One of the best
things about writing this column is I get to catch up with some old friends and
former students. It is even better when those former students also happen to be
good family friends. Such is the case with Travis Briner.
Travis and my son
Grant were in the same class growing up, played against each other in little
league before becoming Loco teammates in football and basketball, and Travis
was always welcome in our home. I had Travis in class as a seventh grader, was
his junior high and senior high Sunday School teacher at First Methodist, sang
with him in church choir, and we even took him along on some family vacations.
So catching up
with Travis for this month’s column was a whole lot more pleasure than
business.
It hardly seems
like ten years have passed since graduation, but alas it has. And that
freckle-faced redhead has become a college graduate, found success in his
career, and enjoys life as a husband and father.
“I started my college career at Defiance
College where I studied Sport management while playing football for the Yellow
Jackets,” explained Travis from his home outside St. Louis. “After two years at
Defiance College, I chose to transfer to Wright State University where I
graduated in 2007 with a degree in Organizational Leadership.”
But like almost everyone featured in this
column, the road did not lead back to Montpelier after graduation for Travis.
Instead he headed to southwest Illinois and a position in the district office
of the Boy Scouts. Why the Boy Scouts and why Illinois?
“The classic, not what you know, but who
you know story,” said Travis. “I was not
a Boy Scout in Montpelier, or ever for that matter. However, my wife’s uncle, Tim Garber, was the
CEO of a local Boy Scout Council in the Metro-East St. Louis. Knowing him over the years, he asked if I
would be interested in working for him out of college, and it’s hard to turn
down a job immediately out of school.”
Travis’s official title is district
director of the Lewis and Clark Council, Boy Scouts of America.
“When I typically tell people that
I work for the Boy Scouts, they immediately think of our program (character,
leadership, citizenship, knots, camping, etc.), which is a good thing, but my
role in the organization is very different.
I am the last person that you would want teaching young men those
skills. As a professional in our
organization it is my responsibility to ensure that those who do have the
skills to lead young men to be better citizens, and leaders of high character,
have the resources they need to be successful.
We organize and lead volunteer committees that ensure quality of
programs, growth in our membership, and that ensure that the funding needed to
support the programs is available.
Essentially, it is my job to bring resources to the table in the form of
money, manpower and membership while supporting the volunteer leaders who put
the program to work.”
“In my
five years, I have helped recruit thousands of new Scouts to the program,
raised well over $500,000 in direct support, and have recruited many doctors,
lawyers, business owners, presidents and
vice-presidents to our organization. My
short-term career goal would be to get into a development position in a
different Council somewhere in the Midwest, which would require my wife and me
to move out of the St. Louis area. My long-term goal is to become the Chief
Scout Executive of the Boy Scouts of America (the CEO of the entire
organization)—shoot for the stars, right?”
Travis
said his Montpelier upbringing has been as asset for him in his career.
“I credit growing up in Montpelier for a
lot of my journey. I talk about it all of the time. This past week I received what I believe to
be the best compliment of my career, and for those who know me, you won’t be
surprised. I was talking with a bank
president at one of our events and he told me, ‘if BS was electricity, you’d be
a powerhouse.’ Growing up in Montpelier
in a community that is interested and engaged in its youth put me in a position
to be around and talk with people from many walks of life. I told this guy that it is my philosophy that
I didn’t need to know a lot about anything, rather a little about everything. Going to St. Joe’s grain elevator with my dad
and grandfather as a child, working for the city in high school, hanging around
guys like Greg Shoup, Rick Richmond, Chuck Moore, and so many others (like
yourself), allowed for me to learn a little about a lot of different things,
not only in those various career fields, but in life in general.”
And his personal life has turned out
pretty well, too. “My wife (the former Jackie Lemmon) is a Certified
Occupational Therapy Assistant and she works in St. Louis at a nursing home
where she does therapy with the residents.
Ultimately, she would like to go back to school to get her master’s
degree in Occupational Therapy to become an Occupational therapist, which would
allow for her to prescribe the treatment, instead of recommending a treatment.”
And Travis and Jackie have a new young son,
Knox. “Knox is nine months old and is doing great! When people tell you that having children
will ‘change your life’ I really didn’t understand what they were talking
about. However, it didn’t take long to
figure it out. He is my new favorite
person. Jackie and I have been very
blessed with Knox; he eats well, sleeps well, laughs all of the time, rarely
cries, and is excited to see us in the morning and when we pick him up in the
afternoons. Probably the best part is he
does well in the car during the six hour drive to Montpelier.”
With his parents (Bob and Kelley) and
other family members still in Montpelier, Travis and family do make the trip
back home when they can. “We do get back to Montpelier a few times a year,
usually around the holidays or long weekends.
Obviously, there are some brick and mortar changes in Montpelier, with
the new school, and the others now gone, but ultimately, Montpelier is the same
town that I left ten years ago, and that’s a good thing, too. The best part of going ‘home’ is that I can
go to the grocery store, church or to Rowe’s for an omelet that I couldn’t
possibly finish, and see people I know, and we talk like we had a conversation
last week. It really does give you the
feeling of home even though I haven’t lived there for a decade.”
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