News

Time to register for Halloween on the Square

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It is almost time for Halloween on the Square in Leonard, TX!! This year’s event will be on Saturday, October 31st from 5 PM to 7 PM. We hope everybody will be able to participate. We would love for your company/organization to set up a candy booth or game. Will you consider participating this year?

This event is sponsored by the Leonard Chamber of Commerce, but open for participation by ALL Leonard businesses! Individuals are not permitted to pass out candy for safety reasons. Your business/organization must be registered with us before permitted to set up a candy booth. Follow this link to register online – https://www.123formbuilder.com/form-5595498/form – Or complete the attached registration form and return by email or mail. Please let me know if you can help us with this year’s event! We appreciate your support.

**UPDATED RULES/REGULATIONS**
 
1. Candy booths will be spaced out around the square as much as possible and we will try to keep people moving in ONE direction
 
2. All candy needs to be individually packaged (a few pieces per baggy)
 
3. Candy bags can be placed on top of the booth tables, spaced out so that there is little contact between the businesses and kids
 
4. Individuals at candy booths will be required to wear a mask
 
5. We would like to limit the booths this year to CANDY BOOTHS ONLY. No games or extra activities allowed, just to keep the trick-or-treaters moving around the square rather than congregating in one area
 
We will not have bounce houses or food trucks this year to try and maintain social distancing and keep everybody safe! We will still have kids that dress up and come up here for lots of candy – so we hope we can still get plenty of participation from the businesses and organizations!
 
Please let us know if you are interested in participating this year or if you have any questions!! We appreciate your continuous support!

Halloweeen-2020 Registration Form

Chamber Update for Sept 2020

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Hello, we wanted to give a chamber update for the month of September.

Feeding Fannin

Feeding Fannin food and resource distributions have become a very important day for many Fannin County residents. Feeding Fannin is teaming up with the Leonard Chamber of Commerce and Lea’s Restaurant and will be serving our Leonard Community at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, September 17th at the Leonard City Park!

Lea’s Restaurant will be making 150 meatloaf dinners for us to serve.
We are looking for volunteers to help pass out meals and resource bags. We also want to fill up the resource bag with any helpful information your business or organization wants to share with the community. We are excited to lend a helping hand to our local families in need.

Right now we have 6 or so members that have volunteered to help, but we will take all the help we can get. Volunteers need to be out at the Park Pavilion at 4 pm if possible.

Please reach out to Marla Burks by email or phone (leonardchamberofcommerce@gmail.com or 903-587-0300) if you are interested in helping or you have any questions.

Halloween

Halloween on the Square will be Saturday, October 31st from 5:00 pm to 7 pm on the square. The city has confirmed they can help us get roads closed before the event. We will not be needing donations this year because we still have money in the Halloween fund. We have canceled the bounce houses and food trucks this year to try and maintain social distancing.
We contacted businesses and organizations at the end last month – if you are interested in setting up a booth please fill out a registration form or contact us at leonardchamberofcommerce@gmail.com. Here is the link to register online, https://www.123formbuilder.com/form-5595498/form
This year, we are hoping to work with the Trenton Economic Development Council and their Halloween Committee to advertise both Trenton and Leonard festivities. They plan on scheduling their Halloween event for that afternoon so that people from both communities can attend both events. We look forward to working with them on future events.
We will keep everybody posted regarding rules and regulations of handing out candy. We might have to make a few adjustments due to COVID 19.

i. Candy booths will be spaced out around the square as much as possible and we will try to keep people moving in ONE direction

ii. All candy needs to be individually packaged (a few pieces per baggy) so that kids aren’t digging around in a candy bowl.

iii. Candy bags can be placed on top of the booth tables, spaced out so that there is little contact between the businesses and kids.

iv. Individuals at candy booths will be required to wear gloves and masks

v. We would like to limit the booths to CANDY BOOTHS only. No games or extra activities, just to keep the trick or treaters moving around the square rather than congregating in one area.

Christmas Parade and Festivities

We will begin planning our Christmas parade. There might be a few new rules and regulations, but we will keep everybody posted.
We are trying to work with other Chamber organizations to see how they are going to proceed with activities

Picnic T-Shirts

There are still T-shirts in Bear Creek Country Store if anyone wants one. Those have been marked down to $10 each. We will be posting those for sale on Facebook next week so keep an eye out. We will offer online purchase and shipping.

Banquet Awards

We will be posting our 2019 Chamber Award Winners on our Chamber Facebook page TOMORROW. So keep an eye out.

Update on Chamber Events – late Summer 2020

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I want to thank everyone who came out and watched the fireworks. They were a big success! It seems like everyone in Leonard and the surrounding communities enjoyed them. I guess we were all able to stop and watch them this year without everything else going on. I would like to thank Linda Beckham and Pyrotex for making sure that happened and for all their hard work!

Picnic Shirts
There are still T- shirts in the Bear Creek Office (104 W. Collin) if anyone wants one!

Banquet Awards
I will be going around and giving out the awards soon!

Halloween
We have booked bounce houses for this year’s event. We have reached out to the City about road closures. We will be reaching out to businesses this month and next so everybody can get registered to set up on the Square to hand out candy! We will not be needing donations this year because we still have money in the Halloween fund!

Thank you all so much. We will see you all in September!

— Blaine Alexander & The Officers & Director Team

Update on Canceled Events and Plans

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Good Afternoon Chamber Members,

I hope you all had a lovely Easter even if it may have been a bit different this year.

It seems like a lot of what we do on the Chamber is plan, but this is something that nobody was planning for. Things are tough right now, we aren’t getting to be together for our regular meeting today, the kids aren’t in school, businesses are shut down, and businesses that are open are having to change up their operations. But from what I have learned about growing up, going to school, and running a business in Leonard is that this community supports its own like very few others. Leonard is resilient, we will make it through this together. Let us know if there is anything that we can do to help.

Since we last met the officers and directors have been in almost constant contact (at a safe distance!) because as you know we voted to first postpone the banquet, and then to cancel the rest of the events in April, including the Egg Hunt and our monthly meeting. At this time we do not have a whole lot of new information to report to you all. We have still been hard at work planning the Picnic July 16-18th! And we are looking at dates for the banquet that works around school sports and other events.

The next big thing that we usually do as a Chamber is vote to give 3 scholarships to the school. If in the event that we are not able to have our monthly meeting in May, the officers & directors will hold a vote to give these scholarships so that we are able to still provide this support in time to the 2020 Seniors, who have already been through a pretty rough year.

Thank you for your continued support of the Chamber. Stay safe, stay healthy, and we look forward to seeing you all soon!

President – Blaine Alexander

Vice President – Marla Burks

Secretary – Elizabeth Christman

Treasurer – Brandi Treadway

& Our Team of Directors: Sheryl Stanley, Charlotte Garner, Kacey Blackerby, Linda Beckham, Kelli Blackerby, & Gaye Doyle

All Chamber Events Canceled through End of April

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Good Afternoon,

The Leonard Chamber of Commerce Officers and Directors have decided to cancel all of our events through the month of April. While we are planning on rescheduling our Annual Banquet that was scheduled for 4/3/20, we have now decided to cancel the banquet, our annual Easter Egg Hunt that was scheduled for 4/11/20,  and finally we have decided to cancel our monthly meeting that was scheduled for 4/14/20.

We have not made these decisions lightly, we have taken the health and safety of the community into account, as well as recommendations from the CDC and now the declaration from Governor Greg Abbot.

We will make sure and send out an email to the members with a chamber update, the minutes from the last meeting, and the treasurer’s report on the 14th.

Thank you for your understanding at this unprecedented time. We hope that you, your family, and your business are all safe, and healthy.

Sincerely,

Blaine Alexander and the Officers & Directors Team

April 2020 Banquet Canceled

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UPDATE: The banquet has been canceled. See you in April, 2021.

Dear Chamber Members,

We regret to inform you all that our Officer and Directors team have decided in light of current events to postpone our upcoming Annual Banquet and Awards Ceremony due to CDC recommendations of limiting crowds of over 50. While we would all love to have a night of celebration of the past year with all of you, the health and safety of Leonard and the surrounding community is our first priority. We want to do everything we can to protect our members and their businesses.

At this time, we do not have another date scheduled, however, we will be having the banquet as soon as possible! We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause. If you have already purchased tickets please hold on to them, they will still be good for the rescheduled banquet! For the people who have donated silent auction items, thank you so much we will hang on to them! We will be working with Magnolia Grace to plan a date that works with everyone.

Thank you all for your understanding,

President Blaine Alexander and the Officer & Director Team

2020 Happenings at the Chamber

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We had great turnout at our February meeting. Here are some highlights:

1.       Membership Dues! Attached is the 2020 Membership form and here is the link to our website: https://leonardchamber.com/join-the-chamber

2.       The Annual Chamber Banquet is Friday April 3 at Magnolia Grace! Tickets go on sale March 1. Here is a flyer with more information!

3.       Please take time to fill out your nomination for Citizen, Business, and Educator of the Year by March 1. These will be presented at the Chamber Banquet! Here are the links, to online forms. Forms you can print out are located here.

-Citizen of the Year: https://www.123formbuilder.com/form-5254436/citizen-of-the-year-2019?fbclid=IwAR3G_0ff63IdvuVICzrhQd-Sig_6YEAxnt84fYta99AitQnKWnNpUxphYLA

-Business of the Year: https://www.123formbuilder.com/form-5254446/business-of-the-year-2019?fbclid=IwAR3SlragmWRJg8W-cRwA4pFONwqFjOCotZ1TxHb_wsSNK8FIzU8IaR_ELYw

-Educator of the Year: https://www.123formbuilder.com/form-5254448/educator-of-the-year-2019?fbclid=IwAR3dx299PyWvxWV5TwgkJwVNC8tbViQ5blQEag4b3Vdbr-hodkwkMCizi2U

4.       The Easter Egg Hunt will be Saturday, April 11th at the City Park. Music, pictures, and food will start at 11am. The egg hunt will start at noon!

5.       Garney Construction will be hosting a 5k Run for Life here in Leonard on Saturday April 18th. https://www.runforlife.club/?fbclid=IwAR1uSLOKKBdo5bpw8oHLGTxCJCukPovagh-67m7PrjcB05_kCAwxy-pQauI

6.       The Leonard Picnic will be held this year from July 16-18. We have already lined up Eleven Hundred Springs, The Blandelles, and The Buzz Andrews Band, and are hoping to get more!

7.       We are looking for sponsors to make the Picnic even bigger this year! We are hoping we can get bigger bands, entertainment, and events going on throughout the picnic to attract larger crowds to Leonard and your business! Sponsors have already started rolling in! Let us know if you have any questions! Attached is a breakdown of the sponsorship levels, and here is a form you can fill out in a few clicks! https://www.123formbuilder.com/form-5253746/leonard-picnic-2020?fbclid=IwAR0ajDDzfWg7RS8ttfjD4UeHjx9hoGzZfNlh-0vexuV6r3CMnt7UebOcdW0

Nominate Citizen, Business and Educator of the Year

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It is time to nominate Leonard’s Citizen of the Year, Business of the Year, and Educator of the Year.  These will be announced at the annual Chamber of Commerce banquet that will be held on 04/03/2020.  The deadline to turn in nominations will be March 2, 2020. The forms can also be picked up at the Leonard Pharmacy, Bear Creek Store, and First United Bank.

The forms may be emailed to leonardchamberofcommerce@gmail.com, mailed to Leonard Chamber of Commerce P O Box 117 Leonard, TX 75452 or dropped off at the Leonard Pharmacy, Bear Creek Store, or First United.

Here are printable forms (.PDF):

BUSINESS OF THE YEAR 2020

CITIZEN OF THE YEAR 2020

EDUCATOR OF THE YEAR 2020

You can also submit nominations online at the below links.

https://www.123formbuilder.com/form-5254448/educator-of-the-year-2019

https://www.123formbuilder.com/form-5254446/business-of-the-year-2019

https://www.123formbuilder.com/form-5254436/citizen-of-the-year-2019

Video from Leonard Christmas Parade

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Christmas Tree in front of City Hall

Check out this video of the December 2019 Christmas tree lighting and Leonard Christmas Parade! This was graciously provided by the Leonard Graphic. Please follow their Facebook page for the latest happenings in the Leonard area.

The Chamber of Commerce appreciates all of the sponsors and volunteers who helped make this annual event possible.

Christmas Tree in front of City Hall

Leonard Chamber of Commerce Banquet – 2018 Awards

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These awards were presented at the 2018 Leonard Chamber of Commerce Annual Banquet.