TNPTA 2023 Student Awards Ceremony

My last official event as Tennessee PTA president was the Student Awards Ceremony held on June 3rd at the Brentwood Public Library. The library in Brentwood is just a beautiful, inviting building. Nonprofits can rent the huge meeting room.

Meeting me there from the board of directors were Vice President Larry Davis -- it was his show and he arranged all of the things necessary for it to happen -- Bala Ramanchandran over the reflections arts, Charles Everett, treasurer, and our office administrator, Tonya Cambre. And G came along too!

We had a great turnout of over 100+ people! Our emcee drove from Knoxville to present: Mike Hammond. This was not his first time emceeing our student awards ceremony!

I enjoy speaking in front of large crowds so I was in my moment!  

I was so pleased that Charles Everett, who also served as council president for the United Shelby County Council, led the way to have our long-time Reflection Chair, Bala Ramachandran, to receive a life time achievement award.  It has long been my long time held personal belief that anyone elected to or currently serving on the Executive Committee should be a life time achievement award recipient from the state if their local unit or council unit was not going to present the honor. I also believe that if a board member, especially one after 4 years, did not have one should get one too. Thankfully, the Council stepped up!

And wow was Bala surprised! It was so good to see this award given to Bala.

The ceremony was well received. Our backdrop was in heavy use by parents and caregivers!  I was very pleased that this was my last event -- an event celebrating our children and youth across the state of Tennessee!

Storage Unit Moving Day May 2023

 The final steps of moving Tennessee PTA items from Nashville to Knoxville happened in May. I met Dana Price at Northgate Mall to close down the Post Office box and to collect items for the state office administrator.  On May 6, G and I made a quick trip to Knoxville and back by dropping off more stuff collected from Dana and from my home office. These were things necessary for the office administrator to prepare for the Student Awards Ceremony less than a month away in Brentwood.

I sat in the president's chair but no desk. The former president's desk is now the office administrator desk.

And I sat at the conference table in the new state office. Turned out to be a good picture!

Then what I dubbed as the triangle trip began on May 10th. In the 36 hours period from the afternoon of May 10th to May 11th, I traveled from Chattanooga to Franklin, then to downtown Nashville, and the next morning from Nashville to Knoxville and back to Chattanooga. This also required taking vacation time from work. I have no idea how much vacation time I used over the last 4 years as president-elect and president for Tennessee PTA but it was a lot!

The triangle trip was moving from one storage unit in Nashville, divide the content, and move some stuff into another storage unit in Knoxville and the remaining content into the Knoxville state office. Whew - that was a lot of planning, preparation, and everything working just right.

Once again, Two Men and Truck Company was hired to move stuff. They moved all of the office content from the state office in Nashville to the state office in Knoxville during the month of March. Now we would use them again to move the storage unit stuff out of Nashville.

I left work in Chattanooga at 1 pm Eastern, noon Nashville time and headed to Franklin, TN. Earlier I had contacted the buyer, then the buyer's property manager, and then connected the property manager to past state president Kim Henderson all in order to pick up the lettering that we had on the exterior wall of the Nashville office. My first stop would be at Kim's house to pick up the box of lettering. 

My next stop was downtown in the Gulch part of Nashville to start arranging the storage unit. I planned and sketched out on paper what I wanted and started the process. But I had no food since previous evening and I was starving, so I decided to return early tomorrow morning before the moving truck arrived to finish the rest of the separation: stuff to storage unit and stuff to office.

I stayed at the nearby Hayes Street Hotel. A very different hotel and I am not going to return to it in the future. However the Las Palmas is attached to the hotel building next door and I would highly recommend their food!

The next day I was up and gone early. Luckily the streets connecting the hotel to the storage unit were not busy work commuting streets. I arrived a bit early for the opening of the gate, so I parked in the next door\s business parking lot. That business? The Larry Flynt Hustler Club!  Yep our storage unit was located next to the Hustler club on one side and the Greyhound terminal on the other side.

Once inside the compound -- security code to enter the lot, code to enter the unit--I took the lock off and closed the unit down at the office. I returned to the unit and finished my separation job from the day before. I finished before the moving crew got there -- right on time at 9 am. The separation job I did was so helpful as it speeded the process along -- the office content was loaded first to be unloaded last and the storage unit stuff was loaded last to be unloaded first. I saved Tennessee PTA a bunch of money by cutting down on the loading time.

The storage unit was almost evenly divided so one half went on first, the movers placed separation ropes, and then moved out the other half of the unit.

We both left at the same time but I could drive faster than the truck could so I was a few hours ahead at the Knoxville office waiting on them. When the movers arrived, everything worked out perfectly in no time! First the storage unit in Knoxville then to the state office.  A very successful trip!

And I placed the box of lettering in the president's office for the next president.