The job did get done, Paul

I couldn't help but think a little bit about former Dickinson County Supervisor Paul Johnson last week while touring the new Career Academy on the Spirit Lake campus of Iowa Lakes Community College.

It's been more than four years since I sat down with Paul in the conference room here at the Dickinson County News and heard all kinds of life stories from him — how he fended off a shark attack, how he developed rocket cones during the Space Race, all kinds of stuff. Not surprising if you knew Paul, really. But last week's tour dragged a few small snippets from my notebook back to the surface of my thoughts.

In particular, I remembered him expressing a modicum of disappointment that he'd never been able to help launch what he called a career center in the Lakes Area.

A former publisher of mine once joked that good news writers can't just let something go when they know they've got the information buried in a box somewhere, and I guess I'd have to agree with that point since I found myself going back to find my notes from January of 2019 — it's much easier in the digital age mind you. I found some interesting factoids in the unpublished portions of that day's interview with Paul, and I thought I'd share them with all of you readers out there.

Paul told me he had at one point hoped to convert the former Mahannah Auditorium in Spirit Lake into a place for high school graduates and those looking for a career change to be trained in particular fields the local business community had trouble filling.

"It's affecting the growth of the area," he told me. "I talk with people at the high school — students coming out — they feel there's nothing here for them. They go elsewhere. They don't stay around here."

His plan was to have those at the center split their day between an internship and work alongside a company sponsor in a particular field. And with the old auditorium — which had been largely unused since 1999 — right next door to the Iowa Lakes campus in Spirit Lake, he thought it was a logical location.

Paul told me back then that several of the area's major employers were interested in the idea, and that he'd also spoken with the college, city officials, his fellow supervisors and even folks at the Iowa Lakes Corridor Development Corporation, but the idea was cost prohibitive at that time and never got much traction. He said he was once given an estimate of about $1 million just to demolish the aging auditorium — and likely a good pile of asbestos — before even starting to look at new construction and modern utilities.

"I never got the job done," he told me. "Maybe somebody will pick up on it and follow through."

I'd forgotten that quote, so I'm glad I wrote it down, because I think that's exactly what's happened in the Lakes Region.

The new Career Academy might be a little different than what Paul envisioned, but I think it accomplishes the same goal. The curriculum isn't limited to those with high school diplomas, in fact many in the academy program are still in high school and able to get a jump start on professional training. They may not necessarily be splitting their days between internships and company-sponsored work, but in many cases they are learning directly from industry professionals who are looking for well-trained future employees. It didn't come with a $1 million demolition cost, but it did come about largely thanks to a $1 million state grant.

But most of all, Paul wanted to have something in place where the local workforce could be trained to fill specific positions major employers in the region needed to fill. After interviewing Iowa Lakes President Scott Stokes last week, I think that's the vision at Iowa Lakes as well. Stokes said the college put a good deal of thought into which career fields the new academy would focus on — those which were seeing both high-pay and high-demand. That way, he explained, students were not only ready to enter the workforce but could easily find a position where they could make use of their training.

So, even though Paul didn't live to see it come about, I think he'd be pretty pleased with what Iowa Lakes has done for the community in Dickinson County.

More over, I think the community can be proud that it indeed picked up on the same need Paul saw and was able to follow through on it.