As many of you are aware by now, Sandhill lost one of our own yesterday afternoon with the passing of Buck White.   Normally I would spend my monthly manager’s report discussing all the work that has been going on here over the past month.  However this month with Christmas coming up, I want to spend some time sharing with you about our Sandhill family.

Like most of you, Monday through Friday we find ourselves often spending more time with our coworkers than we do our actual families at home.   If you are lucky, you get to work at a place with truly good people that you enjoy spending time with and over time even treat some of them as if they are a second family to you.   You get to know not only them, but their families as well.  While many of our employees work out in the community every day, for the past several years, Buck worked here in Jefferson and I got the pleasure of usually seeing him at least once a day.  The three things I could always count on him for is to talk about his two girls, show his passion for the military and what it stood for, and his desire to do a good job here at Sandhill in whatever he was doing.   Recently he has played a very key role here working on our fiber to the home project in helping our Members get faster broadband speeds.  He will be greatly missed by all of us here.

As Christmas approaches, times like these too often remind us just how short our time here on earth can be.  As we all continue to work through the remainder of the year, I hope that like us, you too take the time to spend with those dear to you both at home and at work and let them know how thankful you are for them.  Here at Sandhill we know that when we are out in the community even in the evenings at the grocery store, people recognize us as the ones that keep their phones and internet working.  Sharing this love for service to our community creates a bond between many of us here that we are very grateful for.

On behalf of the entire Sandhill family of employees, we hope you have a Merry Christmas this year and as Tiny Tim said at the end of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, “God bless us, everyone.”

Lee Chambers CEO / General Manager