Doug Reed seems to have a pretty good handle on life’s bucket list.
Own and operate a café? Check that off. Married with children? Check. A teacher and coach? Check. Selling the family home, buying an RV and piling the family in for a months-long, cross-country family adventure?
OK, that checkbox was more like an “opportunity box,” courtesy of the pandemic.
He explains: “When we were in Charlotte, North Carolina, COVID hit. My work was remote, and the kids’ elementary school was remote. So my wife Britany and I decided that we were going to go have an adventure instead of being trapped in the house.
“We sold our house, moved our possessions to my mom’s farm in Illinois, bought a camper, and started traveling. We did 25 states, 13 national parks; we went back and counted! We felt we had this window of time where the kids weren’t involved in sports yet. And they still liked us,” he laughs, explaining that It just wouldn’t work if the kids were older. So off they went!
“We had a ball,” Doug said. “When we were out, Britany and I talked about adventures, we talked about what kind of place we wanted to live in because we weren’t going to travel forever. We talked about the kind of work I wanted to do.”
Looking back, Doug said he was fortunate to work for some great organizations, and he “learned some stuff” along the way – which they decided was something he could apply to benefit small towns.
Growing up in the corn
Doug, 54, grew up in an Illinois town of 2,500. “There are two parts of Illinois,” he joked. “There’s Chicago and the corn. I grew up in the corn!” He left his small town because there just weren’t many opportunities there. “It wasn’t like I hated it, or I can’t wait to leave this place. I always wanted to get back to a small town.”
He played college sports at Southern Illinois, where he majored in Elementary Education. He later taught in a middle school, coached football, track and, at 6-foot-5 – apologies for the stereotype – basketball.
As noted earlier, for years Doug filled his portfolio with experience. “It’s not a straight line from growing up in Illinois to here,” he laughs. So where’s “here?”
Finding a new home
Britany grew up in Stillwater, near the Twin Cities, so on that RV adventure, they chose to look at moving to Minnesota. That’s when Doug discovered the University of Minnesota campuses, including one particular small town gem.
“When I saw Morris, I Googled it and said, ‘Wow, what about a town of 5,000?’ I looked at the agriculture, the community way of life, and it fascinated me to know how the University of Minnesota Morris was founded. And then I saw the Morris Challenge job listing. It checked all the boxes that I was looking for.”
Do you sense a checkbox theme here?
“So, I applied and was fortunate to get an interview,” he said. Doug aced that virtual interview and, with a job offer in hand, brought the family to Morris to see in person what they were getting into.
Needless to say, they liked what they found.
And Doug’s new job? According to Doug, the Morris Challenge is “a new program for high school students and teachers from rural communities that will focus on identifying and tackling both global and rural challenges.” It sounds like a perfect fit for someone passionate about small towns – with experience to boot, right?
They’ve lived in Morris less than a year, but they couldn’t be happier. “Everything about Morris is amazing,” Doug said. “We love it here. People are super friendly, the kids love school and they’ve been involved in tons of activities. Since we’ve moved here, the kids have done archery, Dakota/Lakota language class, basketball, wrestling, and they did an art camp. We love everything about it.”
In other words, Morris checks all the boxes.
