Scott Swanson
Sweet Home Chamber of Commerce board members met with the public virtually on Thursday, Feb. 26, to provide an update on chamber leadership and its goals.
The event, which was streamed live from the chamber office Thursday evening, included self introductions by current board members, led by President George Medellin, who emceed the event.
He was joined by Melody Jordan, who Medellin introduced midway through the event as the chamber’s new executive director.
Jordan, he said, “came on last year and not only helped keep the doors open to the chamber, but managed to continue building relationships with businesses and other community organizations and also increased our presence online.”
Jordan said the increased responsibility is “really exciting.”
She listed some of the chamber’s recent progress, including redefinition of “our pillars” such as membership benefits and services that include increasing online visiblity, free help with website and Facebook setup, and more.
“In today’s increasingly virtual world, this is really important and we want Sweet Home to stand out,” she said.
The chamber has advocated for local businesses increasing community engagement, she said.
“We’ve done this in fun ways,” she added, citing the Bigfoot sighting and Localopoly activities designed to bring residents into businesses.
She said the chamber also worked with its counterparts in Lebanon and Albany in December to distribute state COVID relief money to deserving businesses.
“Most of those businesses received up to $13,000 in grants,” Jordan said.
Several board members have been working to beef up Sweet Home’s Sportsman’s Holiday Court program and there are plans to incorporate more “distinguished leadership training into that,” she said.
The chamber is working to bring more leadership training into the community as well, she said.
The chamber has also focused on increasing its tourism draw, “reorganizing the Visitors Center to make it more cozy and welcoming,” Jordan said, adding that she plans to offer gifts and sourvenirs from local vendors.
Jordan said she’s lived in “a lot of zip codes,” but noted she spent her “formative years” in Clovis, Calif., which “reminds me of Sweet Home.”
Clovis is home to the Clovis Rodeo, near Fresno State University and home to traditions such as Big Hat Days, she noted.
“I grew up begging begging my mother for treats from vendors at famers markets while my dad’s country band performed, and my grandparents line danced with the Elks Lodge chapter,” she said.
She spent several years in the “big city,” she said.
“I do enjoy fond memories of singing at the Whiskey a Go-Go (the oldest live music venue still operating on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, Calif.) and highlighting Grizzly Adams’ hair, and getting into a fender- bender with a ‘Twilight’ star.
“But I really did crave having my roots planted in the rich soil of a real community.
“I didn’t know what God had planned for me when He led me here to East Linn County, but I can truly say this is home. And this Board of Directors has worked so hard to build this organization and get it pointed in the right direction.
I’m so honored and so thankful to play a part to help Sweet Home be all it can be.”
Medellin introduced the chamber’s new vision and goals, formulated by the Board of Directors in a session in December with Robert Killen of the Small Business Development Center in Lane County.
The chamber’s vision, he said, is: “Sweet Home celebrates a thriving business community that fosters prosperity and well-being for all.”
Its mission is to enhance our community by strengthening local business through service, connection, promotion and advocacy.”
“How we want to do this, or the character we want to convey is stewardship, integrity, encouragement, graciousness and welcome. These are big ideas,” Medellin said. “It’s going to take focus and individual effort to make this happen.”
Medellin led off a round of self-introductions by board members, noting that he personally moved to Sweet Home, his wife’s home town, just over four years ago from Seattle.
He said he has seen Highway 20 as “a road of gold” in the potential value it could bring to the town.
He said that there are many organizations “doing good things in the community” and that motivated him to get involved in the chamber, which was in a rebuilding process at the time.
Director Christy Duncan, who works in development for the Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital Foundation, said she has been involved with the chamber for a year but has lived in Sweet Home for much of her life.
Duncan’s parents were longtime owners of The New Era and although she left town, “like a lot of young adults,” when she graduated from high school, she returned to raise her family in Sweet Home.
“It’s a great small town to raise a family in,” she said. “I love Sweet Home. I live here, I shop here, I fellowship here.”
She noted that some local businesses are run by second- or third-generation owners.
“I went to school with a lot of the kids that are now running those businesses. That’s why I invest my time in the chamber. Sweet Home really matters to me.
“The quote is true that ‘only by giving are you able to receive more than you already have’.”
Board member Mark Opperman, pastor of Hope Church in Sweet Home, serves as secretary/treasurer for the chamber. He said he’s lived in Sweet Home for a little over three years and enjoys it.
Shortly after he moved to town, Medellin invited Opperman to get involved in the chamber.
Opperman said his goal in accepting the invitation was “to meet a lot of people, get to know the community, really figure out what is our place here and all of that.
“That has helped tremendously, to be part of the chamber. I find those I work with care a lot about the community. George’s vision of gold, it’s been compelling. There’s a lot of value here. The people are amazing.
“Everybody can contribute something – even myself,” he added, noting that he has been able to help the chamber with his knowledge of financial reports and taxes has been a way for him to contribute.
Board Member Marlene Peterson has been a board member for 2½ years. Now a business advisor and instructor for the Linn-Benton Community College Small Business Development Center, Peterson owned her own gourmet foods manufacturing business in the area for 20 years.
“When my husband and I moved into this area in 1993, Sweet Home was still reeling from the loss of so much of the timber industry,” Peterson said. “Even then I could see the underlying charm and a great amount of potential for what the community could become and how they could rise out of that disaster.
“Small business has always been a passion of mine. I understand, having been a small business owner, what the challenges are. We need all the help and and all of the support we can get.”
She said being a board member gave her an opportunity to be part of an organization “whose sole purpose was to promote and support the small business community in Sweet Home.
“As I look at our community now in 2021, I see a lot of new life and I see growing enthusiasm and a belief that we actually can build a better community,” she said, adding that she’s eager to put her experience and knowledge to work to serve the community.
Board Member Paula Newman introduced herself as a 38-year veteran of the “pizza industry” whose first introduction to Sweet Home was when she and her husband would bring employees from Salem and Central Oregon Figaro’s stores to Foster Lake for staff celebrations.
“Over the years, as we interviewed staff for our Figaro’s, we figured out that the kids from Sweet Home area and other rural communities were hard-working kids. When I’d interview them and heard that they’d bucked hay and worked with horses, those were the kids that we wanted to hire.”
She said she and her husband Jim decided to sell their Salem stores and focus on rural markets, moving to Lebanon in 2015 where they opened Schmizza Public House.
Newman, who’s also very active in the Lebanon chamber, said she’s been on the Sweet Home chamber board for two years.
“The reason why I’m on the board is because I believe that when you add structure to something and truly live your purpose and passions and values as an organization, especially as an employer, it creates an atmosphere where kids can find their strengths and learn great work skills and customer service and that could be a beginning that could set them on the path to success in their further journey in employment,” Newman said.
“I know that in employment, providing structure for employees is really important. I really wanted to be part of that in this community.”
Board Member Karla Hogan, a Realtor with Apple Tree Team of the HomeSmart Realty Group, is serving on the board for the second time, she said, after an earlier stint in the early 2000s. She also serves as a new board member with the Sweet Home Foundation.
Her “love of Sweet Home was instilled at an early age,” Hogan said.
A native of Sweet Home whose mother, LaDonna Chafin, was owner of Rogers Floral and served on the chamber board as well, Hogan observed that “it seems very natural for me and my family to do the same things and it’s just kind of a way of life for us now.”
She said that, in addition to the traditional activities she’s enjoyed since childhood, such as Sportsman’s Holiday, the Logger Olympics, the fireworks over Foster Lake, the parades and the Oregon Jamboree, she also is excited by new activities, such as “the ability to ride side-by-sides through town – that’s a really unique thing” and the Cut the Gut cruise-in held last summer.
She said she is “most passionate” about Sweet Home’s history, events, activities and traditions.
“I’m all about traditions,” she said. “I like to see myself as kind of a keeper and I want to see that those traditions and things that make Sweet Home so wonderful continue on and that they don’t just disappear with the times.”
Board Member Shelly Tack Larson introduced herself as a “lifelong Sweet Home kid” who may be best known locally for the chocolates she makes and passes out at Christmas time.
Larson, whose family has been heavily involved in the logging community, said the Tacks have always been “very supportive of the Sweet Home community and we’re just very proud that this is where we’re from.”
“We really do have the best community I’ve ever seen. People in Sweet Home take care of each other and we make sure that people get the things they need and we help those who can’t get everything they need to have done in their lives to make themselves prosper and to make their lives successful,” such as making sure local kids and schools “have the tools they need,” Larson said.
“Sweet Home has really defined who I am,” she said, noting that the community’s reach extends around the world. “I’ve always been very proud of being here.”
“I’ve traveled a lot and I’ve been many places and I’ve never been anywhere where there wasn’t someone who knew somebody in Sweet Home.
“We do have a very tiny town but we really do get to touch the world. ”
She said she’s passionate about getting the word out about what’s happening in Sweet Home and making sure “that this is a place people can aways say they are proud to be from.”
Board Member Cassie Ritchie, introduced herself as a nearly lifelong resident of Sweet Home who is a volunteer firefighter/EMT, mother of five children ranging from kindergarten to a senior in high school, owner of Sweet Things Boutique on Main Street, and a longtime volunteer at the Oregon Jamboree – “involved in some shape or form every year since it started.”
“I would love to see Downtown come back to life, to see empty buildings filled with thriving small businesses. I can see it in my mind – shops, restaurants and people, both local and out-of-towners, strolling the sidewalks, visiting those businesses.
“I have a heart fo this community and I tend to be drawn to new opportunities to help it. I think that is why I was led to the chamber.”
Ritchie said she has enjoyed local traditions and events since childhood and has been involved in many, such as the Jamboree – “all memories I treasure, memories I want to ensure we continue to create for future generations,” which, she added, was another reason why she got involved with the chamber board.
“I want to see my hometown and its businesses and its people thrive.”