Jim Lintott pauses for a portrait outside Robert E. Lintott Alexander Park, a site restored with the help of his $100,000 donation, in this photograph from 2010.
In 2004, Jim Lintott was leery of visiting Alexander Park, a park on the west bank of the Chehalis River where he and his friends had played while growing up in Chehalis.
“This was a very scary place,” Lintott said Monday afternoon in the same park that now bears his family’s name: Robert E. Lintott Alexander Park. “It looked like people had been camping out here.”
Renamed in honor of his father, Robert Lintott, a former Chehalis fourth-grade teacher, Jim Lintott put up a hefty donation — $100,000 — for the restoration and ongoing maintenance of the park.
Originally established in 1920, Robert E. Lintott Alexander Park returned to its former popularity. After its re-establishment in 2005, its one pavilion was consistently booked out during warmer months. The park needed another pavilion.
So Lintott donated another $35,000 to the city of Chehalis for an expansion at the park.
On Monday night Chehalis gave back. During a regular City Council meeting, Chehalis Mayor Anthony Ketchum presented Lintott with the Chehalis Community Spirit Award and a key to the city for his generosity, contributions and support for the community.
“His loyalty is a tremendous asset,” Ketchum said.
A 1982 graduate of W.F. West High School, Lintott had also made a generous donation to the new Vernetta Smith Timberland Regional Library, “a cornerstone of our downtown,” Ketchum said.
Lintott’s longtime friend J. Vander Stoep, a local attorney and former state legislator, said the donation for the Chehalis library was $100,000.
“Jim is likely the most remarkable talent to graduate from W.F. West in the last 50 years,” Vander Stoep had said.
In three years Lintott earned his undergraduate degree from Stanford University, where he also attended law school.
Lintott now lives in Virginia with his wife May Liang and their children. He owns Freedom Management Group, a money managing firm outside of Washington, D.C.
Upon receiving the award, Lintott said it seemed an undeserving honor and accredited his success to the “wonderful parents and wonderful teachers” of Chehalis. “It really isn’t all that surprising when you have so many great people getting you through your day.”
Besides their contributions to the rebuilding of Chehalis, Lintott and his wife are benefactors of an annual scholarship that is given to a W.F. West student in the name of Robert Lintott and also helps support the school’s debate team.
At Robert E. Lintott Alexander Park, Jim Lintott reminisced his childhood days spent swimming in the Chehalis River before downplaying his monetary contributions to its revitalization.
“My donation was nothing compared to the thousands of hours people spent cleaning this park up,” he said.
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Adam Pearson (360) 807-8208
