From Garnet Street to Hailey High to Rotarun, a lifetime in Blaine County
By Hayden Seder
When 70-year-old Bellevue resident Pamela Rayborn got the call that she was nominated as one of the four Heritage Court honorees for this year, she was vacationing in Mazatlán and thought it was just a missed call.
“I was shocked. I’m really privileged,” said Rayborn.
Turning 70 qualified Rayborn for the Heritage Court, a program of the Blaine County Historical Museum which annually honors four women, at least 70 years old, who have lived in Blaine County 30 years or more and have made a significant contribution to the local history and culture over the years.
Rayborn has been a part of Blaine County since she was born on a snowy February day at the Sun Valley Lodge to a mother who was the first female valedictorian of the Albion Normal School and a father who was in the Air Force.
After building a home on Garnet Street in Ketchum, Rayborn’s father moved up the ranks in the Air Force and ended up being transferred all over the world. Rayborn attended schools in Germany, Delaware, Utah, and on the East Coast, all the while coming home in the summers and other time off with her family to their home in Ketchum.
It was during the Vietnam War that Rayborn’s father moved them back to the area permanently and the teenager got to attend high school and truly put down some roots. Called Hailey High then and located where Hailey Elementary School is currently, both the school and the community were much smaller then.
“I believe my husband Steve’s class was about 49 people,” Rayborn said. “It was really nice to be in a small community for a change. I went to a lot of big schools before that. This community is so great because you know so many people and when someone has trouble, the town just steps up to the plate. It’s great living in a small community.”
Rayborn married her husband Steve in 1965 and raised two daughters while managing the family trailer park on River Street in Hailey, running a daycare center there, and running a cleaning service while Steve worked in logging and construction.
When Steve worked in logging, Rayborn and the girls would spend summers camping and hiking in the forests of central Idaho. Several summers were spent floating the Middle Fork and one memorable trip even led them to float the Grand Canyon with a party of 10.
In the winters, Steve worked on Baldy for Sun Valley while Rayborn worked as a ski instructor and ski patrol on Rotarun and Dollar. They moved to Bellevue in 1974 to the house that the Rayborns remain in 45 years later, and 15 years ago they sold the trailer park and developed some properties in Woodside.
Their oldest daughter, Angie, is now a radiologist at St. Luke’s in Ketchum and is the mother to Rayborn’s 26- and 22-year-old grandsons. Their other daughter lives in Utah.
Despite a love of skiing, the Rayborns have tapped into their love of travel and now spend about four months of winter in Mexico, a country they have learned to love after many winters in Baja and Mazatlán and a memorable tour down the Gulf Coast to the Yucatán. Rayborn continues to work on her Spanish and loves the warmth of the people there, the rich history and opportunities to dance there. After several months in Mexico, though, Rayborn is always happy to come home.
“I love coming home,” Rayborn said. “I get real homesick about March and am glad to get home in April to work in my big yard.”