| Jeff's
Speech to the Academy |
I would like to start by thanking Dublin Scioto
Fiddle Fetish for providing the music, my sponsor, Discount Drug Mart,
for their generous donation and my MC for the night, Brian Goshe.
I would also like to tell you how I got started with
APCO. It was my last year in
Pharmacy school. Lou
Marcy asked the class if anyone was interested in playing in the APCO
gold outing. Three of my
friends and I ran up to Lou after class and signed up.
The only problem was that my other friends had summer classes and
were unable to attend.
Luckily, I was put into a group with Jack Lince and Paul Wherry.
We didn’t play well, but we had a
great time and I sure enjoyed the company.
After Pharmacy School, I went to LasVegas for
awhile, then ended up coming back to Columbus.
I worked with K-Mart for a while, then ended up working for
Discount Drug Mart. While I
was working for Discount Drug Mart, Alan Daniels invited me to the golf
outing. That year we
won the outing. I also
won 4 tickets to the OSU vs. IOWA football game.
Needless to say, I became an APCO member.
Then, 2 years ago, when Greg became President Elect, I was asked
to run as a trustee to fill his position.
I had always wanted to be more involved in APCO, so I said,
“sure”. Then after a year as
trustee, I was asked to become President.
I was very apprehensive at first, not because I
didn’t think APCO was a great organization, and not because I didn’t
think it was a great honor.
It was simply this; I was intimidated.
Here were all of these people in the pharmacy community that I
had looked up to for so long; like Marks Awards Winners, people who were
very involved in OPA, and people who I considered to be in the upper
echelon of the practice of Pharmacy, and they wanted me to be their
president. I thought, “No
way! I’m not worthy.”
But, then I am an opportunist, so I started to think, “What a
great opportunity this would be for me to learn from these people who
have spent a lifetime developing these leadership skills, to have them
as my mentor and to have them take me under their wing and pass their
knowledge on to me.”
Then I became excited and I started thinking, “Well
what can I do to benefit the organization?”
I thought if I could do one thing to make APCO a better
organization, it would be to increase membership.
As I looked around at the meetings, it became abundantly clear:
This organization has a generation gap.
So, not only do I need to increase the number of members, but I
need to increase the number of younger members.
With that being said, I would like to introduce you
to 2 of my best friends.
Chuck and Don, please stand up.
Chuck, Don and I have been golfing once a week or every other
week for the past 15 years.
You might have noticed Don and Chuck are a little older than me,
a little more seasoned with a lot more of life’s experiences under their
belt. The reason I value
these guys’ company so much is that they have a different prospective on
things than I do. They have
a lifetime of knowledge that they passed on to me, that calmer, more
rational approach to things that only comes with age.
I have been lucky that they chose me to take under their wing and
mentor. What do I bring to
the triad? I don’t know,
maybe a new way of looking at things, a different approach, some
youthful enthusiasm. I don’t
know, but I do know this: I
am a better person and golfer by having a friendship with these two, and
this blending of “generations” has made a big difference in our lives,
or at least in mine.
What I would like to do now is use my relationship
with Chuck and Don as a template with this organization.
I see all these Pharmacists with this lifetime of knowledge, a
lifetime of experiences and no one to pass this knowledge on to.
We need a younger generation in this organization to be receptive
to this knowledge, then take their youthful ambition, their new
perspective and ideas and take this organization to the next level.
I always like to use the saying “Grow
from my shoulders.” This is
how far we have brought the organization.
Grow from our shoulders.
Take this organization and see how far you can take it for the
next generation.
Now we just need to get that new generation involved
in APCO. Well, how do you do
that? Quite simply:
you sell the benefits of the organization to potential members.
How do you do this?
Talk about the organization to Pharmacists.
Tell them about the CE Programs and sponsoring scholarships for
students. So, to get people
talking about the organization, I have given each of you a sleeve of
golf balls. If you are a
golfer, I would like to invite you to the golf outing we have every
August as a fund raiser for the organization.
If you are not a golfer, I would like you to take the sleeve of
golf balls and give them to a Pharmacist and tell them about the
organization and invite them to the golf outing in August.
I really feel if we ask people to become involved, we can grow
and take this organization to the next level.
Thank you.
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