Richard Ford Russell, 1956-2025

 

“All the years combine They melt into a dream A broken angel sings From a guitar”

— From Stella Blue by the Grateful Dead (Garcia and Hunter)

 

Richard Ford Russell died peacefully at his home on September 22nd, 2025, his wife and son by his side. The blue Pacific Ocean sprawled before him, ready for his next adventure.

 

Born in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, on November 19, 1956, Richard was the eldest of five children to George and Jane Russell. The family would collaborate in business and philanthropy, but Richard established early in his life that he had his own map. His map was built around music, art, wilderness, and the Salish Sea. He developed the passions that would define his life. He worked alongside his grandfather on their family farm, amongst the Pacific Northwest forests, climbed Mount Rainier, and traveled the length of the Puget Sound and beyond.

 

At Stanford, he studied international relations. Richard began to see how his interests might converge rather than compete. Forging new thinking on how cultures intersect, and continually refining his wit and creative prowess. After graduation, Richard moved to a chicken coop. He focused on his painting and creative pursuits, amongst which he would meet Jileen on a beach nearby with his beloved dog Alice one sunset, borrowing Jileen’s guitar from her and then spending the next evening going door to door to find Jileen again. They built a love that spanned 42 years and a lifetime of sunsets.

 

Richard continued to grow his painting and music, forming The Red Rhythm band, and built a cult following in the South Puget Sound region. He and Jileen married in 1982 and moved to London, where Richard would work closer with his family and their business, The Frank Russell Company. At Frank Russell Company, he brought a strategic mind shaped by creative sensibility that saw opportunities others missed. In London, Richard and Jileen found an arts community that shared their disregard for boundaries. They gravitated toward work that refused categories—performances simultaneous with music and theater, installations that became narratives, and an experimental spirit to inform everything they built together.

 

On his return, Richard and Jileen welcomed their son Zac, and Richard continued to wear many hats, working with The Frank Russell company and beyond across diverse and wide-ranging enterprises, helping organizations and individuals articulate their purpose and communicate complex ideas.

 

Like everything he did, this work was ultimately about connection— on how one innately understands themselves and each other. This culminated in supporting his family in selling their business, with Ricard being key to transitioning a corporate culture that was people first, a philosophy he carried through every part of his life. His forty-two marriage to Jileen was more than romance; it was a foundation and launching pad, supporting individual dreams while creating new ones neither could have imagined alone.

 

In 1999, Richard and Jileen founded a ranch, the Pu’u O Kumau Ranch in North Kohala, Hawaii. What began as Pu'u O Kumau would eventually expand into multiple ventures, including Dis Barn, Kumau Cattle Company, and Kumau Cattle Club. The ranch embodied their belief that business could regenerate rather than extract and that communities could be built around shared values rather than mere transactions.

 

Richard’s artistic output throughout his life was prolific and varied. He painted, primarily in oils, capturing landscapes and the emotions they evoked. He was a musician and songwriter, forming bands including the Red Rhythm Band, The Dogmanauts, Ricardo & Friends, The Red Water Trio, The Slippersons, and The Castaways. Over the years, he produced twelve albums of mostly original music and created documentary films, including "Burner, Once a Blue Angel" and "Movement Nature Meant." His art was never separate from his life; it was how he processed and shared his experience of the world, often from his sanctuary on the water, Alisaz, his boat that he took to every corner of the Salish Sea, embraced by his community as his crew.

 

Richard’s most lasting work may have been in philanthropy. He helped launch The Russell Family Foundation with his parents and siblings, where he served as a trustee and president. He was a foundational leader to the organization and its facets for over twenty years, focusing on the Puget Sound and grassroots leadership development. In 2021, Richard co-founded Clementine Fund with Jileen and their son, Zac. As executive director, Richard led initiatives closer to his and his family's core, expanding globally while also increasing support for his home of Hawaii Island, with particular attention to equity, food security, and community building. Modeling radical trust-based philanthropy through fully streamlined grantmaking and unrestricted gifts, Richard believed that real change happens when funders step back and communities step forward.

 

Richard approached his various roles—businessman, artist, philanthropist, husband, father, grandfather—not as separate identities but as expressions of a single philosophy: that life was meant to be lived fully, that talents were meant to be shared, that success was measured not just in individual achievement but in collective flourishing. Throughout his professional success, Richard maintained what friends described as an uncommon gift for creating safe and welcoming spaces. He could make people feel seen and valued at the ranch, in music venues, or in foundation meetings. Creativity flourished in his presence because judgment did not.

 

Richard often watched the Pacific Ocean perform its daily drama of light and water from his home perched on the world's edge. Each morning brought sunrise from the mountains, and each evening, sunset beyond the deep blue sea. Between those daily revelations, Richard Russell lived as if the spaces between were not a chasm to be bridged but a world to be cherished and explored. He is survived by Jileen, his wife of forty-two years; his son Zac and daughter-in-law Mariko; his grandson Rumi; his father George Russell, and three siblings Dion, Eric & Sarah.

 

“And when you hear that song / Come crying like the wind / It seems like all this life / Was just a dream / Stella Blue” — Stella Blue by The Grateful Dead

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