About Pam

I’m a Byron girl. I grew up here in Byron, Wyoming, the fourth generation of my family to call it home, and graduated from Byron High School in 1967. My mom and dad were very involved in this community. Some of my happiest memories are of sipping the suds off a cold bottle of Dad’s root beer on the steps of Cozzens Store.

I met Glen Hopkinson when I was three and he was five, under a coffee table at a women’s sewing club. We grew up as friends, walked to early-morning seminary together, and once went sledding on an overturned car hood. That ended with both of my legs broken and months in casts. Glen gave up track to come visit me. After his mission to Korea we found each other again at BYU, and we were married on June 2, 1969.

Glen’s painting has taken us a lot of places. By his count we have moved 19 times. We lived in Salt Lake City and then in Cody for about fifteen years, where his art career took root. We spent time back in Byron in a little log cabin on Whistle Creek, where I drove a school bus and taught seminary. Later we moved to Mesa, Arizona, and then to the Tucson area, and we loved both. In 2011 we came home to Byron.

We raised five children: Travis, Heather, Todd, Summer and Holly. Our family keeps growing with grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Back home, I couldn’t stay on the sidelines. My first taste of local politics was the effort to find a new use for the old Byron school building. I was elected to the town council in 2012, and a few weeks after I took my seat, the mayor’s chair came open. In January 2013 the council appointed me mayor. This is my hometown, and I have a great love for this community. I promised to do the very best I could.

That first stretch lasted two years. We took up a sewer project on Riverview Avenue and Pryor and Central streets. In 2014 we saw Byron Memorial Park finished at the east entrance to town. It took fourteen years and many families and volunteers to build, and it honors our pioneers and the men and women from Byron who served in the military. That year the town also won a WYDOT grant for new street lights.

In 2018 Byron sent me back, and I served four more years, from 2019 through 2022. One project I’m still proud of started when our rec director, Becky Bates, and I drove to a placemaking workshop in Worland. We came home thinking about the weedy, empty corner at Pryor and Riverview, where the neighborhood kids had no place to play without crossing the highway. Byron won the Placemaker grant. The Lions Club, the Bairs, a crew of young volunteers and Ken Grant’s old-fashioned merry-go-round turned that corner into a little park. I was also mayor in 2022 when WYDOT rebuilt Main Street.

All told, I served as mayor of Byron for six years. When I left office at the start of 2023, I felt our town was heading in a positive direction, with many projects done and others still in the works. It’s my hometown, and if I can do anything to make it better, I’d like to try.

For years I’ve written the “Byron News” column for the Lovell Chronicle: newcomers and old friends, Byron Days, Christmas plays, deer in the garden, and goodbyes to people we’ve loved. This site gathers that writing in one place.

— Pam