anniversary Archives - Starr Tours & Charters
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It’s Been a Great Year!

It’s Been a Great Year!

As our company celebrates its 70th Anniversary, our blog celebrates its 1st! One year ago we started with a new aim to bring you interesting and useful information to make your travel experiences even richer!

We started with a couple of great posts sharing the history of Starr.
Did you know that our family run business is currently in its third generation?
Have you ever wondered where the name “Starr” came from?

We’ve shared important safety information.
There was this post with information about motorcoach safety.
Starr’s CEO, Alan Glickman, shared information about Starr’s focus on safety.
We posted a few tips on staying safe when traveling solo.

And threw in some pointers for a few of our popular tours.
Like how to spend your time on Block Island.
How to make the most of your day trip to Rehoboth Beach.
Information about Washington, DC’s newest Smithsonian Institute Museum – National Museum of African American History and Culture.
How to make the most of your Florida Winter Getaway.
And interesting information about the Quebec Winter Carnival.

There have been some terrific posts by members of our Starr family of employees, sharing their memories and travel experiences with you.
Dawn Nachbaur, one of our Tour Coordinators, shared her experience of revisiting Ellis Island.
Christine Durling, one of our Tour Directors, shared what makes traveling 26 days Cross Country on a bus so special.
And Christine shared her experience of conquering St. Louis’ Gateway Arch.
Bette Barr, another one of our Tour Directors, shared her love of New York City.
Shana D’Attilio, from our Marketing Department, shared her love of the new Broadway musical, Come From Away.
Margie Mangione, one of our Travel Advisers, shared her Christmas memories.
Allison Berger, one of our receptionists, shared her memories of Hanukkah.

And we’ve thrown in some informative posts with “How To’s” and recipes.
Like this one on how to take pictures with your smartphone.
And this one with recipes for hotel friendly meals.
Or this one with ways to research how to spend your “on own” time.
And this Tour Director’s guide on what to pack in your carry-on.

It’s been a great year and we’re excited to continue to provide you with information, anecdotes, tips, and everything in between to inspire you and to make your travel experiences as wonderful as possible! Be sure to check out our Archives to see our other posts and leave us comments to share your thoughts.

What topics would you like to see us cover in our second year?

Celebrating Starr’s Long-Term Employees

Last week we celebrated a personal milestone at Starr: Kathy Dolly, Starr’s Director of Finance celebrated her 40th anniversary. This special anniversary made me think of not only Kathy, but all the wonderful people who have experienced long tenures at Starr.

 

First thing’s first. Let’s define tenure in this context. Tenure is the length of time an employee has worked for their employer.

 

Kathy with Starr Owner & CEO Alan Glickman, and President John Gillispie

Next, let’s talk more about Kathy (because she deserves it!) This year Kathy is celebrating her 60th birthday (don’t tell her I told you). If you do the math, you can figure Kathy started when she was only 20 years old, back when she was a college student. Kathy has been at Starr longer than she has been married, longer than she has been a mother, and before office computers were a norm (remember carbon copies?)! Plus, during Kathy’s time at Starr, her daughter, Melissa, worked at Starr while she was in high school and college (and has since moved on to a career with a national accounting firm).

 

All in all, there are 19 employees with 25 or more years of tenure at Starr. With a total of 131 employees, that’s almost 15% of us who have worked here for a quarter of a century. Not too shabby, eh? And by the way, the average Starr employee has 12.5 years of tenure. Can you tell we are quite proud that our employees choose to stay at Starr for their career?

 

Congratulations to the following Starr employees with 25 or more years of tenure:
Alan Glickman, CEO, 47 years
Kathy Dolly, Director of Finance, 40 years
Henry Jarkowski, Maintenance, 37.5 years
Bob Multop, Courier, 36 years
John Ciborowski, Tour Director, 35 years
Margie Mangione, Travel Advisor-Tours, 34 years
Andy Waskie, Tour Director, 33 years
Jim Agasar, Driver, 32 years
Penny Rudolph, Tour Director, 30 years
Carole Brown, Tour Director, 30 years
Bill King, Driver, 29 years
MaryAnne Kostic-King, Tour Director, 28 years
Lucille George, Charters & Tour Director, 28 years
Mary Gasper, Tour Operations, 28 years
Rob Graff, Director of Transportation, 26 years
Joann Peate, Tour Operations, 26 years
Nancy Kozic, Travel Advisor-Tours, 25 years
Chic Suter, Driver, 25 years
Jane Peters Estes, Tour Director, 25 years

 

And what about me? Well, would you count the hours I listened to my dad talk about Starr at the dinner table or those tours I escorted while I was in college or the ad copy I wrote while I was in high school? OK, I guess not! So in that case, I will be celebrating my “official” 19th year at Starr this August!

 

Since I find employee tenure fascinating, I looked up some statistics on this topic and I learned the following from the Bureau of Labor Statistics as of January 2016:¹

Did you know?

The median number of years that workers had been with their current employer was 4.2 years, down from 4.6 years just 2 years prior.

The amount of workers with 10 years or more of tenure with their current employer is 29% (men) and 28% (women). Not surprisingly, Employee tenure was generally higher among older workers than younger ones. For example, the median tenure of workers ages 55 to 64 (10.1 years) was more than three times that of workers ages 25 to 34 years (2.8 years).

 

What does tenure say about you?

Please feel free to chime in with your tenure and what you think it says about a person! Looking forward to all your thoughts!

 

Cheers to all of our great employees and here’s to many more years to come!

Sandy Borowsky
Vice President, Tours & Marketing

 

 

¹https://www.bls.gov/news.release/tenure.nr0.htm