Thursday, Sept. 17, the Town Council will be recognizing former Mayor Sharon Morgan who has announced she is stepping down as chair of the Fountain Hills Sister Cities Corporation.

She has served in that capacity since 2003.

Her involvement with Sister Cities began when she was mayor. She led a delegation of Fountain Hills residents to Kasterlee, Belgium, for the official signing ceremony uniting the two towns as official Sister Cities on Sept. 16, 2000.

Under her guidance, Fountain Hills has increased its activities with the addition of three more Sister Cities: Dierdorf, Germany; Ataco, El Salvador and Zamosc, Poland.

The town became involved with the Sister Cites program when I explored the possibility as president of the Fountain Hills Chamber of Commerce in the early 1980s.

I soon found that in order to participate, the town or city had to be an incorporated municipality. We became incorporated in December 1989.

The thought of finding a Sister City was filed in the back of my brain until the town was established. There was enough to do in those formative years besides finding a Sister City.

Meanwhile, when Jerry Miles was running for mayor the first time in 1994, he invited me to lunch, during which he asked me if there was anything I would like to see done in the community. I told him about how I had looked into the Sister Cities program.

Well, he lost that election by three votes.

When he did win the mayor’s race in 1996, he called me his first week in office to see if I still had an interest in finding a Sister City for Fountain Hills. I told him I would dust off the materials I had collected and would get busy.

I set up a committee under the non-profit Fountain Hills Civic Association umbrella.

I ran a story in The Times asking for suggestions on possible cities or towns to be considered and I sought volunteers to serve on the search committee. One of the respondents was David Jackman, who had traveled on business to a small town close to Antwerp, Belgium, called Kasterlee. He said, “It has the feel of Fountain Hills even though we live in a desert setting and Kasterlee is totally green with trees.”

Jackman co-chaired the committee with me.

The committee after much discussion and correspondence with cities in Portugal and Australia decided on Kasterlee as the first match for a Sister City for Fountain Hills.

The first delegation to visit Kasterlee included Jerry and Jackie Miles, Vice Mayor Marianne and Dr Cyril Wiggishoff, Bob and Phyllis Horan and myself.

I had a good hour-long visit with Kasterlee Mayor Walter Otten. He agreed to sign a letter of intent to become a Sister City of Fountain Hills, but he would not agree to sign the document to officially establish the relationship at that time. He signed the letter of intent on May 31,1998 wearing a Stetson cowboy hat that Jerry presented him at the Town Hall when we arrived.

Jerry became an instant celebrity as he walked around Kasterlee in his cowboy hat. A story that ran in the Antwerp newspaper referred to him as “John Wayne.”

And that’s the story of how we became involved in Sister Cities. Sharon, I congratulate you on your award. You not only maintained the program, but you expanded it. Thanks for a job well done.