Greater Valley Chamber of Commerce Breakfast Club
On Monday, I wrote about a great start to the week with Nick Tarasovic's completion of the Tri-Challenge, and we're ending the week on a high note as well. This morning the Greater Valley Chamber of Commerce hosted one of their regular Breakfast Club sessions with Jay Holm, President of Iroquois Pipeline Operating Company, as the guest speaker. The Chamber did it's always outstanding job of presenting Anniversary Breakfast Club Salutes to DiMatteo Group, Brownson Country Club and Advanced Decisions for their significant anniversaries in business before Jay took the floor.
Jay's presentation was especially relevant in light of the recent pipeline explosion in California. I think Jay did an exceptional job in setting everyone at ease as he explained all of the safety procedures built into the Iroquois operations. He also laid out a very strong case for natural gas as the "bridge" green energy solution as the country moves forward in solving our country's energy issues. He also gave a great view of the company's business growth and its business philosophy including their commitment to the community. Jay and Iroquois have won just about every award that Valley United Way has to give. If you look through our website, you will see Iroquois Gas and its employees mentioned in every area of the site. Certainly, their campaigns are the very best, but when you look closer, you will also see their involvement with all of the hands-on projects that we take on. So, I want to thank Jay and everyone at Iroquois for Jay's kind comments this morning - and for their years of demonstrating what corporate citizenship really looks like!!
By the way, if you want to see the video that Jay alluded to, click here.
Leadership Greater Valley
We also started a new year for Leadership Greater Valley last night. We have 19 people enrolled this year, and we're looking forward to another fantastic year. last night's session was on leadership. Next week we will be taking the Valley Heritage History Tour of the Valley, and I am looking forward to getting to know each of our participants during the course of the tour.
A feel good story for the week
And finally, we had another one of those feel good stories that we don't often have a chance to talk about. For as long as I have been here, we have had a quiet, but effective program that allows businesses and individuals to donate items to non-profit agencies that might have a need for them. We have the nonprofits linked electronically, so that we can alert them when something becomes available.
We recently had one of those lucky occasions when a need and a donation coincided. I had a call from a family looking for a wheelchair. A family members health had deteriorated and now needed to move to a wheelchair for mobility. I had to tell the caller that we did not have one available, but I would keep the name in case something came up. Incredibly, about 15 minutes later, Kathy Barrios from Freedom Disability in Shelton called to say that they had a few items including a wheelchair that were looking to donate! A quick call back to the family looking for the chair, and we soon had a match.
What makes the story even better is that the family that received the wheelchair now wants to donate a tricycle for the disabled designed for someone with paralysis from the knees down. We're working to find a match for that as we speak.
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