Local Know-How with a Legacy Behind It
3
Public transportation powers an economic engine that produces returns and creates jobs.
From 2022 to 2024, the 37 development projects near DART light rail stations created a total of 9,422 new jobs and $724.2 million in wages for workers in the region.*
*Source:
LAKE HIGHLANDS ADVOCATE VOL. 33 NO. 3
PROFILE
8 The Ice Man of the Federal Reserve
DINING
12 Drink me, I’m Irish
FEATURES
10 The steamboat that could
14 Rembering the Old Fish Hatchery
20 The woman who made THAT bridge happen
A sailboat on White Rock Lake in January 2026. Photography by Lauren Allen.
Families are taking a closer look at Dallas ISD and discovering strong choices close to home.
Across Dallas ISD schools, students can participate in innovative programs, enroll in AP courses, and take classes for college credit. No matter the path they choose, teachers are committed to strong academics, supportive environments, and programs designed to help every student thrive.
Join us at Dallas ISD’s More Choice Expo.
Your choice. Your future. Choose the best.
Saturday, April 11
9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Automobile Bldg. @ Fair Park
LEGACY STARTSHERE!
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THE ICE MAN
Jacob Holly stays cool under pressure
Story by AUSTIN WOOD
Photography by YUVIE STYLES
Neighbor Jacob Holly thrives in crisis situations. After all, a man with his resume would have to.
NCAA Division 1 football player. West Point Graduate. Iraq War veteran. And now, at 43 years old, a director at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas specializing in business continuity and IT risk management.
Born in St. Louis, Holly grew up moving around the country before settling in McKinney for high school. His family owned land in East Texas, and he remembers most of his childhood outdoors.
He excelled at football in high school and drew attention from schools like Sam Houston State. Holly also had a pretty respectable grade point average and came from a family with a strong military background, which opened another pathway.
“The academies came online because the grades and everything was probably a better path, but my dad was probably inching me a little,” Holly laughs. “I went there, did recruiting trips, did a couple other visits. I liked the whole history piece.”
After being offered a spot on the United States Military Academy football team, he enrolled at the U.S. Military Preparatory School in New Jersey for a year before entering West Point, a common path for Army football players.
When he arrived at West Point for his first year, traditionally dubbed “plebe year” by cadets, he says it wasn’t the easiest transition.
“When you go there, it’s like, ‘This is not fun,’ but the football part is great. It’s obviously tough,” he says. “It’s hard because I was a good student, had good grades, just not Ivy League level. There’s some guys that are just geniuses, almost right Rhodes scholars.”
The West Point team failed to win a single game that season, finishing 0-13 with a 34–6 loss to Navy.
“It is kind of that thing. You just keep trying to keep persevering. Sometimes success doesn’t come right then, but it does come later on,” he says. “You just get better and build the foundation for something.”
Holly was commissioned as an Army operations officer after graduating from the Academy and was deployed to Iraq, where he served two tours. As operations were winding down in 2009, he took the chance to serve on transition teams created to train Iraqi forces.
“Especially in those Military or Army units, you’re getting all walks of life, different perspectives, like a football team,” he says. “Again, you build that cohesive group because you are geared towards one mission. You have to do these things. If you don’t do them, people get hurt, and then people don’t succeed.”
After transitioning out of the military, Holly used connections to land a job at Bank of America, where he worked as a business continuity analyst. He also attained master’s degrees from the University of Oklahoma and Texas A&M University.
Holly is now at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, which oversees
Texas, northern Louisiana and southern New Mexico. In his role as director, he manages crises for the bank to minimize business impact, such as the 2021 winter storm.
“It was, No. 1, make sure we’re trying to help out people the best we can getting communications out because a lot of times if the internet goes down, there’s not much you can do,” he says. “But what we did there made sure our core functions are ready to go. Their staff has people there taking care of their particular families on site.”
Holly says those crises are where he’s most comfortable.
“I personally find it enjoyable, kind of dealing with that chaos, but it’s also making sure people are OK on the family side,” Holly says. “Tactically, I can’t have you be a good worker, working for the company, if you can’t deal with your home life.”
He says he wants his future, career-wise, to still center around crisis management, but with an increasingly tech-forward focus.
Outside of work, Holly is married to his wife Elizabeth for a decade. The pair met at Capitol Pub in Uptown. Jacob had a difficult time putting her number in his phone, he says, as she had written it upside down on his forearm.
The two got engaged in France as a surprise.
“He said, ‘Pack two suitcases, one with cold weather and then one with hot weather,’” Elizabeth says. “And then we got to the airport, and he was like, ‘We’re going to Paris.’ And so we flew to Paris. He had already called and arranged time off for me from my boss and everything like that. And so we went to Paris, and we took a train out to Reims in Champagne.”
These days, the two have an 8-year-old son and live near the L Streets. They have some land in Ranger, Texas, and enjoy spending time at their son’s sporting events.
Elizabeth says she can always count on her husband in a pinch.
“He’s just amazing. You could always count on him,” she says. “He’s very dependable. He’s wonderful in crisis situations like that’s what he does for his job. He’s always calm, cool and collected.”
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THE JESSICA ANNE LIVES ON
A PIERCING WHISTLE RIPPLES ACROSS THE EASTERN SHORES OF WHITE ROCK LAKE.
Faint, rhythmic chugs rumble closer and closer to the ear. Runners leave trails to get a closer look.
As he lets the boiler release pressured steam with a deafening hiss, Lake Highlands neighbor Dean Smith cruises by in his 22-foot-long steamboat. Fitted with a bright red paddlewheel that propels up to 4 miles per hour, near-deck length canopy and twin rudders, the Jessica Anne takes on the shape of a Mississippi River boat ripped straight from the pages of a Mark Twain novel, albeit much smaller.
“As far as I know, this is the only steamboat of its size in Texas,” Smith says.
The Jessica Anne made its first appearance on White Rock Lake in May. Its first voyage, however, took place almost a half century ago on Lake Ray Hubbard.
Smith and his father Cole, a highly-respected architect, built the original body together in the ’70s. Cole had grown up in Topeka and worked part time in a locomotive shop for the Santa Fe Railroad, which sparked an interest in steam-powered engines. One of their first projects led them to build a threecar steam-powered mini locomotive set on tracks 16-inches wide on their Garland property. Dean taught himself to weld, while his father specialized in bending and forging metal parts.
“My dad was really good at sketching and had a real good eye for proportions and all that. And so we would make all these sketches and stuff. Everything we built, it wasn’t like there wasn’t any failure. And stuff that we built, there were some things that didn’t work out quite right, and we just tried something else.”
Love of steamboating passes through generations
Story by AUSTIN WOOD | Photography by LAUREN ALLEN
The boat began as two pontoons laid in Smith’s backyard. From there, the pair framed the hull and laid a plywood deck. Their metalworking skills came in handy when it came time to assemble the pipe system inside the boiler. Working out of a well-equipped workshop, they tamed yard after yard of 1-inch steel pipe into a complicated system of tubes and gauges designed to pressurize and capture the steam necessary to power its 12-float propelling wheel.
Dean and his father named the boat
for his niece, Jessica. Anne, his maternal grandmother, earned the second nod over his mother.
“There was a little bit of politics in that,” Smith laughs. “My mom, she thought me and my dad were a little screwy.”
After a few trips to local lakes, including a well-publicized stop at Cedar Creek covered by the local newspaper, the ship ran aground in Lake Ray Hubbard. Smith was out of the country at the time on an archaeological dig in Cyprus, so he isn’t too clear on the circumstances leading up to its decommissioning.
Eventually, the Smiths pulled Jessica Anne from the lake using a truck and some rope, leaving it to collect dust for the next three decades.
“My dad has always wanted to get it restored and all that. It never really happened. He passed away in 2019; that was kind of the motivation for me to rebuild it really.”
Over the last couple of years, Smith has made small improvements while restoring the boat to its former glory. A new paddlewheel slices the water at a better angle, he says, as the original engine sat “too low,” which left the wheel paddling deeper than needed. The pontoons were replaced. And instead of a plywood deck, Smith sourced construction-grade lumber from a jobsite in Hillsboro for the updated surface.
After years of work, the resurrected vessel made its first appearance last spring.
“It’s just the joy of it running,” Smith says.
“Of course, the biggest satisfaction is here is something you built from scratch, and it actually worked. It’s pride in your work, and it worked pretty well. It’s not like you build a model or nothing against that. Build a model of something and then you just put it on the shelf.”
The steam powering the engine is created by pulling water from the lake, then heating it through the steel pipework in the boiler using thermal energy from a firebox. The goal
is to create enough pressure (around 100 pounds per square inch) to kick start the engine, which is composed of an intricate lattice of metal motors and levers powering the paddlewheel.
“The neat thing about a steam engine is it all kind of has its own personality,” he says. “All the parts and everything are exposed.”
He takes the boat out once or twice a month, with weather conditions being a deciding factor. When he takes it up White Rock Creek, he’s only about a half-mile away from his White Rock Valley home. While he normally brings some company for four- or five-hour boat rides, his most crowded trip came over the holidays, when eight family members piled on.
Most of the time, he says, reactions around the lake are mixed.
“Some people could really care less and other people just think it’s kind of a cool hobby.”
His son, who lives in Corpus Christi, enjoys taking the boat out and recently even brought a drone to capture aerial footage of their voyage.
The love for steam has been passed down through three generations. Dean says his father would be proud.
“I just know if he was here or if he’s able to see it from now, he would be most pleased,” Smith says. “And I just kind of wanted to keep the tradition going on.”
“AS FAR AS I KNOW, THIS IS THE ONLY STEAMBOAT OF ITS SIZE IN TEXAS.”
WHEN THE GREEN WAVE HIT DALLAS
A surge in interest in all things Irish has translated into even more green for pubs
Story by AUSTIN WOOD
Last April, Irish post-punk band Fontaines D.C. performed at a sold out concert at the Bomb Factory in Deep Ellum.
The group performed hits from their latest studio album, Romance , which earned two nominations for Best Rock Album and Best Alternative Music Performance at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards. A year earlier, in 2024, Hozier’s song “Too Sweet” topped the Billboard Top 100, making him the first Irish singer-songwriter to have a No. 1 song since Sinéad O’Connor in 1990.
The Irish hot streak hasn’t just been confined to the music industry either. Irish actors like Paul Mescal and Cillian Murphy have won awards and landed films smashing box office debuts. In
2023, the Los Angeles Times coined the term “Green Wave” in an article referring to the fact that a single Irish-led film, Banshees of Inisherin, earned nine Oscar nods at the 95th Academy Awards.
American tourism to Ireland has surged over the last decade and despite some leveling out since the start of the Trump Administration, remains strong.
Back in Texas, the so-called Green Wave hasn’t missed Dallas, as evidenced by the Fontaines D.C. show last spring.
Peter Kenny, owner of Lochland’s Irish Pub in Lake Highlands and the Dubliner on Lower Greenville, says he’s been glad to see his native land enjoying so much popularity in his adopted home.
“I do love to see it. I love seeing the Fontaines D.C. being the great band they are. They keep breathing it out,” Kenny says. “I’m sorry I missed them in Dallas.”
Kenny is originally from Dublin and moved stateside in the ’80s. After a few years working in bars around town, he opened the Dubliner in 1994. Peter and his wife, Cheryl, now run it and Lochland’s as part of a family enterprise, having previously operated Capitol Pub in Uptown for over a decade.
He’s been in the pub business for over 40 years and says it’s the people who keep bringing him back.
“I just love to see everybody enjoying themselves and having a good time. I like the vibe of it. Kind of grew up in it,” he says. “Whether it’s people enjoying just hanging out and talking and different people meeting each other. Over the years, even at the Dubliner, we’ve had a lot of people even get married there. People who’ve got engaged there.”
The craze for all things Irish has been good for pub owners.
The owners of The Old Monk, The Skellig and Spider Murphy’s have opened up two additional pubs in Oak Cliff in as many years. Younger crowds seem to be seeking out darker, wooden-filled watering holes over conventional sports bars and clubs, which Kenny attributes to a sense of belonging.
“It’s like a community thing,” Kenny says. “Even when the young people come in, groups of them, we were seeing it a lot at the Dubliner on weekend nights, and now they’re familiar with it, and they feel comfortable there.”
And there’s another aspect of the Green Wave driving people to places like the Dubliner. Dark, frothy and slow to drink, Guinness, a ubiquitous symbol of the Emerald Isle, has seen record sales in the U.S. Propelled by cleverly marketed gimmicks like “Splitting the G,” the growth has been driven in large part by an increased interest from Gen Z drinkers.
Kenny, who estimates his Guinness sales have increased by around 30% since the Green Wave began in earnest around 2023, says it’s not just an older man’s drink anymore.
“It’s everybody, and the Dubliner gets a lot of young crowds on the weekends,” he says. “I can’t believe the amount of Guin -
ness we sell, they’re all drinking Guinness. So I guess maybe it’s some of them trying it out, and others just loving it.”
Aside from well-executed marketing campaigns, Kenny also attributes Guinness’s newfound popularity to more developed palates.
“I think, because of all the brew pubs and everything else, people drink good beers these days, whether it’s hazy IPAs or stouts or bourbon barrel stouts,” Kenny says. “And they realize Guinness is not this big high alcohol by volume beer. It’s like 4.2%.”
“It’s a good beer. It tastes well, and it’s not super alcoholic. You know, look at these IPAs, and they’re 7-8%.”
While it may be the poster child, Guinness isn’t the only Irish beer on taps in Dallas. Smithwick’s (the W is silent), a red ale, regularly comes in behind Guinness sales at the Dubliner and Lochland’s.
Sales of Irish whiskey, long second fiddle to Bourbon and Scotch in the States, have seen an increase in sales in the last few years, he says. Jameson has done well, as always, but Kenny says neighbors are expanding their tastes.
“There’s a lot of good Irish whiskeys, whether it’s Teeling and Red Breast and Midleton and they go on and on,” Kenny says. “It’s exploding, the Irish whiskey market.”
However, pubs aren’t just for those imbibing, Cheryl says.
“We have a lot of people that actually don’t drink at all, they just like that camaraderie,” she says. “And I think that you hear of people traveling all over the world, and they always seek out an Irish pub wherever they go.”
The Kennys will hope for the trend to continue as they gear up to host St. Patrick’s Day events at both pubs this month. Preparations begin a year out, and Peter laughingly admits his staff probably “get tired of listening to Irish music.”
Dallas, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be escaping the Green Wave anytime soon.
FISHIN’ FOR MEMORIES
Ever since White Rock Creek was transformed into White Rock Lake, the former reservoir has been a draw for local anglers. With the exception of the extreme drought years of the 1950s, fishing enthusiasts can be found at a number of spots, from the mouth of White Rock Creek to the south end piers at Garland Road.
Now called the Old Fish Hatchery Nature Area on the southwest side of the lake, the hatchery was part of the state network of hatcheries established by the Texas Game, Fish and Oyster Commission. It was built by the City in 1930 for about $23,700, according to Dallas Park and Recreation Department records, before being given to the state. The Park Board made a land swap with the original hatchery at Fair Park, which was a part of the land needed for a new racetrack and later for the Texas Centennial Exposition of 1936.
In 1936, the state transferred hatchery operations back to the City of Dallas. This was in exchange for about $1,450 and salvage pipe to build a new state hatchery at Lake Dallas (now Lewisville Lake), according to the records.
It’s unclear if or why the City wanted the Old Fish Hatchery at White Rock Lake back. Historian and former Dallas Park and Recreation staffer Sally Rodriguez says it’s possible that Dallas’ leaders prioritized local ownership as opposed to state control of the property near the lake at the time.
The origins of the White Rock Fish Hatchery
Story by JOHN H. SLATE, DALLAS MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES & MADELYN EDWARDS
catfish and bream. It fell into disrepair in the early 1950s but was cleaned up, and the Park and Recreation Department returned to propagating fish for White Rock and other City parks.
After it ceased operations, the hatchery “wilded over” (with the ponds still in place but not refilled) and is now a gated area with a hiking trail in and around it. Rodriguez supposes that buying fish from the state instead of running a hatchery made more sense for the City financially. In the 1980s, the Dallas Audubon Society adopted the grounds and worked with the Park and Recreation Department to create a landscaping plan for pathways that don’t disturb the natural surroundings.
“The Park Board was really conscientious about maintaining park land for the citizens of Dallas,” she says.
The hatchery operated from 1930 to 1960 and was managed by the Dallas Museum of Natural History, which was part of the Park and Recreation Department. Originally, its estimated 23 to 26 ponds (ranging from 3 / 5 to 1 1 / 5 acres and depths between 4.5 to 7 feet) were stocked with perch, bass, channel
The preserve is an excellent birding site, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. One can see Red-shouldered Hawk, Barred Owl, Belted Kingfisher, Wood Duck, Warbling Vireo, Eastern Phoebe, and Yellow-crowned and Black-crowned Night-Herons. Beavers, gray foxes, bobcats and coyotes have also been observed here.
The real surprise, however, is the naturalized colony of noisy, wonderful Monk Parakeets. Their origin is not clear, but they’ve been nesting year-round in the hatchery since at least the early 1990s.
The need to preserve the Old Fish Hatchery Nature Area was brought to the forefront of neighbors’ minds when the energy company Oncor cleared multiple acres under its power lines there in 2020. In the aftermath, District 9 City Council member Paula Blackmon created an advisory committee to make sure that wouldn’t happen again without the City’s knowledge. Oncor worked with Texas Discovery Gardens to replant the area, and the Park and Recreation Department was slated to collaborate with the company on maintenance.
“We are fortunate to have a little bit of nature in the heart of an urban area, and it breaks my heart to see it in this state,” Blackmon said in a previous Lakewood/East Dallas Advocate article about the clear cutting. “I understand the need for reliable electric service, but I am confident that we can all work together to create a space for bird-watchers, nature lovers and wildlife enthusiasts in an area that is in the Oncor-owned right of way.”
Photo courtesy of Dallas Muncipal Archives.
Gus Thomasson
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BUILDING THE BRIDGE TO SOMEWHERE
Susan Morgan championed the construction of the
Skillman Street Arch Bridge
Story by AUSTIN WOOD
Photography by LAUREN ALLEN
AS SUSAN MORGAN LOOKED OUT ONTO THE CONVERGENCE OF SKILLMAN STREET AND I-635 IN THE EARLY 2000S, SHE SAW NOTHING SHORT OF A MESS.
Described as “that bowl of spaghetti” by Lake Highlands Advocate contributor Carol Toler, the junction of Skillman, Audelia Road and I-635 was as confusing as it was suffocating for the surrounding area. A disorienting series of stoplights, yield signs, entrance ramps and zipper merges created a precarious situation for drivers.
What’s worse, perhaps, is that the underlying infrastructure issues were contributing to retail decay and business closures affecting both the north and south sides of the highway.
Morgan, freshly retired at the time, began immersing herself in neighborhood issues as a way to give back after decades working in high-powered marketing and IT roles for companies like Texas Instruments. She’s originally from a blue collar area of northeast Ohio and grew up in a middle class-working family. In her small community, Morgan watched as neighbors organized to replace stop signs with a four-way traffic light. Something interested her in local politics and community organizing, so she began volunteering in the 2000s for retail-forward initiatives.
She realized underlying infrastructure would have to improve before business could.
In 2006, at the direction of then-council member Bill Blaydes, Morgan formed the LBJ-Skillman Interchange Task Force committee to untangle the bowl of spaghetti. Blaydes told her it would take 10 years. As it turned out, it would be close to 20 years before the Skillman Street Arch Bridge would open to the public.
Over that time, Morgan secured funding, navigated the initiative’s incorporation into the $1.7 billion 635 East Project and advocated for its survival after the governor’s office nearly shelved the project in 2018 as part of a promise to reduce toll lanes in Texas.
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Now 70, Morgan was one of four ribbon-cutters at the bridge’s September opening. A few months earlier, the Bowling Green graduate self-published a guide on community advocacy outlined through her own experience. Build a Bridge to Somewhere: A Guide to Community Volunteering provides insight on the first steps to becoming involved in neighborhood affairs, securing funding sources and how to be a “champion” for projects like the bridge. To hear more about how a retiree’s determination led to one of the largest infrastructure projects in neighborhood history, we recently sat down with Morgan for an interview. Here’s what she said.
YOU GREW UP IN A WORKING MIDWEST FAMILY. HOW DID THAT SHAPE YOU INTO WHO YOU ARE TODAY?
Well, I think my parents were Depression-era, World War II, Greatest Generation people. And the way you approach things is to figure it out. So I think that has a lot to do with how I approach everything. It’s like, ‘Well, I’ll just figure it out.’
YOU LED A LONG CAREER IN THE BUSINESS WORLD. HOW DID THAT SHAPE YOUR ADVOCACY?
It’s kind of a take on what I said about my parents. Texas Instruments is a great company, and they give people leeway to stretch themselves. And we used to have a saying, ‘Make it happen.’ So you didn’t wait for a promotion. You didn’t really wait for someone to tell you what to do. They just wanted your ideas, and they wanted you to be innovative and implement. So that was a good fit for me, and I learned a lot from them. Then I went into business development and started negotiating with other companies, learned how to negotiate, and we had customers around the world. I learned how to negotiate in multicultural environments. Just great people skills that you learn in management.
SO YOU WEREN’T INVOLVED IN VOLUNTEERING UNTIL AFTER RETIREMENT?
Well, we had one son, and I kept up as best I could with his school while (my husband and I) were both flying around the world. It was just home and work, that was it. And so when I retired, I thought, ‘Well, this is my chance to give back to the community, see what I can do for them,’ because they’ve been so good to me. Lake Highlands is a great place to raise a family and have a career.
IT’S THE EARLY 2000S AT THE SKILLMAN-635 INTERSECTION. SET THE SCENE.
The Advocate wrote an article on it, and they called it the Bermuda Triangle. That’s exactly what it was. When the freeway was built, it was in the middle of nowhere, nothing but farmland far as you can see. The 635 path Skillman and Audelia intersected exactly where LBJ freeway had to move across going east to west. So they had so much room with all this farmland, they threaded the two streets together and then threaded them back on the other side. It was an expansive, spaghetti-like structure to move traffic out in the farmland. We quickly went from being a first ring suburb to an urban town, and we have so much density around there now that the street infrastructure was never really built to handle, and so it was a mess. People couldn’t figure it out. They couldn’t see buildings were there and couldn’t navigate it. There were accidents. It looked bad, and it couldn’t sustain any economic activity.
WAS IT DAUNTING TO TAKE THE FIRST STEPS?
Well, again, my work experience was doing a lot of long-range planning. I remember training my coworkers and saying, ‘If you’re not sitting at your desk staring at the ball, totally bemused, you’re not doing your job.’ You got to start there and then get the juices going, figure out how to creatively fix the problem. I didn’t really know where I was going, but I had it easy because nobody was paying a lot of attention. The only skin in the game was my sweat equity. I thought, ‘Well, let’s just try it. If nothing happens, so be it, but I’ll just keep going.’ And Council member Bill Blaydes was a gem. He was amazing, and he started opening doors for me, introducing me to the right people. He was quoted once as saying the smartest thing he did get was me to work on that intersection. When I heard him say that, that meant a lot.
A MAJOR BUMP CAME
WHEN
LAWMAKERS
DECIDED TO SHELVE THE PROJECT IN 2018. WHAT WAS THAT LIKE?
That was a major unexpected thing. It was all about defining priorities, getting a good solution, authorizing the money and getting in implementing it. Those are all basic business steps when we got involved with 635 East, and then the governor’s office decided that they were going to put an end to toll roads. That was a political bump in the road that I did not expect, and (I) did not understand that there were special interest groups that had that as their primary objective to cancel all these projects.
I was amazed that there were people on the 5 o’clock news that were campaigning against toll roads, which I understand in some situations, it is a problem, and those people need help. So sure enough, I found myself on the 5 o’clock news in front of a camera and a reporter explaining why this was different and why it should be treated differently. And it was kind of crazy, like I never thought I’d be on TV standing next to a freeway.
WHAT WAS RIBBON-CUTTING DAY LIKE FOR YOU?
It was hard to talk to me that day. I was just floating. And even my son, they took the book cover and made a plaque for me and presented it to me on my 70th birthday. It’s got a little thing that says something like, ‘Community champion, beloved mom, grandma.’
IN THE BOOK, YOU TALK ABOUT A DECLINE IN COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT. HOW CONCERNING IS THAT TO YOU?
I don’t feel like it is because I live in Lake Highlands, and we have so many great volunteer organizations. But statistically, across the country, and I worry about it, are people really losing interest in getting together with their neighbors and having community and just working on improving their communities. Because that’s where it starts, grassroot efforts in the neighborhoods. What I learned from my neighbors, because we were a small, growing community, and it was new, so you kind of had to pitch in and figure out, ‘We need a stoplight in the center of town, right?’ And that’s the kind of thing that we need people to have a perspective on and get involved with. So I hope maybe it inspires somebody.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
M.
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