Roland Ilg, who worked the gates at Civic Stadium (now Providence Park) for over 30 years, passed away this past March. He was 79.
A memorial for Ilg will be held on Saturday, June 25, from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. in the KeyBank Club at Providence Park.
Ilg's long career in Guest Services began in 1980 and continued up until his retirement in 2013. In that time, he worked hundreds of events at the stadium, witnessing three iterations of the Portland Timbers and greeting thousands of guests with his signature: “Hi, how are you?”
“When I moved to Portland in 2007, Roland was one of the first people I met,” Timbers owner Merritt Paulson remembered. “He introduced himself to me at a coffee shop near the stadium. He was a fixture at our events and in the neighborhood and embodied so much of who we are.
“When he suffered heat exhaustion working a particularly hot event in late July, he refused to be treated and stop working and I had to personally convince him to seek treatment. I miss Roland greatly and still can see him walking his dog Dusty up 20th Street in my mind every morning."
Ilg became so well-known in the community that when guests encountered him outside of the stadium they almost always came up to him to chat and say hello.
“I got to know so many people and I still sometimes go to the grocery store and people come up to me and say, 'You know, you used to take my tickets!'” Ilg told Timbers.com upon his retirement in 2013.
The jovial Ilg had that kind of effect on people, says Providence Park Guest Services manager Andrea Tolonen, a former colleague who first met Ilg when she began working as an usher at Civic Stadium in the 1980s.
“He had a great personality and then his accent was always so endearing as well,” Tolonen remembers of Ilg, who was from Switzerland. “[He was] always positive. It was always, 'How are you?' He was always glad to see you. He didn't spend much time talking about himself.”
In his many years at the stadium, Ilg's legend and reputation grew.
Some remember the time he ran down a would-be thief at the stadium. Others remember the day Ilg, fed up with standing exposed to the elements, first brought his shed – a disused ticket booth from the Portland Expo Center – with him to his post at Gate 35 (now Gate 1). Most remember the baked goods that the former pastry chef and Culinary Institute instructor brought with him to share.
Tolonen, in fact, still marvels at the mastery that Ilg displayed in the kitchen.
“It was always amazing because he never put the temperature on 350 or whatever,” she remembers. “He would open the door of the oven and just run his arm through it really quick and say, 'No, that oven's too cold' or 'No, that oven's too hot.' And he could just do it by feel – a big swish [of the arm] through the oven – and he would tell his students, 'No, this is not right' or 'Yep, this is perfect.'”
But to truly understand the kind of impact Ilg had on the people around him, you need look no further than the condolences that came pouring in after his passing. Ilg's friends remember him for all the time they spent together outside of the stadium, chatting and laughing for hours about life and work, and describing the Swiss with words like “kind,” “gentle,” “sweet,” and “special.”
“Everybody loved him,” says Tolonen. “He was a dear friend. He was so positive. You liked to be around him and his dog – Dusty and then, more recently, Bebe – [while] he would walk around the [Goose Hollow] neighborhood.
“Everybody knew Roland. Whether you worked here or were just in the neighborhood. He was just like a delight for everybody in a way.”
