County Connect Webster

Gowrie Spring Banquet

Each year, Gowrie hosts a Spring Banquet to celebrate the year’s successes and acknowledge a Go-getter, someone who demonstrates “leadership, inspiration, generosity, and wisdom” of a professional in the community.

The feature speaker at the banquet on March 30th was Deb Brown with “Save Your Town”. “Save Your Town” exists to provide low or no-cost solutions for small towns to make improvements that will benefit their quality of life and economy. They believe that small towns can best be saved by their own people using their own resources. “Save Your Town” shows communities practical steps they can use to impact their future.

Deb Brown grew up outside of Geneva, Iowa. She has led a small town chamber of commerce, foreign casualty insurance underwriting, and retail management, among other jobs. Deb holds an Institute for Organizational Management certification, graduated from Leadership Iowa, and the Ag-Urban Institute in Iowa. She also completed the Governing Officials Institute in Oklahoma and earned certificates in Facilitating for Results and Quality Leadership. What she most loves about her job is “the opportunity to work with people who really care about their communities. Sharing the success stories from other towns is always fun. Helping people get entrepreneurial ideas off the ground, finding ways to save your town and hearing the good things about a town are the things I really enjoy.”

During Brown’s presentation, she discussed filling empty buildings, using city codes that already exist, making new ones and enforcing them as ways to get started. To fill empty buildings, Deb spoke about creating art residencies and incubator projects. To fill empty lots, Deb discussed filling them with, “outdoor activities, museums, party spaces and tiny market villages.”

Brown says, “Small towns have all they need to move forward, try new ideas and save their towns. I believe small towns can be saved by their own peo- great conversations around the small things they could do right away. One young man volunteered to bring his buddies out and use a power washer to clean some of downtown. Does that seem like much? The surprising thing is that it really helps. And more people get involved when they see how they can participate by taking smaller steps. I look forward to seeing how one of the downtown buildings is going to cover their boarded-up windows on the second floor! One lady posted on Facebook a story of how one town was hosting a puzzle night. She simply asked, ‘who likes this?’ She got lots of answers from folks who wanted to do it. Finally, Mulligans hosted a bingo night this past week. That was an idea that came out of this visit. Anytime you can support a local business is a good thing!”

Gowrie Go-getter Award

Bernadette Tucker was awarded with the Gowrie Go-getter award. Bernadette has volunteered and held many positions on committees and boards, and served on the Webster County Planning and Zoning Commission. While a board member of the Gowrie Development Commission, she served as treasurer for many years, put together Welcome bags, planned annual events, spear-headed the digital Welcome to Gowrie signs, downtown flower planters, and co-chaired the Image Committee. Tucker is an active leader with the American Legion Auxiliary Post #431, and organized a blood drive when serving as Vice President. She was involved in the Gowrie United Methodist Church for several years.

Bernadette now lives out of state but continues to support Gowrie, visiting often and continuing to work on a recent project to enhance the downtown.