Community Building - A True Story of Peacemaking

Jan Brown arrived in Idaho Falls one cool October evening back in 1976 at the invitation of Ernie Craner, our Parks and Recreation director at the time. Ernie knew that Jan's environmental education background and forestry degree from Oregon State University would be welcomed by those launching the new Intermountain Science Experience Center (that we now know as University Place). Jan strung her plastic, open-ended tube tent between two lilac bushes by the river at the former KOA and in the morning found herself buried under six inches of snow. Despite the chilly introduction to our fair city, Jan put down roots in Eastern Idaho and spent the next 43 years working to protect the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and its unmatched recreation resources across three states. 

Jan's diverse career included 10 years operating her own guest lodge in Island Park and 23 years leading three distinctly different nonprofit organizations in Idaho and Montana. When Jan was executive director of the Henry's Fork Foundation in the 1990s, she helped create the Henry's Fork Watershed Council in cooperation with Dale Swensen of the Fremont-Madison Irrigation District. Their collaborative approach to problem solving and use of community-building techniques laid the foundation for what is now 25 years of cooperation between farmers and fishermen in the Henry's Fork Basin. Now that Jan has retired and is back,in Idaho Falls, this is the story I've asked her to tell to set the stage for our peacemaking theme for February.