Chamber celebrates business
PENN TWP — Butler County Chamber of Commerce members and many members of the Butler County Bar Association gathered Thursday for the annual "Celebrate Business" dinner at the Butler Country Club.
On tap, besides good food and good company, were two awards, the William A. Morgan Jr. Entrepreneur of the Year award and the 2008 Chamber Business Champion.
• Richard Musko, owner and operator of R.P. Musko & Associates in Center Township, received the entrepreneur award for his years of dedication to the Butler County community.
Musko is a lifelong resident of Butler and a graduate of Butler High School and Robert Morris University, where he earned a degree in accounting.
He began his career with a Pittsburgh accounting firm that opened a branch office in Butler several years later. In 1975, Musko opened his own business.
Musko is very active in community affairs with involvement in many organizations serving in various capacities. Just a few he works with are: the chamber, Butler County Community College, Endowment for Butler County, AM Rotary Club of Butler, Family YMCA of Butler County, Butler Human Resources Association, Golden Tornado Scholastic Foundation, Tri-County Workforce Investment Board, Lifesteps and Junior Achievement.
He has served in many capacities with the chamber beginning in the 1980s. Currently, he is a board member, past president and member of the Legislative Action Committee but has served the organization in other capacities during the years.
Musko is a charter member and past president of the AM Rotary Club of Butler, a Paul Harris fellowship winner and a recipient of the International Presidential Rotary Award for community involvement for the Special Kids Zone project at Alameda Park.
He also worked on the South Main Street Bridge Beautification project of the AM Rotary Club of Butler, which won a Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's "Community Greening Award" last month.
He is a member of the First United Methodist Church on North Street, serving on the strategic planning team, new facilities leadership team and the finance committee.
Musko is a Mason and served as Master of Butler Lodge 272 as well as other leadership roles in the fraternity. He currently is president of the Shrine Luncheon Club of Butler and president-elect of Caravan 14 of the Syria Shrine.
Musko and his wife, Linda, have three children and two grandchildren.
• The 2008 Chamber Business Champion is Quality Life Services, the managing partner and principal owner of 10 facilities that include Chicora Medical Center, Trinity Living Center, Sugar Creek Rest, Quality Life Rehab, Quality Pharmacy, Newberry Apartments, Pine Tree Village, Emlenton's Laurel Manor, Countryside, South Fayette Nursing Center and Fair Winds Manor.
The company is owned by multigenerations of the Tack family, three generations of which attended Thursday's dinner.
The company provides skilled nursing and personal care to the local and surrounding communities. Operating for 35 years, Quality Life Services is one of the largest, private health care providers in Butler, Armstrong and Mercer counties.
In 2006, Quality Life Services moved its corporate office from Armstrong County to Butler County, buying the vacant Heckett-Mulitserv building on North Main Street. Also in 2006, Quality Pharmacy, a stand-alone retail and institutional pharmacy, opened in Chicora. Later in 2007, Quality bought Fair Winds Manor in Winfield Township, adding 100 plus jobs to the organization.
The company offers the "dream-a-little-dream" program, which grants residents' wishes in the skilled nursing and personal care facilities through employee-run fundraisers.
In addition, the organization also provides a state-approved, certified nurse's aide class to new employees at the corporate office in Butler. With 33 graduates, the classroom is also a training site for the Butler County Community College Program, "Leadership and Supervision in Health care."
Trinity Living Center, Sugar Creek Rest and Chicora Medical Center all were named individually as "One of America's Top Nursing Homes" by the Consumer's Research Council of America three years in a row — 2004, 2005 and 2006.
Following dinner, the more than 200 guests received a waking jolt from Pennsylvania Supreme County Justice Seamus McCaffery, who is not your usual judge.Sporting a Mr. Clean shining head and a gray goatee, McCaffery enthralled the crowd with stories of his family that immigrated from Ireland to Canada and then to Philadelphia in the 1950s, along with his 40 years of military service, some of it overlapping with his 20 years as a police officer in Philadelphia.He then became the first member of his family to attend college, graduating with a doctoral degree in law from Temple University after 11½ years of higher education.His life, military and police experiences have developed McCaffery into a judge who doesn't take much sass — especially when a defendant attacked a county sheriff in the courtroom."Everyone else ran and the poor sheriff was getting the tar beat out of him, so I came off the bench — in my robes and all — and took care of business," McCaffery said.Taking care of business, by the way, was to knock the defendant out with one punch.In the end, McCaffery reminded guests to appreciate the United States and the opportunities it affords everyone."I came to be the person I am because of this country, and I'll never forget it," he said.
