Pam Setser is a promoter.
She promotes her music as a vocalist and instrumentalist. She promotes a variety of organizations that are near and dear to her heart. She promotes her company as the business development officer at Centennial Bank in Mountain View. But most of all, she promotes her hometown of Mountain View.
The Mountain View Area Chamber of Commerce recently recognized Setser as its Distinguished Citizen of the Year.
Tori Epperson, chamber executive director, said the Distinguished Citizen award has been given for approximately 30 years to individuals who have devoted a lifetime of service to the Mountain View community. Service can be in volunteerism, community work, or development and community leadership.
“Pam Setser embodies the spirit of Mountain View,” Epperson said. “She is a tireless champion who gives not only her time and extensive talents whenever called upon; she seeks out ways to help any number of organizations to reach their own goals in community advancement. She has an effervescent personality that makes everyone she meets feel like an old friend. We have visitors come back year after year simply because of Pam’s hospitality.
“She was the obvious choice for this year’s Mountain View Chamber of Commerce Distinguished Citizen award,” Epperson said. “We are grateful to have Pam Setser as a true representative of Mountain View.”
Setser, 56, said she was “very surprised … and very honored” by the award.
“I have been very active in the community for many years. I love this community. It’s a great place to live and raise your children,” she said.
“I always knew if I had a way to be able to help support the community, it would be with my music, but now I am able to do it through banking as well,” Setser said.
“Centennial Bank is very community-oriented. They want us out in the community, making connections, being involved in the schools, sponsoring grilling events,” she said.
“Personally, I have been involved in the Teach Children to Save program sponsored locally by our bank,” Setser said. “We go in to the first through third grades in the schools and encourage the students to save their pennies.
“Our bank president, Brad Shipman, is locally raised and is very supportive of all of my community involvement. I love my job and am blessed to have wonderful Christian co-workers.”
Setser is a member of the Committee of 100, a support group of the Ozark Folk Center. She serves as the group’s treasurer and chairwoman of the music and crafts committees. She performs frequently at the Folk Center and was voted Musician of the Year for 2016.
Setser is a member of the Ozarka College Foundation Board of Directors and is now vice chairman and a member of the advisory council for Child Care Aware of Northcentral Arkansas. She is a member of the Stone County Heritage Association, the Stone County Fair Association, the Stone County Youth Leadership, the Mountain View Area Chamber of Commerce and Chapter DK of the PEO. She is a former board member and past president of the Mountain View Area Chamber of Commerce and continues to coordinate music for its events.
Setser was also instrumental in organizing the chamber’s Caroling in the Caverns at Blanchard Springs Caverns.
“We’ve been doing that for 22 years,” she said, smiling.
She has worked with Stone County Abuse Prevention and Stone County In Tune as well.
Setser attends First Baptist Church, where, she said, “I’ve been a member since I was 8 or 9 years old. I also sing in the choir.”
Setser said she moved to Mountain View with her parents when she was 2.
“We lived out in the county before that, but we always lived in Stone County,” she said.
She is the youngest of four children born to Tommy Simmons of Mountain View and the late Jean Simmons Jennings. Setser’s siblings — Danny Simmons, Virginia Lee and Renee Storey — all live in Mountain View.
Setser graduated from Mountain View High School in 1978.
“After I graduated, I went to a vo-tech in Batesville, where I studied business,” she said. She began her career in the business world at a medical clinic in Batesville.
“However, I worked at The Dulcimer Shoppe here in Mountain View during the summers in high school,” she said.
“When I was 21, I moved to Hot Springs to perform in The Country Music Story at the old Mid-America Amphitheater. I kept a place here in Mountain View, too. When I located back here, I went to work for the Mountain View Telephone Co., where I stayed for 23 years,” Setser said.
“I really thought I would retire from there, but this opportunity at the bank came up, and I took it. I will have been here for 10 years in November,” she said.
“I am the business development officer, which includes marketing … and grilling. We do a lot of that,” she said.
“I love it,” she said of her job. “I love meeting people. I also play music on the side,” she said.
“I play at the courthouse, at the Ozark Folk Center, Mellon’s Hole in the Wall, the White River Theater, just to name a few. I also play out of town,” Setser said.
“I sing and play several instruments, … the mountain dulcimer, guitar, autoharp, spoons. My mother taught me to play,” she said. “I started performing at the hootenanny with my parents when I was 5. We performed as The Simmons Family. I did this until I moved to Hot Springs.
“Mom played the autoharp, Dad played guitar, and we all sang. We sang at Mountain View and all over Arkansas.”
Setser said neither of her sisters nor her brother sang professionally.
“It was just Mom, Dad and me,” she said.
“Dad served as mayor of Mountain View in 1968, so our family was well-known in the community. Dad worked to get the Ozark Folk Center started; he was one of the men who went to Washington, D.C., to get funding for it. He was the first general manager in 1973,” Setser said.
“As one of four children, music was a big outlet for me. My family didn’t have a lot of money to spend on vacations, but I got to travel as a musician. When I was 9, I was part of a group that represented Stone County at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. All of this was very educational for me, … to see places I might not have ever gotten to see otherwise. Music has brought me a lot of opportunities,” she said.
Setser said there was “always music … and musicians … at home [when I was] growing up. There were many nights filled with pickin’ in our living room, and Mom would always cook a great Southern meal.
“I’ve led a very blessed life.”
Setser performs with several groups, including the Leatherwoods, Chinkypin, the Ozark Granny Chicks, Pamela G and Jackie B and the Courthouse Orchestra. She also plays with Kent and Beci Coffey, Tim Crouch, Gary Rounds, Brad Apple, Irl Hees and others around the state. Setser sings lead and harmony vocals and plays a variety of instruments.
Pam Setser and her husband, Vic Setser, who is a certified registered nurse anesthetist at Stone County Medical Center, will have been married eight years in December.
“We dated for 3 1/2 years before we married,” she said. “He is very supportive of me in whatever I do.”
The Setsers have a blended family. Pam’s daughter, Sarah Butler, 27, and her husband, Grady, 28, live in Mountain View and together have two children, daughter Raylen, 8, and son, Hayes, 1 1/2. Pam’s son, Austin Kirby, 23, is a recent graduate of Arkansas State University and lives in Mountain View while seeking a job. Vic’s daughter, Stephanie Amant, 45, and her husband, Kevin, live in St. Louis with their two children, Quinton, 16, and Olivia, 15.
Pam Setser said her daughter, Sarah, took fiddle lessons, and her son, Austin, took guitar lessons, but neither has pursued music as a career.
“Mom left Sarah her uptight bass, and she left Austin her guitar,” Setser said. “So they do know the basics but have not pursued it.
“As for me, if I go very long without singing or playing, you’d better come check on me,” she said, smiling. “I get real uneasy if I miss singing or playing. I try to sing somewhere every week.”
Setser has her own website, pamsetser.com, so fans can keep up with her musical appearances. According to her schedule, her next performance will be at 6 p.m. Friday at Mellon’s Hole in the Wall Theater in Mountain View, followed by several more concerts this month at the Ozark Folk Center and the White River Tavern.