Dave Jackson stands with his father and employees for the groundbreaking.

Dave Jackson and a whole slew of folks working with him made the trip out to an open field and broke ground on a whole new store this morning. I’m not going to write about all the little details of the ground breaking. I’ll leave that to folks at WHOW’s Dewitt Daily News and the Clinton Journal. Heck, they do a pretty good job with it. I like to play with photos.

Dave made sure the shovels would be special and had the date engraved.

Now, I’m not one to go wild and crazy about ground-breaking ceremonies. Honestly, as a photojournalist working for newspapers, I think I covered more than I want to even contemplate. It was a game about finding a different angle, a different approach. Most of the time it was a huge plug for city officials more for political reasons than anything else. Not that I’m jaded or anything . . . but I think I had told myself I would never do those again once I left the news industry. I was wrong.

But this one had a bit of a different feeling to it. Kind of nice, actually. It was not a huge corporate entity getting ready to break ground, but a family-run business with the support of small time banks in a small town. Dave is very proud of the fact — and told every about it — that the work will be done by local business (Water Construction) and has the State Bank of Lincoln and Dewitt Savings Bank as their financial backing.

So he had those

Since a bit of old eyesore at Washington and Monroe was torn down people have wondered what would take the place of an empty lot. Coming late this year, a new Save-A-Lot!

folks there. And then he pulled in a few city officials — the mayor and the public works director who also were instrumental in moving things forward. There was an official from Sav-A-Lot there who have worked with him for more than 17 years at their current location.

As a small business owner in Clinton, I really appreciate the desire to stay local and keep the folks in Clinton working on this. And, after all, these are the folks that will end up shopping there also.

Dave Jackson, center, flips dirt along with Clinton City Administrator Tim Followell, Clinton Mayor Roger Cyrulik and State Bank of Lincoln’s Lance White. Also manning the shovels are Dewitt County Savings Bank’s Justin Fentress, Save-A-Lot District Manager Steve Kolb and Dave Water of Waters Construction.

But then it went a bit different.

He invited some of his current managers and employees along with his father for another set of photos. And that was even more special — because the only time his voice broke was when he introduced his father.  That was sweet.

Those are the kind of things that make a small town special. And that is what I had to write about on our blog!

Reverend Ernie Harvey give a blessing to the ground breaking and the coming new store for Save A Lot.