{"id":38,"date":"2014-06-30T00:23:07","date_gmt":"2014-06-30T05:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lnbeta09.com\/alanjennings\/?page_id=38"},"modified":"2018-12-17T01:50:04","modified_gmt":"2018-12-17T06:50:04","slug":"a-little-background","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.alanjennings.com\/?page_id=38","title":{"rendered":"A little background . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"
\u2014 C. Alan Jennings<\/address>\n
\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My father was a hotel manager. He married a beautiful front desk clerk. I was born in a hotel. I grew up living and working in hotels.\u00a0In case you never thought about it, hotel people work so that everyone else\u00a0can play. I tried selling life insurance as an alternative. No luck there.<\/p>\n

In 1988, after I\u00a0slaved for nearly 20 years in the hotel business, a big bad bank seized my boss’s hotel.\u00a0The bank had no more clue how to run a hotel than my boss knew how to run a bank.\u00a0 I\u00a0told the banker’s lackey\u00a0in the manager’s office that\u00a0I figured to be better off seeking\u00a0my fortune elsewhere than by spending any time watching them\u00a0lose money.\u00a0I was right. Neither the hotel nor the bank are in business today. I am.<\/p>\n

In 1989, I\u00a0started a business services and consulting company. We\u00a0 provided\u00a0corporate bookkeeping and tax-return preparation services. I learned that year that Louisiana notaries could create corporations, and I saw a certain economy in being able to do that for my clients. So I set about reading Woodward’s Notarial Manual\u00a0<\/em>so I could maybe pass the\u00a0 notary exam and thereby get a letter from the court saying\u00a0I was competent and qualified to be appointed as a notary in\u00a0East Baton Rouge\u00a0parish.\u00a0 It was a daunting task. I could tell by reading Mr. Woodward’s manual that I needed to enroll in\u00a0a formal exam preparation and study program. I did. It was that course that helped me\u00a0put\u00a0all the\u00a0information in perspective.\u00a0 All together, I spent\u00a0about a year\u00a0in study, and I\u00a0passed the East Baton Rouge Parish examination. The judge wrote\u00a0his letter, and the governor signed my commission in 1990.<\/p>\n

At the same time I was studying for the notary exam, I was elected president of a newly forming church’s\u00a0first executive board.\u00a0Needing to know how to be a presiding officer, I enrolled in a parliamentary\u00a0procedure workshop offered by the Baton Rouge Unit of Parliamentarians. That workshop changed my life! Thanks to the mentorship of two of the founding members of that organization, I found myself immersed in a study of parliamentary\u00a0procedure that continues today.<\/p>\n

By 1992, I had learned\u00a0something about\u00a0how the different motions worked, but I knew\u00a0nothing about forming an organization like the one my friend Judy asked me to help her start. I did know, however, that Robert’s\u00a0Rules, or, more particularly Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised<\/em> contained a\u00a0whole section about\u00a0starting a new organization from the ground up. It became somewhat of a case study\u00a0using Robert to help start a local notary association. The Capital Area Notary Association\u00a0grew quickly to become the Louisiana Notary Association.<\/p>\n

After being credentialed as a professional parliamentarian in 1996,\u00a0I wound up serving as the notary association’s first executive director.\u00a0A few years later, I took on the job of\u00a0publishing a newsletter for\u00a0Louisiana notaries that had been in publication since 1983. I’m lucky: the former editor takes my\u00a0questions\u00a0when nobody else knows what I might want to know.<\/p>\n

In 2002, the secretary of state appointed me to a legislative study committee on Louisiana notary matters. I showed up ready to take notes for my newsletter readers\u00a0only to find\u00a0the secretary had my name up in lights where the committee members sit.\u00a0I enjoyed serving on that committee and others that have been integral to the state’s ongoing “professionalizing” the office of notary in Louisiana.\u00a0 The work continues. As does my work as a parliamentarian.<\/p>\n

I stay pretty busy, but if you need something,\u00a0contact me<\/a>. I’ll see what I can do to\u00a0help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2014 C. Alan Jennings My father was a hotel manager. He married a beautiful front desk clerk. I was born in a hotel. I grew up living and working in hotels.\u00a0In case you never thought about it, hotel people work so that everyone else\u00a0can play. I tried selling life insurance as an alternative. No luck… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":68,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-38","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanjennings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanjennings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanjennings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanjennings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanjennings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanjennings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":468,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanjennings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38\/revisions\/468"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanjennings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/68"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanjennings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}