Wendell Pryor, on civil rights and public service, family values, the importance of Internet for rural connectivity, and only semi-retiring in his 70s

In this episode of the We Are Chaffee: Looking Upstream podcast, host Adam Williams talks with Wendell Pryor, the retired former executive director of the Economic Development Corporation (EDC) in Chaffee County, Colo.

Wendell tells about growing up in what was then a rural area outside Denver, coming up in a two-room schoolhouse without indoor plumbing, and spending weekends in the city with cousins.

His dual-environment childhood and being surrounded by family values would be shaping factors in his life. Wendell would end up leaving the States as a teenager, however, to go to high school in Germany, where his civil servant father took a career stint for some years.

Adam asks Wendell, who would have a lengthy career in public service himself, about his experiences and insights as civil rights director for Colorado and in other roles, including as executive director of the EDC. In that position, he would help to bring broadband internet to this rural slice of central Colorado, empowering a surge of intellectual and entrepreneurial capital to move into the region, among other things.