CITIZEN OF THE YEAR: Willis J. Monie, Jr./Always, There Was Baseball

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Willis J. Monie Jr. was born in 1967 in New Hampshire, but his father established Willis J. Monie Books on Main Street and moved the family here when the son was in first grade.
“It was small.  We didn’t have the tourism we do today – only three stores with baseball cards,” he remembers.
There was the lake, and the gym, and Willis played basketball and baseball through JV, graduating from CCS in 1986.
He studied math and statistics at RPI in Troy.  His goal was to be a statistician for a baseball team, not recognizing until later there were only 26 such jobs in the U.S.
After graduating, he moved to Augusta, Ga., where he did statistics for the local baseball team and got into retail with Rex TV, which transferred him around the state during the 1990s – Savannah, Athens and back to Augusta.  He was married for a period.
Meanwhile, back in Cooperstown, Monie Books was expanding and Willis Sr. had “outgrown being able to do it by himself.”
Willis and his future bride, Dina Sams, came up for his sister Daphne’s wedding, and the pieces fell into place.
The couple and her children, Tyler, now at William and Mary, Chelsea, at the University of Philadelphia, and Anna, a CCS junior, moved to town in 2001.
Willis became friendly with Trustees Jeff Katz and Eric Hage through the Clark Sports Center’s basketball league, and with Trustee Lynn Mebust’s husband Kai.
So when he was asked to run for trustees – Willis Sr. had served on the school board for a dozen years – he ran as a Republican and was elected last March.