BATTLE GROUND — Before he died, Ron Andersen made his brother promise him that he’d keep their annual family reunion going.
The tradition stretched back more than 90 years and was something important to their mother.
“My mother pushed that we had family reunions for extended family,” said Gary Andersen, 77, of Battle Ground. “That was important to Ron, too. It goes back 90 years without ever missing it. We’ve had a family reunion somewhere. It’s getting harder. He made me promise that I would do my darndest to keep it going.”
Gary Andersen said family was important to his brother, Ron Andersen, who died Feb. 10 after his skin cancer spread to other parts of his body.
“Ron was really a unique person. Some would call him a loner,” Gary Andersen said. “He had such love for our mom and dad. Our mother, anything she wanted, she could have.”
Jack Dunn, who worked for Ron Andersen, said he was loyal to people, which is why his businesses have so many longtime employees. In 1966, he purchased a dairy processing plant in Battle Ground, which became Andersen Dairy. He then expanded to open three plastics processing plants, a trucking company and a grocery store.
“You need people like that to keep a company going so long,” said Gladys Sinclair, 83, of La Center.
Sinclair worked for the dairy plant before Andersen bought it, and has remained on the staff since then. When he bought the plant, he was milling around one day and asked Sinclair what he should do.
“I told him to get down there and learn how things work,” she said. “Within three weeks, he was running the plant himself.”
Dunn is the president of Andersen Dairy and Andersen Plastics, and has worked for the company for 37 years. He started as a maintenance man and was hired as president when he was 23, a few years after he started with the company.
“I was good at running the machines and keeping them running,” Dunn said.
Dunn called Andersen a “father figure,” and said he learned everything he knows about business from Andersen, who retired from his companies in 1986.
When he wasn’t working, Andersen was most likely at one of his farms. Gary Andersen said his brother was a bit of a homebody.
“Traveling was going to the other end of his farm,” Gary Andersen said.
Both Gary Andersen and Dunn said Ron Andersen liked to play around on the farm. Gary Andersen remembers his brother using a wire recorder a lot. Dunn said Ron Andersen also liked using farming equipment, and some days would wake up, go to a far off spot on his property, use the equipment, come in for lunch and head back out until night. Workers on the farm would check up to make sure he was still out there.
“He would buy equipment, and nobody at his farm would touch it,” Gary Andersen said. “When he got the newness off it, he’d turn it over to the farm crew.”
Ron Andersen never married or had kids. Gary Andersen said that in their mother’s last days, his brother hired a daytime nurse to take care of her and then he stayed up through the night to make sure she was OK.
He made sure to look after his business before his death, setting up his estate to ensure the business has a plan to keep going for at least 10 years.
Dunn said the business is doing well. The dairy and plastics companies had 165 employees combined in 2016, according to the city of Battle Ground’s most recent Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. That made it the city’s sixth-highest employer, the only manufacturer in the top 10.
“In a manufacturing sector lacking in this area, they’re very important to the city,” said Mayor Mike Dalesandro. “We’re supportive of trying to do whatever we can to help them have a thriving business. They’ve been here more than 50 years and employs more than 160 people. It’s an important part of our economy.”
Dunn said Andersen is one of nine dairy plants remaining in the Northwest, and its three plastics plants produce 11 million bottles a month, some of which are used by Andersen Dairy and some of which they sell to other companies.
“There used to be a dairy farm every mile,” Dunn said. “People don’t drink as much milk anymore. Everyone is in a hurry. They don’t sit down for breakfast together anymore. That’s usually when people would be drinking milk.”
While that family spirit might not be as prevalent in the home, it’s something Andersen made sure was part of his companies.
“There’s a group of us who were kids when we started here,” Dunn said. “Now we run the company. We raised families. We have second-generation employees.”
