For the past 12 months, I have served as the Newton Area Chamber of Commerce’s president of the board of directors.
I can tell you that all of the good that we had this year was because of our executive director Emily Pugh, and certainly not me. At last week’s chamber meeting, we celebrated our successes over the past year and looked forward to the future.
Let me tell you a little b
it about the chamber if you don’t know much about it. The Newton Chamber of Commerce was incorporated in 1952, and it is a non-profit organization committed to promoting the social, economic, commercial, and industrial welfare of the citizens of the town of Newton and surrounding areas.
The chamber, just like Union and Decatur, serves as a cheerleader for our community by promoting our community through events, marketing, serving and shining a spotlight on everything that’s good in our town. Everyone knows about Loose Caboose, but there’s much more to it than that one festival.
We took time to say thank you to our hard-working educators with our back-to-school breakfast. We helped celebrate numerous business grand openings, open houses and ribbon cuttings. We provided a safe place for trick-or-treating on Halloween.
We sponsored the annual Christmas parade and the Christmas in Newton events including Whistlestop Marketplace. However, we can’t take any credit for the snow that made our event especially bright this year. Yesterday, the chamber had our second picnicking in the park event.
We unveiled our three-minute documentary on historic Newton. I hope you had a chance to view that video in the back before we began this evening. And Emily has been especially busy this year welcoming visitors to our community by showing them the diorama of Grierson’s Raid on Newton Station. You wouldn’t believe how many visitors have been through this depot over the past year.
This is just a small sample of what we’ve done this year. I don’t have time to list it all, and you can refer to your program, which has a list of additional things that we’ve done.
I’d like to thank my fellow board members for their hard work over the last year and I wish the best to those who will be serving this year.
If you are not a member of the Newton Chamber, Decatur Chamber, Union Chamber or Hickory Chamber, I’d encourage you to get involved. When we come together for the good of our community, good things will happen.
Contact Brent at bmaze@-newtoncountyappeal.com.
