Voices of Rural Wisconsin Part Two: Rural Leadership
Larry MacDonald - Bayfield
Now in his seventh term as mayor of Bayfield, population 570, Larry MacDonald also owns and operates a bed and breakfast with his wife, Julie. He is at once concerned and optimistic about the future of this small, rural community, which suffers from a well-known phenomenon known as "rural brain drain," the loss of many of its top-achieving young people who go away for higher education and often don't return. It's a problem many small Wisconsin towns face on a daily basis. If the story of small-town America is, as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Russo puts it, "a story of the people who stay and the ones who go," MacDonald is out to rewrite the ending for his beloved Bayfield.
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