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The bonds of family, family traditions

Last week, some of the corporate management of the Five Guys restaurant chain came to town to cook lunch for a fellow and about 60 pals and family. The menu was a predictable burgers, hot dogs, fries, and the trimmings. Alpena is too small a market according to demographics to support a Five Guys store here. They brought logoed hats and shirts and did the cooking.

They were numbers two and three in the management of the 1,300 store chain. The top dog couldn’t come as he was in Europe setting up franchises and numbers four and five had store opening responsibilities elsewhere. Numbers two and three were in to cook lunch in Alpena before jumping back on the plane and heading back to headquarters in Washington.

They were here for the retirement party for their uncle, Pat Richard, who was retiring after 43 years of service at Alpena Power. They flew up to honor Uncle Pat, whose guests were the Richard family and Alpena Power employees. The two were former Alpena resident Jerome Murrell’s kids and partners. They were family. Pat asked and they came.

They were busy guys with busy schedules but they took the time for family. And while they are executives, they still obviously are boys at heart. While in the air they had to call Pat “just because” to say they had a weather hold at Reagan International and might not be able to make it. About 20 minutes later they called off the hoax to say they were touching down in Alpena. Boys will be boys.

Later that day at another event a young man came to me to ask if I worked at the power company. I said that I did and he told me that his grandfather had just retired from there. I startled him by asking if he knew that his great grandfather Rollie, his great-great-grandfather Rudolf, and his great uncle Gene had also worked at Alpena Power. He hadn’t known.

The young guy redeemed himself by saying he wanted to enter the ACC Electric Technology program to become a line worker.

He redeemed himself with me right there.

Those Murrell boys are in a family business and obviously they haven’t forget their family and their roots.

It’s all about family and family traditions.

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