August 1, 2023
Greetings Everyone,
We passed a milestone in mid-July: we marked three years of post-Covid Hometown Helena. The Covid outbreak in March of 2020 forced a suspension of Hometown Helena, and may have forced Ron Mercer and Jim Cottrill into an early retirement. People in town, however, were not willing to see this community gathering suspended permanently; and a group began to discuss how to continue this great tradition during and after the pandemic. In addition, we thought this might be an opportunity to attempt to widen the audience, to reach people with children at home, or who have other situations that make it hard for them to physically be somewhere at 7 am. The lynchpin was Ali Mandell at Anderson-ZurMuehlen, Inc. offering to ask the company to allow us to use their Zoom platform for our Hometown Helena meetings. Ali and the folks at AZ agreed to 'host’ Hometown and we’ve been up and running ever since. Ali has taken other employment, and AZ was acquired by Pinion Global, Inc. But we have continued to use the original Zoom we started with in 2020. Many thanks to Ali and the folks at AZ, now Pinion Global, for their great help. You’ll recall we started with Zoom only, every two weeks. We’ve come a long way since then. Thanks to the fine folks at the Montana Club, and Mr. John Leaf, we’re all the way back to where we once were: meeting weekly on the 6th floor of the Montana Club. Along the way we recruited Peter Strauss and Haley McKnight to join the planning group. The rest of the group is listed at the end of this email. I must say, all of these individuals have been wonderful to work with the last three years. They are competent, positive, optimistic people. They do what they say they will do. That makes it easy and fun. It makes the rough road smooth.
We have somewhat of an open week, so we thought we would take some time Thursday for an ‘open discussion.’ We ought to have ample time for introductions, announcements, comments on any and all topics of interest to Helena. Also, your Hometown Helena Team would appreciate any feedback you may have for us. How have we been doing the last three years? What can we do to improve? What other topics and guests should we be thinking about? Please give this some thought and we’ll welcome your comments and ideas this week.
Meanwhile, we have reached out to the gentleman who has purchased the St. John’s building. He may be able to join us this week for a preview of what the future might have in store for that great old building. I just received and email saying Mr. Mark Webber will be able to attend Hometown this week (Thanks Rick Hays). There seemed to be a lot of interest last week when Emily McVey informed us of the new situation at the St. John’s building, so we followed up right away.
Looking forward to seeing you this week, in person on the 6th floor of the Montana Club, or via the technology of the Zoom. Either way OK.
Jim Smith
406-949-1002
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