By Barry Engelhardt

Robbie Moore sees something special as he looks down Meridian High School's bustling hallways. A natural storyteller, he runs me through decades of Mounds City history, quickly and effortlessly transitioning from childhood stories to meaningful moments from his three children's youth and back again. The constant theme is the sense of community support he's witnessed through his proximity to Meridian High School.

He pauses briefly and points at a random wall, sharing that just past that wall and across the street is where he grew up. With pride, he quickly adds that his mother still lives in the same house his parents purchased when he was in third grade. Speaking quickly and excitedly, he adds that he and his wife raised their three children just a few houses down. He suggests living near the school is the perfect location, recounting countless evenings spent watching his children and their friends congregate to shoot hoops in their driveway after school.

After graduating from Meridian in 1990, Robbie embarked on a new adventure in Davenport, Iowa, to attend chiropractic school. However, he quickly realized life had a different path in store for him. Robbie chuckles good-naturedly as he describes his journey of self-discovery, admitting he dropped out just three weeks into his first semester. "I realized it wasn't my calling. I returned home, not knowing what I wanted to do, but very clear about what I didn't want to do," says Robbie.

Returning home, he quickly plotted his next move. "My granddad had been a sheriff and county clerk, so when I was a little guy, I got interested in serving," says Robbie. "The [Pulaski County] Treasurer didn't have anybody running on my side of the ticket. I was twenty-two years old, I ran, and I got elected. I was the youngest elected treasurer in the state of Illinois."

Now a bit older and wiser, Robbie is about to enter his thirty-first year of civil service as Pulaski County's Treasurer. Along the way, he and his wife purchased their home across from the high school, which he affectionately calls the "sixth house on the left." They've raised three children, all of whom graduated from Meridian.

While Robbie and his wife eventually inherited forty acres in Bell Ridge and built a new house, he remains strong in his eighth term of office. Despite facing opposition in six of his eight campaigns, he has yet to lose and attributes his success to always campaigning by not actively campaigning.

"If you're a good politician, you're campaigning every day. Everybody knows everybody here. If I stop at the store, I see people I know. When I go to work, the pharmacy, or this school, I see people I know. I had three kids that graduated from here."

Reflecting on the thirty-four years since he chose to return home, Robbie considers returning to Mounds City as one of the pivotal moments of his life and cites the people as the reason he and many others who left chose to return. He's proud to serve a community where teachers choose to work and live, suggesting that their steady presence helps build proactive relationships. When teachers, coaches, and administrators see and interact with their students and their families outside the classroom as members of the community, Robbie reasons, it motivates the kids to hold themselves more accountable.

"Look at Meridian and then look at every other school in the area; tell me one that has what Meridian has," Robbie challenges. "There are plenty of people coming to Meridian. There aren't many people living in the Meridian district that are leaving to go anywhere else."

"You've got people from here that have gone out and done something. They come back. There's that sense of community. They remember they went to Meridian. If you're a Bobcat, you'll always be a Bobcat."