The late Peter Michael Coleman Courtney, who served as the Senate chamber’s longest-serving member for 20 years and loved his family beyond all else, was departed from Oregon.
As a number of speakers outlined the kind, irascible man who devoted his life to serving his adopted state, the about 200 dignitaries, former coworkers, friends, and relatives who packed the Senate chamber on Wednesday shed a few tears and laughed heartily. Many wore old campaign buttons using the phrases “here to serve” and “nobody works harder” around a picture of a floppy-eared rabbit from Courtney’s 1980 first attempt at the legislature.
Former Governor Kate Brown, who began working with Courtney in the state House in 1991, was among the dignitaries. Later on, both of them relocated to the Senate, where Brown aimed to become Senate president. However, Republicans only agreed to accept a Democrat as Senate president if that Democrat was Courtney when Oregonians elected an evenly divided Senate in 2002.
According to Brown, she could tell him innumerable tales about her thirty years of collaboration, some of which are inappropriate for public consumption. However, one stood out above the others: the rationale behind renaming the Salem facility of the state hospital after Courtney, one of her final actions as governor.
The Oregon State Hospital, a state-run mental health facility located a mile from the Capitol, was the subject of horrific conditions that were first covered by The Oregonian and Salem Statesman Journal in 2004. Courtney was so horrified by the images and descriptions of asbestos frost floating in the air, lead paint curling from walls, and insufficient staffing that he insisted on seeing the facility.
Courtney asked employees to open a small, locked facility during that tour. Inside, the unclaimed, forgotten remains of hospital patients were stored in thousands of corroded and dented copper cans that remained on dirty shelves.
According to Brown, Peter would claim that nothing in his life had prepared him for what he had learned. He could plainly see that the state’s complete inability to meet the needs of some of its most vulnerable residents was exemplified by what he would always refer to as the room of the forgotten souls. Peter Courtney then rolled up his sleeves and got to work, like he always did.
A 2005 statute on mental health equity and hundreds of millions of dollars to construct a new 620-bed hospital in Salem and a 360-bed facility in Junction City were the results of Courtney’s efforts.
He passed away from cancer complications just hours before the July 16, 2024, ceremony renaming the hospital’s Salem site in his honor.
Southern and Eastern roots
Born in Philadelphia on June 18, 1943, Courtney grew up in West Virginia, which he dubbed “West By God Virginia.” Courtney took a Greyhound bus to Salem shortly after graduating from Boston University’s law school, when he was offered a position as a clerk for a judge on the newly established court of appeals in Oregon.
Room 206 at the neighborhood YMCA, where he lived for two years, held a special place in his heart. In 2022, the Y’s three-story, $30.5 million new building opened because to the millions of dollars in state grants he helped negotiate as a senator.
Courtney was elected to the Salem City Council in 1974, just a few years after coming to Salem. He was elected to the Oregon House by Salemites in 1980, and he remained in the House until 1999, with the exception of a four-year period in the 1980s during which he lost races to the Oregon Senate and the U.S. House. After winning a Senate seat in 1998, Courtney was elected Senate president in 2003. He served as president for an extraordinary 20 years, retiring in January 2023.
For over half of Courtney’s 20 years as Senate president, the House was dominated by Governor Tina Kotek.
Kotek expressed his desire that everyone who got the opportunity to meet Peter would have a lifelong memory they could treasure with him. We all have something to be happy about because someone with a personality and presence like Peter Michael Coleman Courtney never really leaves this world.
A set of hand-embroidered napkins bearing Kotek’s initials, TLK, serve as a tangible memory. The L is there because of Courtney, who was horrified to find out that Kotek’s parents never gave her a middle name before they both took the stage at an event. Courtney introduced himself using all four of his names. After asking what her confirmation name was, he was pleased to hear that it was St. Louise de Marillac. Both of them were nurtured in the Catholic faith and received the name of a saint at confirmation. The new name stuck when Courtney came on stage and introduced her as Tina Louise Kotek.
There are other enduring reminders of Courtney all across Salem. The Courtney Place apartments provide cheap living and a sense of community for dozens of low-income veterans across the street from the Capitol. A few blocks away, the Peter Courtney Minto Island Bridge, which links the riverside of downtown Salem with Minto-Brown Island Park, is traversed by walkers, runners, and bikers. Despite its unique shape, many Salemites still refer to it as the taco bridge.
Sean, Coutney’s middle son, made an appearance on camera and joked that his father would recite a well-known saying around the Capitol: “I got a bad feeling in all my crevices” if he saw one of his kids had the Senate floor.
According to Sean, Courtney enjoyed having a good time. If he had the keys to the Capitol, he would bring his children there after hours, so why not? It allowed them to slide down the rotunda’s marble staircase railings and consume all the junk food in the caucus break rooms. Additionally, he once protested downtown Salem’s Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving by dressing up as a pilgrim with a leashed turkey.
According to Sean Courtney, my father’s greatest legacy is his concern for others above himself. He enjoyed hearing people’s stories. In order to assist someone in need, he would also move heaven and earth. And I want to think that the reason everyone is here today is because Peter Courtney has had some kind of impact on their lives and most likely provided assistance when they most needed it.
Being really appreciative
Among them is House Minority Leader Christine Drazan, a Republican from Canby, who claimed that Courtney was an unexpected turning point in her own life. Courtney was the Democratic minority leader when she began working for the Republican-controlled House Majority Office at the age of 22. Despite their political disagreements, Courtney and Drazan’s employer at the time were friends and would go jogging together at lunch. He was the loudest and most colorful politician she had ever encountered.
Drazan’s greatest friend passed just a few years after Courtney moved to the Senate and Drazan took a position as the House speaker’s chief of staff. Hearing this, Courtney went to the House and sat with Drazan on the side aisle of the chamber, which was vacant.
“I can’t recall what we discussed,” Drazan remarked. I can’t recall whether I sobbed or listened. I simply recall how appreciative I was to be able to sit there with someone who knew my buddy and was saddened by her passing.
No significant event in a senator’s life passed without Courtney’s congrats, condolences, or talks, according to former Senator Tim Knopp, R-Bend.
According to Knopp, Peter was a caregiver. You could see how much he cared for people by the way he reached out.
Senate President Rob Wagner, a Lake Oswego Democrat who succeeded Courtney in 2023, recalled him as a force of nature, bold and hard-charging with a deep passion for helping children and animals. Oregon has had 57 Senate presidents, but none have had Courtney s impact, Wagner said.
Lori Brocker, who served as secretary of the Senate during the last nine years of Courtney s tenure, gave the invocation. Brocker, a former Norwegian Lutheran pastor, recounted the religious banter or Reformation trash talk, depending on who was describing those conversations she and Courtney, a devout Irish Catholic, had during their years of working together. She remembered jokingly threatening to nail an updated version of Martin Luther s 95 theses to the Senate door, and sharing updates on Olympic medal counts for Norway and Ireland.
There are so many memories that all of us have in this room and that people will hear today, Brocker said. I don t know if any of the rest of you feel this, but I feel his presence up here, and I hear his voice in my head.
Courtney often saw something in people, and especially his staff that they didn t see in themselves, said Pat Egan, CEO of See s Candies who was Courtney s student and later employee. When Egan left the Capitol to attend law school, he felt jealous of the people who still worked for Courtney, and Egan learned about how to lead a good life outside of work from watching Courtney with his wife, Margie, sons and dachshunds.
I know I m not alone in saying Peter made me better in every facet of my life, Egan said. He made everyone better, because with Peter, it was always about the team.
Former Sen. Betsy Johnson, who was a conservative Democrat from the north coast before her nonaffiliated run for governor in 2022, said she always imagined that the memorial for grumpy uncle Peter would happen in the Capitol s rotunda. And she promised Courtney that his grievers would use crowbars to pop the state seal out of the floor and slip his casket beneath it, the Capitol serving as Oregon s grandest mausoleum to its longest-serving legislator.
Long after we re all gone, Peter stories will abound in this building, Johnson said. Many complimentary, some not so much, but all of them paying homage to Oregon s most significant naturalized citizen.
