FEATURED PHOTO GALLERY; 'A great honor': Business Hall of Fame inducts four new laureates
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. – The Greater Johnstown-Cambria County Business Hall of Fame inducted four new members Friday.
David R. Davis, Michael B. Smith and Elmer C. Laslo are the Hall of Fame’s class of 2022, nominated by businesspeople in the county, and Pauline H.L. Gordon was inducted as a posthumous honoree.
Including Davis, Smith, Laslo, and Gordon, about 120 honorees have received Hall of Fame honors since the Cambria Regional Chamber of Commerce began it in 1992.
Inductees are selected by a few criteria: they must be Cambria County natives or have made outstanding and enduring contributions to the area, and they must also no longer be active in business or be 65 years of age.
The 30th annual awards dinner celebrating the four new members was held Friday at Ace’s in Cambria City.
“All you have to do is look around the room and you can see what a success it was,” Davis said.
It was a black-tie and gala dress event with more than 400 men and women of the county’s business community in attendance.
Davis is a retired business leader with more than 37 years of experience in the health care and information technology industries. He retired in 2018 as chief financial officer for Enterprise Ventures Corp., a for-profit company of Concurrent Technologies Corp.
Although he received the honor, he praised all of Johnstown’s workforce.
“Our workforce is extremely intelligent,” he said. “The wonderful people I had the opportunity to work with motivated me in my career.”
Laslo retired as president and CEO of 1st Summit Bank in 2020 after 43 years running the bank. During his tenure, 1st Summit grew from $17 million in assets and three offices to $1.1 billion and 12 banking offices with more than 200 employees.
“I always said it would be a great honor if I got in the hall of fame, and here I am tonight,” Laslo said.
Smith, chairman of the board of Laurel Motors Holding Co., shared the same feeling.
“I always wanted to have done enough to receive this,” Smith said. “It’s an honor to join the laureates.”
Gordon was an early trailblazer in mortuary science who died in 2003 at age 83. She established the Gordon Mortuary in Johnstown in 1946 and was the first female mortician in Cambria County.
The Greater Johnstown-Cambria County Business Hall of Fame is presented by the Cambria Regional Chamber of Commerce, as well as Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania.
The dinner on Friday included a silent auction, during which dozens of bidders gave a few thousand dollars to benefit classes of Junior Achievement.
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