Year(s) of Service: 1975-1976
Project Name: Snowy Range Community Action Agency
Location: Laramie, Wyoming

I was assigned as a VISTA to the Snowy Range Community Action Agency (SRCAA) in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1975-76. SRCAA had one of the largest geographic areas of any CAA, covering three sparsely populated counties in southern Wyoming, but it also had the lowest population. Along with fellow VISTAs Ken Rust and George Burnett, the assignment for which we were chosen included facilitating HUD assisted-housing programs, and setting up a consumer counseling program for low/moderate income residents. I hailed from Tempe, Arizona, Ken was from Richmond, Virginia, and George from Los Angeles, California.

Southern Wyoming turned out to have fewer low-income families than we expected, but the area was subject to the boom and bust cycles of a natural resources economy. Stress from this economic fact of life, coupled with severe cold-weather conditions and relative isolation, manifested itself in the population with such symptoms as alcoholism and depression. During boom times, high-paying extractive industries drew workers to the mines and oil fields; and during bust times, the community's youth often left the state for opportunities elsewhere.

Laramie, the location of the SRCAA office, has a classic "other side of the tracks," a neighborhood known as the West Side, separated from the rest of town by the Union Pacific (UP) main line, maintenance yard and railroad tie plant. In the mid-1970s, over half of this neighborhood was Hispanic. The streets on the West Side were gravel or dirt, the area having developed generations before as housing for UP workers. Many residents were current or retired UP employees or their widows.

The University of Wyoming, the state's only four-year college, is also located in Laramie on the far east side of town. This juxtaposition symbolized the "two Laramies" which we VISTAs came to know. Having just finished college, we were naturally drawn to the activities and people at the university. But our new world was Laramie's West Side, where we rented a small house, and began canvassing door to door to survey the neighborhood's needs.

It soon became clear that our neighbors wanted two things. The first was the respect of the larger community and the second was paved streets. Respect, or the perceived lack thereof, seemed to come out in many ways. The university community seemed to exhibit a sort of benign neglect of the problems of the West Side. Most faculty and students had no occasion to venture west, as their travel routes to either Colorado to the south or Cheyenne to the east did not pass through the area.

West Side youths did not try out for the schools' sports teams. "Cowboy" celebrants occasionally wandered over the railroad viaduct and picked fights with Hispanics after Wyoming football games. The at-large City Council elections rarely produced council members from the neighborhood.

The VISTAs began investigating the feasibility of the City of Laramie directing capital funds towards the building of the West Side's streets. According to then City Engineer Jim Nelson, the city had no capital budget to speak of, and furthermore, the other paved streets in Laramie had been paid for by each housing developer as the city grew. Despite this information, we assisted with a petition drive to alert the City Council to the desires of the neighborhood. An improvement district scheme eventually failed because many West Side residents did not own their homes in fee, but were buying them on contract or renting.

During our tenure as VISTAs, the West Side did not get paved. But as events would later unfold, our efforts, and those of the residents, eventually paid off.

After my VISTA venture, I completed a graduate degree in New York state (in Housing and Consumer Economics), but returned to Wyoming to work briefly again for SRCAA, and later for the City of Laramie as Assistant City Manager. During my time at the City of Laramie, the U.S. Department of Commerce made economic development funds available to all local communities for infrastructure improvements. I submitted an application on behalf of the City of Laramie under that program for $1.6 million in funds to install pavement, curb and gutter on the West Side. The grant was approved, and I had the happy task of administering the grant and construction contract for this long-needed neighborhood improvement.

Our earlier disappointment as VISTAs in not being able to pry loose public funds for upgrades to a depressed area was finally overcome with community perseverance and financial help from the federal government. The advocacy role played by the VISTAs did help put the need for paved streets into the limelight for the Laramie community to see. And with these improvements, the West Side began to feel a little glimmer of the respect they deserved.

George Burnett, by now a successful Laramie photography shop owner, and I helped the residents cut the ribbon for the newly paved neighborhood. Ken Rust had by this time moved onto a new career in Texas. When you've been part of a success such as this, you never quite relinquish your new "home," no matter how far you may roam. And so it is that Laramie claims a little piece of my heart as the place where a community came a little closer together, thanks in part to the helping hand of our VISTA team.

I am currently Deputy City Manager, City of Lakewood.