The Link of Eternal Brotherhood

Lenny and me, Wyoming Cowboys first and last.

I was fortunate enough to have a very good friend from Wyoming visit me this weekend in Astoria. I’ve known Lenny Martin since 1986 which was when I first joined the Worland Wyoming Jaycees. One of the gifts I’m most grateful for in this life has been the many outstanding individuals I’ve met in the United States Junior Chamber of Commerce during my tenure in the organization from 1986 until 2001.

I’ve made friends all over the great State of Wyoming and the U.S. but there are only a handful of friends that I can call very close and intimate. Lenny would be at the top of that male list.

In 1991 when I moved to Laramie, WY to take a Manager’s job for a trucking company our relationship as friends quickly bonded into a lifelong one that has been and will continue to be one of the best and most important in my life.

Lenny and Jeff 1993

Lenny and I have similar life experiences not only from our humble and sometimes very difficult childhood but also into early adulthood and middle age. Both of us early in our lives were rough around the edges but in time with the polish of age, experience and self improvement the shine would rise to the top. The personal relationship between us and the success and failures we’ve shared together have forever linked us to eternal brotherhood.

Lenny IS Wyoming. He was chiseled out of the hardest stone of the Rocky Mountains. He’s an excellent example of the rugged bootstraps individualism and conservatism that is the staple of many of great people from Wyoming. He formed his own real estate company in Laramie and has a B.S. from the University of Wyoming. His success in the real estate business help support the 3 children he raised. Lenny has many great attributes but his role as an involved and dedicated Father has to be his own best personal achievement in life. 2 of his kids have college degrees and one of his sons serves in U.S. Naval submarine fleet.

This isn’t to say Lenny is perfect none of us are but he’s spent a lifetime striving for personal improvement and knowledge. Lenny isn’t just book smart and educated; he has the better quality of a strong foothold in good sound common sense and plain hard work. Lenny has been a great listener and supportive in the best and worse times of my life. Although the years and miles may have separated us in the flesh it never has in the spirit.

Lenny is one of those dear friends that you could not hear from for a year but as soon as the phone call or the personal visit began it’s like you had never been apart.

When I stand next to Lenny I want to believe that in many respects I’m looking into a mirror. With very few exceptions we’re identical. We’ve had similar upbringing and adult life experiences; we’re non-apologetic Christians and Conservatives, hard working, honest and intelligent. But perhaps the best part is the belief that a loyal and solid friendship through thick and thin is the most important virtue outside of thy self.

Thanks for going out of your way just to come and see me Lenny. I can’t begin to thank you enough for what your friendship has meant to me. Until we meet or talk again I’ll always love ya Man!

Hero and Mentor Rick Gutierrez dies at 56

Rick is the guy in the middle of the front row with the tie. 

I had a conversation with my Mother who lives in Powell, WY today and found out that a very dear friend died. Rick Gutierrez died on May 30, 2012 at the age of 56 at St. Vincent’s in Billings, MT.

I owe Rick an extreme debt of gratitude. In 1986 when I lived in Worland, WY Rick was President of the Worland Jaycees. After months and months of his badgering phone calls he convinced me and several others to join the Worland chapter in January of that year. In the beginning of my Jaycee career Rick was right there encouraging and supporting me every step of the way.

Joining the Jaycees was a real turning point in my life. I learned so many things in the Jaycees that sent me on a totally different life path. I learned how to be a better public speaker, how to manage projects and gain a ton of self confidence that translated to my personal and professional life. I could write an entire book on the tremendous impact the JC’s have had on so many areas of my life.

Rick with his Granddaughter. 

Less than 5 weeks ago I was in Powell to see my Mother who was ill and run into Rick at one of the local grocery stores. He looked great, I shook his hand when I saw him and thanked him for being so a good friend and being the man who led me to the Jaycees. He invited me for a get together while I was there but I told him since my Mom’s situation was so bad I couldn’t commit to seeing him. I told him the next time I came to Powell we’d get together and have a beer. And so it goes…

It came as a real shocker to hear this news today. Rick was only 56, way too young to be taken at such an early age. Rick was very well liked by many and was a real community service oriented person his whole life.

My thoughts and prayers go out to Laura his wife of 31 years and his children Chad, Mandy and Ryan. He’ll be missed; he was a fine man and good friend. God speed Rick and thank you so much for what you gave me, I’ll never forget it.

Grateful for this glorious Community Service Honor

Jeff Jacques: US Junior Chamber International Senator #69657

Here's the definition of what a JCI Senator is:

"The United States JCI Senate is an independent organization, with its own constitution and bylaws, associated with the United States Junior Chamber and Junior Chamber International.

The purposes of the US JCI Senate are twofold. Foremost, we seek to build and promote fellowship among our Senators through our publications, meetings, and social activities. Second, but just as important to us, is to promote the Junior Chamber program. We do this by offering our assistance and the knowledge and experience of our members to the Junior Chamber organization. The United States JCI Senate stands ready to help the United States Junior Chamber and any local chapter, district, region, or state officer. This assistance is always available for the asking.

A JCI Senatorship is the highest honor which can be bestowed upon a current or past member by Junior Chamber International for outstanding service to the organization. It provides a unique means for recognizing a member’s outstanding achievements, and also confers upon that individual a “Life Membership” in Junior Chamber International.

A JCI Senatorship may be given to any local Junior Chamber member in appreciation of services rendered at any level of the organization, and is subject to the approval of the local, state, and national Presidents. Current local members must have a minimum of five years of membership before they may be nominated for a JCI Senatorship."

I had a very wonderful surprise waiting for me this morning when I came home from work. It’s seems my wife Jenny gave me a great belated birthday present.

I guess she tried to get it to me by my 50th birthday but it didn’t quite get here on time but trust me this is one of those precious gifts that even though you get it late, it was well worth the wait.

My wife, with the help of Frank Sowder the current State President of the Wyoming Jaycees, submitted a Senatorship application in my name to the US Jaycees and the JCI. They accepted it. This award is the highest honor a Jaycee can receive and it’s such a great privilege to be selected. I’ve been out of the JC’s for 9 years but the 15 years that I happily served were some of the best years of my life.  

The instant I joined the Worland, WY Jaycees in 1986 I began to experience immediately all the community, management, and individual development educational lessons the organization would teach me over the next 15 years in several different JC Chapters around Wyoming. I had a fantastic experience in the Jaycees getting involved in a wide variety of projects and meeting all kinds of exceptional people in the organization and outside of it. The experiences I gleamed from the JC’s also helped to advance my business career in management because during those years I ran 2 different businesses.

Today the need for the Jaycees in America couldn’t be greater. It’s the best young person’s organization in the world and has helped launch many of today’s successful businessmen and women and political leaders. If you have never heard of the JC’s and are between the ages of 18 and 41 I encourage you to check it out. Here’s the link to the US Jaycees website.

http://www.usjaycees.org/

Many of my friends on facebook are people I met in the Wyoming Jaycees. To this day they are some of the best friends I’ve ever made in my life and for that one thing alone I’m eternally grateful. I can also thank the JC’s for helping me meet Jenny who I met at the last State Meeting I could attend as a regular member (at 41 you age out) back in 2001 in Thermopolis, WY. She turned out to be my best friend and eventually my wife.

Jenny is the single greatest gift I ever received in the Jaycees. Thank you my love for making this happen and thank you to all the great friends I have in the JC’s and for your love and friendship over the years.

I love the Jaycee Creed and I sincerely believe that if any young person joined the Jaycees today they too would see that service to humanity is the best work of life.

The 1991 Laramie Jaycees Easter Egg Hunt

Funny how over the years in the Jaycees the projects I sometimes never thought would fly actually ending up soaring to the outer reaches of Pluto.  Such was the case of the Laramie Jaycees 1991 Easter Egg Hunt.

First I will have to give some background on what happened before this project took place. I moved to Laramie, WY from Cheyenne, WY in fall of 1990.  The chapter in Laramie was struggling, needed new leadership, members and was in danger of losing their charter.  I was suffering from burnout when I first moved there because I'd just come off a very busy year in Cheyenne as Local President and a painful divorce.  In 1990 when I moved to Laramie the chapter was down to 14 members, they were on probation and only had one more month before the State would pull their charter. Once the charter is pulled the chapter has to dissolve.

I had a good friend named Harold Babbitt who was a Laramie Jaycee at that time. He asked me or should I say begged me, to help the chapter get back on its feet again.  When he and I first talked about it I was just not ready to dive into another big challenge in the Jaycees.  I just spent the previous 5 years doing Jaycees day and night to the point of madness really.

Harold just kept working on me until I decide to give in and help out.  My love and devotion to the Jaycees was to strong at that time to see the chapter not die so I took over as Local President for what remained of that Jaycee year. Then in earnest the task of trying to take the remaining members and seeing what we could do to rebuild the chapter began.  The first order of business of course was to sign up 6 new members so we could retain our charter.  In a month with the help of some of the remaining diehards in the chapter we signed up 6 new members to retain the charter.

We started doing some small fun projects that went well but needed to come up with a project to make a big slash so it could help build the organization.  One member named Janet suggested that we host an Easter Egg Hunt.  She said that no one in Laramie was hosting one and that if might be a way to get our name out in the community.

I freely admit that I was very skeptical that such a project would work in Laramie for several reasons.  One was that the winters in Wyoming especially Laramie was notoriously long and two the chapter was flat broke and didn't have a relationship with many local businesses to get the needed donations that were required to make it happen. We certainly didn't have enough of our own operating capitol to purchase the needed items for it.

Hosting an Easter Egg Hunt in Laramie in March or April was akin to hosting an Ice Sculpting Contest in the Mojave Desert in July.  The chance of bad weather dropping the turnout to a hand full of kids in Eskimo suits was a real possibility.  In all the years I lived in Wyoming in several different cities the worst winters by far were spent in Laramie.  So while I was encouraged by the excitement of Janet and a few of the new members who wanted to try it I just wasn't confident it would work.

Thankfully Janet's excitement did carry over to the non-believers (me included) and with the help of about a dozen other Jaycees we began to get all the donations that were needed to give it a try. A week before the Easter Egg Hunt we got the 1,000 plastic eggs from Wal-Mart which we would use to put the candy in.  We also received a donation on of candy from one of the local wholesale candy stores in Laramie.  Other items were donated like stuffed Easter Bunnies, gift certificates among other items.  The plan was to place slips of paper in random eggs then awarded the donations to the lucky kids who found them.

Then the next big task was stuffing all the eggs.  There were about a dozen or so diehard Jaycees that started stuffing the 1,000 eggs we hoped to have ready for the hunt.  It took as the whole week leading up to the day of the hunt to finish that tedious task.  The project was coming together nicely and the new group of Jaycees jumped in with a team effort to get the eggs ready.  We put an ad in the paper and placed one on the local radio stations and then just hoped upon hope the weather would cooperate.

The weather had been cold most of the week before the Hunt.  The temperatures had ranged from the low 20s to 30s for most of the week so we really feared a cold one the day we had scheduled for the project.  Since the Hunt would start at 9 a.m. on Sunday we knew the coldest part of the day would be the early morning hours.

The morning of the Hunt finally came and all the committee members showed up at 7 a.m. at the local city park where the project was to be held.  When we first arrived at the park the temperature was 34 to 35 degrees and there was a frost on the ground but no snow.  By 8:30 a.m. we had the eggs scattered throughout the park in 3 different areas since we had 3 different age groups for the kids.

Nervously we waited to see if anyone would show up for the 9 a.m. start time. Slowly more and more parents and kids began to show up at the park  By 9 a.m. my best guess was there were 300 kids who had showed up for the Egg Hunt.  Parents and kids alike dressed in winter clothes anxiously awaited around the sectioned off areas for the hunt to begin.  I was flabbergasted; I couldn't believe the turnout especially since it was such a cold day.

The whistle blew to officially begin the hunt and in less than 15 minutes all the eggs had been scooped up off the ground by the excited kids.  It was amazing; we had to break up fights among some of the kids who were scrambling to get to the eggs.  Many of the smaller kids were to slow on the take and some were lucky to even get one Egg.  It was a hilarious thing to watch as the kids run like crazed maniacs to get to the eggs.

I really was the Doubting Thomas right up until the day we had the hunt but it ended up being one of the most successful projects I was ever involved with in Jaycees.  The project had a huge ripple effect on the chapter.  Word got around that we really were making an effort to conduct community based projects in Laramie.  As word spread the chapter started to grow in membership. The Easter Egg Hunt really helped to springboard the chapter.  The project was such a staple for the chapter that it ended up being an annual event and grew each year after.  This project helped keep the Laramie Jaycees active in the community for years.

I guess the moral of the story is never underestimating the value of a good idea even with the preconceived obstacles.  Even in a cold place like Wyoming there was a huge demand for community service projects aimed at children.  It just one of the many great projects I was fortunate to be involved in during my 15 years of service in the Wyoming Jaycees.  The demand is still there so I encourage those of you who have read this far to check into the Jaycees or any other service group and get involved.  You'll be amazed how sacrificing  just a little of your time will do so much for someone, not to mention what it will do for you. The gift of service is the one that keeps on giving. To me it's the best work of life.  Have a Happy Easter.

Sincerely,

An Old Exhausted Rooster,
from the Great State of Wyoming.