bone cancer in my arm. While I’m in total remission now, at the time we didn’t know what to expect. Our home was built in the 1930’s with steep stairs and our bedroom was on the second floor. We started thinking long term and imagining what a different lifestyle might look like. We rented a condominium for a while and then began to explore Continuing Care Retirement Communities. We toured several of them and were on three different waiting lists.

Then we heard about Terwilliger Plaza and the new building, Parkview. Immediately it became apparent to us that Terwilliger Plaza was a cut above the others. We put down a deposit on an apartment home in Parkview which wasn’t yet completed. Because we were a depositor on Parkview, we had full access to the Wellness Center, and 24/7 access to everything that the community had to offer. JoJo in marketing, who is amazing, said, “we want you to be involved and have the opportunity to meet the people in our community and make sure you want them to be your neighbor.” Then she called us one day to tell us there was an opening in The Heights if we wanted to move in earlier and transfer over to Parkview when it opened. So, we did.

Now that you are living at Terwilliger Plaza, what has surprised you the most?

Dick: We moved in September 2022, and I was invited to join the Finance Committee in 2023. I thought this would be a good opportunity to form my own opinion on the financial stability, strength and future of this community. It’s a significant financial investment. We don’t have a deed, but instead a promise that they are going to take care of us.

What is remarkable about the budget process here at Terwilliger Plaza, is that there is no “they” involved here, it’s just “us”. The Finance Committee is a nine-member committee and eight of us live here. The Board of Directors, of which I am also a recent member, has a Member majority - six of us live here. Those who don’t live here are very committed Portlanders, who are committed to Terwilliger Plaza. All members of the board have a vote.

The budget process which begins at the department level starts in the summer to develop a consolidated budget. At our September board meeting, we review the budget, which at that time is an expense budget. From that, the necessary revenue is determined, which includes what we, as a community have to pay in monthly fees to pay the bills and generate a small surplus.

During this process, in addition to our internal analysis, we have an actuarial firm that projects all future cash flows, revenue and expense. In their opinion Terwilliger Plaza is very solid financially. And our independent CPA, as part of their annual audit, also does a similar analysis separate from the actuaries that conclude the same assessment that we are well positioned financially, and the future looks ongoing.

That means a lot to mean personally. Terwilliger Plaza has been so well managed for decades, and I see that same commitment from the current top quality executive team. We have a strong future.

A distinguishing factor within Terwilliger Plaza is that we are a single-site, nonprofit independent CCRC. Is this a critical component in our financial conversation?

Yes. When understanding the finances of a CCRC is it important to recognize that if we were owned by a for profit entity they would have invested millions of dollars to buy or build this community. They have to see a return on their investment. Imagine if we had to come up with say 20% extra or a few million dollars in our monthly maintenance fee to add to that profit line that the investor would require. Or, if we were part of a chain of nonprofits, we might, even unknown to us, be asked to subsidize the development of a new facility somewhere else.

Barbara, you are also involved here at Terwilliger Plaza.

I am the co-chair of the Welcoming Committee. I got involved because it spoke to me, especially the commitment with the addition of Parkview to create one community. I was fascinated and surprised to learn about the depth of planning that has gone into achieving this ideal.

Any Member can access, by design, any amenity or program. From the top, Ryan Miller and Andie Fitzgerald conveyed how critically important it was to figure out how to welcome new Members into our community. Early on in 2023, we started planning with Ryan and Community Life to strategize how to engage current Members in welcoming new Members. It was eye opening to see their commitment and the support of the administration to make this happen.

The Member volunteers who participate in building community exemplifies the spirit of Terwilliger Plaza.

Many of the programs hosted by Marketing for people to learn more about Terwilliger Plaza include current Member volunteers to take people on tours of apartment homes and to ask us questions directly. Then, for the last hour, the event is open to all Members to join. It’s a true community gathering and a wonderful opportunity to meet the people of Terwilliger Plaza.

There is a richness of perspectives and expertise that comes from within the community.

One of the positive attributes in embracing the ideals of a participatory voice structure in our community is that Members can engage in discussions on how to self-manage ourselves. Whether through Resident Council, or the many committees, we have the opportunity to provide input to the Board and administration as Terwilliger continues to grow and flourish.

The agility, adaptability and diversity of perspective within this community is wonderful and impactful. Terwilliger recently restructured the Resident Council to identify new opportunities for volunteer engagement to enhance our approach to welcoming new Members and embracing them into the community.

It’s a great collaboration between the administration and the Members. At the people-to-people level, we are building community.

Dick: Our experiences have been so positive. There are never ending surprises when you meet a new person here and get to hear their life story.

Think Joule