Sweet 16: Ramon Hayes reflects on four terms as Town of La Conner's mayor

As a youth whose World War II veteran father was a booking agent in the entertainment industry, Ramon Hayes grew up familiar with the celebrities who gained fame amid the emerging new world of television.

"I was invited to Liberace's birthday party," Hayes, 54, recently recalled with a chuckle. "I didn't attend."

Hayes was perhaps reflecting on how later in life as a long-serving public official, he would be called upon to make decisions of far greater importance.

"I like to think of myself as being pretty thick-skinned," he told the Weekly News, while looking back upon 16 years at the Town's...