Sign of loyalty: Fossil Forge owner, who put mark on Lee’s Summit, earns high honor

Dave Eames loves Lee’s Summit, and the feeling is obviously mutual. The city is honoring him as part of the Truman Heartland Community Foundation’s Toast to Our Towns Gala Sept. 21. Eames is the 2024 Citizen of the Year.

Although he didn’t grow up in the area, it’s been his home since 1990, when he and his wife moved for her teaching job.

“The people in this town and the business owners, the neighbors are just amazing,” Eames said. “I wish every place was like this, because we would have a really amazing place to live. You’ve got people that are committed with their time, with their money and, more importantly, with their dreams to lift this place up and make it as good as they possibly can.”

Eames said he really started to connect with the city in 2002 after buying an older house in the downtown area. He started Fossil Forge, which he co-owns with Ben Wine, the same year he moved downtown.

“When we moved to downtown Lee’s Summit, I started to get involved with organizations and our downtown Main Street program. That’s when the love affair turned into a lifelong commitment to this place,” Eames said.

He’s left his visual stamp on the city with the various commercial signs and graphics he designs and constructs at Fossil Forge.

“At night, people are walking, and it’s a fantasy land of color and design, and that’s really important to us. Buildings are the body, but signs are the voice and the personality, and most of that has been stripped away from so much of our cities,” he said.

Eames said he’s proud to have helped make Lee’s Summit look different from “Anywhere, U.S.A.”

His public art contributions include the crystalline sculpture marking the city’s sesquicentennial time capsule. He also advises on murals and banners through his extensive work on committees.

Formerly the board president of Downtown Lee’s Summit Main Street, he’s still involved with that organization but has also given his time to Lee’s Summit Creates, the Civic Roundtable and the Lee’s Summit Education Foundation. Recently, he began serving as chairman of the new cultural commission.

“I’ve known Dave a long time. He flies under the radar,” said Lee’s Summit Mayor Bill Baird. “He does all this work, but then he just doesn’t want any credit. He wants to give everyone else the credit. I think it’s important to recognize civic leaders, people that give back, volunteer in a positive way.”

That spirit of giving back is one Eames said he’s tried to instill in his four children, partly by helping make the right environment for them to flourish.

“I think some of that in them is growing up in a place like this, where they’re around people that are opening their storefronts in the morning, and they’re walking to our neighborhood school right through the middle of a little business district,” Eames said.

“So you see that sense of roots that’s really important for all of us in terms of why a place matters.”