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Singer helps River Cities Financial proudly hail clients at dinner

By Gretchen Dowler 4 min read

MARIETTA -- River Cities Financial Services Ltd. held its annual Client Appreciation Dinner at Marietta College's Dyson Baudo Recreation Center Thursday night with special guest speaker Janine Stange, also known as "National Anthem Girl."

"We hold this event annually as a way to show appreciation to our clients with dinner and a speaker," said Operations Manager Janelle Sprague.

Stange is a motivational speaker, singer, and on-air personality best known for her historic journey to sing the Star-Spangled Banner in all 50 states, a mission she embarked on to honor the brave. Her story has been featured on major television networks, and is the subject of the documentary, "National Anthem Girl" streaming on Amazon Prime and Apple TV. The topic for Stange's speech was "Discover Your Mission: Reflections and Lessons From a 50 State Journey."

"After I had traveled around all 50 states singing the National Anthem, since 2014, I guess I just still had the travel bug," Stange said. "Companies started asking me to open their conferences for them with the National Anthem and that's all I would see of the conferences, but I think I wanted to be a part of them more."

Stange said that while at a conference for the company Jelly Belly, one of the company employees suggested she not only sing at these conferences but start telling her story.

"He said 'you should talk about what you learned from traveling around all 50 states,'" said Stange. "So I started out talking in schools, but I soon figured out that I wanted to pass my message on to adults."

Stange says the main message of her speech is getting out of your comfort zone and getting out of procrastination, two topics that she was very familiar with.

"What really pushed me to begin my journey was when my mom died at 59 of breast cancer," Stange said. "I realized that no matter what age you are, just doing one step to reach your goal, what matters is you're reaching to achieve it."

She says that it doesn't matter what stage you start at, that it's about the returning to your "why" of your actions because at the end of the day, you're responsible for your goals. Stange offers the quote "Do what you can with what you've got where you are" from Squire Bill Widener as part of her message. Stange not only accomplished her goal of singing in all 50 states as well as getting her story out there to connect with the world, but she is also helping those who've fought for their goals.

"I have missions for veterans called Janine's Team," said Stange. "It's for if you know a veteran whose birthday is coming up soon, you send an email, we put them on our mission board and we try to get as many birthday cards to them as we can to help them celebrate."

As a result of her mission, people have continued to respond with those veterans, going so far as becoming penpals with them and even driving two hours to drop off birthday cupcakes to them for their celebration. Stange is grateful that companies she gets to speak at want to take initiative and help out veteran causes. She says to her "that's what a real business is" when they want to help out.

River Cities Financial Services President Michael Anthony echoes Stange's passion for veterans especially with his River Cities Financial clients and company partnerships with Military of the Purple Heart, MOPH 743 Marietta and Veterans Last Patrol.

"This event is about our clients and many of them are veterans," Anthony said. "We've had speakers talk about investing, but what Janine speaks about is just as important. It's a great cause."

For more information about River Cities Financial Services visit rivercitiesfinancial.net or call 740-374-6969. For more information about Janine Stange visit JanineStange.com.

Gretchen Dowler can be reached at gdowler@newsandsentinel.com

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