People the kids can look up to
Twenty people donated $50,000 each.
One couple gave $2 million.
The remaining $1.65 million came from a lot of folks. What united them all was a powerful desire to help local children grow up to become the best big people they could possibly be. And that’s exactly what the Lola and Duane Hagadone Boys and Girls Club in Coeur d’Alene is going to do, starting next year and — with hard work and continued support — for many, many years to come.
At a festive, laugh-filled and joyfully tearful evening Wednesday at the Hagadone Event Center, many of those voracious supporters were brought together to celebrate on the eve of Thursday’s groundbreaking. The guy who assembled them is the same guy who united them in the first place; the guy who for almost a decade has steadfastly sought — and succeeded — to separate good-hearted donors from their hard-earned cash.
His name is Ron Nilson.
Ron is as passionate a man as you’ll find. That’s how he turned a failing business into a booming manufacturer of mining equipment. It’s how he’s helped lead numerous community causes that transform drug addicts, former criminals and assorted other lost souls into productive, happy members of society. It’s why one of his pals joked Wednesday night, when Ron took the microphone, that the over/under on his crying was eight and a half.
Ron cries a lot, which is just another proof of his passion. He didn’t disappoint Wednesday night, either, though he never quite reached the 8.5 mark. As the year 2015 draws to a close, however, there might have been more tears than usual.
The mining industry globally is in a slump, which has not been kind to Nilson and his employees at Ground Force and Ground Force Worldwide.
On Nov. 1, he lost one of the great loves of his life. His mother, Barbara Sue Nilson, died at the age of 83. By then she didn’t recognize her son, but to him it hardly mattered. He knew her, and he also knew that the love they share can never be forgotten, and never die.
“If you ask me ‘How’s business?’ it’s not good,” he told a friend recently. “If you ask me ‘How are you?’ I’m great.”
Ron is great. He’s great because his life is purpose-centered, not Ron Nilson-centered. Hundreds of good local jobs would never have been created without him. Many hundreds more people sneered at or frowned upon by society would never have realized that a little love, sometimes tough love, can start the grand elevator up from despair’s depths. And thousands of children, today and in the years to come, would not be able to blossom in the Kootenai County Boys and Girls Clubs without his relentless efforts over the past nine years, efforts unimpinged by the hugs or kicks life happened to be delivering at any given time.
Others’ names may grace the buildings, and that’s as it should be.
But they would be the first to say there was no bigger benefactor than Ron Nilson.