Fort Worth, Texas – December 11, 2019 – Christmas is a special time of year at TTI, rich in celebrations and long-standing traditions. This year’s holiday video features a few of our Specialists sharing their own personal stories and family traditions with Paul Andrews, TTI CEO.
No Christmas tale would be complete without a visit from ol’ Saint Nick. Listen as we capture a rare candid interview with TTI’s resident Santa Claus, as he reflects on a 10-year legacy of greeting hundreds of children during the annual Santa Day event enjoyed by our TTI families.
From all of our TTI Specialists, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Transcript
Paul:
Hello everybody. This is a fantastic time of year, probably one of my favorite times of the year, certainly starting with our annual Toys for Tots Drive, our company-wide Santa Day, with the offices decked out with holiday decor. It always brings home the true meaning of the season. This year I've asked for a few of the TTI specialists to talk about what Christmas means to them.
Luzmila, tell us what you and your family do for Christmas.
Luzmila:
Well Mr. Andrews, Christmas is all about family for me. I'm originally from Peru, with my husband coming from Kentucky. I have siblings here in the area and in LA and my parents live in Mexico. Christmas has ranged from icy weather here in Fort Worth to some sunny times in Mexico. We'll get together Christmas Eve, we'll sit down and have dinner. We have a nativity set that we have, and right before midnight, we bring down baby Jesus to present it. We share a couple gifts and then we send all the kids to bed so that Santa doesn't catch them.
Paul:
Hey, Tommy. Tell us what you do for Christmas.
Tommy:
Well, our family gathers in South Carolina. That's where my parents live, and so me and my brothers, we all gather. No one goes to a hotel. We lay down mattresses for the kids to sleep. My daughters love it. My father plays Santa Claus every year. It's crazy, but we just have a great time being together as a family.
Paul:
Vira, will you share with us what you do for Christmas?
Vira:
I'm from Laos originally, so we didn't have Christmas, the traditional Christmases that you would experience here. But when I came I quickly learned because everyone was all about Christmas. And so I learned from friends, family, co-workers, teachers, and I've got to really experience Christmas and experiences and traditions from multiple cultures and religions and so it's just been a wonderful thing about just having Christmas experiences.
Paul:
Hey, Morgan. Tell us what you and your family do for Christmas.
Morgan:
Well, I'm the youngest of four, and we're all scattered over the United States now, Nashville, Chicago, Fort Worth. So we like to meet at my mom's place, and when I think of Christmas, it just reminds me of family.
Paul:
That's great. Where's your mom's place?
Morgan:
My mom's place is in Northwest Arkansas and that's home.
Paul:
[inaudible 00:02:38] okay.
Morgan:
Yeah, absolutely.
Paul:
Karen, what do you do for Christmas?
Karen:
Well, Christmas is my favorite time. It's very personal to me. Celebrating the birth of Jesus and the salvation that he gave us is really the greatest gift of all time. Then I have a really amazing family, there's somewhere between 30 and 40 of us every year that come to my house, and we have a big dinner. Then here at TTI, my team does Christmas stockings and we just hang them up at our cubicles and somehow magically over the course of the month, they get filled up and then we pick the last day that our team will all be here together and we bring in snacks and eat, and then we pour out our stockings and see what kind of fun or funny things might've appeared in those. We think it's just a really great way to end the year.
Paul:
That sounds like a lot of fun. Can I come?
Karen:
Absolutely. Anytime.
Paul:
What does the Andrews family do for Christmas? We celebrate my mother's side of the family for Christmas. Dad was Scotch-Irish. Mom, Italian. So we celebrate the Italian Christmas in our house, and for many, many years, we followed the same tradition, and that is the guys get together and make my granddad's special sausage. All the guys get together in November, make the sausage, and get it ready for Christmas Eve. And the Italian Christmas is basically a Christmas Eve event and we get everybody together, it used to be at my parents' house, now at my sister's house, and we got about 8,000 people together and we have a great, great Christmas with everybody having a wonderful time, lots of fun and getting to know each other. It's now four generations of family.
Tom, you've been the TTI Santa for how many years now?
Tom:
It's been 10 years going on our 11th Santa Day, Paul. And there's nothing like seeing the magic of Christmas through the eyes of a child. I have seen the wonderment and the amazement and just the experience has been quite a journey. I have seen and held babies as young as two and three months old, and I've seen him grow up as toddlers all the way into some of the early years, we now have teenagers and some that are actually off to college. So this has been an amazing experience. We are blessed to be able to do this every year at TTI and I so look forward to it every year.
Paul:
On behalf of all the families at TTI, we wish you and yours a happy and prosperous new year and a very Merry Christmas.
Vira:
I hope you guys all have a Merry Christmas.
Morgan:
Merry Christmas.
Tommy:
Merry Christmas.
Karen:
Merry Christmas.
Luzmila:
Feliz Navidad.
Tom:
Ho ho, ho. Merry Christmas.
Paul:
Any chance of me borrowing that hat?
Tom:
Now Paul... Have you been good this year, Paul?
Paul:
Mostly.
Tom:
Well, we will see how this works out then.
Paul:
Okay.
Merry Christmas everybody.
About TTI
TTI, Inc., a Berkshire Hathaway company, is an authorized, specialty distributor of interconnect, passive and electromechanical (IP&E) components and the distributor of choice for industrial and consumer electronics manufacturers worldwide. Broader and deeper inventory, leading-edge products and custom supply chain solutions have established TTI as the leading specialist in electronic component distribution. Globally, the company maintains 1.9 million square feet of dedicated warehouse space containing over 850,000 component part numbers. Along with its subsidiaries, Mouser Electronics, Sager Electronics, and TTI Semiconductor Group, TTI employs more than 6,700 people at more than 133 locations throughout North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. For more information about TTI, visit www.ttiinc.com