If Marty can do it, we can do it as an industry
By Susan M. Andrews, Fabric editor -- Furniture Today, April 14, 2002
There are people in this world who never hesitate. If they see a thing that needs doing, they step forward and get it done. Marty Libowsky is one of those people.
At every market since I joined Furniture/Today in 1990, I've seen Marty generously spend energy and enthusiasm for the benefit of sick children. It might be a sick child whose family is crushed under medical bills. It might be a dying child with a lifelong wish that Libowsky wants to grant. It might be hungry children whose parents have been laid off when a factory closed. It might be funding for a summer camp for children with cancer.
His energy and enthusiasm seem boundless, and available to help anyone in need.
The 100 Angels Charitable Foundation he founded a few years ago has given many more members of the industry an opportunity to reach out to those in need. Libowsky and the 100 Angels are superb ambassadors for the furniture industry.
Recently, 100 Angels sponsored distribution of several tons of food to needy families in High Point through Feed The Children. You can read more about it on this page. Furniture retailers, manufacturers, sales reps and showroom building executives came together to see that something that needed doing got done.
Any of them just could have written a check and food would have found its way to needy people, I'm sure. And thank goodness there are so many people and companies that can send checks when there's a need.
But it was a lovely thing to see those furniture folks side by side with folks from the local community, stacking those boxes and then loading them into the trunks or back seats of cars, smiling right into the faces of the people they were helping, and hearing with their own ears the gratitude that was expressed.
On that morning, as far as the people being helped were concerned, that handful of people hefting those boxes of food was the face of the entire furniture industry.
Our industry needs a rallying point. Maybe this could be it — furniture folks feeding children.
The nurturing of children is done at home, and our industry furnishes the home. It seems like a natural to me.
If similar projects were undertaken in hundreds of communities around the country by hundreds of stores, manufacturers, suppliers and reps, the ripple effect would be remarkable. The face of the furniture industry, smiling and happy to help, would be seen everywhere, and the good achieved would be tremendous.
Let's do it.
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Letters to the Editor
Feb 15, 2004
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