> >
> From what I gathered, a talented man, but he wore out his
> welcome rather quickly.
> NEXT POST: WOODY UNITES THE REGION.
> > Yonkstur
> > >
In 1987, Bob Woody, by that time running the Ad Agency
had a big idea. He felt that there was this big wall
between Lackawanna County and Luzerne County and felt
that something should be done about it. He was the ad
agency for the Sheraton Crossgates at the time and the
GM of that property was working as a volunteer as head
of the tourism board. Bob wanted to bring the two regions
together and took his idea to the chambers of commerce
who were lukewarm to the idea. So he formed his own
committee of people and it was called The Twin Valleys
Committee. The first group of members were himself, as
chairman of Lackawanna County and me as Chairman of
Luzerne County. Board members were Bert Ayers, Lee Flynn,
Rene Laspina (you already see how this is going don't ya!!)
Dick Mackey, Dale Rapson from Pocono Downs, an older sales
rep from 22 who's name I don't recall, Mike Raymond
from WSGD FM and Lisa Lebonson from Rock 107, a few hotel
operators as well as some other people who came and went.
> >The meetings were held every Friday at Pocono Downs at 10AM.
If you were late, you had to give a reason why you were late.
If you weren't coming at all, you had to send what Woody called
"an emmisary". Your emmisary did not recieve your voting
power if we decided something, but the responsibility of the
emmisary was to make certain the absent person knew what
went on at the meeting. The committee's charge was to bring
the two cities together via a media message that we beamed
to ourselves first and then hopefully to outside markets.
The advertising would come through the Ad Agency (which got
15%) and most of the TV advertising wound up at WNEP TV (the
sales rep (Lespina) got 15% commission for her efforts. Media
sales reps populated this committee in the hopes of getting
"a buy" from the Ad Agency. Some did, some didn't. (Right,
those without emmisaries did not). In October of 1988 we
pulled off this big event at Pocono Downs where we had
all the radio stations lined up, crafters, food guys, etc.
About 2000 people came. Then we had a tuxedo clad dinner at
the Downs where 250 people came to enjoy the races. We were
generating some excitement and some good publicity. Like any
group or committee, the more people contributed, the more
they wanted to give their input. Bob took some of this input
as criticism. Less media people started showing up and less
started sending "emmisaries". The straw that broke the camel's
back came in March of 1989 when we were having our weekly
meeting at Pocono Downs. When Bob spoke, he wanted the entire
attention of the room. Dale Rapson had given us the run of
Pocono Downs for all of our meetings every week for about 2
years. One day, during a meeting, while Bob was speaking,
Dale's beverage guy came in to take Dale aside to the back of
the room and speak to him about an emergency at the Downs. Both
went to the back of the room and began to confer. Woody stands
up and says to Rapson, the guy who had been housing and feeding
us for free, "Uh, we can't have two meetings going on here at
once. Can you either take that outside or send in an emmisary?"
As soon as I saw Rapson's face and look of incredulity, I knew
the next time we came to the Downs we were going to be paying
admission. That afternoon, Woody's assistant called and said
the new meetings were going to be held at Perkins in Pittston.
The Twin Valleys concept lost a great deal of steam after that
and eventually died a peaceful death. But a few months later
Bob contacted the committee members who stuck it out through
the end. He wanted us to meet a friend of his from Edison,
New Jersey.
NEXT POST: WOODY AND WERNER-the next big thing.
Yonkstur
>
