Despite the horrible weather on Tuesday night, the mood was festive for the 65th Annual Meeting hosted by the Atmore Area Chamber of Commerce at The Club on Hwy. 21.

While some guests were unable to attend due to the rain, those who did make it to the banquet enjoyed the food, entertainment and seeing two of Atmore’s finest residents honored.

Sheryl Vickery, executive director of the Atmore Area Chamber of Commerce, said the event went extremely well.

“I thought it all went wonderful,” she said. “We can’t control the weather, so we lost several people who couldn’t get out in the rain, but other than that it was a perfect night.”

This year’s speaker is a member of the sports community, but showed guests he could also have his own standup comedy routine if he so desired.

Former Auburn basketball coach Sonny Smith took to the stage during dinner and gave the crowd a speech that lifted everyone’s spirits, according to Vickery.

Throughout his time on the stage, Smith was constantly telling good jokes that kept the crowd on its toes. Some of those jokes were aimed at his longtime friend and Atmore native Lou Vickery.

Smith received a boatload of laughs at the beginning of his speech when he joked about one of his last speaking engagements in central Alabama.

“One of the last speeches I gave was at the Sylacauga Nursing Home,” he said. “I was up on the podium and I was laying my best stuff on them and no one reacted at all. There was one lady down there that never laughed and never smiled, so I just zoned in on her. When the speech was over, I ran down to her and said, ‘Lady, don’t you know who I am?’ and she said ‘no, but if you go up to the lady at the front desk, she’ll tell you who you are.’”

Aside from the jokes, Smith made one comment that stuck with Sheryl Vickery the entire evening and afterwards.

“Sonny brought something that we all need, laughter,” she said. “He put a spark in the night and uplifted our spirits. He had a wonderful time and when he said that the community sticks together, he could sense that from the people he had spoken to before the event began.”

With a little less than a year until the next banquet, Vickery is already looking forward to the event.

She said what happens at that banquet will be guided by the year to come.

“I don’t know what we will do or how we will top this one,” she said. “I have 359 days to think about that. That all depends on how things go throughout the course of the year.”