President’s Message I want to begin by telling you that I am honored to serve as your president for 2020-2021. has been a It totally different experience than I had imagined with cancelling our Annual Convention and Solution Center. I was sworn into office at my home, with my family around me and on the Zoom meeting to watch. Hopefully, we will be able to resume our Annual Convention in 2021. While it wasn’t what anyone anticipated, it was an amazing experience. I’m sure as we all made our resolutions, goals and plans for the year not one of us would have thought a pandemic would almost bring the world to a halt. I know COVID-19 has certainly made a change in my world. In our area, we all scrambled quickly to keep up to date with the daily changes, just to find out the next day that we could no longer do what we were able to do the day before. We learned very quickly that we had to tell families right away that funerals had changed dramatically; that we would help them plan a funeral that meets their immediate needs, and could then help plan a memorial service in a few months when everything has settled down a bit. Families were overwhelmed with the changes and so were we. We did not have the words, “I’m sorry but we just cannot do that at this time” in our vocabulary. We had always said, “we will make it happen.” We learned how to do drive-through funerals and drive-in cemetery services all in quick order. I know when we can all get together again, we will all have our war stories to share and many of us will say, “I cannot believe we did this, but…”. I believe that most of us in funeral service have been very imaginative and active in providing the best possible service for each family we served during this www.ogr.org | The Independent® 5 time and I am so glad we have had the support from our OGR staff to keep us informed and right on time with all the changes we have and will continue to face. Thank you all for your commitment to serving those families you are honored to serve and to serve them with the highest levels of service available. As we progress forward to start opening our businesses back to our new normal level of serving, I know we will all still need to be ready to serve each family in new ways. I would also like to remind you that we have an awesome staff in Indianapolis, and they stand ready to assist all of us with any need we may have. I don’t know how many people were able to attend the Weekly Roundtables, but those I attended were great and provided help in solving some problems and ideas to share with families and others. OGR has some awesome programs in place and the new grief resources are wonderful. As I close, I just want you to know that I am available if you need to reach out to me. I would enjoy speaking with you and helping you in any way that I can. For dayto-day operation questions, please call the OGR office. We look forward to opportunities to talk with OGR members and answer as many questions as we can. Yours in service, Mary Flynn Steele
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