When I woke up that spring morning in 1957, I found myself looking forward to a day in my life that would be like no other. At the age of 17, and a junior at Fort Vancouver High School, I was about to take charge of the city of Vancouver, Washington.
It was hard to believe, but there was my official Certificate of Appointment, signed by Mayor Henry Schumacher and City Manager James Neal. Today would be Student Government Day and all the major municipal positions were to be filled by local high school students. After interviewing several candidates for city manager, the student city council and its mayor, John Doran, selected me for the position. I was told that I would be running city government that day and that the position required a high degree of responsibility and maturity.
My immediate reaction was, “Wow! Do the citizens of Vancouver know what they’re getting into?”
When I arrived at City Hall, I was greeted by Mr. Neal, who escorted me to the city manager’s office. He invited me to sit behind his desk, my desk now, and be ready to make important executive decisions as a city manager must do.
Shortly, my secretary (yes, I had a secretary) came in to inform me that first on my schedule would be a press conference with reporters and a photographer from The Columbian. Sure enough, these members of the press were ushered into my office for a story and photograph that can be seen to this day in the archives of The Columbian.
The rest of the morning, things went well. I phoned the student manager of Pearson Field to see how things were going out there. Quiet, no emergencies. I made my rounds of each department to find that the various student managers were having a great time being mentored by their official counterparts.
At noon I received a police escort out to Leverich Park for the Student Government Day picnic. By early afternoon, I was really beginning to settle into this job. I wondered if Mr. Neal enjoyed it as much as I did. When he asked me what I would like to do for the afternoon, I thought that I should do something constructive. That’s what the good citizens of Vancouver deserved from me. But what?
I thought of several near-accidents that I had recently observed at the intersection of Kauffman Avenue and 26th Street, now Fourth Plain Boulevard. I told Mr. Neal about it and then suggested that maybe a traffic light should be installed there. He said that intersection could be monitored by the police and that he would run my suggestion by the various departments that would have to give their approval.
I was driven back to Fort Vancouver High School where my one-of-a-kind day ended with me feeling it had all been too short.
Postscript: Several months later, much to my delight, a traffic light was installed at the intersection of Kauffman Avenue and 26th Street. Watching that light turn from red to green, I felt that, in some small way, I had given back to the citizens of Vancouver something worthwhile, in return for their allowing me to be their city manager, and all the wonderful memories that went with it.
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