Saturday, September 10, 2011

Greenbrier Hotel

Last week I had the opportunity to travel to West Virginia for a major event to celebrate and announce several multiple million dollar gifts to build The Summit Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve, which is the new high adventure base being built for the Boy Scouts of America. I have been working to support this project for the past nine months in my current position with the BSA.

I stayed at the Greenbrier Hotel Casino and Resort. This is a great historic hotel and I enjoyed staying there. Unfortunately with the hectic work schedule I was not able to explore as much as I would have liked but I will visit again sometime. This hotel is the location of the once secret government bunker to house Congress in the event of a nuclear attack. I did not get to take the tour but am looking forward to doing it on one of my future trips to West Virginia.

The event included a day at The Summit so donors and potential donors could experience a little taste of the property. The event was held at the overlook site on the property. It rained most of the week because of Tropical Storm Lee. I arrived on Sunday and we got about 7 inches of rain from Sunday to Tuesday. Needless to say the roads were muddy and wet. Thursday was the day of the event and fortunately it did not rain and we were able to get the roads passable by then. There were around 300 people in attendance including Jim Lovell of Apollo 13 fame and several CEO's of large American corporations. Overall the event was a great success and to date 225 million dollars have been raised to build The Summit.