hoods better to tell their stories than - Allegheny West Magazine

6 Allegheny West Magazine September/October 2012
PUBLISHER’S
We’re 14!
Note
Last month we started our 14th year bringing positive, good news to
the airport area. With this issue, it marks the start of our tenth year
serving your Montour neighborhood to bring good news to your
mailboxes every other month.
This month is yet another turning point, too, as students and staff
return to our local schools. As the school year begins for Montour and
other schools across our region, we wish students a successful and
productive year filled with many learning experiences that help each
and every one of them to grow in new and exciting ways.
As a publisher, I am fortunate to have the opportunity to experience
a lifelong education by learning about my community each and every
day. And, I get paid to do it! What an incredible experience it provides me each time I open my
e-mail or answer the phone. I always learn something new, meet someone new, or understand
something better I did not understand before. It helps me appreciate even more the treasures in
the people and places that make this neighborhood special.
I tell my writers when I assign stories to them, “Allow your curiosity about the story to drive
the questions you ask; if you are curious, chances are the reader will be too!”
As we here at Allegheny West Magazine continue to learn, we wish the same curiosity and
enthusiasm for the young students who are back in the classroom!
Pat Jennette, Publisher & Editor
“You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn
by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.“
~ Clay P. Bedford
A Word About Entrepreneurs
For the past ten months that I’ve been writing for Allegheny West
Magazine, I’ve had the opportunity to interview and get to know a
number of the local entrepreneurs and small business owners who have
invested themselves in the communities we cover.
Some started their businesses from scratch. Others inherited them. I
have gotten to know more about the Scott family, which has managed to
keep a dairy farm running in what’s becoming the most unlikeliest of
places. Previously, I got to know Dooner Sadauskas and his team which
started Up in Arms Tattoo in Imperial, and to learn about their community
involvement and commitment to their art. And, of course, I’ve been
working for entrepreneur Pat Jennette, who started the magazine you’re reading from nothing.
If there’s a common thread I keep hearing among individuals in these circles, both owners
and employees, it’s that they’re a family; sometimes quite literally. There’s a sense that these
businesses allow individuals to realize their own goals and ends rather than someone else’s; to
put their skills to use rather than try and make them fit into an unrelated occupation. That
entrepreneurial spirit, politicians keep telling us, is very “American,” and it’s one that’s the
crux of a community for the very reason that they live in and are a part of it.
Having been a pleasure thus far, I look forward to sharing more of these stories with you in
the future.
Doug Hughey, Assistant Editor