By KIRBY NEUMANN-REA
News Editor
January 19, 2008

Ray Felton passed Go Thursday — and helped collect a lot more than $200.

On a night when “Monopoly” was the festive theme of the Chamber of Commerce annual banquet, Felton came away with the Chamber Member of the Year award and kept right going when it came to the live auction.

“Right here!” Felton repeatedly called out in the Gorge Room at Best Western Inn as Chamber members bid on live auction items to benefit the chamber’s high school Leaders For Tomorrow program. The live auction and silent auction yielded nearly $5,000 for the Leaders For Tomorrow.

Felton, the 2007 Chamber Board president, had also won the Member of the Year award in 2004. Felton was characteristically ebullient throughout the night, and before the program had commented that “no one wins (Member of the Year) twice.”

He shook hands with virtually everyone in the packed room during the social hour, joking that the chamber staff “wrote me out of the script,” for the program. Little did he know.

About an hour later, he fought back tears while accepting the 2007 Member of the Year award.

“It’s been a very difficult year, to say the least,” Felton said, after accepting the award from John Kasberg, 2006 winner and current board president. Moments before his award, Felton presented the Chamber Appreciation honor to Genevieve Scholl-Erdman, who left her post as chamber marketing in December to work for Farmers Conservation Alliance, of Hood River.

It was Scholl-Erdmann who quoted another Chamber’s slogan of “We do everything you think just gets done,“ in thanking the rest of the Chamber staff and Felton and the Chamber board, for their help throughout 2007.

Felton credited “those who do all the work” in his acceptance speech. He filled in as chamber executive from mid-2007 following the sudden resignation of longtime executive Craig Schmidt.

Traditionally, previous award winners give protracted, cryptic introductions to tease out the identity of the new winner. But this time, Kasberg came quickly to the point, revealing the recipient’s name in a record 20 seconds.

“In a year when many Chamber members stepped up, no one stepped up more than Ray,” Kasberg said.

“I am just very grateful for this,” Felton said, deflecting credit to others.

Felton credited his boss, David Griffith of Griffith Motors (“he always knew where to find me — at the Chamber office”), as well as the chamber staff for their support.

“Genevieve was my right arm,” said Felton, and he added thanks to the rest of the staff: Melanee Griffith, Marge Edens and Erin Rue. “I’d call them ‘my girls’ and it’s really more professional to call them ‘staff,’ but I think I’ve earned the right to call them ‘my girls’“

When it came time for the auction, Felton leapt into action, spotting bidders along with Chamber Ambassador president Mike Bell.

Felton started the auction on one side of the room, but soon began touring the tables, calling names, encouraging bids, tapping shoulders, and grinning widely. This bemused auctioneer Griffith; so enthusiastic was Felton in exhorting bidders that Griffith joked at one point, “You come up and take over for me. You’re doing all the work. I’m just making noise.”

The cycle of change Felton presided over has nearly come to a close. Chamber members on Thursday were introduced to the new Chamber executive, Mary Closson, who greeted the assemblage, saying she had received an “A-Number-One welcome in the past few days.”

Kasberg said, “I can’t tell you how happy I am to have Mary as part of our team.”

Closson, who previously worked for the West Linn Chamber, starts work Feb.11.

She said Thursday, “All the times I drove through the Gorge on the way to eastern Oregon, I’d say, let’s stop in Hood River;‘ I never thought I’d be coming to work in this wonderful place.” She told the chamber membership she looks forward to learning “your ideas and your challenges,” and pledged to be “your guide, coach and nurturer.

“But I need you because, as you know, this is your Chamber of Commerce,” Closson said. “People today want to feel like they are part of a family, they want to feel connected, and that’s what I want do continue doing here.”

Awards for the night also went to Paige and Rountree Rouse, for best costume. They dressed in furs and a tuxedo as “Park Place,” and then changing into jeans and flannel to become “Baltic Avenue,” going from prime real estate to low rent in the Monopoly scale. It was Rountree’s second-straight costume award.

Honorable mention awards might go to Leonard Hickman (see photo), Maria Elena Castro as Mr. Monopoly, Camille Hinman as Mrs. Monopoly and the staff of Biznett Insurance: Wendy Delehant (policeman), Jenelle Dennis (Mr. Monopoly), Beth Brown (jail bird) and Christine Winde (railroad engineer).

Best table decoration went to the Chamber Ambassadors, for their railroad motif (as in Short Line, Reading, B & O, and Pennsylvania) complete with a model railroad circling flowers by Tammy’s Floral, and Mt. Hood Railroad placemats handmade by Bell and fellow Ambassador Lisa Nelson.