Chamber of Commerce dinner honors local businesses for accomplishments

By Robert Tomlinson
News Director

THREE RIVERS — An annual celebration of business and community in the Three Rivers area was held last week.
The annual Three Rivers Area Chamber of Commerce dinner took place at the gymnasium of Immaculate Conception Catholic School Tuesday, Sept. 23. Featuring food catered from Russell’s M-40 Catering, the night was a chance to recognize local businesses for their hard work during the last year.
“It’s our honor to be able to celebrate with all the businesses and to give them awards and recognize them for their anniversaries and all the hard work they do for the community,” Three Rivers Area Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Christy Trammell said in an interview following the event.
During the ceremony, Trammell said she wanted to turn the night into a “celebration” of the chamber for its 80th anniversary. While the actual founding date wasn’t until later this year, there was a birthday cake on hand with slices passed out to attendees to celebrate the 80th birthday of the local Chamber.
“Our ambassador team is a super-active and fun group that likes to put a theme together and run with it,” Trammell said. “This year, when they latched on to that, we thought, instead of just celebrating the Chamber’s anniversary, we wanted to recognize the other anniversaries for businesses.”
Later on in the ceremony, the Chamber recognized nearly two dozen local businesses for milestone anniversaries, from Culver’s of Three Rivers celebrating five years in the city, all the way to Armstrong International celebrating 125 years in business.
After recognition of the Chamber officers, board members, ambassadors and local businesses that sponsored the evening, the night turned toward the graduation of the Chamber’s Leadership St. Joseph County program. Ten people graduated from this year’s program, including Bridgette Mulvaney, who called the program a “journey of self-discovery.”
“Leadership isn’t just about what you do, it’s about who you are,” Mulvaney said, while talking about the different things she learned in the class, including leadership profiles and different characteristics of being a leader. “We learned not only to see the value in others, but also the value in ourselves. … We can always benefit from more leaders and stewards, and I think it’s pretty cool a program like this is offered in our county.”
Annette Sigman then talked a bit about the Leadership program’s annual community service project, which was a backpack drive to support all nine public school districts in the county. The group created an Amazon wish list to promote items they needed and went to the Water Festival to collect supplies, and put together 112 backpacks to deliver to the schools. A total of 24 backpacks were given to Three Rivers schools, while 11 each were distributed to the other eight school districts.
The supplies in each backpacks included notebooks, binders, highlighters, sharpies, dry-erase markers, pens, pencils, pencil bags, index cards, sanitizer wipes, scissors, glue sticks, pencil sharpeners and crayons. Supplies were also donated by many local businesses.
Sigman said all of the districts were excited to receive the support for their students.
“We have a lot of little school districts that you almost don’t think about,” Sigman said. “One of our school districts was Nottawa. When the person delivered to that school district, they were so excited to be considered and thought of. I personally delivered to Mendon, Centreville and Constantine, and you would’ve thought we delivered them gold, because they don’t always get considered.”
Following the graduation, Barry Miller of the Three Rivers Rotary Club gave a speech as outgoing chairman of the Chamber’s board. He gave a rundown of initiatives the Chamber did in the past year, and said the year went “way too fast.”
“A couple of times, I had to ask Christy, ‘Is there something else I’m supposed to be doing? Because this is way too easy,’” Miller said. “I think a lot of that is because we have such a great team.”
Miller thanked Trammell, the staff, ambassadors and fellow board members for their support and leadership over the past year. He also acknowledged the retirements of Melissa Barlow and Mark Honeysett from the Chamber’s board.
“It’s just a great group,” Miller said.
John Schragg of State Farm Insurance will be the new chair of the Chamber board in the 2025-26 year, and he said he looks forward to taking on the mantle of chair.
“I’ve only been in business here five years, so it’s pretty nice that they’ve welcomed me in,” Schragg said. “As always, I look forward to feedback; if there’s something that you guys want or need, just reach out to Mary [Schrock] or Christy, because we’re always available.”
The annual Brick Awards were then handed out to businesses that made significant investments into their businesses or organization projects during the year. Those awardees were Beacon Health (remodeling of physical therapy/rehab, remodeling outpatient surgery, and a nurses station), Clark Logic (new addition at 1170 N. Main St.), Culver’s of Three Rivers (new landscaping, parking lot and HVAC work), Riverside Church (renovation with new sanctuary), Russell’s M-40 Speedway (multiple renovations to racetrack and special events), the St. Joseph County Sheriff’s Department (jail infrastructure upgrades), St. Joseph County Parks and Recreation (Meyer Broadway Park playground), the Three Rivers Downtown Development Authority (new amphitheater), Three Rivers Community Schools (bond project work), the Village of Constantine (new wastewater treatment plant), and YMCA Camp Eberhart (lodge renovations).
Culver’s of Three Rivers then went on to sweep the community service and customer service awards, with the restaurant itself winning the former for its involvement with the community, and general manager April Schull winning the latter award.
Greg Moore of Consumer’s Energy went home with the Chamber Participation Award, while Clayton Lyczynski and Sabrina Helland won ambassadors’ awards.
The one award that was not given this year was the David M. Armstrong Award, which is given to someone who displays values of faith, family and job in their work. Trammell said after the ceremony there were no nominees for the award this year, and thus an award wasn’t given out.
Overall, though, Trammell said the recognition for the businesses was the best part of the day.
“Business owners work hard every day, and to give them the recognition is a very nice thing we can do for the community and the businesses to support them,” Trammell said.
Robert Tomlinson can be reached at 279-7488 or robert@wilcoxnewspapers.com.