Speech Transcripts:
Commissioner Brad Abell
[There’s a quote I think is appropriate for this event from] Rabindranath Tagore. He was born in 1861 and died in 1941. He was from India, he was like Gandhi, I guess. And it was:
‘I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and found that life was duty. I acted and found that duty was joy.’
And I think all of you guys sitting in the room tonight have—because you’ve found joy in the duty. And I want to thank you for that. You know, ordinary people doing extraordinary things create miracles. And like Dave was saying, you know, a lot of times you are the miracle in these people’s lives. You know, you’re doing the welfare checks on them, you’re doing those things. And, you know, I thank you—thank you for that.
The other thing I want to leave you with is our County Administrator, Pete Melnick — he talks about red cars. And he asks, ‘How many red cars did you see on the way to work this morning?’ Nobody can tell him. And he said, ‘If I offered you $5 for every red car you saw on the way home tonight, you’d be able to tell me.’
The red cars are the people like you that are out there doing those extraordinary things. And I think it’s important that we recognize you — that’s why we’re here today, is to... You guys are the red cars out there that we need to look for. And I just want to thank you for those things. I just want to thank you.”
Carla Dymant, Director of the Agency on Aging
“Good morning everyone. My name is Carla Dyment; I’m the Director for the Agency on Aging. I just have a couple other things to say. This is one of my favorite days of the year. I get to see so many of you all at once. And there’s a few of you who came and didn’t know other volunteers, and yet you work in the same place on a different day. And so, that’s exciting to see those kinds of connections happen.
I am often at the bird’s eye view, seeing all the numbers and thinking about all the funding and where it’s all going, and you are at the ground level delivering those meals to people. And this last year, that’s been some of my favorite days—is going out with some of you as drivers delivering those meals.
But I have to say, the numbers are sometimes staggering. I think if you imagine all the volunteers in this county, double the size of this room and a little bit more, and that’s what it takes to run this program. And so, over the course of a year, I know that we’re going to hit over probably close to 110,000 meals. Over 80,000 of those will be home-delivered. Those are the kind of numbers that we’re looking at for the last four or five years, and none of that’s possible without each one of you. So, thank you very much.”