Copy Corp Club

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Newsletter #1 (West Baden Hotel, French Lick, IN)

The weekend of November 20th, Jenny and Ken Brown, Judy and Bruce Jennings, Billie and Mickey Higdon and Joyce and Jim Kincer visited The West Baden in French Lick, Indiana on the first of (what is hoped to be many) Thanksgiving Holiday Trips! Hopefully when we do this again, more of the Copy Corp Gang will join us!

West Baden has been completely restored and is absolutely beautiful and relaxing. We had a wonderful time as evidenced by the pictures in this newsletter.

We arrived at the West Baden on Friday night, and had dinner in the beautiful Sinclair Dining Room, great food, comfortable atmosphere and wonderful friends. Over dinner we planned the activities for the weekend. Jenny Brown served as our tour director and made all of the arrangements. She did a very Good Job!

After dinner we toured the hotel and read about the colorful history of this beautiful place. Real Quality!

As you know West Baden is located in French Lick Indiana, and in the old days of Copy Corp, we had managers meetings and incentive trips to French Lick from time to time, however, The West Baden Hotel had not been restored at that time and all of our activities were at the French Lick Inn. We worked hard, ate good and played some golf and even on one trip enjoyed the bowling alley in the basement of French Lick Inn!

On Saturday Morning, we had a late breakfast and continued to reminisce about the old Copy Corp days. There were many wonderful old stories, we talked about everyone we could remember and I bet many of your ears were burning over the weekend! We decided to take a train ride, visit the casino and watch the Christmas Tree Lighting at 7PM on Saturday evening.

The train ride was very relaxing and enjoyable, I think everyone had a nice time, however, we were ready for some casino action by the time the train arrived back at the station! So we made our way to the casino for a while.

The only winners were Billie Higdon and Judy Jennings. When we had as much casino fun as we could stand, we had a snack at a nice place in the Casino called Diamond Jim's. It was a fun place and very good food.

After the late snack, we toured the French Lick Inn and visited a local art and craft fair that was going on in the hotel. Finally just in time we made our way to the Christmas Tree Lighting and it was very beautiful! Everything was perfect, even the weather!

After the tree lighting we returned to The West Baden Hotel for dinner and a special treat, provided by another Copy Corp partner from the 1980's

Sid Swinney provided us with a couple of bottles of his homemade

Swinney Wine

At dinner we told more stories from the early days of Copy Corporation, remembered names of former partners that we need to locate and inform about the Copy Corp blog/website. We tried to remember stories that all of us will enjoy remembering as we add the stories to the website. As everyone knows, Bruce is the longest employed person and has served in many positions with many memories from the past. Mickey and Kenny also were with Copy Corp in the 70's, and 80's. After dinner we made some pictures of us enjoying the Swinney Wine before retiring for the evening.

On Sunday morning we had brunch at another of the golf courses and returned home. A great time was had by all!

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Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Mickey Higdon (Continued)

Mickey Higdon (continued)

The schedule is pretty busy with volunteer work, therefore not many hobbies as such. The roses are still enjoyable but they seem to get more difficult to grow each year. Smoking meat on the grill is a new thing for me and the family seems to like it as well. Last week, I smoked 3 briskets for a fall party that was held by Billie's grandson. I think he ate about 1/2 of the meat. I generally cook brisket or pork shoulder but my newest item is a smoked jalapeno. People seem to like them as well.

As you know, I am affiliated with the ball club through the Clarksville Little League. (VP of the Challenger League). My involvement with the kids centers around organizing the league itself. I send out registration forms in January, process all paperwork, select the uniforms and order them, send out newsletters to the families, organize an "Opening Day" event where I introduce all players before our first game, provide cold drinks to all players and coaches after every game, order trophies and organize a year end banquet. Billie and I are involved from January through July and the past couple of years, we have been fortunate to be awarded a grant from the Horseshoe Foundation which takes additional paperwork. We play on Thursdays in May and June and I leave the play itself up to our 2 coaches who work great with the kids.

I am a member of the Clarksville Redevelopment Commission. We are granted tax dollars through a TIF taxing district which we manage to make road improvements and general infrastructure improvements within the TIF District. We meet monthly for 2 to 2.5 hours and I am the VP of that commission. When I first became involved, we were involved in the development of the Veteran's Parkway corridor area, where Sam's is located. That has brought a big retail boom to our area. We have also completed road projects on our other 2 major roadways in the town. We branched out a little and completed a $5M renovation of our Little League which will provide a great place for our youth to play for many years to come. I was asked to spearhead a committee to dedicate the new facility and we worked about 1 year on that. It rained that evening but we had the ceremony indoors in the Vacant Value City building and it went well.