Parkridge East Staff Treated to Lunch

A couple of local State Farm Insurance agents and the owner of Buddy’s Bar-b-q teamed up on Thursday afternoon to do something nice for East Ridge health care workers.

Justin Robinson who has a State Farm agency on Ringgold Road and his fellow Hixson agent Brett Smalley provided a barbecue plate from Buddy’s for 198 health care workers at Parkridge East Hospital. The barbecue, some of the best around, was catered by Deanne Dawes’s crew at the popular eatery in Jordan Crossing.

“We wanted to give something back to the people who are on the front line of this (pandemic),” said Robinson, who is also the President of the East Ridge Chapter of the Chamber of Commerce. “We wanted to let them know that we are thinking about them.

“I couldn’t imagine going to work and putting your life on the line every day,” he added.

The kind act was not lost on Justin Millsaps, the CEO of Parkridge East Hospital.

” We’re grateful for their support of our staff during this time as we continue to deliver high-quality healthcare, and are honored to be members of such a supportive and encouraging community,” Millsaps wrote in a statement to East Ridge News Online.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.