On Thursday night the meeting area of Cypress Hills Tennis club was full of people from every corner of Greenville.
There were business owners and administrators; doctors and volunteers; politicians and policemen.
We gathered those folks together to celebrate our annual Delta Democrat-Times Best of the Best awards ceremony.
The contest allows the general public to nominate who they think are the best in more than 200 categories of businesses, services and professionals. After the nomination period, the public then votes on the nominees. The website tallies the votes and we announce the winners.
In the past, it seems as though the winners in the public-voting competition were generally the same cavalcade of folks. Not so this year.
About half of the winners this year were new to the contest.
Some of them were new businesses just opened in the past couple of years.
Of course, there were the perennials such as Parker England being named the banker of the year, and St. Joseph Catholic Church taking home the best church award.
I’m proud the newspaper’s contest is the only crowd-sourced ranking system in Washington County. Once the results are tabulated, they are published both in the newspaper and on the website. They live on the website for an entire year until the next contest rolls around.
While some may decry the public vote as simply a popularity contest, my favorite response to such retorts is to say, “Isn’t it good to be popular for a good thing?”
And that’s what this listing is. A tabulation of the most popular businesses in Washington County.
Popular businesses have customers. Customers bring cash. It’s good for the bottom line to be popular.
But the event Thursday night wasn’t just about the presentation of awards, it also gave us a chance to meet people and make new friends as well as say hello to folks we see all the time.
And it was also a chance to share the best margaritas in town.
I’m thinking about entering Tina Hale’s margaritas in the competition next year for best margarita. Tina is our bookkeeper and she had the idea for the margaritas at our awards ceremony in 2015. They’ve been a hit ever since.
Della Cannon was our caterer this year and she did a fine job once again.
Now that this year’s celebration is over, I’ll give you some advice on how to win the competition.
First, be the best at what you do.
Second, when the nomination period starts next year, be sure you are nominating yourself and encourage your friends to do so as well. Next year we will limit finalists for voting to no more than five entries. That means the number of nominations will be equally important to get to the voting stage. Nominations can be made once per day during the nomination period.
Finally, once voting starts, vote early and vote often. You can share your votes through social media and encourage your friends to do so as well.
This is also a grand opportunity to advertise how proud you are of your own business.
•••
This week was the end of the first full week of school for students in Washington County.
The streets are now crowded with cars, busses and children and drivers must be ever vigilant in the mornings.
It’s a memory seared into my brain from my first day of first grade at Robert E. Lee Elementary School in Satsuma, Alabama.
On that day, my mother drove me to school, I would ride the bus the rest of the time, and as we waited in line in front of the school a little boy tried to cross the road in front of the school.
One of the drivers in the line didn’t see him.
The boy’s body cartwheeled through the air and landed in a lump on the side of the road.
He didn’t die, but was on crutches for the first few weeks of school.
Let’s keep our eye on both children and crossing guards, especially on Bowman Drive and Reed Road.
Jon Alverson is proud to be the publisher and editor of the Delta Democrat-Times. Write to him at jalverson@ddtonline.com or call him at 662-335-1155.
