A lot had happened this year at the Bangor Area Homeless Shelter. Our long time Executive Director; Dennis Marble retired at the end of last year, and our former leadership team has transitioned to other career paths. We have a new Executive Director as of July, which gave our Board of Directors a challenge earlier this year. Our Board is an amazing group and really stepped up to help with the day to day running of the shelter while we searched for our new leadership team. Kudos to all of them.
We are now comfortably and capably under the leadership of Boyd Kronholm in the executive director spot and our new Program Manager just started. It’s been about a week now and he’s still coming back so that’s a good sign . Our finance manager has just celebrated her first anniversary with the shelter and we have a new administrative assistant (me). My background is as a college admissions counselor and while I enjoyed working with high school students and their families, I needed less travel and stress in my life so I was looking to try something different. This is different!
Dennis’s retirement also meant the loss of our blog writer (Dennis), so our blog posts have been on hiatus while we searched for a new voice of the shelter. For the time being, I will attempt to keep our blog readers up to date on what is happening down here on Main St. and we have hopes of being able to recruit some guest writers to fill in from time to time.
The most important thing I’ve learned since coming to the shelter is the overwhelming generosity of our community. Every day people from every walk of life come through our doors looking to help those in need. Some don’t have much to give, but they find a way to donate. They give of their time and talents to make a difference where they can. From a single person preparing and serving a meal to someone donating hand-made items that they’ve invested their time in, to our local businesses and churches who come in to cook and serve a meal, to a cash donation, be it large or small, we appreciate every act of kindness and generosity. At the end of each day we go home with a sense of gratitude that we and our community did our best to help where we could with whatever means we have. Until next time, Diane Crockett – Bangor Area Homeless Shelter