ESSEX HAPPENINGS, FRIDAY JUNE 11, 2010
Salem Rotary Club Scholarship Awards Event
In my posting to this site on Tuesday, I made an assumption that proved to be false. I indicated in the information that I provided about the Salem Rotary Scholarship event that the meeting was held in East India Hall due to the generosity of the Peabody Essex Museum. It was quite true that the event was held at the Peabody Essex Museum, but the wonderful East India Marine Hall was provided through the generosity of the Historic Hawthorne Hotel. The Hawthorne Hotel has a relationship with the Museum to provide catering services and as part of that annual contract the Hawthorne is allowed to use East India Hall once each year for their purposes. The Hawthorne, under the present management team, has long has been known for their generosity to the community and elected to use its one time annual use of the famous museum hall to provide the wonderful setting for this important Salem Rotary event. The setting on Tuesday was perfect and I am reasonably certain that the young men and woman and their parents who received awards that day found the setting to be most memorable. For that important memory we at Salem Rotary Club have the Hawthorne Hotel to thank for their generosity. The event was spectacular and the Rotary Club and all of its volunteers worked diligently to be sure that the event and the setting were perfect, but it is important the thank, principal owner, Michael Harrington and General Manager Julie Leaderhaus of the Hawthorne Hotel for their generosity and their usual impeccable service that day and every other day that we avail ourselves of their services. I had the good fortune to serve on the scholarship committee and it was a real pleasure to be able to share the lunch on Tuesday with the recipients. I sat with a couple of the award recipients and was as impressed with them on the second exposure as I was when I first was involved in the interview process with them.
North Shore Medical Cancer Center Walk
A couple of days ago, I received a most professional mail piece from the North Shore Medical Center/Massachusetts General Hospital that focused on the upcoming Cancer Center Walk. The brochure provided some history on the two-decade-old event and focused on some of the people most connected with the walk. It was most positive to see my old friend and the creator of the event, Chris McCann featured in that material. This year’s walk that will be the 20th in this long term series of fundraising efforts for the local hospital is scheduled to be held on June 20, 2010, and will be conducted that day, rain or shine. If you have not made plans to participate in the walk it is certainly not too late and additional information can be found at www.cancerwalk@partners.org or call for more information at 1-866-296-6900.
I was most involved in this event for a number of years both at my former employer and as a co-chair of the event for the hospital for couple of years. In the last couple of years we did not participate, but as a result of the care we received for my wife during this past year at the new facility on Endicott Street in Danvers, we have made a commitment to Walk 2010 and will be there on June 20, 2010. Marge and I are going to make the 10,000-kilometer walk that morning with many of my old friends at the Salem Five Bank. I hope that some of you who have not participated in this event in the past will consider walking for this important cause. Cancer is such a pervasive disease that it truly does at some time effect all families in some way, and these efforts can help to deal with this matter.
Essex Heritage Nomination Process
Last Tuesday afternoon, a meeting of the Essex Heritage Nominating Committee was held at our main office in Salem. The meeting was managed by out chairperson, Sumner Jones, recently retired Eastern Bank executive. In addition to Sumner the meeting was attended by former Massachusetts State Representative Forester “Tim” Clark, Danvers Attorney Wayne Eisenhower who also represents the Danvers Historical Society, Bruce Whear, President and CEO of Wire for Hire in Salem, and Executive Director Annie Harris and me. The meeting was called to begin the process of identifying a dozen or so potential candidates for the role of Essex Heritage Commissioner to be elected at the Annual Meeting in October 2010. This meeting was scheduled a bit earlier than normal as the summer months are always a difficult time to gather the members of the committee for a meeting. A number of names of individuals who could represents the views of this region were advanced by the group and it will be now be the responsibility of the Essex Heritage staff to make contact with the potential candidates to learn of any interest in joining out list of 150 Commissioners. After that preliminary process is complete a second meeting of the Committee will be held to finalize a list of new Commissioners to be presented to the Annual Meeting in October 2010. We are always interesting in leaders in this region who might have an interest in serving in the role of Commissioner. If any of you know of such a leader of if you might be interested in serving as a Commissioner please let us know of a candidate. We are anxious to continue to develop a list of candidates for the future.
Sumner Jones Elected to Serve as President of the Salem Partnership
Just a couple of hours after we adjourned the Essex Heritage Nominating Committee meeting, Sumner Jones who we spoke about in the previous item in this posting was elected the President of the Salem Partnership. That election was the final item on a busy agenda at the annual meeting of the Salem Partnership at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. This term of service to the Partnership will be Sumner’s second as the President. He served a term as President in the 1990’s and at that time he played an important role in the long term planning effort to get a new updated Superior Court building built on the court campus by the river in Salem. It seems appropriate that he will serve his second term during the time that the new Michael J. Ruane Court House will be completed and dedicated for use.
The 22nd annual meeting was well attended by the numerous members of the Partnership, the elected officials who represent this region and the general public. They were all there to hear a report from the Governor of the Commonwealth, Deval Patrick who provided updates on the work of his administration and the public works projects in Salem currently being supported by state funds. In addition to the report from the Governor we also received reports from Congressman John Tierney, Senator Fred Berry, Representative John Keenan and Salem’s energetic and talented Mayor Kimberly Driscoll. Warm tributes were paid to retiring Partnership Chairman Attorney Joseph Correnti, and President, Attorney George Atkins. The tributes were well deserved as the work that both of these gentlemen did to advance the mission of the Salem Partnership was legendary. Executive Director Patricia Zaido provided a look at the planning for the next year provided a general report on the work of the Partnership over the last year. As always the Partnership has an aggressive work plan for the year ahead and President Jones and Executive Director Zaido will be busy, I was pleased to be asked to attend the meeting as the guest of my former employer, Salem Five Bank. I sat with several members of the bank leadership team, including Senior Vice President John Hall, who like myself is a former President of the Salem Partnership. John is the current President of the Salem Rotary Club, and will be the President of the North Shore Chamber of Commerce next year.
As always we value your comments, questions and observations about the work of Essex Heritage. Please contact me with your thoughts or any questions you may have at www.essexheritage.org. We are always striving to make Essex Heritage work as effectively as possible and your input and suggestions are always welcome. We can always provide more information and better communication, and one of the goals of these postings on Essex happenings is to provide that opportunity. Thank You. Tom Leonard
No comments:
Post a Comment