New Braunfels Chamber honors city’s best during annual banquet

The Greater New Braunfels Chamber of Commerce held its 104th annual chamber banquet Friday, Jan. 27.

The theme for the chamber in 2023 is, “It’s about time,” chosen by this year’s Chair of the Board, Allison Humphries.

Emceed by Dave Ferguson, members were recognized throughout the night for their work in the community.

The chamber’s blue coats — ambassadors for the chamber — were honored at the event, with previous blue coats being promoted to senior blue coats and new blue coats taking their place.

For the past 28 years, the chamber has recognized a Blue Coat of the Year; this honor is determined by honor points, which are accrued through attendance, membership sales and retention calls.

The 2023 Blue Coat of the Year was given to Jan Kingsbury.

This year marked the 50th time the Senior Blue Coat of the Year award was presented. The honor was bestowed upon both Helgard Hollis and Joe Timmins.

Since 1990, a Small Business Person of the Year has been awarded. The award for 2022 was given to Art Brinkkoeter of Brinkkoeter’s Transmission.

Chair of the Board awards are given to individuals who did extraordinary work in the fields of advocacy, historic conservation, transportation, education, workforce and economic development.

The awards were given to Ian Perez, Luke Speckman, Kevin Webb, Wes Clark, Debbie Meek and Patrick Rose, respectively.

No more than three Hall of Honor awards are given to individuals annually; the award is given to individuals over 50 who have contributed their time and talents to civic endeavors over several years.

The Hall of Honor awards were given to Cecil Eager, Anna Lee Hicks and Ray Still.

After the awards, 2022 Chair of the Board Ian Taylor remarked on his tenure before passing the gavel to Humphries.

“When I think back on this year, I think one of the things I’ll treasure most is getting to know y’all, getting to know your talents and seeing just how hard every one of you work,” Taylor said. “So thank you all to the chamber staff for what you do day in and day out — what you did for me.”

The theme for the chamber last year, resilience, was picked by Taylor. The idea that the community could face hardships through trying times and unforeseen circumstances, such as COVID-19, was the inspiration behind the theme.

Along with the theme, three priorities were laid out by Taylor: economic and community resilience, designing the community’s economic future and optimizing collaboration.

After Taylor’s final remarks, he passed the gavel onto Humphries.

The Chair of the Board position was held by her brother six years prior, as well as her father when she was 13.

“With our continued growth, what we do now matters more than anything,” Humphries said. “We need to make sure we spend the time now to get the desired end results. We honor our legacy by continuing our traditions, and enhancing the foundation for those to come after us 10, 20 and even 50 years from now.”

Along with presenting her theme centered around, “It’s about time,” she also set priorities for the year. This year’s priorities include having a new chamber office, confluence and investing in communities.

Lastly, the Besserung Award recipient was revealed. Besserung means community betterment, or simply betterment, in German. The award is meant to honor an individual who was seen as the outstanding citizen of the year.

Compassionate, honest, caring, loyal and generous are some of the adjectives that were used to describe this year’s Besserung Award winner, Kathy Meurin.

Although Meurin could not be in attendance at the banquet, Taylor contacted her in a congratulatory video call. Those in attendance could see the video through a screen on stage.

“Oh my goodness, what an honor,” Meurin said after the video and on call. “I’m speechless. That’s kind of unusual for me. What an incredible honor. Thank you so much.”

The video shown to Meurin and those in attendance can be seen online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmI9J649tvU .