With the country reeling from the tragic attack on the World Trade Center in September 2001, Mark Mayer also had a more personal issue to deal with.

With air traffic grounded he found himself and his wife racing across the country by car trying to catch up with their furniture before it arrived in Arizona.

When they got here they found their new home already set up thanks to the help of a family member living in the Valley.

Thus was the eventful beginning to Mayer’s arrival in Arizona for his new job as Parks and Recreation Director for the Town of Fountain Hills.

Today, some fifteen and a half years later, Mayer is beginning a new adventure in retiring from that job for which he came to the desert.

Mayer thinks it has been an amazing and largely successful run helping the parks department and then Community Services as they grew with the town.

Town Manager Grady Miller acknowledged the accomplishments led by Mayer in comments as the Town Council honored the retiring director at its April 20 session.

That list includes development and expansion of the town’s park facilities, oversight of the creation of the McDowell Mountain Preserve, working smoothly with public/private partnerships for numerous park projects such as the Splash Pad, public art, Harmony Park and the Botanical Garden.

Mayer has high praise for the leadership of the council and hard work of his staff over the years. Staff is one-third smaller than it was when he took over, but it has accomplished so much, he says.

“It is a compliment that they have been able to pick up and wear so many different hats during lean times,” Mayer said.

Special events are now approaching 50 per year, and he lauds the hard work of volunteers staging those events as well as other duties such as the trail blazers who he estimates have saved the town hundreds of thousands of dollars building trails in the Preserve at no cost to the town.

Now the Preserve trailhead is at the forefront for construction within the next year.

Mayer took charge with the blending of the Community Center operations with Parks and Recreation creating the Community Services Department.

There are new programs unheard of when Mayer arrived in Fountain Hills. No one had heard of Pickleball, but now there are several hundred people looking to play in the community and growing need to accommodate them.

One of the first things Mayer plans to do in retirement is spend a week on the lakes in the White Mountains of Arizona.

“I’ve been able to get a weekend here and there, but never a full week,” he said.

Later this summer he will spend time with his brother in Idaho and next fall visit family in the Midwest.

A well-deserved retirement is ahead.