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The Lower Verde River Valley Hall of Fame induction ceremony is right around the corner, with nine individuals set to be honored this year.
Inductees from Fountain Hills include Alan Magazine, Bill Craig, Cindy Couture, Dennis Brown, Tammy Bell, Vicky Derksen and Jamie Sunshine. Dwayne Abbe is the inductee from Rio Verde. The Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation nominee is yet to be named.
Following are the first set of profiles on this year’s inductees.
Tammy Bell
Tammy earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota, specializing in business with an emphasis in marketing and psychology. After settling in Fountain Hills in 2005, she quickly became engrossed in volunteering for the local schools – site councils, parent advisory boards, team mom, Falcon store, Falcon Fiesta and more. Her favorite impact at FHUSD was raising funds through Adopt-A-Falcon, where local business members were paired with student-athletes to rally around local students and show their community support.
She has also served with the Strategic Planning Advisory Commission, Vision Fountain Hills, was president of the Fountain Hills Cultural and Civic Association (I Love Fountain Hills) and helped launch Living Fountain Ministries in 2014 and has been on the board ever since.
More recently she graduated from the Leadership Academy, joined the Chamber of Commerce staff, was seated on the Sanitary District Board in January 2021 and in 2023 was hired as executive director of the Protect Our Youth Drug Prevention Coalition after being named to its board.
She and her husband Wayne raised two daughters in the community.
Dennis Brown
Dennis and his wife Judy moved to Fountain Hills in December of 1996. He was born and raised in northwest Oklahoma where his father was a general contractor. Starting at the age of four he spent most of his free time learning the construction trade. His proudest accomplishment to date happened during the summer he turned 16 when he hired two high school buddies and they built a 1200-square-foot home with a single-car garage that is still standing today.
He attended Northwestern Oklahoma State University and has led a lifetime of building. He has built on three continents and in 27 states. Projects have included a church in Argentina, a palace in Saudi Arabia, specialty work at a nuclear bomb assembly plant, shopping center, local churches and countless homes.
In 1999 he opened Echelon Fine Homebuilders, spent eight years on the Planning and Zoning Commission and, following that, served on the Town Council for 12 years. He’s proud of the fact that the building permit process was streamlined during his tenure and that many permanent projects were accomplished including the Centennial Circle, the Avenue’s linear park, Community Garden, the Avenue roundabout and designating Fountain Hills as a Dark Sky Community.
Cindy Couture
Cindy attended Central Michigan University where she received both her undergraduate and graduate degrees in education. Her teaching career spanned over four successful decades of teaching every high school English class, from remedial reading to American literature, to journalism to advanced placement English. She is writing a book she says will likely never be completed.
She moved permanently to Fountain Hills in 2004. She and her late husband Bob both found teaching jobs at Fountain Hills High School, where she taught until retiring in 2016. Much of her life has been spent in leadership roles, whether in school, college, HOA, journalism organizations, Democratic groups, teachers’ unions, civic groups and more.
A founding board member of the Fountain Hills Democratic Club, she also volunteers with the Dark Sky Festival and coordinates the student art contest, painted part of Fearless Kitty’s new home, ushers at Fountain Hills Theater and is always a part of Make a Difference Day. She is a Maricopa County registrar, volunteers at citizenship ceremonies and is a precinct committee person, working hard to get citizens registered to vote, to provide information about candidates and issues and, ultimately, to get out the vote.
