Terri Hines, receptionist and office assistant, retires

Mark Roth, Operations Manager, spoke at Terri’s retirement party on Tues, Oct 15 and he said everything so well we thought we’d just provide his speech in its entirety here!

Terri joined FRC in March of 2002 and has worked for us now for almost 18 years. I am both happy and sad that Terri has chosen to retire. I joined FRC and worked with Terri for a little more than 5 years. Since Terri has been employed by FRC for longer than I worked here I decided to talk to some of my fellow employees to get some history to help me write this speech.

Terri has been the face and voice of FRC. She has been the first person you see when you walk thru the front doors of the building and the voice to greet you when you call. You may or may not know that my office was the original lobby for the building and Terri sat on the other side of an opening that still exists today. The opening is hidden by a caulk board above Ginger’s desk. I found out that Terri first reported to Nate when he was the head of customer service and was interviewed by Jack, Nate and Alice. I hear she had blonde hair, as well as, many other colors throughout her career here.

I was also told that before the company was sold that every Thursday a group of employees would gather at a small bar named Blackbeards to celebrate happy hour. We all know that Terri has been in bands and sings. What I didn’t know was that Terri and Anthony Falcone would sing Karaoke at Christmas Parties. She was also a DJ at FRC parties as well.

Now I’d like to speak of Terri the employee. As I said earlier, Terri is the face of FRC. She has always represented the company in a professional manner. In person and on the phone. Her personality, ability to engage people, her work ethic and because she cares about the people she worked with and always tried to do the best job she could to satisfy her customers makes her irreplaceable. Terri takes pride in everything she does and makes sure it was done right. She makes anyone who walks thru the front door feel welcome and makes sure anyone who calls gets a person to talk to. I’m told that Jack believed in this day and age of automation, it is good business to be greeted by a person, which I wholeheartedly agree and Terri did that job very well for FRC.

Some of Terri’s other responsibilities were locking the front door, maintaining the mail and front office copy machines. She printed manuals for the production team. Which at FRC, because of the volume, is a little production line servicing the production team. Terri always made sure production had their manuals and if the copiers or staplers were broken, she always found a way to get production their manuals, so we could ship Customers their orders.

Let’s all congratulate and wish Terri good luck on her retirement. Terri, I will personally miss you and your “Good Mornings” and hope you have a long and healthy life.

Mark Roth

Lisa Radesco presented Terri with a beautiful vase with the following inscription: “Thank you to the Voice of Fire Research Corporation with appreciation for your many years of service May 2002 – October 2019”