The Crittenden Press Full Version (PDF)
News from The Press June 17, 2010

Myers celebrating 50 years of parts
For 50 years, the Myers family has had its hand in auto parts.
Ronnie Myers, owner and operator of the National Automotive Parts Association (NAPA) store in Marion, is celebrating with his staff the store's golden anniversary this month. It was in 1960 when his father, Louis, became manager of the NAPA auto parts store and started a family tradition.
The NAPA store first opened behind where Five Star Convenience Center is today. Among its early owners were Jackie and Tip Miller and James McKinney – thus the former name M&Mac – but Ronnie Myers put his name on the deed in 1982 and now his youngest son, Kyle, is the third generation to work behind the parts counter.
Customer service has been the trademark of the business, says Ronnie Myers, who started working at the parts store when he was 12 years old.
"It's the only job I ever had," said the 57-year-old owner.
His brother, Eddie, has also spent time behind the NAPA counter, putting in about 20 years before he left for other pursuits.
The current staff has been together for quite some time. Kathy Moore has been with Myers Auto Parts for 25 years, Darren Young for 20 years and Kyle Myers five. Tanner Nix, a high school student, handles summertime and afternoon deliveries.
The vast majority of their parts are overnighted on a truck that runs from Memphis to Marion. If they can't find what you need there, NAPA has about 30-40 other warehouses in the region.
Myers says that common parts are in stock and anything else can be there within a day or two.
Customer pranks are also part of the equation. Regular customers understand that good-hearted jabs come with their parts. From the noontime hangout for lunch-hour merchants to rendezvous on Saturday mornings after Rocket football games, the stools at NAPA are well worn.
Spend a little time at the counter and you might hear the story about how an employee put a chicken snake in Patrolman Tommy Croft's cruiser many years ago or the one about Ronnie getting balled out for the price of his parts even after delivering the $7.80 engine belt to a stranded motorist at Rosebud in the middle of a wet and foggy night. Then there was the time a guy came to Myers' home twice, the second time at nearly midnight, wanting only a lug nut. A few bikers left him a cold check, too, after he'd spent three hours helping them get all their parts installed using his own tools in the parking lot of a nearby grocery store.
Those memories are not all good, but they're still fun to talk about.
"Ninety-nine percent of the people we deal with are wonderful and that's what keeps us coming back doing this day after day," says Myers.
Of course you can't catch Ronnie at the shop mid-afternoon. That's his regular tee time at the local golf course. Like the NAPA parts business in Marion, some things never change.

Local attractions generating more dollars for effort
Tourism spending in Crittenden County has increased every year since the City of Marion created the Marion Tourism Commission. Over the past seven years, tourism spending has increased 150 percent in Crittenden County.
Local leaders point to the efforts of the Marion Tourism Commission, which has been aggressive in promoting the entire county.
The commission was started in 2003 by the City of Marion. It launched a new initiative to increase tourism in Marion and Crittenden County and hired its first director, Michele Edwards, who had ties to the lakes area tourism for many years. To fund the plan, Marion levied a three-percent tax on meals and lodging.
As predicted when leaders developed the tourism commission, there has been a marked increase in dollars spent on tourism and as a result more tax dollars are going into the city’s coffers to promote and market the area.
City Administrator Mark Bryant says there is no question that the City of Marion Tourism Commission is on point with its marketing and development plan.
“I have never heard anything except admiration for what the commission has done, and especially for its director, who is very involved in tourism efforts at the state and regional level,” Bryant said.
The year before the tourism commission was created, Crittenden County took in about $2 million in tourism dollars, according to the Kentucky Department of Tourism, which also includes a multiplier effect on such spending. Last year, more than $5 million in tourism dollars was poured into the local economy.
The original idea more than seven years ago was to make tourism pay for itself and grow. So far, it’s working.
When the city started focusing more closely on tourism and adopted its room and meal tax to feed the effort, collections were just under $150,000 for the first year. In 2009, just five years later, more than $180,000 has been collected in tax dollars, which means new receipts are being generated for local restaurants and lodging facilities. While most of the money goes right back into promoting the community’s attractions, funds are also distributed to parks and recreational opportunities which benefit local residents as well as those coming in from out of town.
Because of Land Between the Lakes and Barkley and Kentucky lakes, western Kentucky draws most of the state’s tourists. The Lane Report lists LBL as the state’s No. 1 tourist draw with Barkley and Kentucky Dam state parks not too far behind.
“When you see the number of people coming into the Marion Welcome Center, you know it’s working,” Bryant said. “We have people come into city hall who say they were visiting the lakes area and drive to Marion, largely to visit the Amish community, which is one of our biggest drawing cards.”
Mike Wheeler, a local furniture maker, has been on the tourism commission for five years. He says the mission of the tourism commission is to bring people to town every day. Seasonal events such as deer and turkey hunting and regular festivals such as Back Roads Tour and Heritage Days draw plenty of people, but that’s only a small part of the overall effort, Wheeler said.
“No one dreamed it. It’s hard to grasp that we’ve come this far in such a short amount of time,” said Wheeler, pointing to the relatively new Welcome Center, a marketing campaign that stretches to television commercials in Evansville and more than 50,000 brochures distributed annually.
Like Bryant, Wheeler commends the efforts of Edwards, who he says sees everything through the eyes of a tourism marketing specialist.
“When we hired her, she hit the ground running and has the contacts we need to keep growing,” he said. “Everything she does is to promote Marion and make sure we’re cast in the proper light.”