Steve Nichols sits at his home Thursday to talk about his life in Mexico and on the city council. He started on the council in 2005. He is not seeking re-election and will retire from the council in April.

When Mexico voters go to the polls in April, a familiar name will not be on the ballot — Steve Nichols. He has served on the Mexico City Council since 2005.

Nichols is retiring from his volunteer and elected positions so that he may spend more time helping family and friends with their needs, whether they are medical or otherwise.

"I just decided I had enough stuff to do, and I was trying to cut some of my irons in the fire, and the council was at just the right time to get out," he said.

Nichols retired from the Audrain Ambulance District Jan. 1 and will scale back his Little Dixie Fire Protection District duties in June. He's settling into full retirement, but he has no plans of taking things easy. He'll turn 66 in May.

"I've always wished I was born one year later," he said adding that would have made his birthday "5-5-55."

Nichols initially ran for the council after he was brushed off by a prior council member.

"I had always been interested in city council,” Nichols said. “I had asked one of our prior council members a question. He said I didn't need to know the answer to that.”

Nichols and Michael Myers came onto the board together at that time, defeating a couple of the old guard.

"It was kind of like the new boys in town trying to upset the kings. Well the kings both lost. I was really humbled because that is quite a deal," Nichols said.

Nichols doesn't want to take credit for major successes while he served on the council, because, those successes would not be possible without city staff doing the leg work, he said.

"It's no one person. You can give [the staff] all the tools they need to do the job and encourage them,” he said. “Our job is not to drum business up. That's why we have different people [to do that]. If you ever have someone that says they're running the city, they're micromanaging and that's not good at all.”

Council members have to take ownership not just of the good, but also the bad, Nichols said, noting the Brookstone and Teva Pharmaceuticals closures.

"If you're going to sit there and say, 'I'm responsible for getting Spartan here,’ I'm also responsible for Brookstone leaving. That's the way it works," he said.

Nichols lauded the city's commitment to keeping fund reserves above minimum levels, which allows the city to make purchases with cash rather than financing, which can increase debt.

"For the city, it's a win-win for you to hold more of your money back in funds," he said.

Nichols is a Mexico native. He went to school in Mexico and his career has been with Mexico businesses, including his own.

He started with A.P. Green on Nov. 17, 1972. By February 1973, there was talk of layoffs, so he founded Nichols Construction. He remained with A.P. Green until its 2001 closure. He decided against renewing his construction/contractor's license last year in preparation for his retirement.

"I tried to slow down [with my construction business], but I found if I didn't just give the license up, I wouldn't slow down," he said.

Around the time of the Green plant closure, Nichol's then wife was looking for a career change. She decided to take emergency medical technician classes in Paris.

"She didn't want to drive two days a week to Paris by herself, so I decided that I would take them, too," Nichols said, adding he already was a volunteer firefighter with the Little Dixie Fire Protection District.

He joined Little Dixie in June 1990, so he already had 10 years of first-responder experience when he went to train as an EMT.

"I figured that would increase my knowledge as far as the medical side of it," he said, adding he graduated within a year of A.P. Green shutting down.

He served as an EMT with SSM from 2001-2009 when the Audrain Ambulance District was formed, and then served with the ambulance district until Jan. 1.

Nichols will have spent 30 years with Little Dixie by his planned June retirement. He was drinking coffee with Art Smith in 2001 when an interesting series of events happened. Smith, for several years, was working to get a firefighter memorial, which is now in Kingdom City.

A statue for the memorial was purchased and had made its way to the U.S. from Austria. It arrived in the U.S. at New York Harbor on Sept. 11, 2001.

"A guy from New York called and said, 'If you agree to give [New York] the statue as a morale booster, I'll get you another for your memorial by May of next year,'" Nichols said.

The man was true to his word. The original statue now sits in front of a bank in New York.

When he's not helping out friends or family, Nichols plans to do some traveling, which he loves. He has a trip planned to Rock Springs, Texas to go hog hunting. This won't be his first trip to Rock Springs. He has a friend who lives there.

"I went to Australia for three weeks [in 2013]," Nichols said, pointing to a hat with crocodile teeth around its crown.

The journey to Australia took around 22 hours on a plane. He went to Australia to visit a friend, Liz Nash, who had visited the U.S., including Mexico. She is a volunteer firefighter, too, Nichols said and was looking at fire department websites when she came across the Little Dixie website.

"She called the [fire chief], added a week to her vacation and spent [the week in Mexico]," he said.

The last time she visited, Nichols took her around town and when eating dinner were talking about Australia.

"I told her I always wanted to go there and she said I ought to go," Nichols said.

He started keeping an eye on ticket prices. It was an expensive trip, but it was also possibly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. When he got there, Nichols had to hit the ground running to do everything he wanted to do.

"I learned a lot of cool stuff. I saw a lot of wallabies. The difference between a kangaroo and a wallaby is a wallaby has black [fur] on it. Kangaroo doesn't. I saw one wombat," Nichols said.

He hopes to eventually do something similar to the classic TV series “Then Came Bronson” — hop on a motorcycle and just go.

cdunlap@gatehousemedia.com

Default No false no cdunlap