New line-up ready for IFI board
Jim Cripe, owner of Valet Cleaners in
Temple, TX, will succeed Lang Houston as president of the International
Fabricare Institute at the
annual membership meeting July 25 in Milwaukee, WI.
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Don Fawcett, the current treasurer and
District 1 director, will assume the role of president elect.
Houston will move on to chairman of the
board; Bob Shirley, the current chairman, will retire from the
board, along with David Rosenblatt, District 2 director.
Barbara Harvey, owner of Fabricare by Fran
in Severna Park, MD, replaces Rosenblatt as District 2
Director. Linda Ferguson, owner of Safeway Cleaners in Pearl,
MS, was elected director of District 6, succeeding Cripe.
As the new president, Cripe said he hopes
to keep the momentum Houston has gathered in his term and
institute new programs to help all cleaners get their dues
worth in benefits and services.
“We have heard that many smaller
cleaners feel that the benefits IFI offers are more geared
toward the larger cleaners,” Cripe said. “IFI is
for all cleaners, and we’ll be working at some projects
designed to help us focus on our smaller members as well as our
larger members. We will be reaching out to our most common
members and prove to them that IFI isn’t just for the big
guys.”
Cripe added that “It is the ultimate
servitude being on the board, and especially as a quote/unquote
‘officer’ on the Executive Committee [which
consists of the chairman, president, president-elect, and
treasurer]. We are available to all members. We want to hear
from you. We are all here to serve. I’ve blotted out a
year of my life so that I can do the best I can for this
industry that has done so well by me my whole life.”
Of his selection as treasurer, Martino
said, “My achievements are not legendary, however, since
my peers have chosen to elect me to this position, I will try
to make a strong contribution.”
“IFI is an association with a long
heritage. We have overcome very challenging times and we are
the backbone of our industry. IFI will continue to be the
leader of our industry. IFI is like your drycleaning business,
because at the end of the day, there can be no
excuses.”
Holdover board members include Gary Dawson
of Belleair Bluff, FL, District 3; Steven Poulos of North
Canton, OH, District 4; Gary Campbell of Corvallis, OR,
District 6; and Perry Pulos of Lancaster, CA, District 8. Brent
McWilliams of the Laidlaw Corp., is the board’s allied
trades representative.
Both new board members were unopposed in
their bids for election this year.
Harvey’s company, Fabricare by Fran,
has one plant, one coin-op laundry and several routes. Her
District 2 includes North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and the District of Columbia.
She has served both IFI and the industry
in general, as well as the Coin Laundry Association, over the
years. For her efforts on behalf of the industry, she was
honored at the Clean Show in New Orleans last year with
IFI’s Meritorious Achievement Award for Positive
Recognition of the Industry.
She also has represented the drycleaning
industry by testifying before Congress on the subject of
contaminated soil clean-ups and regulatory reform. She served
on IFI’s Textile Analysis Peer Review Group and, until
her election as a board member, she was the District 2
representative on the District Committee advisory group.
Ferguson, who will represent the states of
Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, New Mexico,
Kansas and Missouri, gave up law school to help in the family
business after the sudden death of her father.
She became involved with the
Louisiana/Mississippi Drycleaners and Launderers Association in
1990 and has been active in association work ever since. Like
Harvey, she served as an IFI District Committee member before
her election to the board.
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