June 9, 2004
Martiey

Good-bye.  After nineteen years in Happy Valley Martiey Miller is leaving.   For the past six years Martiey has been the head cheese at Cumulus Broadcasting Grand Junction running their radio stations KEKB, Mix 104.3, KOOL and 95 Rock.  And for her entire life she’s been my little sister.  Actually she prefers being described as Dick Maynard’s much, much younger sister.   That description is indeed valid since she was born during my sophomore year in high school. 

Due to the age difference, Martiey went through the first part of her life with her brother long gone from the house.  She graduated high school in Minnesota and headed west on a debate scholarship to Utah State University.  After college came marriage and a move to her husband’s hometown of Thayne in Wyoming’s Star Valley.  For a recent Nutrition & Food Sciences/Business Administration grad, even with a double major there weren’t a lot of jobs available in the sparsely populated area sixty miles south of Jackson.  Martiey waitressed at Mom’s Bar, sold handguns for Freedom Arms, managed a restaurant and worked for a radio station in near-by Afton. 

When her marriage ended, Martiey and her one-year-old daughter, Michelle, headed to Grand Junction.  That was where family lived and here is where I got to know her. 

The year was 1985 and Martiey came to work at our foundering year old radio station as a receptionist.  A few months later a salesman quit and Martiey wanted the job.  We handed her a prospect list, otherwise known as the phone book, and said welcome to the world of straight commission sales.  Within three months she was our number one producer.  Ability and hunger will do that for a person.

After a year in sales, common sense dictated she become sales manager.  The day KEKB turned the corner was also the day Martiey took charge of sales. In fact, she was so good at her job in 1994 the Radio Advertising Bureau named her the outstanding radio sales manager in the United States.  

Not that being a single parent and holding a full time job was ever enough to keep her busy.   Martiey was also a two-year president of the Grand Junction Chamber of Commerce, a member of the JUCO committee, president of Kiwanis, on the Hilltop Board and a member of the Congregational Church Bell Choir.  In 1996 the Colorado Broadcasters named her Colorado’s Broadcast Citizen of the Year. 

But of all her community activities, none had a more lasting impact than when, in 1995, Martiey along with Kathy Carlson and Mike Knode headed up the citizens committee to get a school bond issue and budget override passed by the citizens of Mesa County.  In a community where many of our populace measure the quality of life in terms of whether or not parking downtown is free during the Christmas holidays, getting a favorable vote on a school bond issue passed was deemed practically impossible.  The chances of both issues passing were rated as slim and none with “slim” having just left town.  But putting the press on any friendly face to volunteer for the cause of kids, and by shaking hand after hand and stating their case to any group of three or more that would have them, the bond issue and budget override prevailed by the narrowest of margins.  And today new schools and additions to existing facilities plus critical staffing additions extend from Palisade to Loma.  

Life today finds daughter Michelle a college junior.   Martiey’s done all there is to do at Cumulus Grand Junction; it’s time to move on.  By tomorrow morning she will have packed the SUV, loaded up her Lab, Corgi and cat, and said her tearful goodbyes to Mom.  She’s heading East to Minneapolis and a new adventure as an executive with Infinity Broadcasting.  Where the Interstate approaches the Colorado River just past Palisade she’ll take one last glance at the valley behind her.  In the rear view mirror she’ll see a community that’s a better place to live than when she moved here nineteen years ago. Martiey helped bring about that improvement.   And at the same time in that last fleeting glance she’ll also see a valley where she’s leaving a huge chunk of her heart.  Godspeed, little sister.