Recently I was at a board meeting, as I usually am on Monday nights, and a former board member was sitting next to me when it ended. As we normally do, we started putting away the chairs, stacking them along the back wall, and she said it felt like she was on council again. I told her it’s what happens when you’re a community member, and she agreed.
Something I’ve learned over my almost eight years at The Citizen is that our communities are small, but everyone wears a lot of different hats. We all get involved in multiple things to help support the community.
A few weeks ago, the team at the Citizen was invited to the Main Street Oakland County Main Event, the annual awards for the Main Street Oakland County communities, of which there are 23. They are the only county-wide Main Street coordinating organization in the country. We attended with the Ortonville Downtown Development Authority, as our partnership was nominated for an award.
I dragged my husband Kyle along, and he drove Editor David and I out to Rochester for the event, where we met up with the other attendees from Ortonville, a whopping 21 of us.
I suspect we were one of the biggest groups there, which is saying something when the other communities are as big as Rochester, Ferndale, Farmington and others.
And we made it known there were a lot of us.
During the presentation and awards, Main Street Oakland County Coordinator John Bry was honoring all of the DDA directors who had served within Main Street Oakland County for a significant number of years, and right before he read off Ortonville DDA Director Matt Jenkin’s name, he warned into the microphone, “They’re going to be loud.”
After we all cheered and applauded Jenkins, Bry looked at our group of six tables and asked, “Is there anyone left in Ortonville tonight?”
It’s a small but mighty town. And we continued to make our presence known every time we were announced as a nomination.
While we did not win the partnership award, the Ortonville DDA did come home with one award. And it felt like a high school reunion, walking Kyle around and introducing him to everyone. There was even dancing and a live band. Overall it was a fun night.
The next day I came into work exhausted but glad we had gone to the event. Around noon we went up to Bueche’s Food World for their annual rib fest and rib eating contest, where we saw some of the same people we’d seen the night before. All of us were ready for our next community event, excitedly cheering on the participants in the parking lot.
The event raised hundreds of dollars for the Ortonville Community Emergency Fund,
And the community moments don’t stop. Like I said on Monday, it’s what happens when you’re a member of the community. We all pitch in to lend a helping hand. It’s not the first time I’ll be stacking chairs or cheering on community leaders or helping to promote a good cause, and it won’t be my last.
Smaller communities like ours don’t always have the funds for big projects, and the population means there are less people to get involved. But that doesn’t mean there are less people who need help or less organizations trying to support the residents and businesses.
The fact that we all show up to support each other speaks literal volumes. Like Bry said, we’re loud. And that’s a good thing.