“Got a million bucks?” That was the question Keith asked me when he came over to my house one night to play cards. He’d come a little early. “How about in that dog biscuit can,” he asked pointing to Milk Bone dog treat tin. “No?” he added with a big smile. Other people might not have been smiling as much. Keith had spent the afternoon gathering and estimating the first real numbers on how much the synagogue would cost to construct. The numbers were above what we then thought the estimated one hundred families that would later pledge, could raise. But this was Keith Koplan, and this was an all-Keith moment. Determined, disciplined, focused, with a vision that was balanced with pragmatism, and with a certain polished business cool. There would be no drama. We would work the problem. And Keith did just that as he lent Vancouver’s Jewish community his lifetime of experience as a leader, a business owner, and just simply a very smart man, who understood challenges and understood how to make those challenges work for the greater good. In the end we raised all the money we needed. A big part of that was because people were confident their money would be used wisely. It was. We did.

Keith Koplan was many different things to different people. Proud father to a large family, loving and dedicated husband to Merle, prominent community and business leader, and owner and operator of Koplan’s, a multi-generational Vancouver furniture store, that had been a fixture of this city for decades. He was even a local TV personality. If you stayed up and watched a local channel, there was Keith, very cozy, very avuncular, inviting you to come on over and buy something nice for your home. “From our family to your family…” Keith told the viewers.  When the congregation rented a space called the “Learning Center”, Keith and Merle donated a furniture piece that would serve as our first stationary Torah ark. That piece, our Torah’s first permanent home, now sits inside the religious school wing.

Keith and Merle are active and long-term members of the congregation. And the Koplans were a part of something that was a big part of the history of the Pacific Northwest since the days of the Oregon Territory: The Jewish, family-owned furniture store. These merchants were a part of almost every town’s downtown, and generations of people around here, filled their homes with furniture from these shops. Retail means that you must be open when the customer is off work and can buy. Keith would tell me about how his family would mark holidays at home, while balancing the challenges of keeping a family business available to the public. And like most Jewish families in this community, all things Jewish that could not be done at home, meant taking a drive to Portland. Keith would end up changing all that.

In 2007, when David and Patricia Nierenberg generously, and at the time, anonymously, pledged a foundational donation to make the dream of building a purpose-built synagogue, a possibility, Keith was the natural choice to head up the team. Keith had done it before. He had been among those heading up an earlier team of dedicated professionals to help Southwest Washington Medical Center, today PeaceHealth (aka “St Joe’s) to find a larger, permanent home, in a space big enough to serve the future needs of this community. His deep involvement in the business and philanthropy communities, his personal ties with so many people, and his extensive experiences and education, all made Keith the perfect pick to quarterback the synagogue building and deign project, as co-chair.

That evening, when we knew we were going to have to do some real rolling up of sleeves to raise all the money needed, Keith was as unflappable and poised as ever. Always meticulously dressed, one of those people that’s more put together when casual than some of us when formal, Keith was as cool about the money challenge as he was that night with his best unreadable game face at cards. And so it would be in the months that rolled out ahead, as the project went from emails, and spreadsheets, right through to shoveling dirt to turning the lights on a getting a certificate of occupancy. On time. On budget. No drama.

Over two hundred fellow Reform congregation presidents had sent me their stories and suggestions on their building projects. Many of these stories might have made fine Netflix dramas: incomplete, ran out of money, heavy mortgages, cost overruns, delays and as Cheryl Richards (also of treasured memory) liked to say, “…putting the fun in dysfunctional family.” Keith knew exactly how to spend his time building a building while avoiding the Sturm und Drang that can come with these projects.

Step by step, process by process, decision by decision, Keith delivered exactly as advertised with exactly the facility needed. Eyes always on the prize. Keith understood that every generation would put their own stamp on the synagogue, but that the money we had now must be spent on square footage, walls, ceilings that don’t leak, and spaces that can easily serve many functions. As a business owner he knew that you could kill an organization where operational costs soak up all the oxygen. Under his leadership, we created a space five times the space we were initially renting at the time, but with heating and colling expenses that were lower. I am not sure Keith ever used the words sustainable and footprint in the same sentence, but he sure got the memo from the future. Interestingly, our religious schoolers did a class project of designing a synagogue. Their dream synagogue almost matched, room by room, what Team Keith ended up building. Keith knew how to give life to an idea. Ten years ago, Vancouver’s first synagogue was complete.

Keith died on the second day of June, just days away from Shavuot. Keith had asked that we not hold a funeral, an instruction that of course we are honoring.  Just weeks before Keith’s very unexpected death, Becca Khalil was elected president of the congregation at an AGM held in the synagogue.  Becca is the third president to be elected in the synagogue, and she is our first president to have literally grown up in the congregation and then coming back, as an adult, with her family as a member and now board president. Becca’s journey began when we rented church, school and business park spaces, and the religious school dwelled in the back of the Herson family minivan. But Becca’s son has been able to attend religious school inside Vancouver’s first purpose-built synagogue, while a new generation of Vancouver’s Jewish community no longer must take a drive to Portland to do all things Jewish. Today, our community lives on in the house Keith built. You can’t have a better remembrance of a life well lived. Thank you, Keith.

Doug Green