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William Conrad Cairns. 75. former president, Wyckoff Co., Seattle, Wa., died of a heart attack March 28.

A native of Des Moines, Ia., he grew up in Portland, Or., and was a lumberjack in Alaska before attending Reed College. He served as a navigator/bombardier in the U.S. Army Air Forces and graduated with honors in engineering from Stanford University in 1949.

He began his career in the wood treating industry with J.H. Baxter in San Francisco and Portland before movins to Seattle in 1959 to manage a Baxier/ Wyckoff joint venture. When the firms separated a few years later, he became president of Wyckoff.

In the 1980s, when the Environmental Protection Agency was first investigating corporate polluters, he took responsibility for the firm's illegal dumping of toxic waste into the Duwamish River, paid a $25,000 fine and served 60 days in work release. This and other woes forced him to sell his home where he had lived for 30 years. "He didn't like how aggressively the EPA came after the company," said his son, Don, "but he decided to take responsibility for the problem rather than blamine others."

Firm's Bigger Home ls Sweet

Santiam Forest Products, Sweet Home, Or., recently expanded its operations, in the process increasing its staff from23 employees to 55.

While certainly welcome, the expansion served as a reminder to the firm of the fickleness of the lumber business.

A Fullmer Forest Products subsidiary, the company opened in 1997 to service the Asian market. Soon thereafter, that market crashed, resulting in fewer exports, job losses and slow business for the second half of 1998.

"Things were pretty ugly," remembered president Ted Fullmer. "The Japanese markets were in the tank."

According to Fullmer, business began to improve in February 1999. "Since last April, we haven't looked back," he said.

The expansion included the addition of a Weinig moulder for manufacturing window and door trim, although the firm primarily manufactures lumber used in finishing doors, windows and tongue-and-grove flooring and paneling.

Santiam Forest Products ships these products to other Oregon-based plants that use them as components in completing windows and doors.

The other expansion was in the home center division where the firm bar codes and wraps lumber without knots or defects for companies such as HomeBase and Home Depot.

Founded in 1983, Fullmer Forest Products closed its operation in Donald, Or., last year and moved it to Sweet Home, leaving sales and administration in nearbv Wilsonville.

"The nice thing about this facility is there is room for expansion and it's clean," Fullmer said. "It's huge compared to the Donald facility."

Fullmer soon hopes to begin supplying Japan with specially processed large beams made from Douglas fir for use in earthquake-sensitive areas. The lumber, which would come from local sawmills, would be surfaced and processed at the Sweet Home facility for shipment to Japan.

Reportedly, this would add I million bd. ft. of production to the plant each month, although the facility is limited without expansion to somewhat more than 3 million bd. ft. with its 15 dry kilns. Currently, export products amount to roughly 400,000 bd. ft. each month.