A sweet salute to first responders

BY ROGER SMITH
MOUNTAIN CITIZEN

Cash Express employees delivered cupcakes to officials outside the Martin County Government Center. (Citizen photo by Nora Ray)

INEZ — Cash Express reflected on 9/11 with a sweet salute. Workers delivered desserts last week to area first responders.

Garry McNabb, Cash Express CEO, said there was nothing to celebrate in the extraordinary tragedy of 9/11, but there was one memory that he wants to hold on to – the heroism and selflessness demonstrated by law enforcement officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians who went about their business that day without concern for their own safety and without consideration for the magnitude of what they were confronting.

“If that doesn’t deserve our respect, nothing does,” McNabb said.

Although he doesn’t know where his company’s tradition of delivering food to first responders started, McNabb is glad it did.

“It started out of someone’s caring and appreciative heart and spread from employee to employee and location to location until stores all over Kentucky and Tennessee were involved,” he said. “No one ever imagined that taking a meal to first responders as a way of showing our appreciation would turn out to mean so much to the people in our company. As more and more people and locations became involved, a simple gesture became an annual salute to first responders.”

The way Cash Express shows appreciation differs from community to community. In Martin County and the surrounding area, Cash Express employees gifted cupcakes.

Pigeon Roost Fire Department got a sweet salute from Cash Express.
Martin County Constable Homer Mills was happy with the gift of cupcakes from Cash Express.
NetCare got cupcakes.
Warfield Volunteer Fire Department was treated to cupcakes.
Inez Volunteer Fire Department member Jarrod Slone accepted a dessert from Cash Express.
Martin County Sheriff’s Office honored with cupcakes
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