Message from our President
Greetings and Happy New Year from your Santa Rosa County Chamber of Commerce! What an honor it is for me to lead the best group of board volunteers a President could ask for in 2012. Our President last year, Ron Fields, has retired from Pen Air Federal Credit Union and stepped down from his Chamber board position as well. I want to extend my most sincere thank you to Ron for his exceptional leadership last year. He has certainly given me some very large shoes to fill! Please join me in wishing Ron and his family the best this year.
We also say a big thank you to our departing board members for their years of service: Nicole Gislason, Debra Russell, Ferd Salomon, and Tina Wilson. It was a pleasure to serve with you and we're not going to let you stray too far from us! I also want to thank former Whiting C.O. Captain Pete Hall for his two years of service to our board. What a great partnership we have with our Chamber and Whiting Field! We welcome Whiting's new C.O. Captain Matthew Coughlin and look forward to continuing Whiting's representation on our Chamber Board.
Joining Captain Coughlin as new board members are Bruce Baker, Mary Bishop, Claire Bockwith, Claude Duvall, Rhett Fendley, Jason Kimbrell and Amy Wilks. Thank you for your commitment to serve in leadership to the Santa Rosa County Chamber. We also have a new Executive Committee with Tracy Allen as Vice-President, Abby Wiggins as Treasurer, Margarita Vazquez as Secretary, and Larry Strain as Immediate Past President. This is Larry's third tour of duty as "Immediate Past President" and only in Santa Rosa County could you have Larry serve three times as Past President but only twice as President!
Thank you also to our Ambassadors who are so much the face of the Chamber to our new members! I want to offer a special thank you to our 2011 Committee and Events Chairs, without your leadership there's no way we could pull off all our chamber events. Our Christmas Parade last month was a HUGE success, thank you Connie Clark and team. Thanks to Ken Ponsell for handling our Holiday Lighted Boat Parade, not one boat sank! A very special thanks to Joe Lewis who brought BonfireJam to our community two years ago and provided an opportunity for our chamber to get involved. It's always special when you have a hometown guy who leaves, becomes successful, then brings something of value back to his local community. Because of Joe's commitment to partner with our chamber, we're able to bring an additional source of revenue and have a blast doing it!
January is such a big month for your Chamber and this year our banquet is extra special. It is the 75th Anniversary Leadership Awards and Installation Banquet. There will be a lot of special surprises at this year's banquet, so get your ticket today at the chamber website. I look forward to seeing you there and even more forward to serving as your President this year!
Dave Cobb
2011 President
