Randy Bombardier jokes that he keeps coming back to Great Bend.

He and his wife Natalia moved back to Great Bend after a year in Dallas, Texas.

Bombardier grew up in Great Bend and graduated with the Great Bend High School Class of ’74. Next year will be their 50-year class reunion. He joined the Army, came back again in 1982 and worked for Davis Mud for one year, then went back to college again. He left Great Bend in 1988 and moved to Idaho, but came back from 1991 to 1998. “And now I’m back here for the fourth time. I’m like a bad penny.”

He posted about coming back for the fourth time on the Facebook page “You know you’re from Great Bend, Kansas if ...” and got at least 100 “likes.” Other people were talking about coming back here as well. His neighbor Samuel Hammerschmidt has moved back to Great Bend from Phoenix, and he believes there are others.

“I bought a house on Meadowlark and I’m surrounded by fellow retirees. It seems to me that there are a lot of people coming back and considering coming back, among those of us that have moved to urban areas. I enjoy driving a mile to a local store at 35 miles an hour – not driving 80 miles an hour and taking your life into your hands. So we enjoy being here. It’s more sunshine and it’s more four seasons. I’m looking forward to more of the four seasons.”

Growing up in Great Bend

“There are so many fond memories,” Bombardier says of his hometown.

Growing up in Great Bend, he attended Washington Elementary School.

“I lived right across the street, so I had the playground to myself many days.” Then he attended Roosevelt Junior High, where he was a Roosevelt Roughrider. At Great Bend High School, he was involved in wrestling, football, gymnastics and track. The Class of 1974 was the largest class ever at GBHS.

His mother Betty was the secretary to the chief of police and his father Ronell was the press foreman at the Great Bend Tribune. He left the paper when he had cancer and later worked for Thies Packing for a time. He passed away in 1971.

His first job in Great Bend was with the Police Department. He and a classmate, Mark Bittle, whose dad was the city administrator, painted crosswalks and downtown parking meters. The next year Bittle left that job and Bombardier continued it with his best friend, Roger VanSkike.

After graduation, he joined the U.S. Army, attending language school in Monterey, Calif. He was eventually stationed in Germany where he served as a Russian translator during the Cold War.

While he was in the Army, the Bombardier family moved to Tennessee, so he attended college at East Tennessee State University, where he eventually earned a master’s degree in city management. 

Coming back again

Over the years, Bombardier moved where his career took him. He has three daughters who live in the Pacific Northwest and a son in Dallas, Texas. He divorced his first wife and later married Natalia; she has a son who lives in Washington state.

When he returned to Great Bend in 1991, he served as director of Downtown Development until 1995. From Great Bend, he moved to Twin Falls, Idaho.

“I’ve done downtown development in Twin Falls, I’ve done economic development in Arizona and did city management in Washington state,” he said. “I drove a truck for the last seven or eight years that I worked.

“We moved from Washington to Dallas last year, but it was too hot,” he said. From his years of driving a truck, he’d wake up in the middle of the night and look at the temperature on his phone. With the temperature hitting 100 for about 30 days last year, it was still 95 in the middle of the night.

Now he and Natalia are enjoying the “four seasons” in Great Bend, even though the July 16 storm left them with a yard full of tree limbs.

“Natalia comes from where we get our winter wheat, Volgograd, Russia,” he said. “I’ve been going to Trinity Lutheran Church and we have some Volga Germans there. Well, now we have a Volga Russian.”

In addition to Trinity Lutheran, they’ve been going to Grace Community Church.

“We like both of them for different reasons,” he said.

Speaking of the July storm, Bombardier said one thing he enjoys about Great Bend is his neighbors. “Shout out to my neighbors Dick, Mark and Sam. I’ve got great, helpful neighbors. After the storm, they came over and helped us take our tree limbs down to the waste site because I didn’t have a pickup.”

He’s also looking around for other ways to be active in the community. He recently sat down with city Councilwoman Jolene Biggs at Great Bend Coffee and discussed some of the great things happening here, such as the loft apartments.

“I like being with like-minded, optimistic, can-do people,” he said. “Jolene’s one of them.”

He said he is interested in anything related to beautification, downtown development and economic development, as well as “birding and gardening, and other old retiree stuff.

“I really enjoy being back here,” he said. “I’m just touching base with people, trying to find like-minded people that are excited about Great Bend. I think we can do some things here to make a better community and get people invested in Kansas.”

Community Connections is a regular feature of the Great Bend Tribune, showcasing people who live in the Golden Belt. We welcome readers to submit names of individuals who are active in the community that they would like to see featured in a future story. Send suggestions to news@gbtribune.com and explain their “community connections.”