George Endicott remembers the first late-night call he received after being elected mayor in 2008.

The call came from the fire chief, who was on his way to the Deschutes County jail to bail out Redmond city manager Mike Patterson. Patterson had been charged with felony domestic abuse and was behind bars.

Endicott wasn’t even mayor yet. He was council president and had been elected, but not yet sworn in to the top job. Current mayor Alan Unger was traveling in South America and could not be reached.

“Incommunicado,” remembers Endicott.

The decision would be his.

Endicott thought back through the years of tough decisions he made while in the U.S. Army, at the Pentagon and at NATO. He picked up the phone and called the city’s head of human resources, deputy manager, attorney and the police and fire chiefs.

“Monday morning, 7 a.m., city hall,” he told each one.

At the meeting, they debated next steps. Instead of pursuing a for-cause firing that could have led to a long legal fight, Endicott and the city’s legal team decided they would pay Patterson six months severance if he would resign and just go away. Patterson agreed. Both sides wiped their hands of the whole thing.

“A lot of people were very critical,” Endicott remembered.

But Endicott worried a protracted fight would cost city money and council energy — and leave Patterson on city payroll well into the next year.

“That was my very first decision as mayor,” said Endicott.

It’s clear that is not the kind of decision Endicott likes to make — catching flak and causing controversy, dividing the council and voters. He likes city council, staff and mayor on the same page, getting business done at efficient meetings without unnecessary debate.

This spring Endicott decided, along with his wife and city councilor Krisanna Clark-Endicott, not to run for reelection.

He said they want to travel while they can, both in warmer climes in the U.S. Southwest and in Europe and Thailand.

Looking back at his 14 years as mayor, Endicott said he has a political style that stands apart in an era more prone to lightning-rod issues and partisan bickering.

“I like 7-0 votes,” said Endicott.

Endicott said his political philosophy is one of “fundamental government.” The city provides public health, public safety, economic development and infrastructure. Anything outside of that, including recent pushes to get involved in social issues, diversity and homelessness, are outside the scope of city business. To Endicott, they are a waste of time.

“Don’t touch it,” he said. “It’s the third rail.”

He said nearly every vote on those “fundamental” issues of government finds a united council. If staff do their jobs, they bring council a well-thought plan to accomplish some necessary goal. Often, councilor’s find their way to Endicott’s way of thinking: a 7-0 vote either in favor or opposed.

“When we start looking at social issues (the vote is) 4-3. What’s that tell you? You’ve got some divided government. So I say stay away from it,” said Endicott. “(Discussions about diversity) diverted us from my way of thinking. It didn’t feel good, it didn’t look good.”

Central Oregon lineage

Endicott was born in Redmond in 1946, a time when it was an isolated and agrarian town of about 2,000 residents.

He grew up in a home built by his grandfather near Dry Canyon. Endicott was the progeny of a family that traces its history back to some of the earliest white colonists of Central Oregon. Family lore says that one side, the Endicotts, arrived around 1915 and once operated a ferry that crossed the Deschutes River. Another side of the family, the Campbells, farmed land near Madras even earlier.

When George was growing up, his family ran horses in the canyon — which at the time marked the outer edge of town. His father owned a downtown gas station and an uncle ran the gas wholesaler and flew as a crop duster. It was a pretty normal High Desert upbringing until George turned 8, when his father went back into military service and the family picked up stakes over and over again for the rest of Endicott’s childhood. His father’s deployments — and Endicott’s schooling — included stints in Delaware, Illinois, Alabama, Massachusetts, California and abroad in places like Japan.

Even in those itinerant years, Redmond was always home for the Endicotts. The family would come back every summer for vacation. He remembers the centennial in 1959, when Oregon celebrated a century of statehood and Redmond put up false fronts to look like an old frontier town. And he remembers helping the family fight a mill fire that threatened his uncle’s gas tanks — and thereby a good chunk of the town.

“When you’re a military brat and you move all the time, you need an anchor,” said Endicott. “Redmond was my anchor.”

At Central Oregon Community College he took general studies classes, then joined the Army in 1969 and served until 1972. He was sent to Vietnam, where he became a team leader and rose to the rank of Specialist 5. He got involved in military intelligence, a skill he would later make a career out of. Endicott was wounded in Vietnam and awarded a Purple Heart before being sent home to Redmond to convalesce.

Endicott took a job at a local mill, Whittier Moulding.

“Spent eight hours a day either inspecting it, tying it up, putting it in racks,” he said. “It was just manual labor at the end of a big moulding machine.”

International intelligence

Endicott knew that kind of millwork was not his future, so he applied to Oregon State University and earned a degree in economics. After graduation he took jobs at the U.S. Department of Labor in Seattle, then for the U.S. Army in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, where he met his first wife, Lynda, who died in 2014.

He spent time in Berkeley, Calif., working on some of the world’s most powerful computers of the mid-1980s — some the size of entire rooms. He became a computer scientist before many people knew what that job was.

In 1988, just a year before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Endicott took a job with NATO in The Hague, Netherlands, parlaying both his military intelligence background with his burgeoning computer skills. In 1990, he led the team that put together the first intelligence framework for NATO.

“Just about the time we got done with our system, the Gulf War started and our equipment got installed all over Europe to help the NATO forces run the war,” he said.

When he returned stateside in 1993, Endicott landed an intelligence job at the Pentagon working directly for the Secretary of Defense.

It was high-level stuff, far up the ladder of classified information. He remembers one meeting where his bosses tasked him with breaking a stalemate between the U.S. Navy and Air Force about whether the military should build more ships or more planes.

By that time, Endicott had lived around the world and noticed that nearly all large cities were located near the coast — or at least with eyesight of open ocean. He remembered that the sight of those massive ships could loosen the resolve of the most stonehearted fighters — without a bomb dropped or life lost.

“When a carrier battle group pulls off of some country’s coast, their bowels get weak,” said Endicott.

He advocated for more ships.

Later he became involved with the Defense Science Board, a part of the Department of Defense made up of high-level retired generals and select civilians. He worked on top secret projects, including the world’s first global surveillance architecture.

“Here I am, this punk from Redmond, Oregon, in a room with all these highfalutin 3-, 4-, 5-star guys,” remembers Endicott. “We came up with an answer and a new approach.”

He parlayed that work into being named the head of information technology for the entire Department of Defense in 1997. In that position, he put together highly-classified rules for how DOD data systems communicate with each other in an era when computer data intelligence was just beginning to take off

Local government

While Endicott was making world-changing decisions at the highest levels of the Pentagon, he got involved with his local planning commission in Prince William County, Virginia.

Endicott had the the same level of interest in making high-level decisions on the future of the U.S. military and helping decide if a proposed gas station was too close to the Manassas National Battlefield, where the Battle of Bull Run was fought.

“Every decision you make, somebody cares — including yourself, hopefully,” he said.

He said the local decisions, which he was making as a civilian and sometimes were just about gas stations, were more enjoyable to be part of.

“The decisions you make at that level are a lot more personal and local, and to me more fun,” said Endicott. “Those other ones just make you tear your hair out.”

Retirement and mayorship

After a final military stint in San Diego, Endicott retired in 2003. He was just 55 and he and his wife decided to move home to Redmond.

Endicott said he was too young to really be finished working, and he missed those “fun” decisions made in local government. So he called up Alan Unger, mayor at the time and an old family friend. Unger appointed him to the planning commission, where he spent two years before being appointed to city council in 2005. He ran for his first election in 2006 for that same council seat. Two years later, he ran for mayor. He won both races.

Unger, who was mayor for eight years, saw that Endicott had what it took to do the job.

“He had the experience in policy and a skill at getting people engaged,” Unger said. And he had the time. He was a natural fit.”

Unger said that Endicott’s mayorship was marked by competence and direction, and sound investments in a city’s growing infrastructure.

“He kept us going as a city,” said Unger. “He was always making sure we kept our nest clean.”

Redmond city manager Keith Witcosky said work won’t be the same without Endicott down the hall. Witcosky said that, as someone who didn’t grow up in Redmond, Endicott added critical context to every decision that came before the council. That knowledge of Redmond’s roots will be disappear when he leaves the office.

“You lose the richness and the fabric and the charm,” said Witcosky. “And you lose a big slice of time … There’s this presence and aura that has left the building.”

Witcosky said he appreciated how seriously Endicott took the job, how invested he was in the community and how he was willing to show up at every parade, ribbon cutting and community event.

“His love for Redmond is just tireless,” said Witcosky.

Unger and Witcosky noted that part of every mayor’s legacy is how they continue projects underway before they take the job, and the work they hand off to their successor. Both said the city will be in good hands under Mayor-elect Ed Fitch, who has plenty of history in Redmond and city government.

Looking forward

Growing up as an army brat, Endicott saw a lot of places, some thriving and some dying. He remembers one trip to Texas to visit family, during which he walked downtown to catch a movie. There was a car or two parked out front of the theater, but nothing much going on. Literal tumbleweeds starting blowing down Main Street and no one seemed to notice.

“That made such an impression on me,” said Endicott.

Endicott said his tenure as mayor was mostly spent trying to shepherd growth and change in a financially responsible way.

“Do you grow or do you atrophy?” said Endicott. “There is no such thing as staying the same, really. You either have some dynamism and some growth, or you’re probably not going to make it. There’s towns all over this country that just dry up and blow away. We made a conscious decision to not have that happen here.”