HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Mary Jo Padgett is many things. She’s a writer, editor, public relations consultant, English language coach, lecturer. She co-founded a successful environmental nonprofit organization, served on Hendersonville City Council and in most recent years, she started helping those from near and far learn a little more about Hendersonville’s history. If you had to use one word to define Padgett’s overall character, it might just be: curious.
Her career has spanned the globe, but the Western North Carolina native continues to call Hendersonville home.
“I have not had a linear career,” she admits, but at the center of it all has always been writing, communications work and the pursuit of knowing more.
“The problem is I’m a curious person, meaning I’m interested in anything,” she says.
Strolling through downtown Hendersonville on a hot summer day, leading one of her history walks, Padgett easily runs into people who recognize her and others who naturally gravitate toward her, asking for directions to the nearest this or that. She makes several stops and whips out papers with historical dates and tidbits dedicated to each walk’s theme. This year, she’s helping people learn more about mosaics in Hendersonville, ghost signs, cemeteries and more.
Her enthusiasm for pointing out the overlooked during her tours is evident. Her face lights up when she points to an advertisement sign that’s seen better days, or a mural that makes you stop and look up to notice all the tiny pieces that make it whole.
It’s this sense of place and curiosity for learning more that’s kept her in and out of Western North Carolina her whole life.
Padgett grew up on a farm in Rutherford County. She describes her family as traditional but adds that her parents were very politically active in the community. She credits farm life for instilling values that have stayed with her throughout her life.
“I really like to say that living on a farm makes you very earth-oriented,” she says.
She says her family respected the land and the process of giving and taking from the earth.
“My family really honored and treasured the land, both its heritage and the family, and its production,” she says. “I mean, I think they saw it as God’s acre, I mean it was God’s gift and it needed to be handled with care.”
This respect for the earth would translate into environmental activism later in her career and stay with her for the rest of her life.
After college, Padgett headed south where she would start her career “single and young in Atlanta,” she describes. While there, she had her day job…and her side jobs, always writing in one fashion or another. Opportunities have always seemed to overlap in her career.
Her face lights up when she recalls one of her most “pleasurable” jobs as a dance critic for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She remembers several times when she would watch a performance, then call in her story, dictating each word over the phone to make deadline.
Another job she fondly remembers is writing a column about “people who make the world go round,” shining a spotlight on “everyday people who lived in the community.” This was one way to satisfy her curiosity.
“I love finding out things…and giving them a chance to talk,” Padgett describes her method for interviewing people. “That’s because often people aren’t asked about things, you know, or they’re a little shy… It’s really wonderful when people realize you’re actually interested.”
One ‘everyday’ person who stood out to her was a stay-at-home mom who felt embarrassed to be the center of an article.
“I didn’t have much to say and that’s exactly the topic,” Padgett recalls. “It’s not everybody who’s rich and famous and that the world wants to know about. It’s the everyday people who make this world go round, who raise decent children.”
When a new opportunity struck in the 80s, she accepted a job with Mother Earth News, which gave her the chance to move back to Western North Carolina, closer to her family. Although Mother Earth was based out of Hendersonville at the time, she said she originally planned to move to Asheville because Hendersonville was “Death Valley for a single woman.”
But staying in Hendersonville would prove to be another pivotal moment for Padgett’s life. Within a month of moving, she met her future husband. “We were both ready to marry and we found the right person, golly dang,” she says with a smile.
He taught at a local high school and she continued writing, but now, she was also a “family woman” with a 6-year-old in her life. Padgett says at some point, she and her husband realized they wanted to find something they could do together outside of everyday home life. They were both interested in politics and environmental issues, so they decided to call up a meeting to see who else would be interested in discussing various issues. This was the beginning of the nonprofit organization Environmental and Conservation Organization (ECO). Years later, this would turn into MountainTrue.
Their first meeting consisted of about 30 people, and it grew from there. They scheduled outings around questions from the community, like wondering where their drinking water came from.
“When I see a need, I step into it,” Padgett says – a theme that shows up often in her long career.
During one meeting, a city worker told them about some plans for Jackson Park, saying a road was supposed to cut right through it. This sparked an idea among ECO members.
“We said, you know, if we put in a nature trail right through there, it would be hard to build a road…and so sure enough, the nature trail at Jackson Park is a result of ECO,” she proudly remembers.
As a co-founder of ECO, Padget served as the executive director for more than a decade, later returning as interim director. Even after her time at ECO, her love for the environment and her community led her into local politics. A friend suggested she run for a seat on Hendersonville City Council and although she’d never considered it in the past, Padgett says she was curious what it would be like on “the other side” of the aisle.
There were other big changes happening in her life then, too.
“I will never forget how very terrifying it was for me to go and sign up to run, really,” she says. “It was horrible. I remember I cried… I was afraid, it was so unknown what might come of this moment.”
Even more, she was doing it by herself. After 13 years of marriage, she and her husband had parted ways.
“I was divorced and that is what terrified me more than anything. I was alone,” she says. “I was on my own.”
Despite her fears of the unknown, Padgett won her bid for city council and went on to help establish several protocols in the city that she’s still proud of to this day. One such accomplishment was making sure trees must go in all new parking lots.
“There should be no such thing as a parking lot with no trees, nothing but asphalt. Upsets me right now. It’s not right,” she says. “You know when a Southern woman says ‘it’s not right’ she means it, sister.”
Padgett went on to serve two terms with the city council, including four years as mayor pro tempore. After running two close, but unsuccessful campaigns for mayor, she says it was time to take a hard look at her life and decide what her next move would be.
“I sat down with myself and said, so what do you want to do now girlfriend? And my answer was, I want to go to Paris and learn how to speak French better,” she says.
And she did just that.
Padgett says she had kept up with her French classes throughout the years because she studied the language in high school and college, but now she wanted to really immerse herself into the culture.
She spent a year soaking up everything she could, taking note of the shared history between France and the U.S., especially when it came to American Revolutionary War history. This helped her decide what her next adventure would be once she returned to Hendersonville.
“I guess I’ve become quite interested in history while over there and American history and I came back and I said, why don’t we have any history tours here?” she recalls.
Padgett began asking around, seeing if anyone was interested in leading these walks. But no one was interested at the time.
“We just need to have history walks, and I remember people saying, ‘what history?’ And there was the problem,” she says.
Seeing a need and stepping into it, Padgett started leading history walks around Hendersonville in 2015. Some of her walks take people down memory lane on Main Street, while others take a more somber tone, walking through historic cemeteries. All walks make sure to remember those who lived and worked here before us.
When asked why she stays in Western North Carolina, and more specifically Hendersonville, Padgett says her two favorite places on earth are Hendersonville and Paris – which she tries to divide her time between even now.
“I’m very happy here,” she says. “I think we’re just totally blessed. I mean there’s certainly lovely places all over the world…but Hendersonville is just beautiful and it’s familiar to me.”
If you’re interested in attending one of Padgett’s history walks, or if you’d like to learn even more about her life, click here.