Local businessman Troy Muir values a hard day’s work, good friends and his family.
Muir, 47, has become known around town as a longtime resident and the owner of Marys Peak True Value and three other businesses. He coached the Philomath High School football team for nine years and has continued his involvement in youth athletics.
Muir’s family has lived in Philomath since the 1950s and he moved here with his parents at age 5. Muir and his wife, Melissa, have been married for 19 years and have three children — Kaden, 17, Isabelle, 15, and Keaton, 10.
Kaden will be a fourth generation Philomath High graduate in 2024.
Muir’s football coaching career at PHS ended in controversy in 2016 and he transitioned to working with youth at the middle school level. He coached football, boys basketball and girls basketball with those teams seeing a lot of success. This past year, he coached fifth- and sixth-grade football and basketball.
Muir accepted an invitation to participate in this installment of Inside Philomath and answered five questions.
Q: You have a hand in so many endeavors here in town. What’s behind the development of your work ethic?
A: My Grandma and Grandpa Muir were extremely hard-working and being the oldest grandson, I got to spend a lot of time with them. My Grandpa also had multiple businesses he juggled throughout his life including Timber Supply and BAMM Hardware in town. My Grandma Opal always took the time to teach me things and paid me for the work I did. She was the driving force behind me learning the value of a dollar and how to save one. She helped me open my first bank account and gave me my first loan (plus interest, of course) to start my first business. Beyond high school she was the one that dialed the number to Oregon State University admissions and made me sit down and enroll right then. She is 92 now and still can give me a run for my money and I love her very much for what she did for me.
Besides learning how to make and save money, my work ethic was also molded from the coaches I had the pleasure of playing for during my high school career — Woody Bennett, Dave Garvin, Terry Stephenson, Terry Thomas, Norm Robinson, CA Rath, Duke Oliver and Steve Bennett. They were amazing mentors and I didn’t like all of them but I respected all of them and what they sacrificed to make us the best student athletes they could. It was that experience that made me want to start coaching following my high school career, in order to give other Philomath kids the experience and opportunities that I was given.
I soon found out you couldn’t make a living being a high school and middle school coach, so I juggled two jobs and going to OSU full-time for five years while still coaching in the fall and winter. After graduating from OSU, I wanted to work as much as possible (outside of football season) so I could one day be able to dedicate the amount of time it takes to be a successful head coach at the high school level and in 2007, I achieved that goal.
Q: How and why did you get into building homes with your brother, Tim?
A: One of the main family values we had growing up was you always take care of family no matter the situation. My parents divorced when I was a freshman in high school and it was a difficult transition for me, but more so for my two younger siblings. So, I always looked out for my brother, TJ, and probably taught him things he didn’t need to know way too early in life!
But TJ’s strengths were typically my weaknesses when it came to working. He could fix or rig virtually anything mechanical and I could not. His ability to operate machinery at a very young age blew me away because I was terrible at it. We had the ability to work together very well because of our varying talents we had along with the work ethic we received growing up from our grandparents and parents.
My mom and stepdad ran a general contracting business specializing in new custom homes in the early ’90s so my brother and I started learning how to pour concrete, frame, roof and side new homes. It wasn’t long and we had a plan to build our own duplex on Quail Glenn Drive. After completing the duplex for ourselves, we thought we should start doing this for a living, so in February 2003 we started Muir Development Inc., together and still work off and on with each other on multiple projects from residential to commercial.
Q: You graduated with Philomath High’s Class of 1994. What’s your favorite memory from those high school years?
A: The friendships I forged in high school have stood the test of time. I am lucky in that there are a lot of people from my high school years still in Philomath and I see them on a regular basis, but even the ones I only get to see once in a while or once every 10 years it’s always like we had talked the day before. The ability to look back on all the fun and dumb things we all did in high school never gets old, especially when no one gets offended when they are getting ribbed about something dumb they did!
My teammates in football were always my closest friends and I would say even today if I needed any help, almost all of them would drop what they were doing and come and help me out, because that is just what you did back then, and it would be the same today.
Q: Do you have any future plans to expand current businesses or start a new one?
A: I am currently building my own “final” home for my family and still have a few homes to finish in my subdivision on North Ninth Street but I’m always looking for ways to make my money work for me.
True Value is always an evolving beast that I try to continue to add to and update as the needs of the community change and grow. We have grown from 5,000 square feet in 2008 when I bought it to over 20,000 square feet now. I would like to add more but need to generate more funds in order to make that happen, so more work for me!
As far as more businesses, I’m already involved in four in Philomath, unless something falls in my lap or my son decides to do something, I am planning to stick to only four.
Q: What do you do for fun when you have time away from your daily routine?
A: Once I was no longer the head football coach, I was able to make my family my top priority, so my wife and I decided to buy a motorhome and started traveling to national parks throughout the western United States. We’ve traveled to Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Mount Rushmore, Grand Canyon, Arches, the Four Corners, Canyonlands, Zion and have two trips planned this year. Over spring break we are headed to Zion, Bryce Canyon and back to the Moab. Over the summer, we will be traveling to see my former defensive coordinator, Will Baldwin, in Texas then head down to Big Bend National Park. On the way home we will hit the Petrified Forest National Park as well.
I am a man of routine and will work many hours and many days in a row, but I always find a way to schedule time off to enjoy time with my family and friends sometimes often for a week at a time, but this is the only way I can disconnect from everything in order to truly relax and not worry about what is happening at home or work.
Inside Philomath: Pastor Jeremy Lucke
Ten years ago, Jeremy Lucke’s life journey took him from a big city in Florida to a small town in Oregon. Lucke had been a well-traveled pastor over the years in various locations around the country but with a wife, child and another little one on the way, the idea of settling down hit the…
Inside Philomath: City volunteer Rose Bricker
Philomath resident Rose Bricker has become a familiar face and voice around the community through her involvement with city committees and various activities. A 37-year-old state employee with the Department of Human Services, Bricker’s city-level volunteer involvement includes the Park Advisory Board and Inclusivity Committee. Going on six years as a Philomath resident, she’s originally…
Inside Philomath: High school Assistant Coach Trey Ecker
A graduate with Philomath High School’s Class of 2015, Trey Ecker enjoyed competing in athletics with the Warriors and proved to be a standout in football and basketball. He went on to play collegiately at College of the Redwoods in Eureka, California, and Linn-Benton Community College in Albany. Nowadays, the 25-year-old Ecker works as a…
Inside Philomath: Frolic & Rodeo’s Leanna Buck
A longtime member of the Philomath Frolic & Rodeo’s board of directors and a former rodeo queen and competitor, Leanna Buck has long been a familiar face each July in the local rodeo arena. Rodeoing is a part of life for Buck and it continues with her son’s involvement in the arena. A 1995 Philomath…
Inside Philomath: High school principal Mark Henderson
Accepting the job in April and working his first day in July, Philomath High Principal Mark Henderson entered this school year as one of the biggest personnel changes within the school district. Henderson joined Philomath’s administrative team after serving as assistant principal and athletic director at Crescent Valley High School in Corvallis. He took over…