Collierville Chamber of Commerce Hosts Monthly Membership Meeting
The Collierville Chamber of Commerce welcomed members to their first General Membership Meeting since March. Membership meetings had been curtailed for several months in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, and every necessary step possible was taken to make this limited-audience, masked and socially distanced event a comfortable and safe experience. The July 22 meeting was hosted by Collierville First Baptist Church and sponsored by First Horizon Bank.
As part of their new “Love on the Local Level” campaign, the Chamber asked three local eateries, Cheffie’s Café and Captain John’s Bar-B-Que, and Simply Done Catering, to provide the catering. Local restaurants will continue to provide the catering for the remaining monthly meetings in 2020, all to be held at the beautiful room provided by Collierville First Baptist Church.
Sam Nichols, Executive Pastor of Collierville First Baptist Church, offered an invocation and led the group in the Pledge of Allegiance. Mark Heuberger, President and CEO of the Chamber, began the day’s events by inviting Bo Allen of First Horizon, to the podium. Allen quickly outlined the bank’s recent activities, including their assistance with over $2 billion of business loans during the COVID-19 crisis, and First Horizon’s recent merger with Iberia Bank and acquisition of 30 Suntrust Bank branches in North Carolina.
Prior to the day’s main speaker, Leadership Collierville took advantage of the beautiful venue and the day’s crowd to present their H. R. Houston Community Leadership Award. The organization’s immediate past executive director, Emily Pilkinton, welcomed her successor, Tasha Holmes, to the stage. Holmes thanked Leadership Collierville for the opportunity to serve her home community before the presentation of the H.R. Houston Community Leadership Award to Pansy Hall. Pansy is a Loan Officer at Patriot Bank Mortgage and serves as a Collierville Chamber Ambassador.
The day’s featured speaker was Jack Sammons, former Memphis City Council member and Chief Administrative Officer for the City of Memphis and entrepreneur. He now serves as the President and General Chairman of the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational.
Sammons offered a rundown of the history of the invitational golf tournament since his involvement and used humor to detail the challenges the tournament has faced during serious financial crises, beginning in 2008. Overcoming those times, the golf tournament now is considered one the of top tier tournaments on the PGA tour, with a total purse for this year’s tournament at $10.8m and hosting eight of the top eight golfers on the tour. The tournament serves as a fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, “the soul of the city,” according to Sammons.
The day’s event also featured a brief video of the Chamber’s “Love on a Local Level” campaign.
