In my world now, the mommy world, I have become the customer. Typically, I’m running from one place to another, with a relatively small window of time to accomplish many things. Not everyone can understand that, but to those who try, I sincerely appreciate it. When they give great customer service despite my rushing, that’s worth sharing. Where, you ask, might one find such a place? The Verona Public Library.

On one of my typically busy days, with just enough time to squeeze in one more errand before school pick up, I made a frantic call to the library. Bill Trafton answered the phone. I said hi, he knew who I was, and I asked if a particular book was in stock. He checked and said it was. I said, “Great. I’ll be there in 10 minutes. Can you set it aside for me?” He said, “Sure.”

I pulled up in front of the library and ran in. Bill was there at the counter with my book. He was polite, knew I was rushing, and got me checked out quickly. That doesn’t happen every day. I was so appreciative of his effort that I’ve been telling people this story over and over again.

So Bill, I want to thank you for excellent customer service and always being pleasant regardless of my mood. It’s a pleasure coming to the library and for any readers out there who didn’t know, today is Bill’s birthday! Happy Birthday Bill! I wish you many more.

UPDATE: Hobcaw Cafe threw Bill a surprise birthday party, complete with cake. Take a look.

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Have a birthday shout-out that you’d like to make? Drop us an e-mail.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that contributed to my service project entitled One Hundred Hoodies for the Homeless. My original goal was to collect one hundred sweatshirts during the summer months to be donated to a shelter in Newark. The project was a success. I collected a total of 260 sweatshirts and they were donated to the St. John’s Soup Kitchen in Newark. The staff distributed the sweatshirts in early fall. Thank you all for your generosity.

“On December 10th, 2011 the town of Verona was illuminated by the glow of community spirit as many friends and neighbors joined in celebrating “Share Your Light Night”. The Woman’s Club and Juniorettes of Verona would like to thank all of our wonderful volunteers for helping make this such a joyous night, including students from OLL, the Junior class of VHS, the boyscouts, and many others. We would also like to thank Kings supermarket for their donation. Last, but certainly not least, we would like to thank our dear friend (and honorary member) Chuck Molinaro, without whom this event could not have gone so smoothly.

We wish all of you a very Happy New Year and look forward to sharing the light in 2012.

Leslie Regino and Cyndi Hawkins, Co-Chairs
Woman’s Club of Verona

“On behalf of the Junior Women’s Club of Verona, we would like to thank the area businesses that participated in our successful discount-card fundraiser, which ended November 30.

We are so grateful for the support of Bagelwich, Bella Salon & Spa, Clearview Caldwell Cinema, Cloverleaf Tavern, Forte Pizzeria & Ristorante, Frank Anthony’s, Gelotti, Hobcaw Cafe, Huntington Learning Center, Jack’s Cafe, JT”s Barber Shop, Lakeside Deli, Mardi Gras, O’Neil’s, The Towne Scoop, Tortilla Sunrise, Twin Method Cleaners, Verona Diner, Verona Pizza, Verona Veins, Verona Yoga, Sue Waldman LPC and Yin Yang Cosmetics.

We also would like to thank the individuals who purchased discount cards. Those sales helped our club raise some of the funds we need to continue the important work we do within our community and beyond: assisting families in need, supporting our first responders, awarding scholarships to our students, caring for our senior citizens, filling gaps in our school budget with grants and supplies, and supporting a variety of local, national and international humanitarian organizations.

Kristen Donohue and Meghan Walsh
2nd Vice Presidents, Junior Women’s Club of Verona

Don Smartt, in yellow, presenting the Town Council with a check for the Verona Children's Fund.

For the past two weeks we’ve been telling you all about Thanksgiving in Verona, and most of that has revolved around food. Now it’s time to tell you about how people here are giving thanks and giving back.

More than a few of us are giving thanks to the people who got us through the Halloween weekend snowstorm. For Carine Zemokhol, that meant the neighbors, friends and Rescue Squad volunteers who rallied when her husband Nick Fradette was hit by a falling branch in the first hours of the storm. He had ventured out near their home on Fairview Avenue to help a neighbor’s mother into her car and the falling branch put a gash in his head that required attention at Mountainside. While the Rescue Squad transported him, his wife drew on some of the friends that the Fradette-Zemokhol family has made since they moved to Verona 12 years ago from Montreal. ” My babysitter was on Hillside, but Hillside was impassible,” she recounts, “so a friend from Morningside walked over to get her so she could watch my children.” Then a neighbor drove Zemokhol to the hospital, where doctors had closed her husband’s wound and diagnosed  a concussion–after the hospital got enough power back to run a CT scan.  “We were lucky in our unluckiness,” says Zemokhol. “So many people helped.”

Don Smartt also felt he had a lot of people to thank. Smartt, who heads the company that brings Verona its Fair in the Square every winter,  was without power for six days during the storm, but was humbled by the magnitude of what was happening around him. He came to the Town Council meeting this past Monday to thank  Verona’s municipal employees and volunteers for “the tremendous effort they expended during the storm.” He punctuated his thanks by turning over a check made out to the Verona Children’s Fund.

That fund is managed by Connie Pifher, the Verona Health Department employee who is Verona’s unofficial clearinghouse for charitable giving. Pifher said her thanks for the season three weeks ago, when she was trying to live without heat after the storm. “As I sat in bed in sweat pants, sweat shirt, two pairs of socks, hoodie and gloves under my down comforter, a quilt and two blankets in the dark I was at least grateful for the bed, a relatively safe environment and a roof over my head,” she said in an email. “I was grateful to have work to go to although there was no heat there either but at least there was companionship and something useful to do.”  It was hard to be cheery during the many days that it took Verona to recover, but Pifher put it in perspective. “… although this will be over shortly for me it never goes away for the countless number of persons who are homeless or cannot afford heat/electricity.”

All of which brings us to some of the needs in town that would have been here even if we had not had a monster storm. For the past 17 years, the  Verona United Methodist Church has been serving and delivering meals to Verona individuals and families in need. Food is donated by church members, a food drive at The Children’s House (the Montessori preschool that operates at the church), and other families. Last year, about 120 meals were vserved.

The food is prepared by parishioner, who view it as their opportunity to give back while giving thanks for their own blessings.  There is a lot pf preparation the night before so that on Thanksgiving day, the assembly line of people packing, bagging and delivering food runs smoothly and efficiently. To give the deliveries a personal touch, each meal is delivered with a card made by the children volunteers.

Michele Bernardino’s family is now in its second year of volunteering.  “My husband took my oldest son delivering with him last year,” she says, “and it was a wonderful experience for them both.”

Partnering with Military Moms, a nonprofit created to support families of military personnel, PostNet (located at 281 Bloomfield Avenue next to 7Eleven & Lapels Dry Cleaners) will provide cards like the one shown here for your message. PostNet will also have cards available at its table for Fair In The Square on December 3.

“The holidays are particularly hard on those stationed far from family and friends,” says Scott Harrington, owner of PostNet in Verona. “We want to bring an opportunity for individuals, regardless if they know someone personally overseas, to write thoughts of appreciation and gratitude to those fighting to protect our country.”

The program, which is available throughout November, will provide cards and postage, free of charge, to anyone looking to lift spirits of military members. By December 3, PostNet will send the holiday cards to Military Moms, which will distribute them among various APOs, FPOs and DPOs overseas in time for Christmas.

In addition to the cards, PostNet also encourages people to go online to PostNet’s Facebook wall, “like” its page, and write a message that will then be included on large banners and dispersed to various military posts around the world. “PostNet has always supported programs designed to support or give back to our active military members and veterans,” says Harrington. “This is our way of giving back, while providing a service for Verona and the surrounding area residents to send well wishes to our brave soldiers.”

It does not matter what religion the patient might be. It does not matter if one is a believer or agnostic or an atheist. It does not matter the color of one’s skin. It does not matter what level of education one has. It does not matter how close one is to death. The men and the women on the Rescue Squad will respond to a tragedy or to a simple illness where the patient believes he or she needs help, which cannot be found at home.

Out of a sense of obligation for humankind they volunteer their days to save lives. No one pays them and often no one thanks them. Infrequently, but sometimes, the patient may die on the way to the hospital, and the only reward of the members of the Squad receive is the knowledge that they cared enough to try and save a life. Yet the death that occurred will live with those Squad members forever.

On a small scale, they are like Mother Theresa saving one life at a time and thanking God each time for the opportunity they had to serve their community. I am a member of the Verona Rescue Squad. By far I am not the most active member, but I serve my community with the understanding that all people are created in the image of God. I serve my Protestants, Catholics, Muslims and Jews and because of that I am a better man, a better Jew and a better rabbi.

Ecumenical Outlook is a weekly reflection by the leaders of Verona’s houses of worship. Rabbi Aaron Kriegel is the leader of Congregation Beth Ahm of West Essex, which has been in Verona for 75 years. It is located at 56 Grove Avenue, at the corner of Personette.

Calvary Lutheran parishioners get the word out about the food drive.

We’ve gotten this note from Calvary Lutheran Church, which held its second “Can It With Calvary” food drive during the week of October 9.

To the Citizens of Verona,
With heartfelt appreciation the members of Calvary Lutheran Church would like to extend to you a sincere thank you for the caring kindness you expressed by your gifts of food and cash donations to our food drive this past week. Your response was overwhelming! Please know that people in Verona and surrounding communities benefited from your generosity.

Sincerely,
Helene Zierold, Secretary
Calvary Lutheran Church
23 South Prospect
Verona, NJ 07044
973-239-0577

Now, as the owner of MyVeronaNJ.com, I pay a lot of attention to advertisers. Once Linette Mathewson, our ad sales director, signs them up, I’m the one who programs them into the advertising system and sends them reports on how well their ads are doing, which is, in a word, fantastic. Fantastic for them, but also fantastic for MyVeronaNJ.com. While more of our readers join us as subscribers every week, it is our advertisers who pay the bulk of our monthly bills. These advertisers pay our cost of being on the Internet. They help us afford upgrades to the technology that powers this site and some cool new equipment.

So if you love having MyVeronaNJ.com to read every day, take a minute to thank the advertisers who are making this all possible:

Anderson Electric
Anthony Robert Salon
Art Studio
Derek Moore & Sons General Contractors
Fandango
Kitchen Magic
LaRiccia & Son Plumbing & Heating
Mount Saint Dominic Academy
Our Lady of the Lake
Portray Salon
Re/Max Park Square
Schumacher Chevrolet
Sylvan Learning Center
Terry’s Family Pharmacy
Verona Fit Club
Verona Foundation for Educational Excellence
Verona Yoga
Visentin Plumbing & Heating

These are the business that are with us right now, but we’ve had the support of many businesses since our start in December 2009 and many other businesses will be joining this list soon. So you can also thank ADP Insurance, Children’s House, Dana Visentin Silpada, Denim  & Daisies, Dragonfly Studio, Edward Jones rep Greg Moore, the Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit, First Presbyterian Church, Garden State Painting, GT Fitness, Hardbodyz Fitness, Joey Arminio & The Family, Kevin Ryan for Town Council, Kristin Lavery Lia Sophia, Laura DelBarba Pampered Chef, Lauren Orsini, Lynn Waldron Silpada, Music Together, Nicole Kobernick Tastefully Simple, Pauline Davey Avon, Platinum Fitness, Savva Realty, Sonny’s On The Avenue, Susan Robinson Stella Dot, Towne Scoop, Watchung Booksellers and  Weekday Nursery School. Each business has helped to get us to where we are today, and where we are going.

By the way, if you have a business and you want to reach all the potential customers that these businesses are reaching, send an e-mail to Linette. She’ll be happy to help you.