Notes from Celebrate Corvallis Comments
I’ve got lots of additional material from Wednesday’s Celebrate Corvallis gala that didn’t fit into the G-T’s story — but first, this important and confidential message to Luanne Lawrence, Oregon State University’s VP of university advancement and the emcee for the event:
Luanne, you again rocked! You will return as emcee next year? Right? Please?
With that important bit of business out of the way, here are some additional moments from Celebrate:
– Carlyn Roy of OSU Federal Credit Union sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” a cappella to open the evening — and did it extremely well. That takes guts, and if you don’t believe me, you try it.
– Emcee Lawrence (have I mentioned that she was funny and charming all night?) opened with some remarks about watching another awards show — last weekend’s Golden Globes — with her family, and being astonished at how knowledgeable her 9-year-old son, Ben, was about fashion. After offering detailed descriptions of what his siblings should wear to similar glamorous award shows, Lawrence worked up the nerve to ask Ben what she should wear.
Ben didn’t miss a beat: “I see you in a Meryl Streep modest frock.”
“I stand before you,” Lawrence concluded, “your modest frock of an emcee.”
– One classy touch in this year’s ceremony that seems likely to continue: Each award took the form of an original work of art donated by a local artist.
– One of the running jokes over the years at the ceremony involves a red-and-gold crown that was crafted years ago by Catherine Mater. The idea is that the winner of the Junior First Citizen award is charged with wearing the hat at every social occasion during the year. The joke, of course, is that never happens; the hat pretty much disappears until the next year’s ceremony. This year’s winner of the Junior First Citizen award, Michelle Davis, continued that tradition by showing up at the Thursday meeting of the Rotary Club of Corvallis sans hat.
– One of the nicer lines of the evening came from Chris Vitello, who won Entrepreneur of the Year with his partner, Paul Nash, for their EcNow Tech business, which makes plates and utensils that can be composted. “People ask us, what’s our exit strategy? Our answer is, ‘what’s our staying strategy?’ ” Vitello said he and Nash are committed to keeping the growing business here in the mid-valley.
– The winner of the Robert C. Ingalls Business Person of the Year, Nancy Kneisel of Second Glance, paid tribute to her staff at the downtown clothing store with this charming line: “They teach me to be young and trendy, (even) when I want to wear comfortable shoes.”
– Tim Fitzpatrick of Fitzpatrick Painting, this year’s Business of the Year, found that a common trick for easing stage fright wasn’t doing him much good: “I’ve heard if you picture people naked when you’re speaking, it makes it a little less scary. It’s not really working for me right now.”
– Officials at the Corvallis-Benton Chamber Coalition, the sponsor and organizer of the event, have made one major change to the nomination process for the awards: Instead of opening the nominations late in the year, they’re open now. This should make for a smoother process in gathering information about nominees and getting that information in front of the committees charged with picking winners. To find out more about the nomination process, check out this Web site: celebratecorvallis.com.
Next year’s ceremony is scheduled for Jan. 19, 2011. As the incoming chairman of the board of the Chamber Coalition, I am scheduled to be one of the onstage hosts for the event, which brings me full circle to this question:
Luanne, what are you doing next Jan. 19?
