The Greater Mount Airy Chamber of Commerce hosted the Women Empowering Women Summit on Thursday at Cross Creek Country Club in Mount Airy.
The day was filled with speakers, demonstrations, and presentations from area vendors in an attempt to help women “connect, grow, and lead.”
The keynote speaker for the event was Alex Sink, a Mount Airy native and the granddaughter of Adelaide and Chang Bunker who wanted to share lessons she learned in Mayberry. After graduating Mount Airy High, she studied mathematics at Wake Forest University before a three-year stint teaching in West Africa and then onto a successful career in banking.
“It is inspiring to see this many people in this room. When Diedre (Rogers) called and asked I thought, ‘Oh that ought to be 50 people.’ That fact that in my home county, Surry County, 250 incredible, wonderful women would show up to spend a day like this just shows you how far we have really come.”
“All of you in your own way are contributing a lot to your family life, work life, at-home life. Whether you are a stay at home mom or a business owner, you’re making a contribution to make this community, this place, very special,” Sink said regardless of the Ted Koppell report she recently watched, “My memories are different from what I saw on his show about Mayberry.”
She recalls small town life in a more idyllic time, growing up on the family farm of Highway 601 but pondered, “How did this farm girl who grew up on a family farm end up traveling the world, becoming a bank executive, and running for public office?”
“It all started here... a little small town that I think is one of the most famous small towns in America because no matter where I have been my stock answer is that I am from a little town called Mount Airy, and it’s the real Mayberry. Ninety percent of people can relate to that.”
Much has changed in the past 60 years, she said, including more chances for women to chase their dreams and thrive. Some of the teachers she had along the way would today have had more lanes open to them from business to advanced degrees and doctorates, but opportunities were limited in those days.
One of her life lessons was on resilience after she and her sister lost their mother at an early age to breast cancer. “At the ages of 19 and 16 our mother passed away from cancer which left us motherless... All that support I’m able to give my daughter, son, and grandchildren, we had to figure out on our own, but we were supported and surrounded by all these friends in Mount Airy. We learned how to be resilient and make it on our own and to be mothers ourselves.”
She said those years living in Africa were eye-opening. “I cannot describe to you how life changing it is to go live in a country where everyone else has black skin and you have the white skin.”
“Growing up in Mount Airy even today, I looked it up and 85% of the population is white, so this was an incredibly life changing experience for me because I really began to understand what it was like to be really different and really in a minority,” she said.
Leaning on lessons learned in Mayberry helped her get by. “What I fell back on was the fact that when you grow up on a farm everyone is working, everyone comes together. You don’t think about the color of someone’s skin or where they came from, you just cared about getting that tobacco into the barn.”
“Over the course of two months my sister, mother, and I were down at the barn handing over tobacco or stringing up on the poles working side by side with the Black families that were working with us — together. We didn’t see the color of skin; we saw what we were all contributing.”
She repeated themes of acceptance and understanding for those of different background, socioeconomic status, religion, disability, or sexuality — which she said was taboo in her day, “You never said gay or lesbian and you never acknowledged that there were people who might have different lifestyles, but they were in our community for sure.”
“The power of living in a small town like Mont Airy is that eventually when we go to junior high, we all had to be together. So regardless of economic status, we all learned to live together and to respect each other’s differences,” she said.
In her decades of banking, she said she learned a lot about character, integrity “and how important it was to be forthright and to be honest. The lesson I had learned from Mayberry was that I had learned to talk to anybody. Not just talk to people, but how to listen to people and have intellectual curiosity about someone who is different to me.”
That curiosity and sitting next to Florida Gov. Charlie Crist in cabinet meetings for four years, led to politics. She admitted the occasional “thought bubble” would form as he spoke forming a notion that on some matters she could do a better job. Sink told attendees more women need to seek office.
She said, “I was stunned that since the early 70s, there has been no female county commissioner. So, Melissa (Hiatt) is lonely over there and I hope some of you will give serious consideration because I think when women hold elected office better decisions are made and things can be better for all people — especially women.”
“You know as women, we always have to be smarter and better, so I had to figure out how to be smarter and better so that when the promotion opportunities came along, nobody was going to tell me I wasn’t qualified. They may tell me other bull (manure), but they weren’t going to tell me that,” she quipped.
One of the best pieces of advice she had for the women was to give themselves a break and stop stressing about perfection. Empowerment can from unburdening from unreasonably high expectations, “You cannot make an ‘A’ at everything anymore, you have to accept some day you will make a ‘B.’ Accept it, get over it, and realize you on your best day is probably better than anyone else.”
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