2020: Ten Who Made A Difference
It’s been more than three decades since the News Record first launched the annual Ten Who Made a Difference recognition.
At the time, we wanted to do something to recognize those people in the community who go above and beyond serving their neighbors. We thought this might continue for a decade or so before it became too difficult to pinpoint people who hadn’t already been honored.
Now 31 years later, we’ve yet to exhaust the pool of candidates who make differences in our lives every day.
In a year like 2020 has been, those people who make differences are more important.
In hindsight, we shouldn’t be surprised that people in Gillette continue to stand out in their efforts to improve their home. Now working on our fourth decade of 10 Who Made a Difference, we continue to be amazed at the different ways people find to improve the lives of those around them.
Including 2020, 308 individuals, one building and one group of workers have been honored since Ten Who Made A Difference debuted in 1990. In each of these 30 years, it’s been a struggle to pick only 10. There are so many who go above and beyond in their contributions.
The giving nature they display, their desire to help others, is Gillette’s best attribute and has made the tagline “Gillette Strong” one that means strength in service, strength in generosity and strength in community.
You might not recognize many of these people at first because they don’t seek recognition. We try to offer that with Ten Who Made A Difference.
It’s a small pat on the back, but what we really intend to say is “thank you.”
Thank you for what you’ve done. Thank you for your work. Thank you for inspiring others.
One constant over the past 31 years is that Gillette wouldn’t be what it is without you.
Earlier this year, Bonnie Driskill, 67, took her friend for one last visit to the Skeleton House on the corner of 12th Street and Gurley Avenue in Gillette.
Between fighting colon cancer and the circumstances brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, it had been a tough year for Driskill’s friend, Jean Faust.
But she knew there was always one thing that could bring a smile to her ailing friend’s face.
“She lived to get to see interesting things like that around town,” Driskill said. “She got such a kick out of getting to see that giant skeleton and everything they had going out there.”
The Halloween-inspired scenes created with a dozen or so skeletons artfully arranged in myriad scenarios that are played out on Daniel and Tamara Atkins‘ yard has been a bright spot in an otherwise dreary year for many in Campbell County.
“Have never met them, don’t know them, but I think they’re wonderfully creative people and they certainly made my friend smile,” Driskill said.
During a year where many people found themselves working from home or trapped around their houses, one Gillette family took an interesting twist on remodeling their home.
Alongside the Atkins’ corner house, a giant skeleton looms over an undead army of plastic bone bodies, skeletons arranged throughout their yard, frozen in scenes that the family redesigns periodically throughout the year.
A St. Patrick’s day display featured a skeleton keeled over after too many green ales. Another setup showed a group of the skeletons scaling the fence in fear of a barking, skeletal canine.
Around Halloween on the day one of their daughters was married, the lone towering skeleton officiated a wedding between two lovestruck bags of bones at the alter. The rest of the skeletal fleet looked on.
Although the owners of the Skeleton House committed to the full-time Halloween display before the world had even heard of COVID-19 or knew what the coronavirus was, its campy showcases provided some much needed relief during a difficult year.
“It just makes my day brighter,” said Phyllis Jassek, who has lived next door to the Atkinses since the Skeleton House owners moved in more than a decade ago.
From her up-close perspective of the spectacle, she spent the year observing the city react to the Skeleton House firsthand.
Throughout a year marred by uncertainty, she saw smiles creep onto the faces of passersby as they took moments out of their days to take note of the latest scene.
Cars drive down 12th Street slowly, occasionally honking their horns and sometimes stopping altogether to gawk at the latest arrangement and soak in the sprawling scene outside the home.
This Halloween, local kids dressed in costumes, chaperoned by parents or exploring the night on their own, flocked to the house that stands in the city as a yearly symbol of the autumn holiday.
The home’s festive energy made it a neighborhood focal point, somewhat of an escapist mecca for those seeking a playful surprise or any kind of serendipity outside of the houses many spent more time in than usual.
“Us playing with our skeletons is not something I normally think of to make that list,” Tamara said about being selected as on of the News Record’s 10 Who Made a Difference.
But this year, people learned how much life can still be lived inside of a home when that’s the only place there is to go.
Being housebound could feel restrictive. As the Atkinses showed this year, it could also turn creative.
For many of those who have their days brightened for a fleeting moment as they pass by on 12th Street, they learned that one family’s creative expression could elevate a whole neighborhood.
“It’s not anything to save the world with or anything like that, but it provides people, especially this year with COVID the way it is, something to laugh about and smile about,” Driskill said.
Shelby Bachtold has had a desire to help others since she was young.
Bachtold, 32, moved to Gillette from Columbus, Ohio, when she was in the eighth grade. Each day when she finished with school, she would spend three to four hours at the retirement home. When she was old enough to get a job, she worked at the YES House.
That spirit remained with her through adulthood, but it wasn’t until this summer that she realized how much she loved it.
In June, the Campbell County Recreation Center announced that it was canceling the annual Fourth of July parade and activities at Bicentennial Park due to concerns surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.
Almost immediately, a group of people came together on Facebook to save the local Fourth of July celebration.
“COVID had just hit pretty hard and the community was pretty depressed that everything was going to be canceled,” said Bachtold, event coordinator and chair of 307 Patriots.
Parks and Recreation eventually announced it would have the parade, but it worked with the group to also have a celebration for the community.
What started as the “Save the 4th of July Gillette” Facebook group has now become 307 Patriots, a volunteer organization dedicated to organizing free events for the community. It hosted a Back the Blue Barbecue for Labor Day weekend. It’s put on events for Veterans Day and Christmas, held a walk for suicide prevention, partnered with the movie theater to host Free Admission Thursdays and helped with Treat Street.
And the group doesn’t plan on slowing down in 2021.
“We are not going anywhere,” Bachtold said.
For the Fourth of July, Bachtold was put in charge of handling the donations and fundraisers. She had never done anything like it before and was blown away by the community support.
A big emphasis for 307 Patriots is keeping events free, if possible. As a mother of three, Bachtold understands how expensive it can be to take the family out.
“Everything we do, we try to do it for free,” she said. “That’s where the warm, fuzzy feelings come in for me.”
Through working with 307 Patriots, Bachtold has learned just how much she enjoys volunteering.
“I really do enjoy it, I don’t expect anything in return,” she said. “Without this group, I don’t think I would’ve found it.”
She gave credit to the 307 Patriots committee, made up of volunteers dedicated to the same goals.
Bachtold said she’s not a patient person and likes to be the leader. Through working with 307 Patriots, she’s learned that “it’s OK if it doesn’t get done right this second, and it’s OK to let someone else take the lead.”
“We are a family. We vote on everything that we do, from how much money to spend to donate to a charity to the time, date and place we do our next deal,” she said. “It’s a lot of time, a lot of energy and a lot of no sleep.”
Her favorite part about event planning is seeing it all come together after weeks of work.
“Nothing really compares to when you finally see it together, you see the people and you see their smiles,” she said. “Once the cleanup is over, you’re like, ‘That was awesome.’”
As Sen. Mike Enzi comes to the end of a 24-year run representing Wyoming in the U.S. Senate, Wyoming and Campbell County will lose one of the most experienced and respected voices in Congress.
That’s because the four-time senator doesn’t pander to public opinion, enjoy the spotlight or give many sound bites for the press corps clamoring for a quote, said his counterpart, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming. It’s also not a secret that Enzi would rather be hunting or fishing around the Cowboy State than politicking in Washington, D.C.
His humble, get-the-job-done attitude helped Enzi become a strong voice for Wyoming, Barrasso said.
“Gillette and Campbell County could not have asked for a better advocate in the Senate than Mike Enzi,” he said about Enzi being named one of the News Record’s Ten Who Made a Difference for 2020. “Whether it was his time as a Wyoming small-business owner, mayor of Gillette, state legislator or in his role as a U.S. senator, Mike always put the people of Wyoming first.”
His impact can be found in the Congressional Record, which shows more than 100 of his bills became law. One of the most important and high-profile came when he chaired the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and punched through a bill to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in Abandoned Mine Land money owed to Wyoming and other states.
While states are supposed to receive back half of the 35 cents per ton coal producers are taxed federally, that wasn’t happening. For Wyoming, which mines more coal than all the other coal-producing states, that added up to about $700 million.
Enzi said that when he became chairman over a four-committee conference to reform pension law, other legislators told him he wouldn’t be able to pass an AML bill. When the leaders in the Senate came to him and said they were going to tack on some of their bills because the pensions law had to pass, he mentioned he’d add the Abandoned Mine Land money to it.
“I’d been trying to get money for AML and had been told it can’t be done,” Enzi said. “So, if you’re going to put your bills on there, I’m going to put mine on there.
“They said, ‘Oh, no, no, that’s not how it works.’”
That’s when Enzi said he got some help from an unexpected ally, Democrat Sen. Ted Kennedy.
“Sen. Kennedy said, ‘No, Mike. You’re the chairman. You can do what you want.’ So I put it on there and it passed along with the other stuff,” Enzi said. “That’s how we started getting the AML money. We’ve had to defend it every year, because everybody wants it.”
That fight for fiscal responsibility went beyond getting AML payments back to states. For 14 years, Enzi was the only accountant in the Senate, and in 2015 became chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. He’s also repeatedly tried to pass a balanced budget bill.
In 2014, he was one of the voices to speak out against a Barack Obama administration plan to increase the federal debt limit to avoid a government shutdown. Enzi said that it didn’t make sense to simply increase the debt limit without also having a plan to bring it back down or repay the debt.
His plan, also known as the “penny plan,” called for a 1% across-the-board budget cut annually for seven years.
“I told them no plan, no vote,” he said. “I really do expect they ought to be able to come up with a plan. It doesn’t have to be my plan, but there’s no plan out there.”
For Campbell County and Gillette residents, Enzi’s service goes back much farther than his time in the U.S. Senate. A small-business owner — he operated Enzi Shoes in Gillette and two other locations — he ran for Gillette mayor at the urging of then-Sen. Alan Simpson. He helped guide the city through a painful boom time, then was a leading voice in the state Legislature.
Through it all, he said he was never comfortable with a spotlight, preferring instead to work behind the scenes and get things done.
But when he chaired that high-profile conference, Enzi recalled the one time he was hounded by the national press.
“Everyplace I went I was followed by the media,” he said. “They never did get the fact that I never negotiated through the media. That’s how you get locked into things. I was never followed like that before or since.”
One time during that crunch, Enzi said he was approached as he came out of a room and into the hallway.
“What did you decide in there?” Enzi remembers being asked.
“I didn’t decide anything,” he responded. “That’s the bathroom!”
Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.
Those words of generic wisdom can’t help but seem seductive to any who work a job simply because it pays well or it was what was available at the time. Jobs need not be extensions of a person’s interests and hobbies, but there’s a begrudging respect due to those who can turn those things into their career.
James Greer III, owner of Primetime Paintball and Skateboards, is one of those lucky few.
“When I started, there was no place to buy a skateboard, but there were a lot of kids who skated,” Greer said. “It’s gone up and down over the years in popularity.”
He started as a teenager by going to work for a family friend who had a paintball business in Casper who’d opened a shop in Gillette. When that friend later went through a divorce and was going to close the business, Greer’s parents bought all of the inventory and kept the store going.
“We just started with paintball, and now we do skateboards and snowboards,” Greer said. “Skateboarding, you know, there’s nowhere to get boards, same with snowboarding, so it’s been an organic expansion process over the years.”
At 35, Greer’s spent almost two-thirds of his life in the business, and what’s most noticeable is that he hasn’t spent that time looking inward, nurturing only his personal love for these hobbies. He’s spreading it throughout Gillette.
“It’s more than a skateboard,” said Tanner Baumann, who’s known Greer for 20 years. “You’re part of something you discovered. It’s more than just a sport that your parents told you to play.
“Skateboarders get a bad rap, sometimes. Maybe not anymore because it’s in the Olympics now, but skateboarding is a community unto itself and all those other categories just do not matter.”
Beyond providing an outlet for kids (and adults) who are interested in paintball, skateboarding and snowboarding, Greer often has participated in mentorship programs through local high schools to help students do what he did: turn a passion into a living.
“There’s a ton of variety of ways that you could be involved if you had a passion in something,” Greer said. “Not many people are passionate about vacuums or something, so when kids are stoked on something, you know, you only have so many chances to go do things that might not be there in a few years or when you get older and tied down. We encouraged and tried to point kids in the right direction.”
He’s partnered with the Campbell County Recreation Center to put on skateboarding day camps where the price of registration got the participants a discounted skateboard and a day of instruction from more experienced skateboarders.
Greer is finishing out 2020 by continuing the community outreach the way one might expect for a person so intent on giving back: with a donation drive to provide underprivileged kids with skateboards for the holidays.
“We get a lot of different people in the shop, some that are really well off and others who aren’t,” he said. “We just wanted to come up with a way to generate some money to give back and give out as many boards as we could during the holidays.
“So, we’re trying to collect money and we’re matching every dollar. Say, if someone gives us 5 bucks or 100 bucks, we’re going to match it and then give away as many boards as we can in the near future.”
After months of preparedness and a relatively tame spring and summer, the COVID-19 pandemic appeared in full force in Campbell County in 2020, as it has around the globe.
Responding to the local public health threat has been area health care workers.
“We just didn’t know when it would hit here, but we knew it would,” said Laura Castellanos, 44, an ICU nurse with Campbell County Health.
This year, COVID-19 has claimed more than 20 lives in Campbell County, most since a months-long surge began in September and has continued through the end of the year.
Since the autumn spike began, hospitalizations have climbed steadily as well, reaching a peak in early December when there were 29 COVID-19 patients at the hospital on a single day.
As an ICU nurse, Castellanos has been there all year to treat the sickest of those patients.
“It’s relentless,” she said of the pandemic and its impact here.
Although she and her team of ICU personnel have been able to handle the challenges thrown at them, the intensity of this stretch has been unparalleled in her 20-year career.
Before the pandemic, a busy day with multiple unexpected emergency situations might happen once or twice a week. Now, she said every day is at that level of intensity for weeks at a time.
“I really think we’re the most resilient and relentless type of workforce out there,” she said.
Even during the spring and summer when most of Wyoming had avoided COVID-19 outbreaks, those months were still filled with heightened caution, extra preparedness and the knowledge that it was only a matter of time until COVID-19 patients started filling the hospital’s beds.
“I never had a moment where I felt like I could be relaxed about it,” Castellanos said.
The lack of relaxation comes with the territory, which for some Campbell County health care workers, is the pandemic’s frontline.
And at the front of the frontline, is Alice Rambo, a Walk-in Clinic nurse with CCH.
“The bulk of our day is spent doing COVID-related things,” Rambo said about life at the clinic throughout the pandemic.
Rambo also has been a nurse for about 20 years. For some COVID-19 patients seeking treatment, she is the first face they see once they enter the clinic’s doors.
In the months since the pandemic began, she said that she and her colleagues have rallied and supported each other through the unrelenting work weeks stacked one after another.
“I knew if something like this ever were going to happen, I would have to do that,” Rambo said. “I try not to complain, because I signed up to be a nurse and I still love it.”
All of the confirmed coronavirus cases need to be tested first. For the past nine months, Tiffany Sylvester, 38, has done her fair share of that swabbing and processing.
On top of the rest of the medical testing the hospital lab conducts daily, COVID-19 testing has added to the workload. At its height, the lab processed about 200 COVID-19 tests a day. Now, it is processing about 100 per day, with the rest of the COVID-19 tests being outsourced to preserve the hospital’s testing reagent for patients and employees.
“There are times I feel like we’re more of a COVID testing center than a hospital lab,” Sylvester said.
As a CCH pharmacist, Molly McColley, 40, has seen her job change quite a bit. Remdesivir and Bamlanivimab are two antiviral medications that are difficult to pronounce but effective in treating COVID-19. Both have become stocked at CCH as the pharmacy department has had to change its medication supply to accommodate the hospital’s patient base during the pandemic.
That’s in addition to stocking, storage and preparation of a COVID-19 vaccine, which for some health care workers came as a godsend when it arrived near the end of the year.
She also has less face-to-face interaction with patients, something that may seem minor, but the rapport between patients and health care providers is an important part of the treatment process that has been affected by the pandemic.
“Personally, I feel like some of these people are only going to start taking this more seriously when it hits home for them,” said McColley. “And that’s the unfortunate part. It’s probably going to take something drastic for them to start taking it serious.”
Castellanos, who as an ICU nurse, works directly with some of the sickest people in the community and said that the safety precautions taken at work make it feel safer than being outside the hospital.
“I really do feel safer at work almost than I did out in the community,” she said.
Her kids go to school where there is always a risk to bring something home with them. Plus, with some in the community doubting the seriousness of the virus or buying into misinformation about the safety of masks and vaccines, there are many who are increasing the risk.
“There have been patients who say, ‘This doesn’t exist, I think it’s all crap and it’s not around,’ and they are convinced otherwise, with either a positive test or a family member,” Rambo said. “It unfortunately strikes their life somewhere.”
That has become a reality of this year: Hospital workers who have been overworked and underappreciated while serving a community of people, some of whom actively defy public health orders health guidelines intended to keep them safe.
But for Campbell County’s health care workforce, that’s OK. They know it comes with the job. Throughout this past year, they have proven just how capable of that job they are.
“It’s just what health care workers do,” Rambo said. “We walk right into it and stick it out.”
Bob Palmer’s passion for higher education in Campbell County goes back more than 30 years.
Palmer worked for Gillette College in the mid-1980s, when “we were in the old hospital building which doesn’t exist anymore,” he said. And he’s served on the Gillette College Advisory Board since the late 1980s.
He said he loves “seeing the history and each chapter unfold for the college,” and as a member of the advisory board, he’s had a chance to see that growth up close, from the construction of the main building and Technical Education Center to the addition of athletics to the successes of the diesel tech and welding programs.
This summer, the Northern Wyoming Community College District announced it was cutting all athletics at Gillette and Sheridan colleges. After a proposal to privately fund Gillette College sports for a year was turned down, work began on creating a new community college district.
Palmer was one of eight people on a task force appointed by commissioners to help with the application process. That task force was “very much of a team effort,” he said, with each person bringing their own strengths to the table.
From putting together information into presentation form to speaking at public hearings in Gillette and Riverton, the task force put in many hours to convince the Wyoming Community College Commission that Gillette deserves to be its own district.
Palmer said his role on the task force was as “the historian of the group,” since he was part of a 1991 effort that also attempted to create a college district.
One of the people he worked with in 1991 was Sherry McGrath, another champion of the college. Her son, Josh McGrath, is part of this new task force.
Josh McGrath, president of the Gillette College Booster Club and a member of the college advisory board, said Palmer had the knowledge, wherewithal, leadership and guidance the task force needed.
“He had been down that road before, which I think is huge,” McGrath said.
Although Palmer’s knowledge and experience were big assets, McGrath said Palmer brought much more to the table. He said Palmer’s professionalism and energy were instrumental, particularly at the Wyoming Community College Commission meeting where the application was eventually approved.
“I think he exuded all of that,” McGrath said. “He was able to speak very eloquently but very directly on the need, the want and support. He really summed everything up, and I think it made a difference for a couple of the commissioners.”
As an advisory board member, Palmer has played a part in the college’s growth over the last three decades, McGrath said.
“The community and the college owe him a big debt of gratitude for his work, time, effort and energy,” he said. “From the college’s perspective, I don’t believe we are where we are without him.”
Mason Powell remembers meeting Nate Perleberg. Powell was the bat-boy for the Post 42 Gillette Roughriders American Legion baseball team while Perleberg was the head coach.
Several years later, Powell is beginning his career playing baseball for Montana State University in Billings. While his individual talent and dedication is a big part of what got him to the collegiate level, so is Perleberg, Powell said.
“Maybe it seems like such a little thing back then, but you look at it now and the Roughrider program really helped me in the long run,” Powell said. “It’s gotten me to where I’m at now.”
In his 16 years coaching the Roughriders, Perleberg has had 54 players go on to play college baseball. In that span, he’s doubled the number of baseball teams in the Roughrider program.
In his first year, the program consisted of the Roughriders and the Rustlers, the program’s JV squad. In 2011, Perleberg added a prep team designed for high school freshmen.
The next year, he added the Junior Riders for seventh and eighth graders.
“We were one of the first outside of maybe Post 22 (in Rapid City, South Dakota) and Cheyenne to go to a third and fourth team model to try and get it under one umbrella,” Perleberg said. “Now it’s really common. It’s pretty much statewide now.”
A testament to Perleberg’s dedication to the baseball program as well as the kids involved was his persistence in scheduling games over the summer.
On March 25, American Legion baseball announced the mandatory shutdown of all team activity because of concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic. At that point, Perleberg knew it was inevitable that playing a normal baseball season wouldn’t be in the cards for the Roughriders.
On May 22, the Roughriders played, and won, their first game of the season. At the time, no one in the program, including Perleberg, knew there were kids in 44 other states who wouldn’t see a baseball diamond in 2020.
“When I got to college, I was the only player who played this summer,” Powell said. “Some people only got to play one game.”
The Roughriders played 67 games over the summer and finished as the runner-up in the state of Wyoming. There were no positive COVID-19 tests on the team throughout the season, Perleberg said.
“I think we kind of spearheaded and showed that this was possible,” Perleberg said. “We wanted to show that if we were smart about it, we could have a safe and successful sports season.”
Perleberg is dedicated to his baseball program as well as the Gillette community. While preparing players for a potential future in the sport is on the forefront, developing character is the No. 1 goal for the coach.
“In the moment, I always thought it was just about baseball,” Powell said. “But the more I look back, he did a really good job of developing young men.
“He taught us respect. When we’re in a restaurant, we’re going to eat with our hats off and we’re going to hold the door for women — all those little details about being a man in this world, and I’ve just come to really respect that.”
It’s a great day to be a Rider, as Perleberg always says. And despite the pandemic, he made sure it also was a great year to be a Roughrider.
Stacey Peterson has gone above and beyond to help students and families in need in Gillette for several years.
That her efforts are recognized as being named one of 2020’s Ten Who Made a Difference is hard to comprehend.
“I’m very humbled by that,” she said.
Peterson is a Realtor at RE/MAX Professionals, a board member on the Campbell County Board of Realtors and part of the Northeast Wyoming Realtor Alliance.
Through the alliance’s community outreach program, Peterson has contributed money from each paycheck earmarked for local nonprofit organizations.
“It just makes me feel good,” she said.
The alliance’s committee receives applications from interested nonprofits with information about what they intend to use the money for and what their needs are. The committee then decides who to allocate the funding to.
This year they were able to raise about $20,000 and disburse it to the organizations that applied.
“Nonprofit organizations are struggling this year too,” Peterson said. “This year nonprofits have not been able to hold fundraisers to raise money to provide what they need to.”
For Thanksgiving, she donated premade meals to two deserving Lakeview Elementary School kids and their families.
During the holiday season, Peterson has maintained a tradition of adopting a handful of kids in need and buying gifts for them. This year she helped two children at the Boys & Girls Club of Campbell County. Each child got a winter coat and toys.
Peterson has been doing this for many years, said Carrie Boedeker-Larson, who nominated Peterson for Ten Who Made a Difference.
“She is one of the most generous, caring people that I deal with and I think she is always trying to better our community and figure out ways to help,” Boedeker-Larson said. “She’s always more than willing to go out of her way.”
At the beginning of the school year, Peterson also bought water bottles for 258 Campbell County elementary school students. She also put together gift baskets for several Campbell County and Thunder Basin high school Class of 2020 graduating seniors.
“I felt really bad they couldn’t enjoy the last bit of their senior year,” Peterson said.
She made sure the items in each basket were bought from local businesses.
“It’s important to keep the doors open for these businesses,” Peterson said.
Other things Peterson has done include sponsoring local sports teams like the Gillette Hockey Association, Gillette Girls Fast Pitch softball team and Gillette Bulldogs, and in the summer she hosted a customer appreciation party at the Fishing Lake. Leftovers were donated to the YES House.
“They support us, I want to support them,” Peterson said about her clients.
It has been a long year, “but I’m beyond thankful to be in the craziest year everyone’s experienced yet still be able to provide and have the greatest clients and be in the greatest community,” she said.
“At the end of the day I’m thankful for 2020 because it’s provided a lot of good things,” Peterson said.
The Council of Community Services assists upwards of 98% of Gillette’s low-income population through its 11 programs, and the total number of lives touched each year is easily in the thousands.
Jerry Tystad, 71, has been doing his part to ensure that work continues for more than two decades as a part of the council’s board.
“He’s doing all he can to make sure it’s a great place to raise a family, and his involvement in the council is just very impressive,” said Tystad’s longtime friend, Nick Kasperik.
Tystad also serves on the Gillette College Advisory Board and is working on Campbell County’s bid to form its own community college district.
In a year where many more people have found themselves in need of the agency’s help because of the twin difficulties of economic downturn in the energy sector that led to job losses and the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s fitting that Tystad’s outsized influence on the Council of Community Services should be recognized this year.
He’s an indispensable member of the agency for not only his care and concern for the community, but also the way he approaches issues, said Mikel Scott, the agency’s executive director.
Tystad pointed to his long career in engineering, operations and management at area mines as good preparation for his work on the board. Both require juggling both the big picture and the details, he said.
An example of that approach perhaps best summarized as not losing sight of the forest for the trees happened around the time Scott took over as executive director. The agency was struggling, and it became clear that cuts were going to have to be made.
“He stuck it out, and he worked really hard to get good people on the board,” Scott said. “He truly came in and learned everybody’s position, what they do, how it was funded, how it worked. He really had not just my back, but everybody’s to make sure we weren’t cutting anything that couldn’t be replaced, that wasn’t being done somewhere else.”
Tystad’s care about the details did not escape the notice of employees at the agency.
“Almost every single one of my employees has, at one point or another, said how great he is and how much it meant to them for him to come in and learn what they do all day,” Scott said. “It doesn’t sound like very much, but when you are working every single day and listening to people’s stories, it really wears on you. People burn out of those positions really quickly. With Jerry around, there’s been a whole lot less burnout, myself included.”
Like a small stone tossed into a lake can cause ripples that spread out to a far greater distance than might seem likely based on the size of the stone, so too can the effects of a singularly dedicated person ripple out through a community.
“The council is 52 years old now, but there was a time in there, a few years back, where I think that if there hadn’t been just the right people at just the right time, I don’t know how well we would be doing today,” Scott said. “Jerry is definitely one of those people that was in place that we needed.”
(0) comments
Welcome to the discussion.
Log In
Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person.
Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.