2014 was a tremendous year for the Ideas in Motion Media team and it definitely showed on LaPorteCountyLife.com. We loved covering good news in La Porte County and 2014 saw us connect with a lot of great groups and organizations doing great things in town.
I see about 99.9% of the events we cover and post about and have a crazy good memory for stuff like this (just ask my wife!), so I thought I’d throw together a personal Best-Of for my favorite stories I can remember posting about on LaPorteCountyLife.com this year.
Teaching Wolves About Money
Early in January, our partners at Horizon Bank expanded with a new, unique location - and while the idea of a new banking center may not stand out to you as a great story or one that should be highlighted in a yearly Top 10, this story of Horizon Bank’s new Wolves Branch, located in Michigan City High School, should be celebrated. Not only is it providing an opportunity for kids to learn about financial discipline and literacy, it also gives kids jobs at school.
Dodge Balls for Charity
We love working with the United Way of La Porte County and I, in particular, was excited when they invited us out to their annual Dodgeball Tournament fundraiser at Marquette Catholic High School. I loved dodgeball in high school and played intramurals in college, so I truly enjoyed the opportunity to through my arm out and complain about it for a couple weeks after. Plus, we won a game!
4th of July Bigger and Better than Ever
This year we continued our coverage of the La Porte Jaycee’s 4th of July Parade, one of the biggest celebrations of Independence Day in the state of Indiana and the turnout was tremendous. We expanded our coverage of Independence Day again this year, with an expansion out to Lake County, and if you’d like to see just a ton of patriotism, this link is right up your alley.
Breaking Ground Brings Bread
Back in May, we were happy to attend a groundbreaking ceremony in La Porte for a $100M+ investment project by Alcoa Howmet for a new facility that will create over 300 jobs for the county. This massive expansion by Alcoa saw Governor Pence come up and join in on the celebration, which should put one of the most “space age” (get it?) jet engine manufacturing facilities in the world.
Everybody's Awesome, Everything is Cool When You're Part of a Team
The Alcoa announcement was just one of many economic achievements in La Porte County this year, and Mayor Blair Milo happily shared the fruits of the La Porte County economic agencies' labor with an exclusive blog post in our Voices section with “La Porte Growing Economically as a ‘Hub of Awesomeness.'”
Move that Tassle
With the launch of NWIndianaLife.com in August 2013 we expanded our audience by tens of thousands, and with that increase we saw a number of schools that we now needed to help tell the stories of. We had graduations covered throughout the region - increasing from seven to 30 covered in the summer of 2014. We also started our #1StudentNWI series that has had a number of unique stories told through the eyes of the students at school.
Untold Stories
Our most visited and viewed story of all time on LaPorteCountyLife.com is only a couple of weeks old. Our Pam Antonetti profiled Jim Antrim, famed Walmart Greeter at the La Porte location. Pam did a great job sharing and telling the story of the military veteran, and is a must-read for all.
Football Fever
I’ll cheat on this one and combine some of the bigger stories that happened in the county this year with the New Prairie and La Porte High School football teams making their way down to Indianapolis to play for the state championships! We have a couple great photo galleries for New Prairie and La Porte’s game, but my personal highlight was the pep rally held the week ahead of the title games that combined both LPHS and NPHS, students, teams, faculty, staff and fans.
Stepping Up for Health
Another just cool initiative you don’t read about everywhere - Blair Milo makes her 2nd appearance on this list with our story on her “Step Up Saturday” initiative, building upon La Porte’s Fitness Friday. Her goal was to visit all 92 counties in the state and learn what they’re doing to stay active and healthy, and she accomplished her goal in October. Very cool.
Eventually Sparks will Cause a Fire
Our Voices section this year was dominated by La Porte High School teacher Erin Parker, who wrote in with dozens of inspirational and thoughtful pieces meant to get something inside moving. Great contributions all year long from the Slicer teacher, and I’ll go ahead and cheat again by not picking any one of them, but linking to her Contributor page so you can enjoy them all.