If you live in Ridgway, you have seen Sue Husch. She takes tickets at the Sherbino Theater, where she also coordinate non-musical events, and serves on the board. She prices donations at the Second Chance thrift shop, whose proceeds support the animal shelter. Until last year she was slinging pizzas at Colorado Boy. You see her EVERYWHERE. Ask her what she does, and she says, "whatever needs to be done."
On Tuesday, Sept. 22, she was in Washington, D.C., at the Department of the Interior, receiving the National Park Service's 2026 Excellence in Cooperating Association Partnership Award, formerly the Murfin Award. It honors a career of strengthening the partnerships between the Park Service and the nonprofits that support public lands. In its citation, the Park Service says she did that work "consistently behind the scenes."
That is the career most in Ridgway doesn't see. In 1989, Husch was running the bookstores at Dinosaur National Monument and Fossil Butte. Those stores are run by nonprofits, and she says the money they make goes back into education and science on the public lands where they sit. In 1993, she says, she helped form what is now the Peaks, Plateaus and Canyons Association, a network of those nonprofits across the Colorado Plateau. Its mailing address is a P.O. box in Ridgway.
There is a national organization for the same work, and Husch has worked for it too. But she told KVNF the regional group was built on purpose to stay close to home: "working locally, which is the most impact I feel we can have."
Husch spent years organizing the conferences where the Murfin Award was handed out. "I cannot even believe that I would possibly be among them," she said. The news came on a video call this summer. "All I did was burst into tears. Thankfully, the camera wasn't working on the call."
Why does she do it? "People feed me," she said. "Being around people feeds me. Being around nonprofits feeds me." It runs in the family, she says; her mother, 86, is still volunteering in Grand Junction.
She borrows a line from a late friend: "we need dreamers, we need thinkers, and we need doers." And she has a standing offer for anyone new in town. "Let me know when you're ready to get involved, because I can figure out which way you might want to go."
For those who don't find their community through kids and schools, her advice is one word: "volunteer. It's the way to become part of an amazing community like this."
