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Bert Daday speaks at a United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley event in 2007.
((Sue Beyer | For lehighvalleylive.com))
You can't see the ties that bind the Lehigh Valley as easily as you can count the disagreements, recall the moments of parochialism and feel the outright resistance to change that has dogged every good (and bad) idea that has come along in the last half-century.
Yet the Valley has come a long way since its industrial base began crumbling, and one of the people who kept pushing toward the light has called it a day. Bert Daday, known for walking the halls of the public and private sectors to promote regionalism and charity, as well as a 38-year career as the public voice of PPL Corp., died Wednesday. He was 85.
Daday's name isn't on anything -- yet -- but his imprint is on many things taken for granted.
One of those is a consolidated United Way organization in the Lehigh Valley. (He chaired the record-breaking 2006 campaign.)
Another is the idea that vocational education needs to stay in step with the changing employment needs of the Valley. He also pushed for a business-based group to help the Allentown School District.
Daday was among those who lobbied the state to bring the Valley's highway network up to speed, at a time when Interstate 78, the Route 33 extension and Route 222 bypass were hash marks on a map. He pushed for one group to oversee business recruitment and retention, leading to the formation of the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp. With the late Walter Dealtrey and others, he saw how the Valley's location could spawn industrial parks to help replace job losses in heavy industry. He saw the wisdom and efficiency in merging chambers of commerce and Red Cross chapters. He backed the since-abandoned proposal for a two-county health board.
Every organization needs someone who can speak truth to power, and Daday gravitated to that role, tempering a well-known reputation for blunt talk and brusqueness with a sense of humor.
Through the Lehigh Valley Partnership, he argued that building up the Valley's suburbs at the expense of the cities was a recipe for regional decline. As a member of the Lehigh-Northampton Airport Authority, he had a role in the growth of the airport and its name change; he railed unsuccessfully against a terminal expansion at a time when ridership was declining and airlines were leaving.
He didn't win every argument. It just seemed that way, because he usually had good information and was willing to dispense it.
Daday was a rainmaker for charitable causes. In addition to his work with the United Way (starting as executive director of the Bethlehem Area Community Chest), he used his skills and contacts to raise money for St. Luke's Hospital, the Sixth Street Shelter, Lehigh Gap Nature Center, Allentown Symphony and the Negro Cultural Center, later known as Allentown Alliance Hall. Baseball fans might recall that his support for a two-county hotel tax not only funded tourism and economic development work, but helped to bump Coca-Cola Park from blueprint to reality. He believed in, and supported, Catholic education, and was recognized for his work promoting minority business ownership.
That's the short list.
Getting people to work in concert is the key to any community or business venture. Splicing those two fields is an art, and for some, a lifelong mission. We in the Lehigh Valley are fortunate to have had a few, like Daday, who traveled in both circles, and knew how to draw them together.