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A formula for victory

| August 29, 2010 9:00 PM

The e-mail contact list was long, a message sent on KTEC election day at 12:12 p.m.

There were just a few words from the author, encouraging everyone to "finish well - for the kids."

The e-mail contained some other pretty inspirational words, stated even better than the e-mailer's.

"I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious."

Those words came from a guy named Lombardi. Had a little success with a football team in Wisconsin some time back.

You also know the originator of the e-mail. His name is Ron Nilson, and we can attest that he left it all out there on the field of battle. Like the Hall of Fame coach, he, too, was victorious.

Ron would bristle at the mention of his name alone here, and in fact, it would be a grave injustice to say that the wreath for KTEC's success belongs exclusively at his feet. The educators and business people who gathered at the Coeur d'Alene Inn almost every week starting several years ago? The ones who, with Nilson at the helm, argued and agreed and disputed and dreamed? The wreath needs to be big enough to cover their several dozen feet, as well as that of the entire Meyer family, whose land donation linked possibility with reality.

Nilson couldn't do it alone, but we're convinced funding for a technical high school could not have been done without him. The guy who once drove thousands of miles to save his struggling business knows only that one speed: Full blast to the goal line, and if there's a dented fender here and a bruised feeling there, well, if the mission is worthy, the casualties are worth it.

The KTEC team would have made Vince Lombardi proud. What would have made the legendary Green Bay Packers coach prouder still was the astonishing support at the polls from 5,361 voters across three Kootenai County school districts.

The Packers are the only team in the National Football League - actually, in all of our nation's professional, major league sports - that is a nonprofit owned by citizens of that community. It's a throwback to semi-pro teams and times, but it has proved one of the most successful formulas of teamwork in the entire realm of worldwide sports. When support runs that deep through the very roots of the community, lying exhausted on the field of battle - victorious - seems inevitable.

Ron Nilson understood that when he urged his friends to finish well.