She was an 80 year old babushka-wearing Croatian grandma,
and she had been sitting in her plastic lawn chair just west of the
intersection of East 9th and Lakeside Avenues in downtown Cleveland
since 5:30 a.m. It was the Cavalier’s 2016 NBA Championship Parade Day, and she
wasn’t going to miss it for the world.
When my wife Allison and I arrived at the same spot about
7:40, the sidewalks were filling up. We wanted curbside, and it was already running
solid for blocks. We started chit-chat with grandma, “Great day, go Cavs, can
we kinda-sorta squeeze in near you?” She said a stern-sounding something in
Croatian, and Allison and I ain’t got game for that. The woman next to her
(turned out to be her daughter) translated, saying Grandma warned us not to
block her when the floats came by, but said Ok.
We were in.
Fast forward 3 hours, and the sidewalks are now teeming with
NEO humanity; all shapes, sizes, variety of Cavs t-shirts, and geographic starting
points for the journey downtown. The one thing we shared, and the only thing
that mattered, was the joy of celebrating Cleveland’s first major championship
in 52 years. Halleluiah, and grandma made it too.
Just in our dense little pop-up neighborhood we hung out
with hillbillies, hipsters, high income suburbanites, holy-rollers (with Jesus
T- shirts), half-in-the-bag frat boys eating Doritos and at least one hopeful
woman, dressed to score points, screaming, “SHUMP I LOVE YOU!!!” as Cav’s
player Iman Shumpert drove by (probably wanted to become a basketball wife).
What we ALL wanted was to get close to King James and his
court. So we waited, and waited, and waited.
Finally we got our rewards: there they were, our majestic
Warrior-beaters, really live and really right in front of us. Not just LeBron,
but all his supporting cast (it’s Channing Frye hoisting the trophy in the
picture above, with Richard Jefferson smiling alongside). It took a team to
beat those boys from the Golden State, and we had just the right collection of
superstars, role players, coaches, and bench cheerleaders. It took the whole
team to make it happen.
Now, since this is a company blog, and it’s pretty much
expected I bring this around to work, let me go strong to the basket: like
the Cavs, it takes the whole Redwood team to bring championship living to
communities across all the States where we do business. It takes accountants,
deal-makers, service technicians, leasing agents, community managers, regional
managers, marketeers, human resourcers, executives, computer geeks, support
staff, bill payers, payroll distributers, trainers, operators, decorators,
heck—even interns.
The key to all of it is working together, figuring out where
our strengths and challenges are and finding the right combination of smarts
and skills to go with our dedicated efforts.
Redwood strives for a championship daily, and our fans
(residents) deserve no less. Like the entire smorgasbord that makes up
Cavaliers fans, we need to be ALL IN for our residents.
--Luke Frazier
Luke is the Marketing Director at Redwood, and a
huge Cavs fan
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