On the last page of the newsletter, two coupons jump out: one for a discount on a passport photo, the other on shipping services. And at the very bottom of the ad, in uppercase italicized letters, the UPS Store at 3439 Sandy Boulevard is proudly identified as PRINTER OF THE BEAUMONT-WILSHIRE NEWSLETTER.
When I stopped by the UPS Store in early April, Kamal Grover had just returned from a three-week trip to Europe. His primary purpose was to see his son graduate from a program at Oxford in England, but he included some stops on the Continent as well. As a small business owner and operator, opportunities like that don’t come often, and he made the best of it. As a rule, Kamal tries to take off weekends, filling most of his leisure time with family activities. A family man to the core, he understandably glowed with pride as he spoke of his only son, who graduated from the Oxford program and had previously obtained electrical engineering and MBA degrees from other schools.
The path Kamal followed to the store on Sandy took a few twists and turns from his home in India. And yes, the surname Grover would not be considered typical Indian. Even Kamal is not sure of the origin of the name. Familiar with his family history going back several generations, he suspects there’s a British colonial link. Kamal grew up in New Delhi with his brother and sister, his father working in the financial and banking industries. After trying college for a couple of years, Kamal joined a company that specialized in supplying fiberglass items (such as chairs and displays) for the exposition industry. Through those connections he eventually set out on his own and became a top-tier certified general contractor for a development company that was heavily involved in public works projects (such as convention centers), despite the fact that he had no formal academic civil engineering training. It was there he honed his entrepreneurial spirit.
As is true of many immigrants, the initial draw to America was related to the presence of family. Kamal’s brother and wife had come to America in the 1970s and became US citizens in 1979. This was key, as his brother could now act as a sponsor for Kamal and his wife when they arrived in the mid-’80s. The significant cultural change and strong family ties left behind in India proved a difficult hurdle to overcome, and Kamal and his wife returned to India after a few years. However, in the late 1990s a desire to seek opportunities in America—not the least of which was education-relation—prompted them to give relocating another try. Initially, Kamal had dreams of opening a motel, but Y2K and 911 fears, coupled with an economic downturn, altered his plans, and he ended up going into partnership with his sister, who already had a franchise with Mailboxes, Etc. (later bought out by UPS). Despite a couple of early location ownership changes, the brother-sister team has stayed the course with UPS for 18 years, Kamal managing the Sandy store, his sister the same at the Hawthorne location. That said, Kamal continues to talk with friends who manage motels and has not abandoned pursuing that dream again in the future.
Over the last 20 years, the Indian community has grown significantly in Portland, primary due to large contingences working at Intel and OHSU. His brother used to find it necessary to make the trek in from Hood River (where his business is located) periodically to one particular Portland market that stocked spices and other cultural items (think DVDs) from India. Today there are over 20 such establishments, along with many temples, meeting the cultural needs of the Metro Indian community.
Kamal Grover deals with global logistics on a daily basis at UPS, and now you’ve glimpsed how his life path has a definitive global feel to it as well.