Volume 3, No. 13. July 11, 2003
Community
Spirit
Amid the daily hurly
burly of amusement park management emerges moments that remind operators of
their mission. Joe Muscato, director of marketing at Knoebels Groves Amusement
Grove in Elysburg, Pennsylvania, occasionally experiences such days thanks to
his and his park’s community-minded attitude.
But
now the community gave back. Specifically, the Spirit of Bethlehem, a service
group at East Hills Middle School in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, gave back to Knoebels.
The organization’s advisor, John Coyle, called the park last year proposing
a reward outing for his students, but with one caveat: the students had to perform
a service. “We had them pick up trash for a half hour,” Muscato said.
This
year when Coyle called, his conversation with Muscato turned toward Knoebels'
work with Give Kids The World, providing an amusement park experience for terminally
ill children and their families. Knoebels used to provide the families disposable
cameras through a sponsorship with Kodak, but this year the film maker dropped
the program, and Knoebels had no cameras to give out.
So,
Spirit of Bethlehem’s 56 members raised money to buy the cameras plus little
blue teddy bears bearing a Spirit flame insignia. They didn’t stop there:
each student wrote a personalized note to accompany the camera and bear. “There
seems to be a couple of neat things like that each year, but that one kind of
went over the top,” Muscato said.
What made the gesture particularly special for Muscato was the line of 56 young teen-agers individually handing him the cameras, bears and notes. “It seemed very important to these kids to hand them to me directly as a pipeline to the people receiving these things, since I try to be the one to greet the (Give Kids The World) families,” Muscato said. “These kids were quite serious about this. When I see the age of these kids and the amount of public service they must do over the year, that’s a pretty incredible thing. This is middle school, you know.”
THE LOOP is written and produced by Eric Minton, Minton Enterprises, LLC. To see more examples of Eric Minton's work and Minton Enterprises services, visit www.ericminton.com.
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