What are the best places to save and restore the positions of a grid's columns. I can successfully restore the saved properties in Grid.Init() but have to save the grid column properties in the Form.Release() which beats the OOP purpose. Grid.Destroy() for saving is too late as there are no longer any columns.

I am sorry, but you are mistaken. The place to save the settings is in the grid's destory - as a matter of fact, I have a grid class that does exactly this. When the container is instantiated, the init() of all the contained controls fires before the container's init(). When the container is destroyed, things happen in the opposite order - the container's destory() fires before the destroy of the contained controls. So the columns are still there when the grid's destroy fires.