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Combining the
best of their individual experiences, Briana Dwire Tomack ’92 and
Cathi Gerhard Williams ’91, M’92 published the first edition of the
Laurel Mountain Post in the fall of 2004. A quarterly
community newspaper, it highlights aspects of life in the Laurel
Highlands area with a strong focus on people and community.
Graduates of
Derry Area Senior High School and IUP, Tomack and Williams have been
good friends for over twenty years. Tomack was a corporate contract
manager and controller in Philadelphia before having her first child
in 2001.
Briana Tomack and Cathi
Williams
Williams worked
in corporate and nonprofit public relations and advertising for ten
years in Pennsylvania and North Carolina before forming, in 2002,
her own advertising and design agency,
biffBOOcommunication, which also publishes the newspaper. (Her
six-year-old son, Robert, is the spokesmodel for the
agency and is featured on the website.)
At turning points
in their careers and family life goals, they decided their
professional and personal skills complemented the other’s business endeavors.
“Cathi is a
creative and conceptual introvert, and I'm an analytical and
organized extrovert,” said Tomack.
Taking their
years of experience in corporate and nonprofit business, they
decided to work together and create something new.
“We wanted to
create a free community magazine for, by, and about the people of
Westmoreland County,” said Tomack. “So many local publications focus
on business or all-advertising formats… an all-feature, good-news
type of publication is something new.”
Debut issue
of Laurel Mountain Post, 2004
Although their
post-graduate life took them away from the area, Tomack and Williams
always kept in touch with the people and places they left behind.
Tomack eventually
moved to Duncansville, Pa., with her husband, Rick Tomack ’91, and
their children, Sam and Alex. Rick is a department director of
a long-term care facility in the Altoona area.
Williams, a
third-generation IUP graduate, lives in Fuquay-Varina, N.C. (a
suburb of Raleigh), but spends summers and vacations at her parents’
farm in Derry. She also commutes frequently between the two states
for the newspaper and for advertising projects. She met her husband,
Drew Williams D’93, while both studied in IUP’s graduate English
program. He serves as the newspaper’s fiction editor and is a
published author.
Their daughter,
fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Srsic (her grandfather is Bill Srsic,
IUP’s associate director of financial aid), serves as the
newspaper’s art and layout editor, performing design revisions to
ads and feature content during the final editing and print
preparation process.
“This newspaper
is a way for everyone who calls this part of the state home to keep
in touch with it,” said Tomack. “Residents can reconnect with their
neighbors, and those who have moved away can keep in touch. Our goal
is to build, promote, and strengthen the community in Westmoreland
and surrounding counties.”
The paper is
available to view on line at
www.LaurelMountainPost.com. |
