as tourism destination

If you’re going to fail, fail forward.” Kate Rispens recalls sturdy advice from her father, Bob Hastings. “Use the lesson and move forward onto the next idea.”

Bob Hastings was an idea man. “He was a dreamer, a doer and innovator,” Rispens said. “Growing up with him, I got to watch those ideas come to life.”

The list of things Bob helped create is exhaustive. The Church Hill Inn, Country Walk Shops, Green Gables, Innline, Chamber Mixers, the four-lane highway, Lighthouse Tours, Shipyard Tours, Festival of Blossoms, and more. Moving to Door County in 1979, he thought this would be a good place to raise a family. He also saw Door County as having “potential for an amazing getaway,” according to his sister, Liz Hastings-Junion.

“Our father was a huge influence on Bob,” Junion said. “I remember them sitting on the porch talking ideas. My dad was the Egg Harbor Village President and owned the Egg Harbor Lodge. They were always talking about how things could be better.”

In 1986, Bob and then-wife Madeline, along with some others, built the Churchill Inn and the Country Walk Shops in Sister Bay as a way to invigorate the sleepy town.

“My mom worked the front desk and my sister and I basically grew up there,” Rispens said. “He wanted some way to create a place for businesses to grow; to improve things for the town. I remember being put in a hotel room on Sunday mornings to watch TV and Anna and I would watch Sunday Morning Wrestling and take each other on in a wrestling match.“

When the Executive Director of the Door County Chamber of Commerce retired, Bob, who was on the board of directors, was approached to be the interim Director. Once he got started, though, he knew he had the skills to promote the county into the next generation.

“He was always well-informed and listened to people,” Junion said. “He wanted to preserve what Door County was about.”

“He wanted the Door County experience to be extraordinary,” former Visitor Bureau co-worker, Anni Lampert, said. “He had integrity and could articulate best about what was going on. He was anti billboards, about preserving the scenic byways and adding technology.” Lampert said he was one of the best bosses you could ever wish for because he was fearless. “Once we decided on where we wanted to go, we just did it.” “He had really great ideas and knew how to delegate,” Junion said. “He surrounded himself with talented people. He was good at fitting in, could adapt and relate and always found common ground.” The original version of the “In the early 90’s it was a scary time Go! Guide was launched by for businesses,” Lampert said. “Back Bob Hastings in the early 1990s and published by then, you’d order your guidebook and the Chamber of Commerce plan your vacation. As things came onuntil 2006. Three years later, the publication was line like the weather outlook and online relaunched by Door Guide reservations, he saw that we needed to Publishing. get hotels online. He gathered programmer Greg Swain to create a program to have live vacancy reporting and kiosks in each town because there were no cell phones back then. It was revolutionary. It changed everything.”

“His vision was to stretch the tourist season by encouraging a mass daffodil planting throughout the county in order to promote the Festival of Blossoms,” Lampert said. “There was no budget to speak of, so we gathered the right people and made things work. It was so much fun!”

He also created this publication, the Door County Go Guide, which was then published by the Door County Chamber of Commerce until 2006. “It was created to promote the retailers and restaurants and he wanted it put in every hotel room,” Lampert said.

“He had a passion to create, or instigate, and he was good at getting us to go along with his ideas,” his good friend Greg “Fuzzy” Sunstrom said. One year he thought the Door Community Auditorium should have entertainment on the Fourth of July, so with two friends, he put together the funds to hire well-known musician Leon Redbone. “By the 4th we had sold no tickets,” Sunstrom recalled, “so we joined the 4th of July parade to hand out notices to come to the concert. We each made $27 after it was said and done. That night Leon went to Bob’s house and played a house concert for us well into the night. Those were the things he did.”

Her father’s greatest personal challenge, Rispens thought, was that he was an extreme perfectionist, “which can be a blessing when you want things done right. He was impatient and he wanted things to happen how he saw it,” she said. “I remember he would take a level and straighten the pictures in the house. I would poke the pictures just to mess with him.”

As Sunstrom re- As Executive Director of the Door County calls, “on a boat trip to Chamber of Commerce, Bob Hastings initiated a program in 1993 that led to the planting of Michigan over Labor 2.5 million daffodils throughout Door County. Day we went golfing and he was so frustrated by how poorly he was playing that he threw his clubs into the garbage can.”

Bob’s perfectionism never got in the way of reaching for new ideas. He tried implementing a county-wide health insurance program, a noble concept that brought collaboration with Donna Valler. a regional sales manager for an insurance company. Though the initiative was not feasible, what he gained was a new love and a new life with Donna. In other words, “If you’re going to fail, fail forward.” — Marise Redmann