Share This Article
For more than two decades, Mike and Katie Risk have quietly shaped two of Baxter County’s most vital community institutions: the Donald W. Reynolds Library and the rivers that define the region’s identity.
The Mountain Home Observer has named the Risks as its 2025 Family of the Year for their sustained commitment to education, conservation and community building.
Katie Risk’s fingerprints are on the very foundation of Mountain Home’s library system. In 1999, she was one of three women who spent an entire summer writing bylaws and establishing the structure of the Baxter County Library Foundation alongside Deborah Knox and Gwen Khayat.
That foundational work laid the groundwork for what would become a transformative moment in Mountain Home’s history: securing a $10 million grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation that built the current library on Library Hill.
“When Deborah Knox, Katie Risk, Gwen Khayat and I decided we needed a library foundation in 1999, I feel sure that Deborah and Katie and probably Gwen had a much better idea of what a foundation would accomplish,” Carol Landrum said at the library’s 2025 Heart of the Library reception. “But I don’t think any of us dreamed 11 years later we would dedicate a $10 million library to our community.”
The Risks continue their library support today as platinum-level sponsors of the library’s annual Wrap It Up campaign and other fundraising efforts.
While Katie helped build an institution for books and learning, Mike Risk devoted himself to protecting the waterways that make north-central Arkansas a destination for anglers and outdoor enthusiasts.
As vice president of Friends of the North Fork and White Rivers, Mike has been a driving force behind the organization’s educational mission, particularly through the Dodd Creek Stream Team program that brings Mountain Home High School and Arkansas State University-Mountain Home students together each year to study local water quality.
Mike leads the stream bank erosion component of the program, teaching students how to measure and document the loss of creek banks over time. His meticulous record-keeping has produced charts tracking erosion over seven to eight years, revealing approximately four horizontal feet of erosion at certain cut banks along Dodd Creek.
“We measure the stream bank for erosion,” Friends of the Rivers President Steve Blumreich explained at the organization’s 2025 annual meeting. “It’s hundreds and hundreds of pounds of erosion of gravel and sand.”
That data has prompted the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to install rock barriers along portions of the creek to slow erosion.
The Stream Team program, founded seven years ago, has grown significantly under the leadership of Mike and other volunteers. The October 2024 event drew 50 to 60 students, the largest group in the program’s history.
Beyond stream monitoring, Friends of the North Fork and White Rivers has fought to protect the Buffalo River watershed from concentrated animal feeding operations, opposed the reopening of the NABORS landfill, and worked to preserve riparian zones along local waterways.
Mike Risk, a dentist who has practiced in Mountain Home for decades, brings the same precision to environmental documentation that he applies in his professional work. Students learn to install metal rods along creek banks that allow the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to measure how much silt washes away throughout the year.
The Risks represent a model of community engagement that spans multiple spheres: education, conservation, healthcare and philanthropy. Their work demonstrates that lasting community impact often comes not from a single grand gesture but from decades of steady involvement in institutions that serve the public good.
From the library stacks to the creek banks, Mike and Katie Risk have helped shape a community where residents can learn, explore and connect with the natural world that makes Baxter County home.
