When it comes to heavy lifting, Nancy N.
Drake has done her share. Don’t even think of
discouraging her once she has identified a worthy goal. You
just don’t have it in you. When Nanci gets dealt a ton of
lemons, and she has, she delights in the prospect of all the
fabulous lemonade she will
be able to make, and she is mentally planning a celebration where the whole community can enjoy it.
be able to make, and she is mentally planning a celebration where the whole community can enjoy it.
When we first met Nanci, she was a one
woman promotion machine for the city of Franklin near rural
Southampton County. She organized a downtown association of
business owners and civic groups and was busy planning
festivities in downtown Franklin. She was director of what became
a very successful Main Street Program. Within no time at all a
revival was happening, and storefronts that had been empty were
filling up with eclectic gift shops and specialty restaurants.
Old time favorites like Fred’s restaurant were anchors
and thriving as well. She stirred up interest in Franklin that
would have put many economic development directors to shame.
She promoted the city’s attractions like a top rated tourism
director.
Then the city turned upside down
overnight, or at least that’s what Mother Nature tried to
do with the help of her minion Hurricane Floyd in 1999. The
next time we saw Nanci was on television showing the devastation
of the flooding that took a long time to subside. Behind her,
you could see rescue crews in boats like the scenes we grew
much to accustomed to after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans
and the Gulf Coast. Franklin and the surrounding areas were
hard hit. The entire downtown historic district was devastated.
In all,
182 businesses and 100 homes were under as
much as 18 feet of water for almost ten days. Even the emergency
operations center and city hall were under water. We did not
get discouraged. We knew the next time we visited Franklin,
Nanci would be taking us around, telling us about what was
going to be here, there, and across the street before you knew
it. Before the first business was dry and the cleanup crews got
to work, she was planning a waterfront park. That’s right.
With the help of federal grants, she was able to do just
that—create a community recreational area called
Barrett’s Landing where before had been so much
devastation.
When we heard she was going to Bedford to
direct their first joint city-county tourism office, we knew
she would make an equal impact on
I have known Nanci to be the consummate
professional. I have personally observed her to demonstrate
great skill and expertise in her profession, to not only
conform to standards of professional behavior, but to be a
benchmark by how others are measured, and to be a true
professional. Nanci is an expert in her field that has worked,
and I mean worked her way to the top of her profession by
concrete, documented, successful programs, and not by being a
“spin doctor” some have been, or attempt to be. She
truly loves and cares about her community and the profession
she works in.
If her name was in the dictionary,
synonyms beside it would be: proficient, adept, skilled,
skillful, and an expert’s expert. She is a strong
professional, but an even stronger community leader.
- Dr. Douglas McAlister
Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech
