Wilder brings great experience to Lovell schools facilities position

A Lovell native with many years of experience in facilities management and engineering is the new maintenance director for the Lovell school system.

Todd Wilder was hired and began working part time in November while wrapping up a project in Ten Sleep, then began working full time last week. He fills the position held by Jason Jolley for many years.

In his new role, Wilder said, he is responsible for all of the School District No. 2 facilities including school buildings, ancillary buildings like the bus barn, Lovell Rec/BOCES building and the maintenance warehouse, Robertson Stadium, football and practice fields and all grounds.

Wilder was hired while still working on the new Ten Sleep K-12 school building project as the owner’s representative, working with the School Facilities Department, architect and contractor. He worked three days a week in Ten Sleep and two days a week in Lovell getting up to speed in his new role.

Background

The son of Ralph and Louise Wilder, Todd was born in the old Lovell hospital that is now the Cattlemen Motel and raised in Lovell. His grandfather Tom Wilder was a two-time mayor of Lovell.

After graduating from Lovell High School in 1971, he attended Northwest Community College for one year, then enlisted in the Air Force and received training as a teletype maintenance technician in Wichita Falls, Texas, after basic training at Lackland Air Force Base. His first posting was at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida, which he said is now a NASCAR racetrack.

He was assigned to a mobile communications squad, with all of the equipment fitting on trailers or in the back of trucks. When the army would deploy, the mobile communications squad would deploy with the soldiers and set up communications systems to liaison with the Air Force, providing forward air control.

He spent about a year and a half in Germany, as well, and was discharged as an E-4/buck sergeant in 1976.

During this time he married Debbie Sintek, the daughter of Bill and Audrey Sintek of Lovell, in 1973.

After his discharge, Wilder enrolled at the University of Wyoming to study electrical engineering and received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1981, then was hired by the U.S. Navy in Keyport, Washington. Keyport specialized in undersea warfare, and Wilder joined a team testing and evaluating a new anti-submarine and -shipping torpedo. He rose to become the lead engineer on that team.

Wilder was then transferred to the largest ammunition supply depot in the United States, operated by the U.S. Army and located at Hawthorne, Nevada, where he was in charge of the underwater mine weapons.

Coming home

After a five-year stint in Hawthorne, 1994-99, Wilder resigned from the Navy because his mother-in-law, Audrey, had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She passed away on Aug. 30, 1999. During his time back home, Wilder began looking for housing, and his brother recommended a home in Byron, the former Harold Hopkinson house. The family, Todd, Debbie and sons Cory and Mathew, moved to Byron, and Todd went to work for an environmental firm, helping the company get into the government sector. 

A couple of years later his former boss at Keyport called to ask if he would be willing to return to work on a project. He didn’t want to uproot the family, so he took the job but came home every other weekend.

“I got to know I-90 very well,” he said.

He worked on the project, an anti-torpedo system to protect aircraft carriers, until 2006, and during that time he also enrolled in the Navy direct doctoral program in engineering management, his starting point determined by his college EE degree coursework, management experience and training.

By 2006, Wilder had tired of missing his kids’ events and the long commute, so he resigned and returned to Wyoming, where he was hired as an area project manager for the School Facilities Department, working with 12 school districts in the Big Horn Basin. That job morphed into his becoming planning manager for new school construction in Wyoming, helping schools work through concept planning on SFC projects.

“It involved a lot more travel than I wanted to do, so I went to work on the school district side when an opportunity came up in Powell,” he said.

Wilder was hired in 2010 as the facility director for Park County School District No. 1 in Powell, working on the new high school and the new South Side and West Side elementary schools, remodeling the Park Side School, renovating the bus garage and putting in the new artificial turf on the football field.

In 2018 Wilder started his own consulting business, Wyoming Facility Service, consulting with school districts to help them deploy major maintenance funds and plan capital projects.

In demand

Wilder’s career then took several more turns. He received an offer from former School Facilities Dept. head Del McOmie to become the onsite project manager for the State Construction Dept. to deal with ongoing problems at the Wyoming State Prison in Rawlins. Then just when he was thinking of retiring, he was called by the chairman of the board of the Thermopolis hospital, who asked him to oversee a project there as the owner’s representative.

During that period in his life, Wilder’s health was failing due to some blood clot issues in his lungs that was affecting his heart, among other things. He underwent a surgical procedure at the University of California-San Diego, and the surgeon from South Africa removed the blood clots, completely changing his health outlook. He had a new lease on life.

“I went from congestive heart failure and a deteriorating condition to everything turned around,” Wilder said. “He gave me my health back. I’m in better physical health now than I have been in 15 to 20 years. That’s why I keep on working.”

After the Thermop project, Wilder was hired for the Ten Sleep school project and now the Lovell position.

Lovell work to do

The first thing on Wilder’s plate as maintenance director in Lovell has been to update the state required facilities plan, which helps a district analyze facilities and determine which components score poorly and need to be addressed, he said. He’s working on the plan now, which is due later in January.

As for specific areas in the schools, Wilder noted that District Two has done a lot of work with HVAC systems and new carpeting, adding, “The insides of the schools look very nice. We have very good custodians.”

Along with the facilities plan, his other short-term goal is to bring even more of a professional approach to custodial practices along with wrapping up projects started under Jolley’s watch like the HVAC project at Lovell Middle School, a fire sprinkler system at the high school and upgrading parking lots.

“We’ve got old parking lots,” he said, noting that the high school main lot needs to be revamped including a new paved surface, better lighting, sidewalk upgrades and improved drainage.

He’s also been evaluating the swimming pool and its myriad issues with decisions to be made on future use of the space. The boilers in the building need to be replaced, he noted, among a slew of needs.

Wilder has also been on the Hyart Theatre board for some 18 years.

Todd and Debbie Wilder are happy to have both sons living relatively close. Cory lives in Powell and has a Snap-on Tools franchise. He has one son. Mathew lives in Helena and is a civil engineer at a firm specializing in airport work. He has two boys and a girl.