Wendell Wardell, Coeur d'Alene School District chief operating officer

COEUR d'ALENE - Wendell Wardell is a glass half-full kind of guy, no doubt about it.

At 70, the 6-foot 6-inch Wardell is completing his first year as the Coeur d'Alene School District's chief operating officer, managing the finances of one of Idaho's largest public school systems.

And as anyone who's dealt with school finance knows, it's often accompanied with much hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth.

But a year later, Wardell is still smiling.

"I'm having so much fun. It's very satisfying to be able to work in a school district, because people are supportive. They listen," Wardell said. "You know, we're doing some things differently than we were before, but I'm learning from them all the time too."

His experience with the Coeur d'Alene School District isn't his first time dealing with school finance. Wardell served as a school trustee in Billings, Mont. from 1983 to 1986. In Coeur d'Alene, he served on a 2008 community-based school finance advisory committee.

"I use the word 'exciting' a lot, and there's exciting good, and there's exciting bad, but it's all exciting," he said.

A common theme to his life, Wardell said, is that he's "been very fortunate."

He attended Washington State University on a football scholarship, playing offensive tackle for five years while earning his degrees. He said he wouldn't have been able to go to college without that scholarship.

In 1962, Wardell was 19 years old, and was taking the train home to Montana from WSU, after the spring semester, to go to work.

The train never made it.

"They rolled down the mountainside just outside of Missoula ... that was amazing," he said.

It made national news, with headlines that read, "One killed, 219 injured in Montana Train Crash."

Wardell was uninjured.

"The train broke right in front of the hitch of my car, and all the cars and engines in front of me rolled down the mountainside, and our car turned and went nose first down the mountainside," he said.

After college Wardell was commissioned into the U.S. Air Force, and sent to Vietnam. At 26, he was responsible for 800 people and all of their equipment.

The general Wardell reported to in Vietnam gave him a nickname: "The Happy Warrior."

He's still that way, grinning as he goes about tackling the challenges that come with being responsible for public school funding.

"After we made it through Vietnam, you can get through just about anything," Wardell said. "I think that may be true for every Vietnam vet, because it was such an ugly war, and it was an ugly homecoming. You just don't forget that."

His mantra, while in Vietnam, was: "I just have to get to breakfast."

After the war, he returned home and went into the family business, a food brokerage company, handling distribution and store-level sales for food manufacturers.

In business, his mantra was: "Don't change the rules so I can win. Help me understand the rules, and I will win."

After 29 years, Wardell decided to retire, and the Billings, Mont. native moved to Kootenai County, a place he had visited often for business purposes.

He ended up going back to work, and served as business and finance manager for the Community Library Network for a dozen years. Wardell retired from that job and then joined the Coeur d'Alene School District's central office administration staff.

What makes you so happy to be doing the work you're doing?

Great change. Great responsibility and the opportunity for great responsibility.

Life can be a lot of fun. Even when we were struggling with the city over Person and Bryan fields, it was still fun, because I love strategy. I love the feeling of putting a plan together and having the plan come together. All of that's fun to me. And, the little pieces that make up the plan, they're fun too. You know, the detail is as much fun as the whole picture.

That was true when I was in corporate America. I would win awards, and people would say to me, "How did you do this?" and I would tell them, "It's all fun, and if you're having fun, something good's going to happen."

What surprises you about your job?

It's the level of profile. Chief operating officers, generally, are allowed to have a lower profile, because they do a lot behind the scenes. They don't really need the credit. They just get to watch it all.

What do you see as your greatest challenge?

To help the district and the community move past the funding challenges that still face education in the state of Idaho. When you look back from '09 to now, there's $110 million that used to go to education that isn't there, so the challenge of being able to deliver a high quality education with the budget that we have, that's always going to be exciting.

Do you see any of the things you've done as successes?

The school district's successes are successes that you don't take ownership in. They're the school district's successes; there are no silos here. I can point to things that have happened while I've been here, but they wouldn't have happened with just Wendell doing it. Some of the people, well, I had a vision, and I needed to articulate the vision in such a way, that people could feel comfortable in that vision, and they do.

The joke around here is that "If he says 'corporate' one more time..."

I didn't realize I was doing it until one day, (Superintendent) Hazel (Bauman) said, "He needs a jar and he needs to put money in it every time he uses that word."

Those teachings in the private sector have a lot of translation to the public sector, on the business side. I am not an educator. People think of me as an educator and an administrator, but no, I'm a businessman working for the community and the district.

My goal is always that the school district can be as nimble as we can be in business, because if we're nimble, we can conserve costs.

Staff writer Maureen Dolan can be reached at 664-8176 Ext. 2005 or [email protected]