Paul Martin Sumey was born on February 7, 1938 in Topeka, Kansas. So, you may be asking, where did Pete come from. I will tell you the answer I received when I asked them the same question. “One week after you were born, we changed our minds”. And from that time forward, I was “Little” Pete, until I grew 7.5 inches during the summer between grades 7 and 8, at which time I became, wait for it, “Big” Pete.
All of my formal schooling was in Topeka, culminating with a degree in mathematics with a minor in education at Washburn University. During my sophomore year, a friend in my church youth group told me about the good times she had working at the YMCA camp in a place called in Estes Park, that was next to Rocky Mountain National Park. That sounded pretty interesting, so I filled out an application for 1959 summer employment and climbed on a train headed for Denver. The Kansas boy, who had never been west of Salina, Kansas, was headed for the mountains.
One of the people I met that summer was the Chaplain at the Y camp, a fellow named Ned Linegar. More about him later.
During my last two years at Washburn, I worked evenings and Saturday morning at the telephone company with three other students. We used IBM punch card equipment to finish the daily and weekly billing cycles. I found that I had an aptitude for the work, and after graduation, and a summer tour of the western United States including a visit to the Y camp, I interviewed with IBM and was hired for the Kansas City sales office in October, 1961. After two months of training in Chicago, I made my first visit to the Kansas City office where I met my future bride, Lois Kuchenbecker.
We were married in The Village Church (Presbyterian) on May 23, 1964, and will celebrate our 57th anniversary next May. We honeymooned in Colorado. On May 30, we found ourselves in the Bear Lake parking area, seated in our car in a snowstorm, with me telling her how we would bring our kids here to take family hikes. It took some convincing, but four years later we brought our one year old out for a week of beautiful weather, and came back to the Y camp for fifteen years of the next twenty for family vacation, adding a boy and a girl in the process. Ironically, two of the years we missed were the Big Thompson flood, and the Lawn Lake flood.
I retired from IBM in December, 1991, and went to work in the business office of The Village Church in Prairie Village, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City, where I managed the computer network and church information system until August, 2003. The time had finally arrived to achieve a goal that we had been dreaming about and planning for the previous 39 years; our move to Estes Park as full time residents. We had purchased a home on Longview in April, and our daughter (a seasonal park ranger) was living in the house to accept furniture deliveries while we were making monthly trips from Kansas City. We immersed ourselves in volunteer activities in RMNP and town Ambassadors, and moved our church membership to Presbyterian Community Church of the Rockies where we found an old friend.
The first person we saw upon entering the church our first Sunday was Ned Linegar. Our paths had crossed often during our vacation trips at the Y, and Ned lost no time in bringing me to my first Rotary meeting and sponsoring my membership on January 14, 2004.
One of the first tasks I performed from the Good Beginnings for New Members was to attend a club board meeting. Steve Little was the chair for the Scholarship Committee, and Steve got up and told the board members that due to the loss of a major fundraising activity, there was only enough money available to provide one scholarship that year instead of the three that were normally given. Whoa, I thought to myself. I need to look into this. I joined the Scholarship Committee, and it did not take long for the trail to lead to Don Widrig, a member of the Rotary Golf Tournament committee, the one remaining fundraiser for Scholarships. Don and I had similar backgrounds, and we collaborated to allow him to be committee Treasurer while I performed golfer registration for the tournament in 2004, a function I still perform 16 years later. Later in the spring, Julie Phares organized a musical variety show called Estes Park Sings for Scholarships that had a seven year run, and when that ended, Jack Overly, Madison Casey, and I started a similar variety show called It’s Showtime that ran an additional seven years.
One of my real pleasures of involvement with scholarships is joining other committee members each year to review the student applications for our Rotary scholarships. I am continually amazed and impressed with some of our high school seniors who exceed academically and socially while dealing with serious financial and functional difficulties in their personal lives. They have high personal goals, a plan for success, and the toughness to make it happen.
I attended my first Duck Race in 2004, and knew that I had to be involved. I joined the Widrigs, Lassons, and Andersons in Duck Central in 2005, and missed participation for the first time this year.
I believe in Service Above Self. Over the past 18 years, I have served the club as Secretary (twice), Director of Fund Development, President (2012/13), and club Foundation President (twice). My passion has been scholarships. We are currently experiencing another decline in funds raised for scholarships, and we need more committed members to be active in all aspects of the scholarship program. I believe in the 4 Way Test, and I use it every day as a guide for life’s decisions. And I believe in an organization with a Foundation that is second only in strength of funding to the Gates Foundation. I am proud to be a Rotarian.
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