If you have been to any local meeting or event in Columbia in the last several months, two faces are likely to be quite familiar by now.
Adair County High School 2024 graduates, Trey Stephens and Braylon Breeze have opted to spend their last summer before college working as interns for the City of Columbia, reporting directly to Mayor Pamela Hoots. Their duties have included assisting the mayor in any capacity they could, whether it be planning community events like this summer’s U.S. Sen. Rand Paul visit, Paint the Town, or Back to School Bash; attending meetings with the mayor; and spending time immersed in and learning about the inner workings of city and local government.
This was the first time Mayor Hoots has had interns. The two approached the mayor, who already knew them through their work in Future Business Leaders of America and as class officers, where Breeze served as class president and Stephens as class historian.
“We both knew the mayor, and we got to know her better because she was kind enough to do our commencement address this year,” Stephens explained.
Stephens is the first and only McConnell scholar from Adair County. As a McConnell scholar who has just returned from a retreat focused on Appalachia with all 39 other McConnell scholars across the state, Stephens is attending the University of Louisville.
Majoring in political science, Stephens is eying law school as his next step after completing his undergraduate program. After that, he dreams of being involved in politics on a state or federal level.
Breeze also has dreams of working in politics. When he started the internship he says that, essentially, he wanted Hoots’ job of being a mayor. While serving in his internship position, however, he has gravitated more toward Stephens’ ideas of national politics. Before the internship, Breeze managed to secure a full-ride scholarship to the University of Kentucky where he will also major in political science and wants to focus on political campaigns or explore his interests in international politics.
“I really enjoy traveling and just going places. When I went to Europe this summer, I really enjoyed learning about their politics,” Breeze said. “Some things they do more efficiently than us, like trains are everywhere. Other things… they don’t have washrags or showers. Little things like that.”
For two men interested in a future in politics, the opportunity to work closely with a sitting mayor has been an invaluable resource for learning the inner machinations of how to get things done and what it takes to affect change in one’s community.
“(The internship) has given me a great appreciation for the incredible prosperity in Columbia. Columbia has a much higher standard of living than almost anywhere else in Appalachia,” Stephens said. “Inside Columbia especially, they want to see progress, they want to see things forward, and they elect people who will put that in action.”
Breeze echoed Stephens, saying, “I don’t see any reason why in the future we can’t be the size of a place like Campbellsville.”
Between the 2010 and the 2021 censuses, to support Stephens’s assertions about the prosperity of his hometown, Hoots pointed out that Columbia’s average income went up over 100 percent.
Breeze reflected on his summer, saying, “I think this internship has shown just how active politicians even in a (small) community like this need to be. Mayor Pam is out every day talking to random people in the community. People feel the need to come up to her. That’s a big part of politics. That’s what politics is supposed to be about, is you talk to people in your community… I’ve learned there are efficient ways to do that.”
“It’s taught me there is a system of getting things done, and it’s taught me a lot of respect for that system,” Stephens said.
Stephens and Breeze may have ended their internship for the summer, but they and Mayor Hoots all plan to work together again next summer, and for specific events throughout the year when they are home for college.
By Kenley Godby
kenley@adairvoice.com
