Greater Redding Chamber of Commerce Honors Individuals, Businesses at Annual Chamberee

Hundreds of people gathered at Win-River Resort and Casino Friday evening for the annual Greater Redding Chamber of Commerce Chamberee to honor its 2013 award-winners.

The winners were Doreeta Domke, Citizen of the Year; Black Bear Diner, Business of the Year; Randy Denham of SJ Denham Chrysler, Businessperson of the Year; Karen Simmons of Five Star Bank, Volunteer of the Year; and Brittany Nelson of Belfor Property Restoration, Ambassador of the Year.

Below is the full text of each award-presentation speech, courtesy of  the Greater Redding Chamber of Commerce.

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Doreeta “Dee” Domke, Citizen of the Year

Redding Mayor Rick Bosetti presents Doreeta “Dee” Domke with an award for Citizen of the Year. Photo by Kat Domke.

As you drive through Redding this weekend, I’d like you to look around carefully. Drive past Turtle Bay and take a moment to really see it, and the architectural marvel of the Sundial Bridge. Enjoy the graceful palms in front of the courthouse. Look at Mercy Hospital up on the hill; at the YMCA on Court Street. Drive past City Hall over on Cypress and stop to take a close look at the Mayor’s Memorial on its south side. Appreciate the landscape and playground outside the Martin Luther King Center.

Glance over at the offices of KRCR as you pass on Highway 44. We take these things for granted. And yet they either wouldn’t exist or wouldn’t be what they are if not for a series of turning points many years ago – and the way one person responded to those events.

Hindsight is funny. We could call these a series of fortunate events now, because of the good things they brought us. But at the time they must not all have seemed that way.

Nine days before Christmas, in 1931, a baby girl was born to poor dirt farmers in Henryetta, Okla. Had her mother remained healthy, we might never have heard of her – although there might today be a very nice museum complex in Henryetta, Okla.

But in the first turning point, the girl’s mother contracted tuberculosis and needed to be in a dryer climate. Like so many in Oklahoma during those years, the family moved out to California.

The little girl had already developed survival skills. She had been sick herself, and spent two months in a hospital alone at age 6. She’d learned that dressing for school meant volunteering to buy the family’s flour – because the flour sack she picked out would be the one made into her school dress. She’d never owned shoes.

In California, she earned enough money for shoes by picking fruit in Clovis. But she found more trouble and heartache. Her mother died of TB, and in a series of events she went to live with her aunt, in Long Beach. This would prove a turning point, as well.

Her aunt died when she was 17, and she finished out high school sleeping on a friend’s sun porch. Then another turning point. When she showed up to apply for a bank job right out of high school, the bank managers were interviewing college students for teller jobs. They assumed she was one, and they hired her.

That’s where she met and befriended another young lady named Billie. Billie had a brother she was very, very proud of. She talked about him ad naseum, and insisted on setting them up. He showed up for their blind date, 6 feet tall and dashing, driving a black convertible. Recently out of the service, where he was a sergeant, he now worked for the California Department of Forestry in San Bernardino. So… 6 feet tall, war hero, firefighter, driving a black convertible. Yeah. I believe the word is “smitten”.

One day, after it became clear where their somewhat long distance relationship was headed, he showed up with a ring. But it took one final turning point to make all those things happen that now make Redding a more liveable place.

We laugh at the idea of someone from the government being “here to help.” But whoever offered the promotion to the CDF office in Redding could not have imagined what good he was doing for all of us.

While her husband went to work for CDF, she took a job working for an insurance adjuster, where she crossed paths with the  McConnell’s, who owned the adjuster’s office building and were also major investors in the local TV station. That led, in turn, to a job as the secretary at Channel 7.

She would spend the next 37 years there – working up quickly to Program Director and serving as the station’s No. 2 executive for several decades before taking over as General Manager from 1990 to 1995.

Ross, the middle of her three children, remembers a childhood intertwined with television. It was a small operation, and she had her hands in all of it. Someone had to star in those local commercials. “We grew up on camera eating McColl’s ice cream,” Ross says now. Perhaps her best-known role was as the pitchwoman for First Federal Savings and Loan.

Here’s something you probably didn’t know. Many years later, she was at an affiliate convention, where the networks bring in the stars to mix and mingle with station execs, when Tom Hanks – yes, that Tom Hanks – spotted HER. Hanks, as many of you know, grew up in the North State. He was clearly excited to be meeting her in person. “I grew up as a kid watching you do First Federal Savings and Loan commercials!” he told her.

“She was Tom Hanks’ first movie star,” says Patsy Smullin, who now heads the family company, California Oregon Broadcasting Inc., that owned KRCR for much of our honoree’s career.

Smullin remembers having the same feeling. “She looked like Doris Day,” she says. “I was the same as Tom Hanks – she was my hero. There weren’t a lot of TV stations, and there weren’t a lot of beautiful women on staff.”

Apparently, even Bing Crosby fell under her spell. One night during a storm, he stopped at the station to ask help getting his pilot the weather report. She left such an impression that he returned on his next visit with a box of donuts and coffee for her, and a signed copy of his White Christmas album.

She was far more than a beautiful face on camera, of course. Smullin points out that to this day, relatively few women hold top positions in station management. When she finally retired in 1995, California Oregon Broadcasting sold KRCR. She was the ultimate franchise player.

Smullin explains this frankly: “The only reason we still don’t own it is because (she) retired.”

The professional role opened doors for what was clearly an equal if not greater passion: Building up the community.

It would be unfair to call this a second career, because she really was doing it throughout her first career, too. But after retiring, that boundless energy had to go somewhere.

She served on the initial Steering (slash) Campaign Committee for Turtle Bay, and later became co-chair of the Capital Campaign that raised $63 million to build the Exploration Park. She also served on the McConnell Foundation’s board when it gave $23 million to build the Sundial Bridge. In fact, she still has the napkin on which Santiago Calitrava sketched his concept while eating dinner at her house.

Here’s a partial list of her contributions and involvements over the year – and trust me, this is VERY partial:

– Helping save those palm trees in front of the courthouse, soon after she first came to town.

– Member of the committee that developed Redding’s general plan, adopted in 2000.

– Head of fundraising for United Way for approximately two decades.

– Mercy Medical Center advisory board for about a decade.

– YMCA campaign committee for capital improvement.

– Multiple school activities while her children were growing up, including Boy Scouts, 4-H, Redding swim team, Shasta Youth Symphony, and Shasta High School youth orchestra.

– One of Redding Rotary’s first female members, a board member, and longtime member of the Membership Development committee.

– Chair of the committee to raise funds for the Mayor’s Memorial at City Hall.

– Chair of the Salvation Army Bell Ringers Committee for many years.

– Active in the early literacy program for young children for eight years.

– Chair of the landscape and playground development project at the Martin Luther King Center.

– Member of the Mercy Foundation North Board, where she helped successfully close the ER/ICU campaign and raised funds for expansion of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

– Board member of Turtle Bay Exploration Park, and chair of the Development Committee and annual auction.

– Chair of the Sundial Bridge First Crossing Event in 2004.

– Recently raised $26,000 for One Safe Place through her participation in Dancing with the Stars Shasta County Style.

She and her husband, Don, had figured they’d be here for four or five years before moving on to the next big thing. Since they didn’t do that, he eventually retired in 1988 as deputy director of the Sierra Cascade Region right here. When he did, he was the longest-serving employee in the history of CDF with 45 years of service. That final year, he was named the agency’s most outstanding employee. Don passed away in November, but his gentle touch and dedication to his family and community is in everything we’re celebrating tonight.

We ARE very fortunate to have with us tonight a great contingent of the family. All three of their children, Denice Seals and her husband David; Ross Domke and his wife Janet; and Kelley Forseth, are here. Also with us are grandsons Joshua Domke and his wife Kat, Andrew Kidd and his wife Cristy, sister Betty Smith and her husband Herb, brother Hal Donathan and wife Marcie, and Don Lohman – “Papa Don” – whose wife, Billie was the other Don’s sister – the one that first introduced the couple more than 60 years ago.

Altogether, she has 10 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

Who is this amazing woman? Well, I don’t mean the name. I figure most of you have guessed that by now. But who is she, really? I think Judy Salter best described her with the word kaleidoscope. Certainly, she’s a prodigious fundraiser for the things she believes in.

“You don’t say ‘no’ to (her),” is how Barbara Harrison puts it. And that’s the voice of authority – how many of you have had Barbara pick your pockets for a good cause?

She’s a great cook. Judy says it’s “worth getting sick just to get her soup.” She’s a bridge player, a golfer, a world traveler. The little girl who went to school in an altered flour sack grew up to love bright clothes and big, bright watches.

She is cheerful, compassionate, fair and loyal. She is fierce when it comes to her love of family. She’s uncompromising in her standards and possesses phenomenal willpower. She’s generous and gracious.

She’s the kind of person this award was created for – someone who has made herself of enormous use to her community. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine how much poorer we’d be if not for the series of events that brought her to us, and the love of Redding and the north state that kept her here.

When you think of all those little turning points – that her mother should fall ill, that she’d need to move to Long Beach to live with her aunt, that a bank manager happened to schedule a particular recruitment event on a particular day, that a state bureaucrat needed a man like Don Domke in Redding, it’s a little frightening.

How easily we could have missed out.

But in the end, hers is not a story of chance at all. It’s a story of a woman with grit, determination and boundless optimism – the only kind of person who could have turned hardship into opportunity at every turn, and could have changed the course of a community in the process.

It is my great privilege to introduce you to the 2013 Citizen of the Year, a woman who has always seen us as something even better and then made that vision happen, Doreeta “Dee” Domke.

Greater Redding Chamber of Commerce award-presentation speech

Randy Denham, Business Person of the Year

Randy Denham accepted his Redding Chamber of Commerce award Friday night for Business Person of the year. Photo by Kat Domke.

2013 Businessperson of the Year Our 2013 Businessperson of the Year was born and raised in Redding and started working in the family business when he was 8 years old. A multi-talented athlete, he was a starting player on basketball teams for both Shasta High School and Shasta College.

During the summer he played fast-pitch softball, both during college and for many years after graduation, and it was at one of the Redding softball games in the summer of 1972 that he met his future bride, to whom he has now been married for 40 years. (At 5’-3” tall, she is exactly one foot shorter than he.) After graduating from Shasta College, our businessperson moved to the Bay Area to complete his Bachelor of Science degree in Business, where he again displayed his athletic ability by becoming the number one bowler on the San Jose State University Bowling Team. On one of his notable golf trips, he played in the Bob Hope Classic Golf Tournament in the foursome right in front of the Presidents of the United States group, and was seated at dinner next to Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra and Gerald Ford. Not bad dinner partners.

Since taking over management of the family business from his father in 1974, he has continued to expand the enterprise and provide jobs for more and more citizens of Redding. Although the business currently has 68 employees, it operates more like a large family, because our businessperson treats them all like members of his family.

Many of the employees have been a member of his ‘family’ for 20 years or more. Although still very active in the daily operations of the business, our businessperson has proudly groomed a “next generation” for the company, his eldest son, Ryan. As the third generation to operate this successful business, Ryan now holds the title of General Manager. Our recipient is equally proud of younger son, Trevor, who served his country during “Operation Enduring Freedom in the Middle East” and returned home to become a police officer for the City of Redding.

Our businessperson recently brought positive statewide attention to Redding when he was voted Chairman of the Board for the California New Car Dealers Association, a most prestigious position. He has been an active member of the Shasta College Foundation Board, the Miramontes Foundation Board of Directors, the Redding Rotary Club, the First Baptist Church, the Restoration Enterprises Board, and the Mercy Hospital Advisory Board.

Each year he sponsors the “Top of the State” Golf Tournament, which raises $20,000 annually for youth scholarships. He generously donates to many Redding events, including: Taste of Redding, Turkey Trot, Redding Youth Soccer, Turtle Bay Exploration Park, Redding Police K9 Operations, Northstate Symphony, Redding Special Olympics, Good News Rescue Mission, March of Dimes, Mercy Foundation and many Chamber events and scholarship programs.

His company SJ Denham Chrysler Jeep and Tire Center has been a member of the Redding Chamber for 23 years.

In brief, our recipient tonight is the sort of man that helps make our town a great community.

Please give a warm round of applause for our 2013 Businessperson of the Year. From S.J. Denham Chrysler, please welcome Mr. Randy Denham!

Greater Redding Chamber of Commerce award-presentation speech 

Black Bear Diner, Business of the Year

From Black Bear Diner website.

Our story is a tale of two friends and business partners in Mount Shasta, California, in 1995 when an opportunity came up. A landlord friend was unhappy with the operator of a restaurant, and needed someone to come in and take over.

One of the partners had been a veteran of the restaurant industry, having worked at the old Sambo’s chain. He knew operations. He could cook and he could develop a menu. But he couldn’t come up with the concept. So he asked his friend to think of one.

So he went home and dreamt about bears.

Bears were a big part of his life. This was Northern California, after all—Mount Shasta was at the base of a volcano, not far south from the Oregon border. He was a wilderness guide with bears. His sports team in high school was The Bears. The team he coached was called The Bears.

Everything was based on bears. He just couldn’t avoid bears. So he envisioned this restaurant with old-fashioned values, like the Cheers story, where everybody knows your name and you’re actually a person.

He called his friend the next day, and their restaurant was born. The two cobbled together $15,000 apiece and received a lot of help from suppliers and the landlord. Sysco gave them 60-day terms. And they literally put everything into the business—except the jukebox money, that is. Early on, they put jukeboxes in the restaurant that used customers’ quarters. And then every Monday they’d empty the jukebox and split the coins.

The lack of cash didn’t keep the two from opening a second unit when the opportunity came. In the early days, customers of the restaurant kept telling the pair to open one near their town, and one day someone told them to open in Redding. They got that opportunity when Harry’s Restaurant there closed at noon one day. They reeled in a bunch of bears; put pictures on the wall and were open at 5 o’clock the next morning. Total time and budget was five hours and 50 cents.

The pair gained a reputation in Northern California, for the friendly atmosphere Sugar Bear conceived and for the food that Papa Bear prepared. They built their customer base one customer at a time and still try to do that.

By 2002 the business started to franchise. Today they have 61 diners in 8 states. Two more will open at the end of March. The goal is 100 Black Bear Diners by 2018.

There is a belief the company’s lure is its “soul,” and comes directly from Bruce Dean and Bob Manley. The two have employed a customer-oriented focus from day one.

Lately Bruce and Bob are able to slow down and enjoy fun past times like disc golf and ice skating. The only drawback is that all that activity makes Bob “Sugar Bear” Manely hungry every time.

Ladies and gentlemen congratulate Bruce Dean, co- owner of the 2013 Business of the Year, Black Bear Diner.

Greater Redding Chamber of Commerce award-presentation speech

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 Brittany Nelson, Ambassador of the Year

The Ambassador committee has been a valuable resource for the Chamber. This program is entering into its eleventh year serving Chamber members. Dedicated volunteers visit new and renewing members asking the right questions to help members feel they have a voice and they are valued.

Tonight we award Ambassador of the Year to an individual that has gone above and beyond to welcome our members and help them feel at home in our Chamber.

She has been an Ambassador for the past two years. She loves the color pink and owns both a pink riffle and revolver. Our superstar Ambassador loves to shoot and is a very good shot, she usually hits her mark. In her spare time you may find her riding a Quad, cheering on the Pittsburg Steelers, golfing or just hugging and hanging out with her dogs Kimber and Bruiser.

Along with her Ambassador duties she has also volunteered for the Chamber and other community events. She has worked tirelessly on the past six golf tournaments and Co-chaired the 2013 Spring Tournament. The Chamber Staff refers to her as the expert on the Chamber app. 

Greater Redding Chamber of Commerce award-presentation speech

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Karen Simmons, Volunteer of the Year

Volunteers are the backbone of Non-Profit organizations. We are successful in meeting our goals due to the help of dedicated volunteers like tonight’s recipient our volunteer began a few years back by becoming an Ambassador. After that she took the microphone as a Greeters co-host each Thursday morning for the past two and half years. She has rarely missed a Thursday morning and looks forward to each Thursday as a new challenge. The crowd loves her enthusiasm as does her Co-Host.

She has also stepped up and volunteered to Chair the 2012 and 2013 Hall of Excellence Awards. Through her vision and leadership the event has exceeded our expectations each year. She worked the door the entire day at the first annual Bacon & Brewfest and enjoyed every minute.

She has a big heart for every animal she sees. Recently while on a trip with her family she saw a little dog running loose on the side of the highway. So what does any person do that is crazy about animals? She pulled over and picked up the little guy and took him with her for his safety. After checking with a vet to see if there was a way to find his home she ended up giving Bandit his forever home with her and Sophie, the other dog in her life.

When she is not rescuing animals she volunteers at Safe Haven Horse Rescue and has recently been spending some time in Oroville at Barry R Krishner Wildlife Foundation holding baby tigers and lions leaving behind a generous donation to help them.

Karen Simmons is an outstanding volunteer for the Chamber and for our community. We are lucky to have her on our committees helping us achieve success. Please give a round of applause to the 2013 Volunteer of the Year Karen Simmons, Five Star Bank.

Greater Redding Chamber of Commerce award-presentation speech

Press Release

-from press release