Every tree has a story

Annual Christmas Tree Decorating Contest brings NPC departments together, branches out to make donations to area food banks & non-profit organizations

“When You Wish Upon a Star” is a song written for Walt Disney’s 1940 adaptation of the movie Pinocchio, and can be heard during the opening credits. At the beginning of the song, there’s a line that reads: “No request is too extreme.” That’s pretty much the approach Tom Urbain took into every challenge, every assigned task, and every special project he worked on during his 15 years as a trainer/instructional designer in NPC’s Human Resources department.

Whether it was teaching a new process, giving a company overview to visitors, helping someone learn a new piece of software, or filming and editing a new training video, Tom was always on board with all of these types of requests from his co-workers.

When it came time to decide how to decorate for this year’s annual Christmas Tree Decorating Contest at NPC, the decision was a pretty easy one for the HR department. It chose a Disney theme to honor Tom, a long-time friend and co-worker who passed away in early November as a result of a brief, sudden illness at the age of 50.

Tom may be gone but definitely not forgotten at NPC.

“He was more than a co-worker, he was family,” said Brian Bracken, a trainer/instructional designer at NPC who worked side-by-side with Tom for a number of years.