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Two nominated for
By Helen Altonn
Campbell Estate
trustee posts
Star-BulletinRetired Adm. Ronald J. "Zap" Zlatoper and Hawaii developer Richard W. Gushman have been nominated as trustees of the $2 billion Estate of James Campbell.
Members of the Campbell family, the beneficiaries of the 100-year-old trust, agreed on Saturday to offer the $800,000-a-year posts to Zlatoper, the former commander of the Navy's Pacific Fleet, and Gushman, who co-developed the Waikele Center.
Seats on the estate's four-member board had been vacant since the October, 1999, resignation of local business executive Tom Leppert and the December, 1998, retirement of Paul Cassiday.
Current trustees are board chairman Clint Churchill and former Theo H. Davies & Co. executive David Heenan. Gushman and Zlatoper have not formally accepted their nominations, which require Probate Court approval.
"Both Dick Gushman and Zap Zlatoper will be excellent additions to the mix of abilities and experience among us as trustees," Churchill said.
The Campbell family had hired a San Francisco firm, Spencer Stuart, to help conduct a nationwide search for trustees and they had a long list of candidates, Churchill said.
"It was through that process they they reduced down to Dick and Zap."
Gushman, 54, is president and chief executive officer of Gushman Development Co. and has owned and developed real estate worth more than $1 billion in Hawaii, California, Washington, Texas and Guam.
He serves on the boards of Servco, Crazy Shirts, Oceanic Cablevision and Rampac and is a trustee of Aquila/Pacific Capital Funds. Gushman also has served as chairman of Aloha United Way and president of the Boys and Girls Club of Hawaii.
Zlatoper, 57, is chairman of Sanchez Computer Associates, Inc., a fast-growing high technology banking software firm in Philadelphia.
He joined that company in 1997. Under his leadership, it was ranked No. 1 out of 269 public companies in the information technology sector.
Zlatoper retired as a four-star admiral after 33 years in the U.S. Navy. His last command was in Hawaii. From 1994 to 1996 he served as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, overseeing an organization with 250,000 people and an annual operating budget of $5.2 billion.
He served on the boards of various community organizations in Hawaii, including the Hawaii Chapter of the American Red Cross and Aloha Council of the Boy Scouts of America.
The nominations came after members of the Campbell family had petitioned the Probate Court to reduce the number of trustees to three.
"This decision renders that whole issue moot," Churchill said. "The family has decided to go back to four trustees on a permanent basis."
James Shingle, grandson of James Campbell and chairman of the trustee search committee, said the nominees "bring unique skills and experience, which, when added to those of our current trustees, make for an outstanding combination of qualities that will serve the task well."
He said the search was "a difficult task. ... It was important to the family that both nominees share the same community-spiritedness that marks the family and the estate.
It was also vital that both have strong ties to Hawaii and are committed to Hawaii's future."
Established in 1900, the Campbell Estate is one of the state's largest private landowners and owns office, retail and industrial properties in 15 other states. Its largest project has been development of the City of Kapolei, for which it received the highest U.S. recognition as the 1998 "National Developer of the Year."
Reporter Rick Daysog contributed to this story.
