Michael's Gratitude Project

Sometimes one act of kindness in a moment of dire need can have a long and lasting impact.  This is a story about one of those acts. Not long after starting my job at the Utah Hotel & Lodging Association I started a blog of sorts doing reviews of hotels around the state.  It was a way for me to highlight and bring attention to hotels that supported the association.  It also gave me a chance to get around the state and to visit a lot of hotels.  I would usually try to connect these reviews with meetings that I needed to attend in order to get more bang for my buck. On one such occasion my plan did not work very well.  I had planned a meeting in Cedar City to help the hotels there organize a local lodging association.  It was a lunch meeting that would only last a few hours.  However, since it was a three hour drive each way I figured I would use it as a chance to visit a local property. I had been talking with Patrice Arent who was doi...

It seems like many of my posts so far have been about political influences, or people that have impacted my career.  Perhaps I will try to focus on a few other influences in my next post.  But not this one. After writing about Mike Leavitt the other day I started thinking about one of the major players in that post.  If you read it you would have come across the name of Darrell White who was the superintendent of Davis School District while I was a student there.  Derrell was the one that helped to orchestrate my first meeting with Governor Leavitt while I was a sophomore at Viewmont.  Of that incident I could write a long post about how grateful I am to him.  However, since the history of that event and the subsequent effects of it are already in my other post on Mike Leavitt I want to focus here on some of the other great things that Dr. White did for me, for which I will ever be grateful. At the end of my Jr. year I was selected as the Student ...

Many of the people that have influenced me are your average Joe’s and Jane’s.  They have been neighbors and friends, classmates and coworkers but occasionally they have been more public citizens or high profile individuals.  Some of the high profile folks on the list have come across as kind of “high and mighty.”  They know that they are a big deal in town and they let everybody know it.  This is a story about a man that was a big deal in town, but that was as down to earth as any neighbor and friend that you could hope for. Jim Wall was the president and publisher of the Deseret Morning news when I first met him.  He had been in that position for many years when we first crossed paths.  As the publisher of a major newspaper he had enormous influence in Salt Lake City and throughout Utah.  We met while we were both serving on the board of directors for the Salt Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau, later called Visit Salt Lake. The board is a ...