Ex-mayor Vilas Young dies

Vilas Young

MARYVILLE — Former Maryville mayor and two-term city councilman Vilas E. Young died Sunday at age 92.

Young, who was first elected to the Maryville City Council in 1987, served as mayor for two terms in 1990 and 1991 before retiring from the council in 1993.

During his term as mayor, Young was instrumental in bringing the now popular Mozingo Lake Recreation Park to reality. The original Mozingo watershed project had been the focus of concern for the city for several years before Young joined the city council and he worked diligently to bring the project to fruition.

“I will always hold him as being among the best I have ever served under,” Maryville Public Safety Director Keith Wood said Monday. “I don’t really know how many mayors I have worked with here — there have been seven city managers, I know that — but he was certainly one of the top three.

“I always appreciated his open-mindedness,” said Wood, who joined MPS in 1989. “He was non-confrontational, but he would state his position so that it was readily understood.

“And he would always add a touch of common sense to a difficult and tedious process.”

“He was a great individual and school board member,” said Bob Colville, a former president of the Maryville R-II School District Board of Education. “He knew how to work on a board and kept his high priorities on student achievement.

“Vilas was really a great guy to work with on anything, whether it was club work, the extension service, our school board or city council.”

Young, a veteran who served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II and again as a member of the Missouri National Guard during the Korean Conflict, was a 1946 graduate of the University of Missouri. He earned a master’s degree from Missouri in 1974 and was a loyal fan of the Missouri Tigers.

While a Maryville resident, Young’s primary occupation was with the University of Missouri extension service, but he later served as an agricultural advisor for Bank Midwest.