Hayden's longest-serving employee reflects on 38-year career

HAYDEN — As the first snowstorm blankets the city of Hayden this season, Wade Holecek plans to be somewhere warm and indoors, peacefully watching the flakes swirl to the earth.

He won't be making 3 a.m. phone calls, pulling on his boots and getting the plows ready. He won't have to strategize with crews to clear the roads before the morning rush.

“I’m looking forward to the first snow this year, and I’m looking forward to watching it come down and not worrying about it,” Holecek said Friday. "When I was younger I loved to plow snow, but as I’ve gotten older, not so much.” 

No, Hayden's superintendent of operations and public works won't be thinking about any of that because after 38 years with the city, Holecek is retiring Thursday.

"I won’t have to be up and down all night long seeing if it’s snowing and the boys have got to go to work," he said. "I won’t have to call and wake anyone up." 

A 1984 Coeur d'Alene High School graduate, Holecek, 58, began his career with the city of Hayden when he was 20. He's watched a little lake town of 3,000 grow to a population of nearly 17,000 in his time with the city. He will retire as Hayden's longest-tenured employee.

Hayden has definitely changed in that time, he said.

"Finucane Ranch was still going, when it was before all these homes and this was a huge field out here,” he said, gesturing to the south of city hall. “You could watch all the goofy ground squirrels in the spring with the hawks coming in, plucking them out of there. That’s the thing. You see so much devoured up with all the homes. That makes it different.”

Holecek witnessed and was instrumental in the development of about six parks. He saw the expansion of Hayden City Hall as it grew into a two-story building.

“With Hayden, for me, I’ve evolved with it,” he said.

Holecek closely worked with Hayden's first city administrator, the late Bob Croffoot, to establish Diamond Park, which would later be named for Croffoot, who served on the Hayden City Council for 15 years before becoming administrator.

"That was a big one, when Bob Croffoot was here and we were looking for another park," Holecek said.

He is most proud of the efforts he and Croffoot put into modernizing Government Way from Honeysuckle to Hayden avenues, although Holecek would have liked that stretch to have been five lanes when the work was done.

"Me and Bob Croffoot, we went to first meeting in getting funding for this, so that was kind of neat being involved in that,” Holecek said. 

He said Croffoot always encouraged him to think about the future and ways to advance the city.

“He was a big help with the start of getting us better equipment,” Holecek said. “Finally he was city adminstrator, and that was really neat.” 

Hayden Superintendent of Parks Ron Reno grew up with Holecek.

"Wade and I have been friends since we were little kids," Reno said. "Our moms and dads were friends. They rode motorcycles together."

Reno and Holecek have worked at the city together for 30 years.

"Chief’s kind of one of a kind," Reno said. 

He said he's excited for his longtime friend and colleague to enter a new era of retirement.

"He’s just a great, great man," Reno said. "He has great integrity. He always does the right thing. He’s always been very, very, very fair. He’s always let me do my job — I really could not be happier for him."

Reno was also part of the Croffoot Park project, an undertaking he said was stressful but made less so due to Holecek's connections.

"Wade has a great network of people he can rely on," Reno said. "We relied on the airport to help us out. Lakes Highway District helped us out. I was very happy with the way that park turned out. We had a vast network that helped with that."

While he is happy for his friend, Reno will miss working with Holecek. The two have been through a lot together.

"We've argued, we fought, we've drank a lot of beer, we've cried together, we’ve hugged, we’ve worked together most of our lives," Reno said.

"The biggest thing I'm going to miss about working with Wade Holecek is I'm going to miss him standing up and looking at me and telling me to, 'Zip it, Reno,'" he said with a chuckle. "I can always tell when I hit my limit because he stood up and looked at me or turned in his chair and said, 'Zip it, Reno.'"

Holecek has no concrete plans for his retirement. He enjoys spending time with his family and black Lab, Rowdy, and he loves being up in the hills or at a friend's property on the Coeur d'Alene River.

"I do have an intention of cleaning my garage out," he said, smiling. "I want to get that done.”

The parting words of wisdom he has for the team members he’s leaving behind is for them to “continue doing the great work they do.”

A retirement party will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. Thursday in the Hayden City Council Chambers to celebrate Holecek and his nearly four decades with the city.

“I got lucky,” he said. “I worked with some pretty cool people.”