The Civic & Commerce group of Richmond made two special awards in the community for the year 2007.  In this story, President Anita Reichert introduces our award winner in the area of community service and talks about why they were chosen.  You'll meet Tucker and Patti Plantenberg, recipients of the 2007 Richmond Civic and Commerce Community Service Award.

Tucker & Patti Plantenberg own Plantenberg's Food Pride Grocery and Plantenberg's Meats in Richmond.  Tucker is the 4th generation in the Plantenberg sausage making family.  His great grandfather began making specialty meats back in 1910.  Tucker and Patti purchased the grocery story and meat processing plant from Tucker's parents in 1997.

Tucker credits "the gang" at Plantenberg's (their employees) for their long-standing tradition of friendly service and high quality grocery and specialty meats.  Tucker and Patti are both very active in the Richmond Civic & Commerce, the Richmond Fire Department, the Richmond River Lakes Days festival, special community projects and their local church.

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 This story was sponsored by the Richmond Civic & Commerce Association promoting business and enhancing the well being of our community.
Richmond Civic & Commerce Website

View Other Richmond Civic & Commerce Award Winners

There are universal truths that connect each of us to a past history that goes back not just hundreds, but billions of years.  When you look up into the sky at night, those stars were responsible for creating the fundamental elements that make up all living things.  The majority of the elements found in the periodic table were made from the birth and death of stars.  The universal truth is the fact those elements form the building blocks of life that link us directly to the stars in the sky.  We are and have always been connected to these beginnings.

 

Who we are and what we become in life is based on two primary influences, our biology and our environment.  We have a biological genetic history that was passed down to us from our parents, our grand parents, our great grandparents and so on.  Those genetics were directly responsible for the shape of our nose, the length of our arms and the size of our brain.  Of equal importance is the social environment we grew up in.  What were the values, norms and cultural guidelines of the tribe you grew up in?  In order for you to be accepted in your family, community and world, you had to conform to certain ideas and concepts that formed the way to look and think about life.

 

My Dad always had the saying, "The apple falls only so far from the tree".  He use this phrase when he'd talk about kids in the neighborhood.  This inference was that if you knew the parents and how they acted, you most likely knew how the kids would grow up and what you could expect out of them.  The universal truth here was that only a given amount of change can be expected from one generation to another.

 

These universal truths are all about our ability to identify our "receptive choice" in life.  Although there are certainly limits as to how far one can live outside the norms and values of the society they live in, there is definitely an opportunity to discover your universal creative power and to pursue a life filled with personal passion in pursuit of fulfilling purpose and happiness.