Faces of Newton County 2015
The Covington News
staffins
from page 4
knowledge is helping him maintain
the small town charm, while working
to grow Newton County without
changing altering its identity.
“I think Covington and Newton County has done a great job of
maintaining that charm and every
time you walk around the Square
you see it. I still remember being a
child and smelling General Mills,
smelling that cereal when you drove
by there,” Staffins said. “There are
things that haven’t changed but
things that have changed tremendously.”
Among the items on Staffins to
do list is continuing to use the resources Newton County’s chamber
has already developed and leverage
some of Covington’s attributes.
“We want to leverage the Hollywood of the South and other tourism opportunities,” Staffins said.
“We want this to be a retail hub for
our part of the state and we want
to make sure we are giving our
chamber members the best service
possible.”
Above all though, his goals seem
to be giving his family the same
opportunity that he had. Staffins
brings back to Newton his wife,
Rachel, daughters Evelyn Kate, 2 ½,
and Katherine Anne, 10 months.
“We’ve got a growing family,
and I can’t tell you how exited I am
to go raise those two girls in the
same place I was raised. It’s a different environment but the same
great folks.”
lane
from page 5
“All of a sudden I started working for my friends,” Andrea Lane
said. “And I was on the PTO when
the Theme School started and I
ended up getting a job as registrar
in its front office.”
She worked there for three
years, when the Director of Volunteer Services position at NMC presented itself through the network
she had cultivated since moving to
Covington and working jobs for
friends in her community.
It turns out Lane’s work at the
Theme School lent itself well to the
position of Director of Volunteer
Services, placing people in needed
volunteer positions and managing a volunteer force. The Theme
School requires each family volunteer 20 hours a year in order for
the student to attend there.
“I had certain duties for the
school as related to the school
system but also every parent at the
school ha has a responsibility at
the school to complete 20 hours of
volunteer time,” Lane said. “I was
dealing with a lot of people who
wanted and needed to volunteer
and part of my job was to tell them
how to get their hours and to support them.”
Lane also did her own volunteer
work, mostly through her children
at school but also through her
membership at the Good Shepherd
Episcopal Church.
“Having a job like that makes
you acutely aware of the importance of volunteering and how
important it is to an institution like
a school or hospital.” Lane said. “My
responsibilities here are to oversee volunteers, recruit volunteers,
orient volunteers and place them
based on their skills, background
and personalities and place them in
the v