PNC Bank fully furnishes new Community Resource Center

It all started when Dianne Searon, a volunteer at the Community Resource Center, was talking with her banker at the PNC Branch office on Coastal Highway in Rehoboth Beach. Searon had heard PNC might be closing one of its branch offices in Sussex County and wanted to know what they planned to do with any excess furniture. Searon told the bank officer that the Community Resource Center was moving into a new facility and was in desperate need of office furniture. The bank official offered to look into the matter.

After a few days, Searon received a telephone call from PNC and was advised that PNC had excess furniture at its furniture warehouse in Salisbury, Md., which might be donated.

Searon immediately contacted Larry Beach and Wally Johnson, two CRC volunteers, who went to Salisbury to check out the available furniture with a PNC bank official.

Beach and Johnson met with the bank official, who showed them what furnishings were available. The two volunteers explained the CRC was a ministry of the Lewes-Rehoboth Association of Churches and provided assistance to the needy in eastern Sussex County. The bank official called PNC Headquarters in Baltimore, Md.  After the calls were completed, the official asked how many offices needed to be furnished. Johnson and Beach indicated there would be 10 offices in the new facility, along with a kitchen and day shelter for the homeless. The bank official asked if Johnson and Beach could meet him the following Thursday at the PNC Headquarters building in Baltimore. PNC would be moving to a new space, he said, and CRC could choose furniture from its headquarters to furnish their new building.

"We were like two kids in a candy store," said Beach. "Everything we asked for they gave us, including chairs, desks, filing cabinets, lamps, couches and bookshelves." The PNC officials were with the two volunteers every step of the way and never denied a request.  "It was a real blessing," Johnson said.