Weyerhaeuser Led Company Through Key Years
George H. Weyerhaeuser Sr., who served as president and CEO of Weyerhaeuser Co. from 1966 to 1991 during an exciting period of wood products development while encountering new timber supply challenges brought on by an aggressive environmental movement in the Northwest, died June 11, 2022 in his sleep at home in Lakewood (Tacoma), Wash. He was 95.

Sketch appeared in Seattle Business magazine, November 1986

Sketch appeared in Seattle Business magazine, November 1986
Weyerhaeuser, who continued to serve as Board Chairman through 1999, was the great-grandson of Weyerhaeuser Co. founder Frederick Weyerhaeuser.
Weyerhaeuser oversaw significant growth of the company, including a number of major timberland acquisitions, and had an enduring impact on the evolution of forest management at Weyerhaeuser and across the industry. He was also instrumental in the development of international relationships and markets, especially with Japan.
Weyerhaeuser led a reorganization and cultural change at Weyerhaeuser in the early 1980s that streamlined the managerial process toward quicker decision-making at the operations level. He also oversaw the company’s strong push into engineered wood products.
In the mid 1980s Weyerhaeuser said, “There is a revolution going on in what used to be traditional forest products markets. I could go down all of our major product lines and I could tell you what we have going on, but I’ll just tell you that if we move forward five, six, seven years we’re going to be experiencing a completely new set of products which are going to be designed with properties built into them and those properties are going to be developed by different kinds of fibers and overlays mixtures right in the basic products.”
Also in the 1980s Weyerhaeuser led the company’s movement toward more independent logging contractor operations and less emphasis on company logging operations.
“With the changes in our logging areas, somewhat more scattered, smaller timer, we need smaller more flexible operations,” he said. “When we looked at the option of reinvesting in a very large set of company operations we found the answer to be very easy to arrive at. We had to get a good deal more competitive and in doing so we’re going to downsize and put in a major amount of contracting.”
It was said of Weyerhaeuser, “His personal presence was powerful. He was honorable, confident and optimistic. He liked to focus on getting things done. He wanted his office to be out on the floor with his executive team, working in the daily grind of decision-making and policy formation. He liked people. When you were with him, you would feel his warmth and his focus on you. This was great motivation for people around him.”
Weyerhaeuser was born on July 8, 1926 to Helen Walker Weyerhaeuser and J.P. (Phil) Weyerhaeuser Jr. During the early years of his life, the family lived in Idaho, and then moved to Tacoma in 1933.
Fame came to Weyerhaeuser very early in his life as an 8-year-old child when during the Depression, in May 1935, he was kidnapped. The kidnappers took him while he was on his way home from elementary school in Tacoma, and held him for eight days in various trunks and closets and even in a freshly dug pit in the ground. He was ultimately left on the side of a forest road and walked to a farmhouse, whose inhabitants reunited him with his family.
Weyerhaeuser did not let that experience derail his life nor cloud his feelings toward other people. When speaking to Sports Illustrated in 1969, he said, “A boy is a pretty adaptable organism. He can adjust himself to conditions in a way no adult could. It didn’t affect me personally as much as anyone looking back on it might think.” Years later he wrote the parole board supporting release for one of the kidnappers, and offered him a job to help his transition back into society.
Weyerhaeuser went to the Taft School in Watertown, Conn. for high school and later served as a Trustee for the school. He served in the Navy from 1944-46, a young entrant as the war was winding down. He studied engineering and received a B.S in Industrial Administration from Yale University in 1949. Weyerhaeuser married Wendy Wagner on July 10, 1948.
In the early years of his career he worked in mills in Longview, Wash. and Springfield, Ore., and then moved up to positions of manager and vice president in several divisions of the Weyerhaeuser Co. He became a young CEO for Weyerhaeuser Co. at age 39.
Weyerhaeuser worked for years on a plan to build a new Corporate Headquarters in Federal Way, Wash., that used an open floor plan to encourage communication across departments and centralized management. The building was at the forefront of modern design for a corporate work setting and won awards including one for environmental merit.
Weyerhaeuser served on the Boards of The Boeing Co., SAFECO Corp., Standard Oil of CA, and The Rand Co.. He was a member of The Business Roundtable; Council on Foreign Relations; Board of Visitors, UPS School of Law; Advisory Board, Graduate School of Business Administration, U. Of Washington; Japan-California Assn.; The Business Council; the Federal Reserve Board of San Francisco; and the Washington Council on International Trade, among others. There was an oil tanker named for him by Chevron while he was serving on that board.
After decades of being an avid tennis player, he spent his final years watching the tennis channel, doing sudoku and reading The Economist. George was predeceased by his sisters, Ann Pascoe and Elizabeth (Wiz) Meadowcroft; his brother, J.P. (Flip) Weyerhaeuser Jr.; and by his wife of 66 years, Wendy, who passed away in 2014. He was also predeceased by his son, George Weyerhaeuser Jr., in 2013 and his grandson Karl Griggs in 2014. He is survived by his children: Merrill Weyerhaeuser (Patrick Welly), David Weyerhaeuser (Sarah), Phyllis Griggs, Sue Messina (Bob Newkirk), daughter-in-law Kathy McGoldrick, Leilee Weyerhaeuser (Damian Rouson), 15 grandchildren, 17 great-grandchildren and numerous nieces, nephews and cousins.
A memorial service is being planned but no date has yet been set.
Latest News
Housing Starts Continue Negative Pattern
Housing Starts Continue Negative PatternU.S. housing starts dropped 4.2% in October from September to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.425 million, including a drop in single-family starts of 6.1% to 855,000, and a modest decline of 0.5% in multi-family starts...
First CLT Office Opens In DC
Opened in fall 2022, the first mass timber commercial building in the U.S. capital city features more than 108,000 sq. ft. of mass timber. The building is an innovative retrofit at 80 M Street SE in Washington, DC: Termed an overbuild—extra stories atop an existing building—the expansion features three floors, where columns of mass timber are visible from the interior…
Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks
Article by Jessica Johnson, Senior Editor, Timber Processing November 2022 – I very clearly remember a dinner I had with one of my favorite engineers from the West Coast after a day on the sawmill show floor many, many years ago. After a few cocktails (don’t all stories get good once you hear…
SFPA Elects 2022-23 Officers
The Southern Forest Products Assn. (SFPA) elected its new officers during the board of directors session at the association’s annual meeting October 21, 2022, in Nashville. The 2022-23 SFPA officers are Chairman of the Board, Mark Richardson, The Westervelt Co.; Vice Chairman of the…
Weyco, Union Reach Contract Agreement
In late October, after a 48-day strike, Weyerhaeuser reported the successful resolution of a work stoppage involving members of the International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union in Oregon and Washington. Weyerhaeuser has approximately 1,200 employees who are members of…
WWPA Opens 2023 Master Lumberman Nominations
WWPA is now seeking nominations from member companies for the 2023 Master Lumberman honors. The awards will be presented at the Association’s Annual Meeting, April 17, 2023, at the Embassy Suites PDX-Portland Airport Hotel…
Port Angeles Grant Boosts Port Efficiency
In Washington state, the Port of Port Angeles has been awarded an $8.6 million federal grant from the Dept. of Transportation Maritime Administration’s Port Infrastructure Development Program. The grant will provide key funding to assist in the repair and improvements to Port Angeles’ industrial…
Schooler Cuts Down The Net
Timber Processing magazine presented its 34th Annual Person of the Year award to Eric Schooler, CEO of Collins, as he prepared to embark on his new career of “retirement.” The presentation ceremony and reception, which was hosted by Hatton-Brown Publishers, Inc. and sponsored by Real…
Pallet Block Facility Planned
BID Group has announced a partnership with ArbaBlox Inc. to build a state-of-the-art turnkey composite pallet block plant in Winona, Miss. BID will manage, design, build, install and provide startup services for the $53 million project, the largest of its kind in the country…
Find Us On Social
Newsletter
The monthly Timber Processing Industry Newsletter reaches over 4,000 mill owners and supervisors.
Subscribe/Renew
Timber Processing is delivered 10 times per year to subscribers who represent sawmill ownership, management and supervisory personnel and corporate executives. Subscriptions are FREE to qualified individuals.
Advertise
Complete the online form so we can direct you to the appropriate Sales Representative.