‘A good man’ — Lander remembers Mayor Monte Richardson

LANDER — If you drive by Lander City Hall in the early hours of the morning, you will no longer see a red car parked there.

Mayor Monte Richardson often arrived early enough to greet the riders waiting for the 6 a.m. bus, checking in with them about their work and lives. Wednesday morning, the Lander community was shocked by news of his unexpected death.

“My heart’s just broken,” said Margaret Appleby. “It’s just a shock … He loved Lander.”

“I will miss him dearly,” Jessie Rognon commented on Lander Journal Facebook post inviting the community to remember Richardson. “My heart is breaking for his wonderful family.”

Richardson, who grew up in Green River, came to Lander in his 20s in the 1970s. He quickly became involved in various community and volunteer efforts, working as a janitor in the local schools for many years and forming lasting connections with generations of students.

He and his wife, Debbie, raised three children in Lander.

“Monte and I didn’t always agree – but he always listened to me with patience, kindness, and a genuine love for the community,” Sarah Reilley wrote, remembering sharing items from her lunch with him as a young student. “I don’t know that anyone in town ever made me feel more believed in or supported these past few years and for that, I am forever grateful. Monte – thank you for the lessons learned throughout my entire life. Gratitude, humility, forgiveness, and dedication to the community.”

“My favorite part about Monte is how he always had a smile for everyone, no matter what burdens he was dealing with. He greeted every kid, staff member and, later, community member (as mayor), by name,” Lander Middle School teacher Josie Rounds, who worked with Richardson for many years, recalled. “He never forgot a face and always had that big smile.”

The three words brought up most frequently in interviews about Richardson are “genuine,” “sincere,” and “good.”

As a school janitor, as a soccer and basketball coach, as a volunteer, and eventually as mayor, he touched the lives of countless Landerites, always there with a helping hand or a supportive word when people were in need.

Jordan Carr, who played soccer on the Lander Valley High School team while Richardson was the assistant coach, recalled how Richardson went out of his way to spend time with him while he was sidelined with a broken leg at the state soccer tournament one year.

Carr was by no means the star player, he added; he wasn’t a stand-out player whose talent warranted special attention, and it wasn’t as though Lander was doing poorly. The team had a shot at doing well that year. Even so, Richardson made sure to spend time with Carr throughout the tournament.

His wasn’t a unique experience, Carr added. When another player was injured while playing, Richardson immediately ran out onto the field to check on him. Although he could be somewhat intimidating as a coach at first – he was often the one responsible for pushing them to work harder, run faster – Carr said that over time it became apparent that Richardson asked more of them because he wanted to help them do their best.

“He touched everybody’s lives he ever associated with,” commented Janet Keiser.

As members of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 954, Keiser and her husband Bob collaborated with Richardson over the years, most notably on the now-traditional Lander Community Pig Roast.

For many years, they said, the VFW had held a pig roast to celebrate a member’s birthday; Richardson suggested expanding it and inviting the whole community. It was decided to make it an event dedicated to community unity, mental health, and suicide prevention.

Oakley Boycott remembers Richardson as a consummate public servant, someone who didn’t just talk the talk but walked the walk. She was adamant about continuing to refer to him in the present tense.

“That’s what legacy is,” Boycott explained; his impact on the Lander community will continue to be felt for years to come.

Janelle Hahn, who was Richardson’s neighbor for over 40 years, said that the most noteworthy thing about him was his dedication to his family. He was an early father, she said, and struggled at first to secure a job with the school district. Over the years, he helped his disabled sister-inlaw and cared for the family after the unexpected passing of his mother-in-law.

He and Debbie ran a daycare out of their house for a period, and Hahn recalled that her daughter used to disappear at all times of day – only to be found at the Richardson household.

“The greatest thing was just being friends and meeting in the middle of the street,” she described. “We used to meet in the middle of the street and solve the problems of the world.”

He was always willing to lend a helping hand, she remembered, digging out frozen lines and plowing the streets so kids could get safely to and from school – and he loved having his whole family over to shoot off fireworks in front of the house on the Fourth of July.

Richardson served on the city council for several years before running for mayor in 2018. It was as a council member, Lander Police Chief Scott Peters recalled, that he first encountered him; at the time, Peters was the mayor of Shoshoni, and they would sometimes cross paths at Fremont County Association of Governments meetings.

Although he didn’t know him well then, even at that time Peters noted his dedication to his community.

“You could tell that Monte just had a care for people,” Peters said. “And that’s what set Monte apart – Monte truly loved people, and he cared on top of that.”

“He loved everybody from the little folks, like his granddaughter, clear up to the oldest senior citizen,” Keiser described. “He loved serving people; that was his number one goal in life.”

At a New Year’s Eve party just six weeks ago, some attendees who moved to Lander more recently asked Carr what he thought of Mayor Richardson.

“I was like ‘that dude’s a good dude,’” Carr recalled.

Regardless of political agreement or disagreement, Carr’s sentiment is widely echoed by those who knew him: Monte Richardson was fundamentally a good person.

“One thing you could not dispute is that Monte was a great guy – he was a good man.”

As mayor, Boycott said, he maintained an open-door policy that wasn’t just theoretical. Anyone, at any time, could stop by city hall and he’d make the time to speak with them.

“That is, to me, the essence of what it truly means to be from here – is to sit down and have that cup of coffee with anybody regardless of whether you agree or disagree with them,” she shared.

Peters noted that from his perspective, an open door doesn’t even adequately describe Richardson’s approach to communicating with his constituents. If people reached out, he was always happy to go to them – and he took time out of his day to check in with his staff. He recalled that it wasn’t uncommon to see Richardson sitting in the squad room, visiting with officers as they passed by and making sure they were doing well and seeing whether they needed anything.

Richardson’s time as mayor wasn’t free from criticism, but Boycott, Peters, and many others highlight his response to these criticisms as one of his strengths.

Hearing people say negative things about him affected Richardson deeply, Peters explained, because he wanted to do right by everyone in the Lander community. Even the people who strongly disagreed with him were welcome, and he was always striving to bring people together

to find common ground.

“If we had any problems, we’d go to Monte,” Keiser said. “We had a fabulous mayor … Even [people] that had problems with the city that Monte couldn’t do anything about, Monte would invite them in, offer them coffee, and quite generously listen to them.”

During his tenure, Richardson was instrumental in boosting Light Up Lander into the event that it is today and growing the community pig roast. He was also a feature at Lander community events broadly, showing up for concerts, museum events, and games.

“He loved parades – he loved people,” Appleby observed.

He’d told her that he would take over running the Lander Fourth of July parade once he was no longer mayor; now, Appleby is considering putting to the parade committee that this year’s parade should be dedicated to him.

“Every decision he made and everything he wanted for Lander, was centered around giving and caring and community. He always had a smile and a kind word,” Mike Kusiek wrote on Facebook. “His motivation was making our community better.”

It would be a mistake, Peters said, to remember Richardson as simply a mayor; he was a dedicated member of the Lander community long before he ran for office.

“What we lost was an extraordinarily good person who made our community better just being here” he said. “Monte was more than just a title.”

When he was hired as the Lander police chief, Peters recalled, he got to know Richardson in a more personal capacity.

“I talked to Monte a lot about just life. Pretty much he was just a surrogate dad,” said Peters.

Monday, Richardson was on his way to surgery – but made time to call Peters, who he knew had been wrestling with some personal issues, just to check in and make sure he was OK.

“That’s the void that the city’s going to have … We lost one of the salt-of-the-earth ones that you don’t see very often,” Peters said. “Monte was literally about ‘How can we make your life better? As a mayor, how can we run this city to make everyone’s life better?’ He loved the person that hated him.”

“His legacy is his family; the love he had for his wife, those three kids, and the ultimate love for his grandkids,” Hahn commented.

Richardson was to undergo surgery earlier this week. He passed away Wednesday morning, at the age of 69.

“I guess God wanted somebody to come up and help him in Heaven … and he called Monte,” Keiser remarked.

As of press time, service details have not yet been released – but, said Bob Keiser, with the number of people that are likely to show up, “I don’t know if even the community center’s going to be big enough.”

The Richardson family has established a memorial fund at Atlantic City Federal Credit Union to support the planting of trees in the new Popo Agie River Park and Antelope Park in honor of Mayor Richardson.

This story was published on February 15, 2025.