'We've always been willing to do those things'

Moses Lake father, son have legacy of community involvement

MOSES LAKE - People used to separate Bob Trask Sr. and Bob Trask Jr. by calling them Big Bob and Little Bob.

Even today, some old friends still call Bob Jr. "Bobby." The others mostly refer to them as "Junior" and "Senior."

"We get along awful good together," Bob Sr. said. "For a father and son team, we've been very, very fortunate. We're more like brothers sometimes than we are father and son."

Bob Sr. attributes that good fortune to the fact he and his son are both a couple of nice people.

"If you don't think so, just ask us, we'll tell you," he joked.

The family has always been very active in the community.

Amongst other activities, Bob Sr. has served as a president of the Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce, a founder of the Moses Lake golf course, a member of the first library board, the first vice-president of the Lions Club and has a lot to do with area youth, working as an advisor for 12 years to Rainbow Girls and DeMolay Boys through the Masonic Order. He also served on the school board from March 1955 to December 1960.

"We spent all our time building schools," he remembered. "With the air base out here, we had Frontier and Chief Moses Junior High and one school out there on the base that were full of nothing but Air Force kids, most basically, that paid no money, so we had a hard time around here for a long time."

Bob Jr. is the current president of the Grant County Economic Development Council, a Lions member, a past-president of United Way of Grant County, as well as being involved with the Big Bend Community College Foundation, the Moses Lake Manta Rays swim team, Moses Lake Rotary Club - both Bob Trasks have received the club's designation of Paul Harris Fellow - and more than 12 years on the state board of the Independent Agents of Washington. He has also served as a master of ceremonies for several area organization events, including the recent Boys and Girls Clubs of the Columbia Basin auction.

"We've probably been, with Dad leading the way, good community citizens," Bob Jr. said.

His belief is that in running a good business in the community, something is owed to the community. Many people choose to act in many different ways, he said, but he is concerned about the future and what young people think about the community.

"More people are willing to talk than are willing to do, and I think we've always been willing to do those things," Bob Jr. said. "We want to be a viable part of the community. We live here, we work here, we make our living here and we feel we owe something back to the community."

"We've always been kind of pretty active in the area," Bob Sr. agreed. "Tried to help out, do things … Of course, over the years, you donate a lot of time and a lot of your own money and everything else to get these things established and help out."

Bob Sr. first arrived in Moses Lake in September 1946.

"I was looking for a place when I came out of the service," he said. "I went looking around and every time I came to Moses Lake, it was that much more interesting, and I kept coming back to it."

Bob Sr. had seen progress and land development with the arrival of irrigation in Boise, Idaho, and thought Moses Lake looked like the place to be, a place with a future.

"It's proven to be very successful to us," he said. "It didn't move as fast as everyone thought it would, or wanted it to, I guess, but it's progressing very nicely now. But it's the irrigation, really, that got me up here. This is a farming community and it's always going to be a farming community."

Since the Trasks arrived in Moses Lake, the area has grown from 700 people to roughly 17,000 in the incorporated city limits, Bob Sr. said.

"There's a lot of improvements that have been made throughout the town; I remember when I first came here they were just digging the first ditches and so forth for the first sewage system," he said. "The whole town was torn up and we came over the hill coming into the town, all you could see was just a big ball of dust, you couldn't see a building or anything, it was just dust."

Returning to Moses Lake from dancing in Ephrata, one could count seven lights in the whole town.

"We played baseball in all dirt fields," Bob Jr. remembered.

"He was playing Little League ball one time, a dust storm came by, you couldn't see first or third base, you couldn't even see the players," Bob Sr. said. "Everything was dirt."

Through Bob Jr.'s involvement with the economic development council, he would like to see qualified growth lead Grant County into the future.

"If we don't have good growth, we have nothing to sell," he said.

When he first arrived with his wife in tow, Bob Sr. opened the Basin Motor Hotel in 1946, the Pontiac-Cadillac Agency in 1948 and a Texaco service station around 1949. The Trasks also built the building, currently the Crittenden Building, to house the Trask Motor Company in about 1948.

Bob Sr. had met his wife, Dorothy, while in the service when he was getting his discharge in El Paso, Texas, during World War II. She was from Jacksboro, Texas, but working in El Paso because her best friend was the commander's daughter.

Dorothy died in 1994 of cancer.

They had two children, son Bob Jr. and daughter Terry, who resides in Spokane. Bob Jr. is married with four children.

Bob Jr. was born in in Moses Lake in 1950.

"The general comment I've always made is that I was one of the first 50 kids born in a hospital here," Bob Jr. said.

After 13 years in school and one year at Big Bend Community College, Bob Jr. spent three years at Eastern Washington University, and left for about 10 years, living up and down the coast in Washington, Oregon and California.

Bob Jr. returned in 1978, at a stage in his career where he would either have to take a job he didn't want or be downsized.

"So I decided to pursue what I wanted to do," he said.

In the meantime, Bob Sr. had started up the Robert M. Trask Agency, which he began in 1960 after selling the motel in 1950 and the automobile agency in 1957.

"I started out in the life insurance end of it, and then everybody said, 'I'd like some car insurance,' or homeowners' insurance or something else, so we progressed and moved into the complete general agency," Bob Sr. recalled. "It proved to be very successful for us and the time came when I needed help. Bob came along at the right time and we went to work. It's been that way ever since."

"Dad and I worked out a deal and I came to work for him July 1, 1978," Bob Jr. recalled.

Bob Jr. purchased the insurance agency from his father. Today, Bob Sr. basically does a lot of public relations work for the agency, but does not have a license to sell any property anymore.

"Dad was ready to do something with the business, and when I came along, it clicked, so he was willing to let me go," Bob Jr. explained. "I never had to do it his way, I always had the freedom to do it my own way. He just stood in the back to back me up, never out front telling me (what to do)."