You know the old adage about when life hands you lemons you just need to make lemonade, right? Well, for National Life, when the weather hands you a hurricane, we just Do Good.
That’s what our Law Department and Travel and Conferences team did this week when the impending storm wreaked a little havoc on gatherings we were planning in Washington, D.C.
Here’s what happened. We had a field leadership meeting planned in D.C. through Friday. That involved a lot of planning because it included visits with members of Congress, speakers, a catered dinner on Capitol Hill and a catered dinner at ACLI (the American Council of Life Insurers).
But as we’ve all heard, Hurricane Florence is bearing down on the southeast coast. And that started disrupting air travel early in the week as airlines scrambled to reroute travelers.
General Counsel Greg Woodworth explains:
“We made the difficult decision to cancel because of the likelihood that many of the attendees would be unable to get home on Friday. We were able to get most of our deposits back except for the money (approximately $4,000) that went to the caterers for the perishable food for the dinners.”
What to do? Well, turn to Patti Morrison, Greg’s assistant.
“Patti spent some time researching food banks and shelters in the DC area and arranged to have the food that we purchased donated to two different shelters, one of which serves women and children in need,” Greg reports.
We’re told that the shelters were “beyond thrilled with the donations.”
And we’re proud of a company and teammates who always ask, “How can we Do Good in this situation?”
Photo at top: Some of our colleagues also visited Capitol Hill last year.