Hazleton Area Business Citizen March 2014 | Page 11

Promoting a free market in the Greater Hazleton Area HABC: Operating a business today is very time consuming. But in spite of this, business people still find time to be civically active. You have been active in scouting for a number of years. How did you become involved in Boy Scouts? Dave DeLessio: I started in Scouts when my son was six, so that was in 1990. My son was a Tiger cub and I got involved just as a parent. In 1993, the cub master at the time was Gail Bartosevich, someone who was a great inspiration to me because she had a very rare lung disease that unfortunately claimed her life at a young age. I remember her saying that the cub pack needed help – she said “it’s only an hour a week!’ Now that’s the running joke - every time I ask someone to help with scouting, I tell them “it’s just an hour a week.” Really the commitment is much more, but I’m still active and I’m still involved. In scouting you can never truly measure what impact you have on other people’s lives, but once in a while you get a glimpse. HABC: How do you see active community involvement, such as scouting, impacting on the business climate in our area? Dave DeLessio: This is our community. And our community has undergone radical changes in the past fifteen years. I think as business people, we really need to be involved in our community in any way that we can so as to make the Hazleton Area a better place. I don’t know if ten years from now being involved in scouts is going to make a difference, but I would much rather have kids be in the Boy Scout gang than in the Bloods or Crips. Does it help? Again, very rarely, do we get to see glimpses of how we change things but I’m hoping it does. I feel that if we don’t get in- HABC March 1, 2014 9