Pennyrile Area Development District staff and members of the community reflected on this year’s achievements and explored the idea of home with author Melody Warnick at Monday’s 56th annual dinner.
PeADD’s staff and Board of Directors were spotlighted for their recent work anniversaries and received plaques. The big award of the night was the John C. Mahre Regionalism Award and it was presented by Christian County Judge Executive Jerry Gilliam.
Mahre was a Hopkinsville native who was an architect and served many roles in the community such as chairman of the Christian County Chamber of Commerce, president of the Hopkinsville Rotary Club and the West Kentucky Chamber Alliance and served on several boards.
Gilliam presented the award to Elizabeth McCoy, the president of Planters Bank. Gilliam says McCoy and her staff are always willing to take on challenges and invest in the people, not just projects.
McCoy says she has seen many people receive this award and is proud to now be one of them and says Planters Bank wouldn’t be what it is today without her team.
To conclude the dinner Warnick talked to attendees about thriving and being rooted where they live. Warnick works as an assistant communications director at Virginia Tech and has worked as a freelance journalist for the Washington Post, New York Times, Slate, Reader’s Digest, The Guardian and many other publications.
Warnick is also the author of two books, “This Is Where You Belong: Finding Home Wherever You Are” and “If You Could Live Anywhere: The Surprising Power of Place in a Work-from-Anywhere World.”
Warnick says her and her family were often moving around before settling down in Blacksburg, Virginia and calling it home. When it comes to people’s relationship to their homes, Warnick says folks are either mobile, stuck or rooted, and she initially felt stuck in Blacksburg.
Warnick thought moving would from Blacksburg would be the answer, but knew she couldn’t uproot her family so she had to learn how to love where she lived. Blacksburg began to feel more like home when she started to form attachments to the place by exploring the community and building relationships with fellow residents.
Warnick took a survey of the audience and found that a majority of attendees had a strong sense of home. Warnick says a lot of the work PeADD does shows that people are attached to their homes and want to support others who also call it home.
To establish a strong sense of home, Warnick tells folks to see the good, build connections and create the place where they want to live. More information about Warnick’s research is available at her website melodywarnick.com.
