Warren Deal
Warren Deal, a founding member of the Willamette Wine Tasters group, was born in Hornbrook, California and moved to Portland in his youth. He graduated from Benson High School and went to work in the printing industry. He was a supervisor at Abbot Kerns and Bell, a leading printer in Portland in the mid 1950’s. A short time later, he and two others formed Agency Lithograph.
At that time, lithography was a new process for printing that was replacing the old technology. Agency Lithograph capitalized on that, and in 1964, they purchased Abbot Kerns and Bell and merged with Hallwyler Printing Company to form Graphic Arts Center. They built a facility designed for printing. Warren ran the plant and ultimately became its president. The firm grew and in about 1980 went public. Warren was Graphic Arts Publishing Co. chairman and chief executive officer and a retired LDV Investment chairman. He also was a former Printing Industry of America president. Warren stayed on in a management position before retiring to Newport and later Hawaii.
Warren loved to fish and owned many boats over the years. Warren with his wife, June, liked to pack up a dinner after work and take their boat up the Willamette River, throw the anchor out, eat dinner with 2 fishing lines out catching catfish. Warren enjoyed water skiing and used the upper Willamette to do so whenever he could. Warren also enjoyed cooking and eating crawdads. While the Blodgett’s trapped them, he would always be on hand to clean and cook them. That always provided an opportunity to drink a little wine some poured it over the cooked crawfish. Sometimes, the crawdads got shorted.
Warren enjoyed wine, and along with his wife, June (pictured here together) attended the original wine classes at Des Champs. He was a founding member until his work responsibilities became too time-consuming and his participation too erratic in the mid-1980's. He lived in Kalaoa, Hawaii until his death on December 2, 2002 at the age of 86. He was a great friend and is truly missed.