Richard Ayer, an 18-year member of the Mountain View Electric Association board of directors, has decided to retire from the board at the end of 2008. Richard, or better known as Dick, is the member representative for District 6. The Ayer family has a long and interesting history in the Falcon area.Dick is the fourth generation of Ayers to live on his property off of Meridian Road. His great-grandfather and grandfather emigrated from Ayr, Scotland to Canada and then to Lewiston, N.Y. When the area became too populated, father and son decided to go west to Colorado in 1870. After arriving, they each homesteaded 160 acres and soon each were able to add an additional “Forestry Homestead” of 160 acres. They added more land purchased at 25 to 50 cents per acre until they had acquired 2,300 acres of Black Forest property that comprised their cattle ranch. Much of this area is now Meridian Ranch Estates. Dick’s grandmother was also the first woman in Colorado to serve on a school board.Dick’s father, Ralph Ayer, was instrumental in getting MVEA started in the Black Forest area. Ralph went out, knocked on doors and sold memberships to families in the area urging them to support the cooperative. At $5 per membership, many folks could not afford to join, so he made arrangements for installment payments. They managed to bring electricity to the area in 1946.Growing up on the ranch, Dick has many fond memories of “how it used to be.” One of these was driving cattle down to the railroad. “We used to drive them down Meridian Road, which was dirt at that time. The holding pens were located at what is now the Falcon fire station.”The train would pick the cattle up and take them to feed lots in Nebraska,” Dick said. “Our only neighbor down Meridian was Hugh Bennett who also raised cattle, so no one cared if you tied up the road for a bit. It was quite fun!”With five students, Dick’s class at Falcon High School was one of the largest in the history of the school at that time. After graduating from high school, he attended Colorado A&M, now known as CSU. Dick made the decision in 1950 to join the U.S. Air Force where he served as a cryptographer. Much of his four years in the Air Force was spent in Germany. After resigning, Dick took a job with the CIA as a cryptographer and worked for the bureau for six years. Dick said, “Cryptographing was done on code machines in those days and I could burn up the keys at 125 wpm.” During this time, he met his future wife Shirley at a church function. Shirley was born and raised in Manitou Springs and had graduated with a degree in education from Bob Jones Christian University in South Carolina. The two were wed in 1956.After living in various places around the United States, Dick and Shirley decided to come back home in 1960. They moved back to the ranch and raised cattle until 1970 when they decided that logging would be a more profitable business and a natural fit for a forestry homestead. Additional trees had been planted by his father in 1935, so Ponderosa Timber Products Company was founded. Later, Dick started Ayer’s Saw Shop which his son, Michael, purchased from him in 1996 and still operates today.Dick and Shirley have always been great supporters of the Falcon community and school district. Dick, like his father and grandmother, served on the local school board for many years. Dick is planning on starting flying lessons and hopes to be able to utilize that skill to help various Christian organizations in the future. He and Shirley were recently flown back to Lynchburg, Va., and honored by the Liberty University Board of Regents for their support through the years. The school is the largest Christian University in the world and Dick said, “We wanted to support something good that is making a difference in the world. It was a great honor for Shirley and me to be recognized in this way.”Of all the things that were accomplished while he served on the MVEA board of directors, the one he is most proud of is the formation of Operation Round-Up. “That was a program that was very much needed in our communities and I am so glad I was part of it,” Dick said. He also served on the Round-Up board during its initial start-up.Dick has always been very dedicated to this cooperative. He went the extra mile to become a National Rural Electric Cooperative Association certified director and has made the effort to attend conferences and classes. Of his years on the board he said, “I want to be sure that my wife Shirley; son Michael and my daughter and son-in-law Susan and Bob Gordon, know how much I have appreciated their support through the years. I also want the other board members, staff and employees to know how much I enjoyed working with them. They are really neat people!”The members and staff of MVEA thank Dick for his many years of service to the cooperative and wish him the very best in his future.
