b'C H A P T E R S E V E Nshe homed in on another instinct: to be a serious gardener. So, when Small the Florist on West Main Street, Chatham, came up for sale, she and her husband, Sam, (they had been Chatham vacationers for years) bought it and opened Greensleeves in 1991.As for John Geiger, hed graduated from University of Colorado with a B. A., and had run a ski area for five years before traveling east to Chatham. Looking about for challenges to match his interests, he signed on with the Conservation Commission, winding up as chairman for nine years. Later, he accepted a bid to join the Historic Business District Committee; he also went on the Stage Harbor Implementation Committee to help put the plan into effect.While that plan was materializing,he learned what FCW was doing to energize the process. As a natural outcome, by 1997 he was invited to join the FCW board, of which Mrs. Streibert was already a member. At the time, quality of life was in the news. Barbara and I started talking about it, he recalls, and figured it might be a really good thing for FCW to take on. But their thinking had a more specific dimension. Says Geiger, It was clear that FCWs board was getting more involved in .what the Board of Selectmen is doing and what its not doing that it should be doing.And he added:We realised that with that kind of momentum beginning, it was a perfect time to canvass the community and see what it had to say about all these issues.As 1997 marched into a new year, the Geiger/Streibert concept went before the other FCW directors. They liked what they heard and told the pair to sail on. Later, Deborah Ecker enlisted in their effort. With that strong a crew on deck, there wasnt going to be any turning back. Fortunately, The Cape Cod Chronicle welcomed the project, too, and said it would cooperate.At FCWs first board meeting of 98, on January 12, details could now be discussed. The two proponents had prepared a list of questions to put to residents, questions about how people defined the towns QOL. If townsfolk replied, The Chronicle offered to run their responses in the paper. It also indicated that, stimulated by Geiger/Streiberts visits to school principals, it would carry essays and drawings sent in by school children. The whole point, said FCW President Kurt Hellfach, was to raise peoples consciousness about the many special traits of this town.118'