{"id":199,"date":"2013-04-17T23:58:59","date_gmt":"2013-04-17T23:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:33051\/?page_id=199"},"modified":"2026-01-22T18:57:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T01:57:00","slug":"board-of-directors","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/friendsofcmsp.org\/?page_id=199","title":{"rendered":"Board of Directors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u00a0President\/Treasurer: \u00a0Lori Hawkins<\/strong>\"\"<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Lori joined the Board in November 2021, but has enjoyed the park for many years. She\u2019s run the Cheyenne Mountain Run 6 times!!! Lori recently retired after 20 years as Accounting Supervisor at Harrison School District 2, and has served as Treasurer, Editor, Timer, and Secretary for Pikes Peak Road Runners, so she is well-suited to the job of Treasurer. She has lived in Colorado for 30 years and can\u2019t imagine living anywhere else!<\/p>\n

Vice President, Past President: \u00a0 Pat Cooper \"\"<\/a><\/b>\u2028
Pat retired from Banking after working in the field for 28 years: she was an Agriculture Banker for 12 years and then moved into residential Mortgage lending for 16 years.\u00a0 She was raised on a Ranch in Northern NM and is a graduate of NMSU.\u00a0 After retiring, she finally had the opportunity to pursue her passion for the outdoors and since has been an active Volunteer at CMSP. Her primary activities in the Park are Native Plants, Bird\/Raptor Monitoring and helps manage the Native Plant Gardens. Pat is an avid hiker, swimmer, traveler and golfer.<\/p>\n

Secretary: Lori O\u2019Hare \"\"<\/a><\/strong>
<\/b>Lori is a retired\u00a0School Psychologist who\u00a0began volunteering for State Parks in 1998 at Castlewood Canyon State Park.\u00a0\u00a0 When CMSP was on the drawing board, she and her husband Jerry\u00a0helped start the Friends of Cheyenne Mountain State Park\u00a0in 2002.\u00a0 It was exciting to see\u00a0the park built from the ground up.\u00a0 After serving as the Secretary for many years, she became Vice President in 2011.\u00a0\u00a0She enjoys doing special events and trail hosting at the park.<\/p>\n

<\/b>Past President: Jack Busher \"\"<\/a><\/strong>
<\/b>Jack is a retired teacher who spent 41 years in the education profession, the last 33 years in the Cheyenne Mountain School District as an English and Video Production instructor. Jack came to Colorado in 1972 from the Cleveland, Ohio area. He enjoys hiking, biking, backpacking, cross-country skiing, and snowshoeing.
Realizing that the trails he was enjoying needed someone to take care of them, he volunteered with several organizations including the Volunteer Conservation Corps, The National Forest Service and the National Park Service.\u2028Upon retiring from teaching in 2006, Jack took advantage of the newly opened CMSP as a place to continue his passion for trail work. Initially \u201cjust another volunteer,\u201d he joined the Friends of Cheyenne Mountain, became a board member, and has been president of the organization since 2011.\u2028He coordinates the park\u2019s trail volunteers, and recently began a series of sawyer training classes so he can work with the newly organized Fire Mitigation Program at the park. Jack is also a member of the park\u2019s History Committee. Another project was the writing and editing of the Park\u2019s Trail Guide, which is a source of revenue for the Friends.<\/p>\n

Membership: Ralph Cadwallader \"\"<\/a>
<\/strong>Ending a 25 year career in the US Army, Ralph retired from Evans Army Community Hospital Fort Carson in 1995. After 4 years working at hospitals in Denver, he began his second career as a Director, Material Services Consulting, Carefusion Corporation, San Diego, CA, retiring from that career in 2012. Living \u201cnext door to Cheyenne Mountain State Park\u201d Ralph immediately began his volunteering at Cheyenne Mountain State Park. Ralph\u2019s love of the outdoors and his past trail running experiences caused him to begin volunteering as a trail dog maintaining and building trails within the park as well as other parks in Colorado. His interest in fire mitigation caused him volunteer for the park sponsored 2013 sawyer training resulting in becoming a certified sawyer. He now is the crew leader on the very active fuel\/fire mitigation crew, actively creating fire breaks with in the park and maintaining past mitigated areas. Ralph has been selected as \u201cVolunteer of the Year\u201d both in 2013 and 2014.<\/p>\n

<\/b>Board Member: Kylee Taylor\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/b>
Kylee currently works as the programs coordinator at Bear Creek Nature Center where she schedules and leads public programs from field trips and nature camps to restoration work, the El Paso County Trailability Program, special events, and more. Kylee is a Certified Interpretive Guide with the National Association for Interpretation and has worked in environmental education for 6 years in Montana, Nebraska, and now Colorado.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cheyenne Mountain State Park was the first park Kylee and her husband visited upon moving to Colorado Springs in 2022 and they both quickly fell in love with the park. Kylee volunteers with the CMSP Trail Dogs and Timber Tigers and on the Friends Board creating communications such as social media, newsflashes, and the website!\u00a0<\/p>\n

In her free time, Kylee enjoys hiking, camping, foraging, and creating wood burning and acrylic artwork. You can also find Kylee serving on The Nature Conservancy’s 13ers Advisory Council.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Board Member: Steve Stadler
\"\"<\/a><\/b>Steve Stadler is a new member of the Board bringing with him many years of non-profit board experience and also many years of trail and back country maintenance experience. Steve began hiking at Cheyenne Mountain State Park and helping with the Trail Dogs several years ago after retiring from other activities. Since joining the Friends, Steve has been active with the Trail Dogs, Timber Tigers, ambassador program, and the Cheyenne Mountain Run.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Steve retired after spending forty years in the US Military Space Program. In the space program, he served with the Air Force and worked with Lockheed Martin Corporation. He also found the time to hike the Colorado Trail (486 miles) which led to multiple years of leading Colorado Trail Foundation trail maintenance crews and adopting yearly maintenance of various parts of the Colorado Trail. He also served for 12 years on the Colorado Trail Foundation Board. As a Board member, he focused on Foundation strategic planning and planning\/executing Foundation volunteer social events.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Board Member:\u00a0 Rick Upton-Former President \"\"<\/a>
<\/b><\/div>\n
After taking a break from the Board and semi-retiring, Rick is back!
Rick began volunteering with CMSP before it was a Park. His first volunteer project was to remove over 1 mile of barbed wire in the vicinity of where Sundance and lower Talon trails were eventually built.\u00a0 Before the Park opened, he led community groups on hikes and introduced them to Park plans that were up for review.\u00a0 He also worked on all park trails with professional and volunteer trail building organizations prior to and after Park opening.\u00a0 Currently Rick volunteers with the Trail Dogs, Timber Tigers and Friends projects.\u00a0 Recently Rick retired for the fourth time! However he is working part time as a healthcare supply chain consultant. In addition to his time volunteering with CMSP, he also volunteers with other outdoor organizations.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
\n
2025 Board of Directors
<\/i>Left to right, back row: Steven Stadler (Member at Large), Jack Busher (Past President), Rick Upton (Member at Large\/Trail Dogs), Lori Hawkins (Interim President\/Treasurer), Ralph Cadwallader (Membership\/Timber Tigers)<\/em><\/i><\/div>\n
Left to right, front row: Kylee Taylor (Member at Large\/Communications), Lori O’Hare (Secretary),\u00a0<\/em>Pat Cooper <\/em>(Vice President)<\/em>
<\/i><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/i><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0President\/Treasurer: \u00a0Lori Hawkins Lori joined the Board in November 2021, but has enjoyed the park for many years. She\u2019s run the Cheyenne Mountain Run 6 times!!! Lori recently retired after 20 years as Accounting Supervisor at Harrison School District 2, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-199","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendsofcmsp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendsofcmsp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendsofcmsp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendsofcmsp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendsofcmsp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":116,"href":"https:\/\/friendsofcmsp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6243,"href":"https:\/\/friendsofcmsp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/199\/revisions\/6243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendsofcmsp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}