Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece, and welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I have a special guest with me, Donna Reed. Hi, Donna.
Donna Reed: Hi, Toni. Good to be here.
Toni: How are you doing today?
Donna: I’m good. A little chilly, but fine.
Toni: It’s cold today. It really is. It’s getting there. We’re getting into winter. Donna, take a moment and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Donna: I’ve been around Berks County a long time. I grew up in Muhlenberg Township when it was still somewhat rural, believe it or not, on a farm. I went to Muhlenberg High School, and I then went to American University in Washington, which I loved. I love Washington. I still do. I think of it as my second hometown. I got a degree in Political Science and Communications.
I stayed in D.C. for about a year. I thought I’d come back to Reading for a few months, and for 23 years I spent time as a reporter, editor and columnist at the Reading Eagle. I knew I wanted to make a switch and go into public service, so I left the Eagle, and since then work wise, I’ve been at the former Berks County Chamber of Commerce, which I enjoyed tremendously as a communications manager. Then I worked for some private industry. I worked for Channel 69 News Berks Edition.
I work now a variety of different jobs as many people have since the recession – you sort of patch together things – but I’ve been lucky in that the things I’ve patched together have been really terrific. I am the Public Relations Coordinator for the Berks County Parks Department; again, a part-time job. I’m an editor and staff writer at Lancaster weeklies, primarily The Ephrata Review, and I am a member of Reading City Council.
Toni: Oh my gosh – you really have diversified so many talents of yours in order to showcase them and to help people everywhere.
Donna: I think we all try to help each other. I’ve just enjoyed the written word. It’s always been my calling, I think, to concentrate on that and to utilize that, hopefully for the better good. Journalism has just really been the calling of my life, the career of my life. Public service I enjoy because I enjoy the constituent outreach and trying to make the area a better place. Our city we love, but it is certainly a challenge.
Every day presents a new opportunity. I just finished my three-year tenure as editor of The Historical Review of Berks County, and that was great. The great thing about The Historical Review and the Berks History Center, the Historical Society of Berks County, is that it gives us the opportunity to see where we’ve come from – how terrific we were, and how we can use that past to build into I think an even better future.
Toni: I agree. I can't wait to watch this and be part of it. It’s going to be amazing. Let’s go into the Get Inspired! Project. What does inspiration mean to you?
Donna: I think inspiration is coupled with enthusiasm. The most inspirational people I know are enthusiastic people who see the good side of life, who see the bright side, who see an opportunity where others would walk away and scoff at a problem. I try real hard to be like that. It’s really hard sometimes to do that, but I so admire people that can stand on their own, know when to ask for help from others when the need arises, but really have the enthusiasm, have a goal in mind, and know that they’re not going to rest until they reach that goal.
Toni: When was the last time you felt that in your gut where you knew, “I am inspired by this, and I’m going to do something about it.”?
Donna: I think you get little inspirations every day. I think if I look back on the last decade or so, I think the fight we waged to save Antietam Park to make sure that it was into perpetuity preserved and remain natural, there was a lot of effort and a lot of angst that went into that on a number of levels, but to know that that park is now preserved and in public hands into perpetuity and will be even better than it was before, and to know that 100 years from now somebody can go there and walk the woods and go fishing and enjoy the quiet and peace of nature, I think that was worth all the effort. It certainly inspired me looking ahead to the future of what people could enjoy and bask in nature, and it was worth all the legal efforts and everything else that went into it. It was long battle.
Toni: Yes, it was.
Donna: It really was a battle of Antietam.
Toni: I live in that area. I have to tell you, I walk it, we enjoy it, and we thank you for that.
Donna: And it’s the symmetry of how life goes. When I was working on that, it was a city-owned property, and it’s too much to get into, but it was a spirited situation to make sure that that was preserved. It’s so amazing to me that 10 years later I have this part-time job working for the County, and the County owns the lake, and I’m able to at least help through my writing and the public relations outreach publicize the programs that are going on down there and encourage people like yourself to enjoy it and to come out, even if there’s not a program going on, enjoy those trails. Walk it. It’s really inspirational. Almost a mystical kind of place.
Toni: It really is. I agree completely. Now, you’ve given a great example there, but how else have you put that inspired enthusiasm into practice here in Berks County? Can you give another example? There are so many with so many hats that you wear.
Donna: I like to think when I write or stories I’ve written, articles I’ve written about people, those are really the crux of what journalism is, what storytelling is, whether it’s for the Eagle as I worked there for 23 years, or Berks County Living, having written for them for several years off and on.
I think of some of the people I wrote about, some of whom are gone, like Senator O’Pake has come and gone. I think of when I first came into this building to do a story on a man named Craig Poole who no one knew about. I think it was an hour-and-a-half later until we were done talking. I was doing a postscript in the back of Berks County Living. I thought, “This guy really has an interesting story to tell.”
Now we flash forward four plus years, and we know the changes he’s wrought at the building we’re sitting in, which is Crowne Plaza. My hope and my belief is that his work being transferred downtown with the new hotel coming forward will not only enhance and beautify what promises to be a really beautiful building, but will enhance the city from the standpoint that he has had such a strong impact, a positive impact on his workers here and on the community, that by doing that in center city Reading it’s almost like you see the sun and the rays going out. It’s going to make life better.
Toni: It will. I had the privilege of seeing it here, of witnessing it from the sides and seeing what he can do.
Donna: Those are the unexpected joys. Craig is very well known, and I think we’ve all met people who maybe who aren’t everyday household words either in a micro setting or nationally or internationally, but when you get the opportunity to meet those people … I think of by marriage a grandmother who was the kindest person I had ever met, and the fact that maybe the marriage didn’t work, but I had her in my life and I can always smile thinking about her. I think how great it was that I was related to her for a while.
I think when I delivered Meals on Wheels as a volunteer and walked into a squalid little apartment in Reading, and when I gave the woman her little bag of her lunch or whatever, she said, “You look tired. Why don’t you take my grape juice?” I’ll tell you, I was more inspired in that squalid little apartment with that sense of grace that woman had, who had nothing, and yet thought I should drink her grape juice because I looked tired from delivering Meals on Wheels. Those are the things that really stay with you and you feel terrific about.
Toni: The question is particularly, how do you put when you’re inspired and that enthusiasm into practice here in Berks County, but what you did with the answer to that question is you told two stories. Those stories of the people that you meet and you witness inspiration, you’re inspired by their stories, and then you get to tell those stories, and to me that’s how you get that into practice here in Berks County.
Donna: It is, and I’ve always felt it’s been a privilege to be a reporter, to be a journalist, to have the opportunity to tell the stories of the people I’ve met along the way, and sometimes they’re not always great stories, but that’s what human nature is. Mostly I think they’re positive.
I’ve always taken issue with people who say, “Oh, the newspaper only reports the bad stuff.” No, that’s not true. I’m not doing an advertisement for the Reading Eagle or any other newspaper, but if you really look at newspapers, with the exception maybe of the tabloids that we all know and try to walk past, but still look at the headlines, but if you look at responsible newspapers, responsible news outlets, local TV news stations, things like that, you’re going to see mostly the positive and the inspiring, and if you can adjust your mind to that … you have to know everything that’s going on, but if you can adjust your mind and think about what those stories tell you, that’s worth everything.
Toni: Is there anyone else in Berks County who inspire you?
Donna: Lots of people do.
Toni: Do you want to give a shout out to any one of them?
Donna: I just think there’s a world of people around here. I’m lucky in that I represent 16,000 people in Northwest Reading as a councilor and I’ve met many wonderful people, one of whom passed in the last year. His name was Harvey Kimble. He lived on little Holland Box Street in Northwest Reading. We always joked. We called him the Mayor of Holland Box Street. He was also the downtown mailman for the courthouse and all sorts of things.
Harvey was as kind a man as the day was long. Every time you saw him, he had a brilliant smile, a kind word to say. He was pure joy and pure wonderment, and just a great guy. Unfortunately, we lost him very suddenly and very quickly last year. I remember going to that funeral and seeing everyone from judges to other elected officials to business people in tears because he was such a unifying, positive, great part of the City of Reading. We’re so sad we lost him, but still to this day, when you mention the name “Harvey,” everybody says, “Harvey!”
Next year we’re going to be doing something to commemorate him more permanently in the City, and I’m really glad that a citizen who made that impact is remembered as well as all the “honchos” in the world are remembered. It’s the people like that that make a city or an area wonderful.
Toni: It’s fantastic. What do you want your legacy to be?
Donna: I just hope people think I was an okay person that tried hard and was lucky enough to live a really lucky life and have different roles to play and have a terrific family, a great son. I’ve been lucky enough to be married to two great guys over the course of my life. Can't have that often. As a result, I have my family plus two other families I’ve been able to call family, so I don’t know how much better it gets than that.
Toni: As most people are, you are living your legacy. Thank you for telling the stories of Berks County and doing the work that you do. Thank you, Donna Reed, for showing up for the Get Inspired! Project.
Donna: Thank you.
