Life’s passages occur daily in our personal and professional lives. Children and grandchildren are born. Friends and family die. And people with whom we’ve worked retire, seeking lives filled with leisure and pleasure, instead of pressure and expectations. Sometimes, folks who have crossed our lives move to warmer climes, or to be closer to family.
Retirements strike a nostalgic chord in me.
However, I do not intend to write a melodramatic, melancholy column. Just the opposite. Instead I am paying tribute to two people whom I like and admire.
A longtime neighbor, John Merceron, recently retired as a partner and vice president at the Fellows, Helfenbein & Newnam Funeral Home in Easton. He is a superb professional. From afar (actually very close), I watched how he treated families grief-stricken by the death of a loved one. I observed his employees, who followed John’s example of compassion and competence.
John has a big heart and great sense of humor. I looked forward to our frequent conversations in the alley behind our house and his funeral business. He always had time to chat and laugh.
Having followed Mike Newnam, another excellent funeral director, Merceron took very seriously a profession that brings a community together at a stressful time. He understood that his funeral business, if conducted well, included a well-kept property, attentive employees and an operation that provided confidence and caring to grieving families.
Our family too benefitted from first-class service commonplace to what we simply referred to as Newnam Funeral Home. For each of my in-laws, the funeral home had to travel to Baltimore to arrange graveside services. The process was seamless.
While John no longer has to don a dark suit and project a comforting air of professionalism, he’s left a great legacy. I will miss our alley talks and wish him and Debbie well.
Last Thursday, I attended an informal retirement party for Rene Stevenson, who for six-and-a-half years managed philanthropy, membership and visitor services for Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum (CBMM) in St. Michaels. She and her husband Tom are retiring to care for parents in Texas and Michigan.
When Rene began at CBMM in 2009, the museum was slogging through the awful effects of the Great Recession. Like so many non-profits throughout the country, even one with as solid a financial structure as the museum, this institution faced difficult fiscal stress. It was not an easy time either for staff or board members.
Yet, Rene projected calm. Her smile, soft-spokedness and gentle demeanor were reassuring. She was easy to like and trust. She understood the need to raise money at a challenging time. She would not be deterred.
All the praise rightfully directed at Rene by Kristen Greenaway, the president, Richard Tilghman, the board chair, Bob Perkins, former board chair and Langley Shook, former president, all described a delightfully determined, kind and accessible and loyal and dedicated person. Few of us receive such sincere commendation when we leave the world of work.
One other person, Judge John North, a museum founder, spoke highly of Rene and presented her with one of his valued sculptures, a weather vane with the silhouette of the refurbished Rosie Parks, a legendary Chesapeake Bay skipjack.
John Merceron and Rene Stevenson worked in entirely different professions. The demands on them were not comparable. But each was determined and capable. Each wanted to make a difference. And each did.
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[…] Read more about Rene Stevenson’s retirement in a Talbot Spy article here. […]