Four candidates are on the ballot for three open seats on the Powell Valley Healthcare Board of Trustees.

Trustee Larry Parker resigned his position on the board in June, and Trustee Deb Kleinfeldt is not running for reelection. Trustee Bonita 'Boni' Katz term expires in December, and she is running for reelection. Three other candidates have put their name in for the race. The three winners will serve not only on the hospital district board, which owns the actual facilities on the Powell Valley Healthcare campus, but also on the board of Powell Valley Healthcare, a nonprofit organization that runs the organization.

Bob Graff

Bob Graff and his wife, Linda, moved to Powell at the end of May. The retirees fell in love with the community.

“We absolutely love Powell. The community is full of amazingly good people. It’s got a nice, laidback lifestyle, and we enjoy it a lot,” Bob Graff said.

He’s running for one of the three open seats on the Powell Hospital District Board of Trustees alongside four other candidates.

“We plan to live here the rest of our lives, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to contribute to the community where we’ll be living,” Graff said.

The Graffs have a lot of ties to California — he was born in Bakersfield — but the political environment there has made it unwelcoming.

“We don’t claim it anymore,” Linda said.

Graff worked as a consulting petroleum engineer for 44 years. The work took him and his family all over the world including Thailand, Saudia Arabia, North Africa, the Adriatic Sea, Italy, Southeast Asia, the U.S. Gulf Coast and the Rocky Mountain region.

His career goes back far enough that in the 1970s he worked for Husky Oil Company, which was founded in Cody in the 1930s and had a string of service stations across America. Over the years, he’s worked for Chevron, EOG, Unical and a bunch of independents.

While managing on and offshore rigs he oversaw complex systems. That experience, he said, would be an asset to the Powell hospital and Powell Valley Healthcare boards. He’s been responsible for multi-million dollar budgets and lots of personnel.

Despite his decades of experience, Graff said he knows there’s going to be a lot to learn should he find himself serving on the board. But he said he’s “not averse to asking questions,” and the other board members have been very helpful so far.

Graff said that, in retirement, you have all the time you need to contribute to the community. He’s been looking for such opportunities wherever they go. The Graffs lived in Cheyenne for a while, where they volunteered at the local library. The couple ended up leaving, saying they can only take so much wind.

They bought a house on the old Edmonds homestead south of Powell. The Graffs made it a point to buy the entire parcel, because they didn’t want anything to come around and spoil the view they have of Heart Mountain.

Being out in rural Park County, they aren’t eligible for a lot of city boards, and they have been impressed with the care they’ve received from PVHC.

“I just happened to see the solicitation in the paper, and I thought it might be a good opportunity to contribute,” Graff said.

They have a 29-year-old son, Jason, who lives in Laramie.

Bonita ‘Boni’ Katz

Bonita “Boni” Katz first ran for the Powell Hospital District Board of Trustees in 2012, on the encouragement of her friend and fellow trustee Deb Kleinfeldt, who is not running for re-election. Katz reluctantly agreed to be one of three candidates who ran for three seats that year, and she ran again successfully in 2016.

“I feel [the board of trustees] is such an important part of this community. And I feel it’s something I can do. I was raised in a home where you gave back. That’s just what you did,” Katz said.

Before her first term, she was warned that trustees face a steep learning curve. Katz is a registered nurse and a doula, which is someone who provides guidance and support to women in labor, and she’s assisted with over 200 births over the last 20 years. With all that experience she didn’t think the curve would be as steep for her.

“I joined the board very naively, thinking I knew a lot, only to find I didn’t know as much as I thought I did,” Katz said. 

Her background certainly helps, she said, but she needed plenty of mentoring to get up to speed. Now she is running for re-election, along with three other candidates going for three seats on the board.

Katz is very passionate about obstetrics. She’s president of the International Childbirth Education Association and serves on a number of boards associated with obstetrics. She said it’s not a big money maker for hospitals, but it’s an important gateway to building relationships with patients. 

During Katz’s time on the board, the hospital faced a number of tribulations, including filing for bankruptcy in 2016 — from which it emerged in March 2018 — over a number of malpractice suits. Things have really turned around for Powell Valley Healthcare, and Katz attributes this success to the CEO Terry Odom.

“She has made a world of difference,” Katz said.

The other component of the hospital’s success, Katz said, are the people. She said the staff is sincerely dedicated to providing the best care for its patients.

“It’s nice to have good equipment, but if you’re just another number? People genuinely care here,” Katz said.

Her husband is a certified registered nurse anesthetist at PVHC, and combined with her own medical background, she has connections to the hospital’s staff. Besides her eight years of experience on the board, she said that connection is an asset to her position.

“It gives me a nice open door at the hospital,” Katz said.

Katz is originally from Illinois and has lived in six states in her life. She has six adult children.

Richard Stearns

Richard Stearns said he has a commitment to the community — and he sees serving on the Powell hospital board as a way to satisfy that commitment.

Stearns is one of four candidates running for three seats on the Powell Valley Hospital and Powell Valley Healthcare boards. Stearns said the hospital has good leadership, and he’d like to contribute to its success.

“There were some troubling times there. I think the leadership now has done a great job,” he said, especially with its association with Billings Clinic.

Stearns is the electronic banking manager for First Bank of Wyoming in Powell, and he’s been with the institution for 13 years now.

In explaining his role there, he said “All the money that flies through the air in ones and zeroes falls into that realm.”

That would include wire transfers, direct deposit payrolls and debit cards.

Stearns said what he likes most about his job is that he gets to help people. In his position, that means helping businesses navigate hurdles like paying vendors electronically or setting up their direct deposit payrolls.

“I get a lot of satisfaction out of that, helping a business become more efficient,” he said.

Stearns has had some experience doing volunteer work. He is a companion hunter with Wyoming Disabled Hunters, which helps disabled people avail themselves of Wyoming’s outdoor opportunities.

He said that while we all face adversity in our lives, it’s “inspiring” to help someone who has a disability to set their sights on an outdoor goal and achieve it.

The two boards that oversee PVHC are known for their steep learning curve. Working in banking, Stearns said, gives him the background to be comfortable in a highly regulated environment like the medical industry.

He said with the help of other trustees — such as R.J. Kost, who was Stearns’ teacher and coach when he was a kid — he can learn the ropes.

“My history wasn’t in banking before I came here, and so when I stepped in, it was kind of like drinking from a fire hose,” Stearns recalled.

Stearns was born in Vernon, Utah, and his family moved to Powell when he was 6 months old. The family arrived here when Stearns’ father, a private pilot, flew the family into the Powell Municipal Airport. Stearns took some college classes at the University of Wyoming and Northwest College.

His wife, Kafka, works at Eastman Publishing, and they have two daughters, ages 14 and 11.

Syd Thompson

Syd Thompson believes a good community needs a solid healthcare provider, and he said Powell is very fortunate to have Powell Valley Healthcare.

“No pun intended, healthcare is the pulse of the community,” Thompson said.

He is one of four candidates going for three seats at the Powell Hospital District Board of Trustees.

He’s served on the Powell Medical Foundation (PMF) board since 2008. He said he’s enjoyed the experience, but after 12 years in the position, he’d like to try something else.

“There just comes a time when it feels like you need a change,” Thompson said.

Thompson is the owner of Thompson Funeral Home and Cremation Services. He is originally from Idaho and purchased the funeral home in 2004.

“We’re transplants, but this is home,” he said.

Thompson said one of the things he likes about the Powell Valley Healthcare Board of Trustees is their openness to feedback, even when it’s critical. Anytime he’s made suggestions to the trustees during his work with the PMF board, Thompson said they’ve always been willing to listen.

“I never got a pat on the head and passed along,” he said.

Thompson attributes much of the hospital’s success in recent years to its CEO Terry Odom.

“I think what Terry [Odom] has done there is remarkable, and the staff in its entirety is fantastic,” he said, adding that he has no ambition to change anything if he is elected to the boards.

In serving on the PMF board and working as a funeral director, he said he’s developed an “ear for the community,” which will aid him as a trustee.

With the complexities of healthcare, Thompson said he’s prepared to go through all he’ll have to do to get up to speed on the board. He said he’s spoken to current board members who have told him the first year on the board is about learning how and why things are done. He said he understands it takes that background and understanding to contribute effectively to the board.

“It’s not about learning how to follow along. It’s learning how you can be a part of things. This is why I’m here,” Thompson said.

Thompson also said the board is well informed by medical experts, whose input lends a lot to the board’s decisions, and they work well with the trustees and the community.

Critical access hospitals are closing at alarming rates, whereas PVHC is growing. Thompson said he’d like to help PVHC continue to be a success.

“The hospital is crucial to our community. And anything that can help its growth and vitality I’d love to be a part of,” Thompson said.