2011 MBJ BUSINESSPERSON OF THE YEAR: SURVIVING THE STORM

THE 2011 MBJ BUSINESSPERSON OF THE YEAR

In our inaugural Businessperson of the Year award, we are honoring the grit and guile of two Smithville small business ownerships, who stared down a community-destroying EF-5 tornado. Theirs, along with all but two businesses, were destroyed last April. But Phillip and Tiffany Lockhart of Doughbellys Pizzeria and Bobby and Melanie Edwards of Mel’s Diner have built back — bigger and better — and are serving a town that is healing on multiple levels. Sometimes, success is not measured in hundreds of millions of dollars made, but in serving your community. This is one of those times.

STORIES:

Families behind return of Mel’s Diner and Doughbellys are given MBJs highest honor

Hope abounds after tragedy, destruction

Smithville banking on keeping Highway 25 coming through town

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