February 10, 2013 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Amount donated in 2012: $191.5-million
Top beneficiary: Oregon Community Foundation
Other notable gift: $10-million to Lewis & Clark College
Background: Mr. Fields was the owner and chief executive of the Coe Manufacturing Company, which he sold in 2000.
Mr. Fields, who was 88 when he died in 2011, left the bulk of his estate to 13 nonprofits. He bequeathed roughly $166-million to the Oregon Community Foundation to establish a fund to support education and the arts in Oregon, where he spent most of his career. He placed no restrictions on any of his other bequests.
He donated $10-million to Lewis & Clark College, which will use the money to endow scholarships for undergraduates, law-school students, and those attending the college’s Graduate School of Education and Counseling. Mr. Fields served on the college’s board for 21 years.
In addition, he left $2-million apiece to five organizations: the Oregon Historical Society, Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, Oregon Health & Science University Foundation, Purdue University, and University of Oregon. He also left $1-million each to Columbia River Maritime Museum, Eisenhower Medical Center, Lake Erie College, Portland Art Museum, and Ronald McDonald House Charities of Oregon and Southwest Washington. And he gave $500,000 to Boy Scouts of America, Cascade Pacific Council.
While Mr. Fields and his wife, Sue, who died in 2010, had donated smaller amounts to many of these organizations over the years, most had no idea they were included in his will, and not one knew it would receive such a substantial gift.
“Fred was incredibly secretive about this,” said Richard Canaday, the lawyer for Mr. Fields’s estate. “People didn’t realize how wealthy he was.”
Surprise Gifts
Although the full extent of their wealth may have gone unnoticed by almost everyone, including local nonprofit officials, the Fieldses were well known by local charity leaders as consistent donors and dependable board members.
Nonprofit leaders who knew the couple described Mr. Fields as unassuming yet engaged and someone who valued charities that had little or no debt.
“The way Fred made his gifts is the way he was in life, generous and never wanting to call attention to himself,” said Tom Soma, the executive director of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Oregon and Southwest Washington. “I’m sure he was laughing all the way to the grave thinking about how surprised we’d all be.”
In business, Mr. Fields was a shrewd negotiator who would sometimes show up at corporate meetings wearing a stained tie and liked to make a point of letting business associates know he bought his shirts at discount stores, said Mr. Canaday.
A child of the Depression, Mr. Fields worked on his family’s farm from the age of 10. He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps and studied engineering at Purdue in 1946. Unable to afford tuition, he left after one year and went back home to Alexandria, Ind. to work on the farm.
In 1947, he landed an engineering job at Coe Manufacturing, which made machines that milled lumber and other wood products. He remained at Coe for 53 years, working his way up to the leadership role. In 1976, his friend and lawyer, the late Garthe Brown (No. 28 on The Chronicle’s Philanthropy 50 talked him into buying the company, which Mr. Fields eventually sold in 2000.
After the sale, he continued to devote his time to a variety of other business dealings and to the charities he supported.
Along with his board service at Lewis & Clark College, Mr. Fields served as a trustee of the Columbia River Maritime Museum, Portland Art Museum, and Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, among other groups.
