Cheese War
| Timeline | ||
| Event Date | Event | Source (See key below.) |
| 1-1-1962 | Tillamook Cheese Association and Tillamook Grade A Shippers Association consolidated as Tillamook Cheese & Dairy Association on January 1, 1962. Ferd Becker, Tillamook farmer, said the Tillamook Cheese Association had title to its cheese factory, and the Grade A Shippers Association supplied the funding for the fluid milk plant and equipment. Cheese & Dairy was accepted as a co-op member of Tillamook County Creamery, a county-wide cooperative that had included small cheese factories. Representatives from all the cooperatives served on the board of County Creamery. H. S. (Beale) Dixon was manager of Cheese & Dairy, and also manager of County Creamery. | H-H, 2-10-1963 |
| 6-5-1962 | At a special meeting of the board of directors of Cheese & Dairy, Hans Leuthold made a motion that Cheese & Dairy recommend that the County Creamery board demand the resignation of Beale Dixon, manager, at the June 13, 1962 board meeting. The motion was seconded by Arnold Waldron. Voting by secret ballot, the directors passed the motion with nine in favor, one opposed. | TC&DA minutes, 6-5-1962 |
| 6-13-1962 | At a County Creamery board meeting held at the Tillamook High School cafeteria, George Milne, who was president of Cheese & Dairy and also a County Creamery board member, moved that Dixon be asked to resign as manager of County Creamery. Satterfield wrote, “Milne read from bylaws the duties of the directors. He then said that at a meeting the previous month with Carnation, Dixon had been asked not to bind the TCCA to any action that would lead to delivering milk to Carnation at less than the $5.92 price set by the Milk Stabilization director. Milne said Dixon signed a petition requesting a drop in the fluid-milk price and asked the board to approve asking for a price cut without stating he had already signed.” The motion was defeated by one vote. | Satterfield, p. 91 Northwest Dairy News, 6-28-1963 |
| 6-19-1962 | At a Cheese & Dairy board meeting, Joe Beeler moved that Beale Dixon be removed as secretary/manager of Cheese & Dairy. Directors voting in favor of firing Dixon were Beeler, Milne, Leuthold, Lucas, Landolt, Redberg, Waldron, and Tohl. Voting against were Bailey, Schild, and Zweifel. One reason board members sought Dixon’s removal was that Dixon had ignored directions given to him by the Cheese & Dairy board to stop making unsecured loans to grocery stores in order to sell fluid milk to processors in the Portland area. Another reason was that Dixon made deals to sell milk at lower prices to Portland processors than had been approved by the board. George Milne, Cheese & Dairy board president, said, “Dixon did not adhere to the policies of the Cheese and Dairy board and did not follow the directions of the board, therefore this action resulted in the request to resign.” | Northwest Dairy News, 6-28-1963 Oregonian 4-21-1963 TC&DA minutes, 6-19-1962 |
| 7-1962 | Ralph Tohl resigned from the Cheese & Dairy board. Glenn Johnston was elected to his seat. | B.I. 8-1-1962 |
| 8/9-1962 | Three Cheese & Dairy directors, Millard Bailey, Otto Schild, and Karl Zweifel, mounted an effort to persuade the membership to recall all the other directors. The eight directors they wanted recalled were Joe Beeler, Glenn Johnston, John Landolt, Hans Leuthold, Vern Lucas, George Milne, Ralph Redberg, and Arnold Waldron. The three directors formed the board minority when the board majority voted to fire Beale Dixon as Cheese & Dairy’s manager. | B.I. 9-16-1962 |
| 9-5-1962 | Near the end of a long membership meeting, patrons of Cheese & Dairy voted 126 to 114 to retain the eight directors. Beale Dixon attended the meeting, although he was no longer employed by Cheese & Dairy. President Milne did not allow Dixon to take the floor. | TC&DA minutes 9-5-1962 |
| 9-7-1962 | Cheese & Dairy board members George Milne, Vern Lucas, Ralph Redberg, Glenn Johnston, and Hans Leuthold attended a Dairy Stabilization conference in Salem. Also attending was Wayne Adams, a Tillamook member of the Oregon Farm Bureau stabilization committee. | H-H, 9-30-1962 |
| 9-21-1962 | Tillamook farmers attended a meeting in Portland to discuss stabilizing the milk supply in Oregon and equalizing producers’ shares. | H-H, 9-30-1962 |
| 10-11-1962 | Cheese & Dairy filed suit against County Creamery and Beale Dixon seeking a Declaratory Judgment. In its suit, Cheese & Dairy said Beale Dixon and County Creamery had interfered with Cheese & Dairy’s sale of milk, had loaned Cheese & Dairy’s funds without permission, and had usurped control of tanker trucks and fluid milk handling equipment and facilities at the cheese factory complex north of Tillamook. The suit asked the court to settle controversies between the two cooperatives. | H-H, 10-14-1962 |
| 11-1962 | Tillamook farmers met with groups working with the Oregon Farm Bureau to design legislation for voluntary stabilization of the milk supply and price. Oregon’s Emergency Milk Stabilization law will expire on Dec. 31, 1962. | H-H, 12-2-1962 |
| 12-1962 | Anticipating the expiration of Oregon’s milk stabilization law, rumors circulated of a milk price war. Farmers and processors hoped to agree on legislation to propose in 1963. | H-H, 12-30-1962 |
| Key to sources: B.I.: Board Information, a newsletter that expressed the rebels’ viewpoint. It appeared irregularly from 1962 to 1966. H-H: Headlight-Herald, a weekly newspaper published in Tillamook, Oregon. Northwest Dairy News: a farm newspaper published twice a month in Seattle, Washington by Northwest Farm News, Inc. Journal: Oregon Journal, a daily newspaperpublished in Portland, Oregon Oregonian: a daily newspaper published in Portland, Oregon Portland Reporter: a daily newspaper published in Portland, Oregon from 1960 to 1964. Satterfield: The Tillamook Way: A History of the Tillamook County Creamery Association, a Farmer-owned Cooperative; written by Archie Satterfield; published by Tillamook County Creamery Association; Tillamook, Oregon; 2000. Shopping Smiles: Shopping Smiles, a sister newspaper to the Headlight-Herald, was published weekly in Tillamook, Oregon. |
