Emcee puts his Bo Rester spin on Chamber Banquet
“We’ll write what we want her to say, but I want you to put the Bo Rester spin on it,” Tommy Shumate advised in passing to Bo the script provided for the chamber’s outgoing Ambassador of the Year, Suzy Castillo, to name Shelton West as this year’s pick.
So as soon as he got the microphone back, Bo ran through a 30-second litany of one liners targeting Shelton’s standing as the most recognizable face in the county.
“I’m tied a distant second with the rest of the ‘also rans,’” said Bo, who put in a day’s work after hours picking music and working the backstage players into the script.
Everybody called on to speak had a song of their own played as they made their way to the lectern.
For Suzy, it was “Mejur Latina.”
“You picked it because I’m Mexican?” she livened up the act while the music still played.
Well, sort of, but more for the lyrics set to a salsa beat.
“It loses a bit in the translation but it’s a powerful song about someone who comes with sunshine –I come with heart, I come with love – that’s Suzy, always a bright spot,” Bo said.
Billy Joel’s Piano Man played for Ron Clinton, a world-traveling concert pianist before he settled into a 40-year community college education career.
He plugged the coming opening of Rancho Seco Steakhouse (located in a restoration of the one-time furniture warehouse at 416 East 6th Street) during a catered dinner in which Chef Brandon Rodriguez’s inch-thick, bone in pork chop served with an agava-dijon sauce knocked it outa the park.
He pointed out that the dessert selection of Laura’s cheesecakes was the same as those whose reputation has grown as the prime supplier for holiday-season cheesecakes shipped across America.
When the home-grown manufacturer whose ranch and rodeo equipment penetrates a global market passed on speaking after being named the business of the year, Bo thanked the Priefert family for supporting the local rodeo, transitioning into recognition for a Mt. Pleasant Rodeo committee not on the evening agenda that this year was named the runner up Texas Pro Rodeo Circuit Committee of the year.
“That’s voted on by the rodeo participants selecting the best rodeo and the community that entertained them best,” Bo said.
Ambassador greeted with longest ovation at banquet
Bill Priefert got the crowd home earlier by not giving a speech, Ron Clinton walked off as best extemporaneous recipient speaker, Sabrina Vaseleck broke hearts and Mt. Pleasant Chamber of Commerce Ambassador of the Year Shelton West got the longest standing ovation of any honoree at the 2025 Banquet.
Shelton’s a one-time SWEPCO employee who worked 20 years in the restaurant business before taking a community relations slot with EAG Auto Group. He credited Tommy Shumate with best career advice.
“If you get to work on time, you’re ten minutes late,” he said.
More people know Shelton than anybody in the county, according to perennial emcee Bo Rester.
“There are notable ‘Also Rans,’ but Shelton’s Mister Mt. Pleasant,” he said, setting up his punch line. “It makes me mad because I’ll always be second.”
The energy behind any project at which he takes aim, Bo closed his office door at midafternoon and worked late the night before, boning up for the show.
As for someone knowing what they might mean to others, “this is probably gonna be it,” Bo said. “Nobody’s up for an academy award. We’ve got so many good people – the night’s gotta be as good as we can make it.”
Dr. Ron Clinton, who circled the globe as a concert pianist before coming to town four decades back as the new community college’s first director of music and is presently winding up his career in academia as its fifth president, took home the Lifetime Achievement Award.
“One of the greatest blessings of my life is to have known so many of you in this room,” he said.
Coming in under two hours, the crowd made it home by mid evening in part because the father and son duo of Bill and Eddie Priefert passed on the podium. Was anybody shocked that Priefert Manufacturing – finally – got named Business of the Year?
From its beginnings as a backyard shop, the company today has more than a thousand employees producing rodeo and ranch equipment and has diversified into steel mill operations.
Cut to, a shot of a veteran air force intelligence veteran, a Pittsburg High product, a Magna Cum Laude A&M Texarkana grad, a one-time teacher of the year and the story of the beginnings of a business she named Ruby Begonia that invoked silence, reverence changing to a celebratory ambush as family, students and employees met Citizen of the Year Sabrina Vaseleck on stage.
Ruby Begonia was first the nickname the family gave Sabrina’s mother, who’d never liked her given name.
So she’s renamed for a gem and a flower in the story as told at the Ruby Begonia website.
Diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer in the summer of 2020, as a side effect she became sensitive to scents. For the mom she was with until she died that December, Sabrina began experimenting, creating clean burning candles.
In August 2021, she launched the business she named Ruby Begonia. Beginning as a vendor at festivals and fairs, Ruby Begonia is now a storefront business on Madison with manufacturing facilities across the street.
They manufacture clean burning candles.
