Holiday Gift Ideas For Coworkers

Holiday Gift Ideas for Your Employees, Boss and Clients | The ...

Now that Thanksgiving is over, the holiday shopping season has officially begun. But deciding what to buy for all those close to you can be downright paralyzing with all the choices that are out there. It can be even more difficult to shop for those we know professionally but maybe we don’t know so well personally. Here is a starting point for brainstorming your holiday gift list:

West Fertilizer Co. owners mourn explosion's impact on their town

WEST — Don and Wanda Adair worked hard to build their family farm and carve out a slice of happiness in rural Texas. It slipped away — maybe forever — on April 17.

Like the rest of the world, the Adairs witnessed the fireball and mushroom cloud when the West Fertilizer Co. exploded. But they watched from a unique perspective. Their company, Adair Grain Inc., owned the fertilizer plant.

In the days after the explosion, the statistics rose to 15 dead, 200 injured and $100 million in property damage. Reporters chronicled the lives of the 12 firefighters who died in the explosion. And they wrote about good Samaritans who jeopardized themselves to evacuate helpless patients from a destroyed nursing home.

But the story of Don and Wanda Adair has remained largely untold to the world outside West. They are anything but high-powered executives for a big corporation like Monsanto or Union Carbide. They live and work in West like everyone else.

“This couple has known the families of the people who died all of their lives,” said the Rev. Ernie Albrecht, pastor of West Church of Christ. Don Adair serves as one of three church elders. “They employed people who now have no jobs. They know the people who lost their homes. How are you supposed to face these things emotionally?”