SPARK

Discoveries, innovations, and insights that illuminate the future of the built environment

Giving back moves us forward

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McKinstry is dedicated to giving back to the communities in which we live and work. Top-performing employees come to McKinstry–and stay–in part because they feel good about our company’s corporate citizenship and because they have opportunities to be involved in social issues through volunteerism and community outreach. Volunteering enables our employees to develop leadership and other skills as well as forge networks and relationships that improve effectiveness.

Our peoples’ passion and participation is critical to our ongoing success. Fortunately for us, we have many dedicated employees like Rebecca Fitzsimmons, Brittany Pfaff and Laurel Price who exemplify McKinstry’s deep spirit of community and pour their hearts and hands into helping the company make a meaningful impact in our communities and for our planet. [Read more…]

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Grand stories

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My great-grandfather would go on to marry the ex-wife of the jealous brake-cutter

My great-grandfather would go on to marry Opal, the ex-wife of the jealous brake-cutter. It’s a long story, but my grandfather (pictured in front of the bread truck) knew how to tell it.

Warren G. Smith was a master storyteller.

He could hold you spellbound for hours as he spun his yarns. Like the time a jealous man cut the brakes of his father’s bread truck, sending them spilling into a ravine halfway across their mountainous route. Or when he dressed as Santa to greet people traveling home for the holidays through the Amtrak station where he volunteered. Or how he rescued a boy from drowning because he was the only one at that lake who knew CPR. His stories were burnished over time like beloved war medals, ready to be brought out at a moment’s notice.

Warren, my grandfather, recently passed away. But his stories live on.

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Bounded optimism

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Back in 2014, in a move that delighted reporters, bloggers and railfans alike, Amtrak started to offer free traveling residencies to writers. I’ll admit to the temptation to apply. I, too, love what writer Jessica Gross, on Amtrak’s “trial run” for the program, described as the “sense of safety, borne of boundaries” that comes from train travel, finding myself calmed by the erasure of uncertainty.

What to make of boundaries? Read any advice column and you’ll learn that boundaries are set to wall us off from the intrusions of others. Healthy relationships require you to respect your own boundaries, they write, and those of others.

But boundaries are more than ramparts for our hearts. They can also connect us and, in the case of a recent community engagement program, allow us to serve others.

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