'I had fun every day' — MetraPark general manager Bill Dutcher to retire Dec. 31

“Where does it go?” asked Dutcher with a smile during an interview with The Billings Gazette and 406mtsports.com last week. “The thing I’m most proud of is I had fun every day. I’ve never been bored one minute in over 40 years, and to me that’s a good feeling.”

Dutcher began working at the sprawling entertainment, tradeshow, and community event campus as a part-time employee during the fair in the summer of 1980. He was hired full-time during the fair week in 1981, and over the next 40 years worked a variety of jobs from cleaning to managing. Dutcher is now general manager of the 189-acre facility, a position he has held since 2006.

The 69-year-old native of Lincoln, Nebraska has lived in Billings since he was 7 years old when his family moved after his father, Jim Dutcher, took a physical education and athletic director job with Billings Public Schools.

The 1970 Billings Senior graduate, who later graduated from Rocky Mountain College in 1991 after taking his final classes while working at Metra, will retire from MetraPark on Dec. 31. A retirement reception is set for Friday, Dec. 10, from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Billings Hotel and Convention Center. The reception is open to the public.

“All of the wonderful people, staff, full-time and part-time, and board members over the years,” Dutcher said of memories he’ll leave with. “The different county commissioners. All of the clients have just been super. All the conventions over the years, big or small, or presidential visits, I’ve loved. The relationships, people, our vendors. It’s been a wonderful experience. … The beer pourers, concession workers, bus drivers and athletes. A great people business all the way.

“Overall, there have been just so many nice people to work with and work beside, to make small, local, regional and big-time national events work side-by-side and get it done.”

Ray Massie, the marketing and sales director at MetraPark, said his boss of 7 ½ years is a dedicated employee and did his job well.

“Bill brings a sense of culture to the facility,” said Massie. “He may be the best (public relations) guy for what’s right at MetraPark that I have ever seen. He cares about the guests who come, and the employees who work with him, and he’s always concerned about what’s right for the community and the guests. Those are his strengths.”

Massie told a story about how even though Dutcher was the GM at the facility, no job was too small for him. 

“A skybox holder wanted soda in his room, and Bill didn't call anybody to do it, he just did it. He just does what it takes to get it done. If you see something to do, go do it. Bill picks up trash on the grounds and drives around and takes notes on his 3x5 cards of what we need to do.

“The words you’ll never hear out of Bill Ducher’s mouth, ‘That’s not my job'," Massie said. 

Working his way up

Dutcher recalled beginning his full-time job at the Metra on a Wednesday during the fair week.

“I had worked the year before and Bob Glasgow (then the manager of Metra) knew me,” Dutcher said. “They had a fair crew and an arena crew and I was arena crew for 13 years. I worked every trade show, moved every rodeo panel. I learned to drive 19 pieces of equipment," including tractors, dump trucks, scrubbers, a Zamboni, graders, and front-end loaders.

“I swept all the floors and mopped the seats and worked the sound system for graduations,” said Dutcher, while also recalling times preparing for the MATE show, the NRA rodeo, making ice for hockey, and readying for other shows during hockey season.

In April of 1994, Dutcher became the event coordinator for Metra.

“It was a needed position between Metra management and the renters and clients,” he recalled. “I just loved that job. It was good for our clients.”

Dutcher was named operations director in February 1999 and was appointed interim manager in December 2005 after Bob Wagoner resigned. He became the full-time general manager in April 2006.

“They did a study and recommended local management and I became full-time general manager,” Dutcher said.

Mark Beckman is in his 18th year as executive director of the Montana High School Association. Throughout Beckman’s tenure with the MHSA, the organization has worked with Metra numerous times as the arena has hosted many state basketball and wrestling tournaments. Beckman said Dutcher was always a pleasure to work with and his work history served him well as Dutcher was able to understand any issue the MHSA brought to him.

“He’s done an outstanding job and is so easy to work with and accommodates our events,” Beckman said. “It’s been good to know if you had an issue, you pick up the phone and talk to Bill. His staff is good to work with, too. … they have a good example with Bill.”

Beckman called Dutcher a “great ambassador with MetraPark and the city of Billings.”

Brian Michelotti of the MHSA, the longtime state wrestling tournament manager, echoed Beckman.

“Bill is a wonderful friend of the MHSA and is possibly one of the most approachable people I have worked with,” Michelotti said. “He’s such a great supporter of all the student-athletes in Montana.

“We will miss his smiling face when we walk into the Metra and his infectious personality will be missed.”

Privatization or local management?

Currently Yellowstone County Commissioners are looking at the possibility of privatizing management at MetraPark, a county-owned facility. 

The subject has become a hot topic locally and now a recall effort to remove county commissioner Don Jones is underway.

Dutcher was appointed interim manager in early December 2005 after Wagoner resigned after four years on the job. Prior to Wagoner resigning, a California consultant had been hired to study management at MetraPark, The Gazette reported. In March 2006 county commissioners voted to continue with local management and Dutcher, who as assistant GM under Wagoner, was the only internal candidate who submitted his application before the deadline.

On the current process, Dutcher offered his thoughts.

“Yellowstone County and MetraPark has been very successful with the very multi-purpose facility it is advertised as being. A great staff that has treated all of our customers, renters, promoters, local visitors, regional and national visitors; they have been very well taken care of and very successful at these.

“I’m an open-door guy and we have so many good relationships with our renters, who pay the bills with our facility and none of them have walked into my office to say they are dissatisfied with the staff or facilities, or vendors or contractors. That’s how we do business.”

Dutcher pushed back his retirement date by a year. He was originally going to retire on Dec. 31, 2020. He altered those plans, partially because Yellowstone County officials are in the process of putting together a master plan for the future of MetraPark and also because of the coronavirus crisis.

“I’d thought about it last year because of the high number of years and my age,” Dutcher said of retirement. “And the pandemic came and there was so much confusion and chaos going on, I just decided I’d stay another year and everyone said that’s fine and I was glad I did.”

Anniversaries at Chase Hawks

Dutcher is married to Sue and the couple will celebrate 36 years of marriage on Dec. 21.

Dutcher joked that after retirement he’ll no longer have to worry about celebrating his anniversary during the Chase Hawks Roughstock Rodeo, which is held every year around that time.

Dutcher and Sue have two children, son Michael, 24, and daughter Helen, 28, both of whom live in Billings.

He plans on staying in Billings and spending more time with his family.

“I have a stack of books. I’ve cut back on my reading and am ready to pick up,” Dutcher said of how he plans to spend some of his free time after retirement. “I get The New Yorker, and am always behind. And, I’ll start walking my dogs with my wife a lot more.”

He also is a member of the Rotary Club and Midland Roundtable.

“I love those relationships,” said Dutcher.

Sports, sports, sports

From bowling, to rodeo, to bull riding, hockey, motorsports, horse racing and indoor football — with many in between — MetraPark has been home to many sports.

“When I started, the Billings Bighorns were playing hockey,” Dutcher said, “and the Billings Volcanos were playing CBA basketball.”

Dutcher has enjoyed all the competitive moments and friendships he’s made at these events.

During his time at MetraPark, Dutcher witnessed his share of changes and upgrades and the addition of the Expo Center and Montana Pavilion in 1995 were highlights.

The Expo Center was home to the American Bowling Congress national tournament in 2002. Nearly 54,000 bowlers competed at the event over 135 days.

“I was the 24-hour call guy for six months,” Dutcher recalled with wide eyes of the bowling tourney. “I was operations director. … We didn’t turn the lights off from Jan. 2 to June 23.

“The bowling was 48 lanes and started at 8 a.m. and went to midnight every night.”

Along with rodeos and Western sports events such as the Professional Bull Riders, NILE, NRA Finals and MontanaFair rodeo that for many years was held outdoors prior to this past year’s fair before the grandstands were razed, MetraPark has hosted the Wrangler National Team Roping Finals 16 consecutive times.

Dennis Tryan of Huntley, president of the Wrangler Team Roping Championships, said of Dutcher, “I wish he wasn’t retiring.”

For all 16 of his annual events, Tryan said he’s worked with Dutcher. He said Dutcher was much more than a steward of Metra, but cared about the city and county as a whole. Tryan’s WNTR is a week-long event.

“Here’s what I think Bill was, I think he cared about bringing stuff in,” said Tryan. “If it looked like it was doing good for the city, that’s something he was good at. He didn’t just look at well, we’re going to make a zillion dollars off this thing. He looked at we have people here for a solid week, cruising our streets, and he got that and understood that.

“I’ve talked to him before. Everything is there. It wasn’t all about the Metra, it was about the city. We like to feel appreciated, like maybe we contributed to the economy a little bit, with our event and I know it does, but Bill thought so, also.”

Tryan has many of the same feelings about Dutcher as the MHSA’s Beckman does.

“He would just work with you. If you were right in the middle of the whole deal and you needed something you didn’t have, he’d make sure you got it and make sure your event was going to go off the way you hoped it would go off,” Tryan said. “He just didn’t say, ‘That’s the way it is. I’m sorry.’ When he could do something about it, he always did do something.

“If things come up, I’d get on the phone with Bill. He just didn’t give me everything I wanted all the time, but he sure made sure you had what you needed.”

Cher, U.S presidents, and the Eagles

Dutcher said during his career at Metra, some of the highlight concerts span from Johnny Cash and Van Halen in the early years to Mötley Crüe and Aerosmith. Then came the Eagles and Cher to more recent acts like Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert. Among the other highlight shows during his tenure — like sporting events and the like, too many to list every performance or date — were Garth Brooks and his string of performances, Elton John, Neil Diamond, Boston, Chicago, and Carrie Underwood.

“I’ve liked all of them,” Dutcher said. “I’ve enjoyed every one of them.”

One thing Dutcher has noticed over the years is the evolution of concerts and the equipment needed to stage a performance.

“In the 1980s, every act had three semis and a little production room with two guys in it and then came the IT, and the video screens and sound music boards,” Dutcher said. “Carrie Underwood, her last concert, was 18 semis and 12 buses and Mötley Crüe was 11 semis and 11 buses their last show.”

The Elton John concert in 2011 was the first at the Metra after the Father’s Day tornado in 2010 damaged the arena.

“That was a big deal, getting 10,500 people in here,” said Dutcher, motioning to the arena while being interviewed.

Overall, there were also four presidential visits — and numerous other candidates who campaigned at other times. Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump all had presidential visits, with Bush stopping twice.

“I absolutely loved spending a week around the Secret Service and loved getting to know the Secret Service guys and all we could do for them,” Dutcher said.

MontanaFair

During the fair, Dutcher was always found either working the midway, at the arena, or at one of the other buildings. Many times he was found visiting with patrons of the fair, making sure they were having a good time.

It is one of his favorite times of the year and he was proud of the work those involved with MontanaFair put into it to make it a success.

“I loved being at a facility that worked all year, one staff on the fair,” Dutcher said. “Most places have a fairgrounds on one side of town and the arena on the other side. We have one staff that works all year on the fair. That is great.

“It (the fair) is a big part of our business. Our facility is known coast to coast. The fair business knows us from our fairs and the entertainment business knows us for the entertainment.”

Massie said Dutcher was recently honored for his work at the fair.

“The coolest thing for me is when he was inducted into the Rocky Mountain Association of Fairs Hall of Fame,” said Massie.

Massie said Dutcher is a past president of the association and has been on the group’s board of directors.

While he’s spent many hours working at the MetraPark grounds during the fair, Dutcher has also managed to sneak in some family time there.

“I had my years when my boy was a little younger and I love the spinning rides, the Scrambler, the Tornado, and Pharaoh’s Fury,” Dutcher recalled.

What is his favorite fair food?

“I love all the fair food, but I go home at midnight from a 16-hour day and I am hungry,” Dutcher said. “I eat a funnel cake, make some notes and got to bed and come back.”

Life after retirement

When the Dutcher family moved to Billings, they came from Mount Vernon, Iowa, where Bill’s father coached football and track at Cornell College.

“We packed up a ’56 Chevy, five kids and two parents, and came through Yellowstone Park, down through Cooke City and Red Lodge and came to Billings,” Dutcher recalled with a grin.

Dutcher is eternally grateful that the family moved to the Magic City.

“I’ve loved every bit of my life in Billings,” he said. “I always thanked my parents when they were alive that they moved us to Billings, Montana. I grew up and loved it here, all but a couple of college years have been here.”

Now, Dutcher is looking forward to traveling more and continuing his yearly visit to Yellowstone.

“I’ve been to Yellowstone every year since I’ve been to Billings and that’s an absolute highlight going at least once a year to Yellowstone National Park,” Dutcher said.

“I’ve been so appreciative of the county to be at the fair and arena and music conferences, my family has traveled coast to coast with me, which I appreciate. I look forward to a little travel.”

Dutcher will continue to enjoy his time, only now he can do so more at his own leisure.