Photo by Mike Lamb Brooke Guetter serves as city administrator for Vesta and also helps with organizing community events.

VESTA — Brooke Guetter says she always thinks the project she’s currently working on will be the last one. But then “something else falls into our laps.”

That’s the way it has gone for Guetter since being hired as Vesta’s city administrator three years ago.

“I’m never going to say no,” Guetter said.

Guetter was working at Midwest Vision Center in Marshall until it was bought out by Shopko. The Vesta resident then interviewed for the open city administrator position three years ago and was hired.

“It’s been going pretty smooth. I have to go a block for work,” Guetter said. “I love it. Being involved in your community. Before I had never been to a council meeting, so I had no idea what was going on. And now I know everything that is going on. So it’s kind of nice being involved in your community.”

That includes being involved in the Booster club and presently the Lions Club. Those two organizations have historically been involved in the planning of River Days. This year, Guetter is the chair person of the committee organizing the Vesta 125th town celebration, which will replace River Days this summer.

“It’s going to be a little bigger. We are going to bring in some history aspects to the town,” she said. “We are going to do most of it right here in the park. Friday we are going to do fireworks and live music and Vesta Cafe is going to cater their famous roast beef. We are going to do a little pageant. It’s kind of cool because we’re going to do essays. You don’t have to live here, but if your grandparents lived here, your grew up here, you remember coming here for fast pitch or something like that, you will have to write a little three sentence essay on what’s your tie is to Vesta.”

Guetter said working on organizing community events is fun, it’s a lot of planning and preparation. It involves a lot of people to work all the committees.

“I wouldn’t want to do it every year, but it’s 125 years. I guess we can figure it out,” she said. “We’re working on a history book. Some of the history is coming from right here (government office). Going back through old files, which is kind of fun to go through and see who was mayor. It’s kind of cool.”

Guetter hopes more people will care about the history of the city.

“This place used to have all kinds of stuff,” she said. “All the businesses we used to have. So were going to do a hay ride tour. Have somebody on there and have a speaker. We will have stakes in the ground (that indicates) this used to be the tax store. This used to be Doc Martin’s or whatever building.”

Guetter moved to Vesta eight years ago with her husband Darren.

Guetter is from Ghent and the couple were engaged when they decided to move to Vesta.

“He worked at C&W Welding (in Vesta) and I worked at Marshall Decorating . And I was like, we have to live where one of us works to buy a house. We picked Vesta because we could buy more house for your dollar. Which actually worked out. We had a couple kids, found day care here,” Guetter said.

The couple have two children, Thea, 7, and Harlow, 5.

Guetter says her family loves living in a small community like Vesta.

“Everybody knows everybody,” she said. “You drive around in golf carts in the summer time. My kids think it’s just so crazy I know who lives in every house. But it’s kind of nice knowing who your neighbors are.

“A little friendlier atmosphere I think in a small town.”