Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
The Sweet Home Chamber of Commerce?s 62nd annual awards banquet was quite a shindig. Lots of awards to very deserving folks. Good food. Good times. Good prizes, though I didn?t win any.
You know, it?s quite an achievement just to have 62 of these things in a town the size of Sweet Home. You realize, of course, that Sweet Home is about twice the size it was 50 years ago (see the history column on the far right of this page). And they held the event 12 years before that…
This was my second year at the Sweet Home Chamber of Commerce?s annual awards banquet, a fact that kind of falls into the ?Now it can be told? category.
Last year, only three people knew my wife Miriam and I were there. One was kind of a friend of a friend at that time ? we?d just met. The others were Alex and Debbie Paul, former owners of The New Era, and the ones who told us we really should come to the awards banquet.
?You?ll get a good idea of what Sweet Home is all about,? they promised.
And they were right.
We saw utter strangers get called out of the crowd to be honored for their community involvement and we were struck by the level of commitment that was evident in the very fact that we were sitting in the Jim Riggs Community Center, which was largely the result of volunteer effort.
What made the evening especially fun and challenging was that we had to stay incognito. We didn?t even have seating assignments.
The Pauls wanted us there, but since nothing had been nailed down, officially, in the transfer of this newspaper from them to us, they wanted to keep things hush-hush. Understandable, but that didn?t make it easy to be at this banquet.
Carla Claasen, chamber manager, knew the Pauls had purchased an extra pair of tickets but she didn?t know whom they were for. She knew we were strangers and that was about it.
Since we couldn?t let on that we knew the Pauls, that limited us to our single other acquaintance in the room. We ended up finding seats near our friend at what turned out to be the Samaritan Health table. All good so far, until we glanced down the table and locked in on ? Alex and Debbie sitting 15 feet away. (Debbie?s on the board of Lebanon Community Hospital, so hence the connection.)
Deciding to plunge ahead and act normal, I began talking with the woman sitting next to me. Turned out she was Christy Duncan, daughter of former New Era Publisher Dave Cooper, who now works for the hospital foundation. The friendly guy across the table was Brad Canfield, the hospital public relations guy, who told me he?d previously been a reporter for the Lebanon Express newspaper.
Ahem. A really nice choice of seating. Here we were, in the midst of journalists and former journalists. And they were curious.
Miriam and I began to sweat a little, at least mentally, as our new friends began asking us the whys and wherefores of our presence there.
We?d already agreed we wouldn?t lie, but we certainly weren?t volunteering any information. I did acknowledge that I?d been a journalist, as I recall, but we said we were looking into relocating ?and trying something new? and thought we?d come to the banquet to see what kind of community Sweet Home was. I thought I saw Christy eyeing me thoughtfully. And every time Brad opened his mouth, I?d steer the conversation away from where I didn?t want to go.
Alex and Debbie ignored us for the most part. They looked a little nervous, but Alex played the part to the hilt, loudly introducing himself to me. Later, as I hung out next to the punch bowl, he sidled up to ask me how things were going (since he?d already introduced himself, of course). He was loving it, but I was just trying to make sure I didn?t blow the secret.
So it ended up being a little more of a cloak-and-dagger experience than we?d planned, but that made it all the more memorable. And made this year?s event a lot less pressurized.
Amazing how much more fun it is when you know a few folks.