Tom Peterson (1930-2016)
A public viewing for Peterson will be held from noon to 8 p.m. Monday, August 1, at Lincoln Memorial Park & Funeral Home, located at 11801 SE Mt. Scott Blvd in Portland.
Peterson is survived by his wife Gloria; his sister Janet Gutzmann; his children Keith and Kathy; his grandchildren Erik Peterson, Tiffany Condon-Shirley and Chelsea Condon; and his great-granddaughter Olivia Shirley.
If you watched Portland TV in the '80s, you knew Tom Peterson. The grin. That flat-top. Maybe you dozed off on the couch one night and woke to him tapping on the inside of the screen, telling you to "Wake up! Wake up!" and visit his store.
Peterson, 86, died on Monday, July 25, after a decades-long battle with Parkinson's disease. With his death comes the loss of another piece of old Portland, the quirky city that existed before it became a hip tourist destination.
With his commercials for furniture, appliances and electronics, Peterson worked his way into the cultural fabric of our city. His straightforward, low-budget ads wouldn't be considered ground-breaking by those in the advertising industry, but no one can deny that he understood his audience.
He embraced the kitsch of his ads (the free haircuts, alarm clocks and even poodles with purchase) while communicating a sincerity that made viewers feel like they knew him personally.
But Peterson, like so many others who have shaped Portland, didn't start out here.
A Minnesota native, Peterson met his wife, Gloria, at a church camp when they were both 14.
When Gloria returned from the camp, she told her mother she had met the man she would marry, she told The Oregonian/OregonLive in an interview this week. And about eight years later, she did. This September would have marked the couple's 64th wedding anniversary.
Peterson had worked for vegetable company Green Giant for about 10 years when he decided it was time for a change, Gloria said. So he contacted the Muntz company about a franchise selling TVs and electronics. He got the franchise, but wasn't sure where to go.
His Green Giant colleagues pointed him in the right direction, Gloria said.
"They said, 'Tom, if you're going to move any place, you've got to move to the Pacific Northwest.'"
So the Petersons - along with their two young children, Kathy and Keith - packed their bags, settled in Southeast Portland, and in 1964 started their business with $10,000.
"I didn't know much about accounting, and he didn't know much about advertising, but with hard work we pulled it together," Gloria said.
That first year, the couple paid themselves a total of $150 a week, Peterson told The Oregonian in 1987. (That's equal to about $60,000 a year in today's dollars.)
"It was a wonder we made it,'' he said at the time. "But we just worked one thing out after another.''
By 1986, they had three stores near 82nd and Foster: One each dedicated to furniture, appliances and electronics.
Peterson's venture had grown nicely: The store that had brought in $300,000 its first year had transformed into a chain with revenues of $30 million by 1989.
Kathy Peterson ticked off the reasons for her father's success: Good products, good prices and great customer service.
"He loved his customers," she said. "He loved being out on the floor, shaking hands. He just had that touch."
Peterson wanted his business's growth to continue. So when the bankrupt Stereo Super Stores chain went up for sale that year, he snapped it up, despite protests from Gloria.
He should have listened to her.
Two years later, the acquisition forced him to liquidate his company, leaving him with little of the retail empire he and Gloria had built.
But in 1992, with the help of his son-in-law Robert Condon, Peterson made his comeback. This time, though, it was as "Tom Peterson's & Gloria's Too."
Kathy Peterson recalls his reasoning: "Basically, it was 'I should have listened to my wife, and your name is going on the sign,'" she said.
The family continued to operate the business until 2009, when the chain's final Foster Road location closed.
Throughout the years operating his business, Peterson made time for his family. He would take Keith on hunting trips and taught Kathy how to fish, she said.
As a girl, Kathy wanted a horse. So Peterson bought her a horse at auction, but it hadn't yet been broken.
"You're not riding this," she remembers him saying after the horse bucked him off.
Instead, he bought her two Shetland ponies.
"He'd do anything for anyone," she said. "If you needed something, he was right there."
This was the impression he left with those who knew him personally and those who knew him only through his commercials.
Though he only met Peterson briefly while working in the Portland radio industry, Doug Zanger felt a connection to the ad man.
"I don't recall anybody ever being like, 'Oh, there's a Tom Peterson commercial,'" he said. "It was like, 'Oh! There's Tom Peterson.' .... He was very much a pillar of what Portland was. And to this generation, he's iconic in a lot of ways."
His legendary status was boosted in the late '80s and early '90s, when Portland director Gus Van Sant tapped him for cameos and minor roles, like the non-speaking part of a police chief in "My Own Private Idaho."
Meanwhile, the Z-100 radio station released the song "I Woke Up with a Tom Peterson Haircut," and Kurt Cobain wore a Tom Peterson T-shirt during a 1993 concert in Salem.
As entrenched as Peterson was in pop culture in Portland and throughout the Northwest, his ads were still unorthodox.
"A creative person (in the advertising industry) might look at it and say, well that's just a person trying to sell stuff in a loud and obnoxious way," Zanger said. "It's just some guy talking real loud. To people here it was much more nuanced because he wasn't just selling furniture, he was selling the Portland thing."
-- Anna Marum
503-294-5911
@annamarum