It all began with a dream and a story.

The older I get, the more I love the fact that I am creating a place that makes people happy.

It isn’t always easy. 

I have been a hotel and restaurant junkie my entire life. When I was growing up in Connecticut, I used to ride my bicycle to The Silvermine Tavern just to look at it. It was an old New England inn with a deck that reached out over the river; the trees were strung with white lights, and I thought it was spectacular. Brunch at the Tavern included sticky buns, which I considered little works of art. The occasional dinner at Cherry Street East wasn’t quite as beautiful, but I adored the dark wood of the booths and the cozy, low lighting.

Had I grown up during the age of the celebrity chef, I probably would have taken a different educational path. But after spending much of my childhood cooking and baking for my six older siblings and my parents, I went off to college to study English and French. After a masters degree in English, I landed a plum job at Loyola School in Manhattan, where I spent my twenties cavorting around the city (restaurants and hotels galore!) and making lifelong friends. I loved teaching.

But life takes its zigs and zags, and when I got married in 2000, my husband Jim took a head of school job in West Virginia. And that’s when I landed at The Greenbrier, my first behind-the-scenes peak at exquisite hospitality. A stately, legendary resort frequented by presidents and movie stars, splashed generously with Dorothy Draper florals, The Greenbrier was inspiring and intriguing. 

Zig, zag: we moved to Maine. We had two beautiful children, and I loved staying home with them. But I was antsy for a project, provided it could be on my own terms. I packed the kids into their car seats and explored properties along the coast, but I couldn’t find one that seemed like a sturdy enough business. Then in May 2008, Jim ran a road race that began and ended across the street from what was then The Brunswick Inn on Park Row. I was hooked: beautiful New England structure, steps from Bowdoin College, 16 rooms with the potential for a restaurant.

We moved into The Cottage at the inn the following June. All 600 square feet of it. It has a spiral staircase that leads to the small bedroom, and that’s where we all slept together until November, when the reservations in the Main House slowed enough for us to create quarters of our own. It rained every day that summer. Helen and Charlie were oddly oblivious to our plight, using the spiral staircase as a jungle gym and playing in my office. Poor Jim, who had been able to walk across the street to work, now had a 70 minute drive each way. Why he agreed to let me take on something I had never done before, something that hijacked a good chunk of our savings, I will never really know. His confidence in me is undeserved and frankly staggering.

Day by day, I chipped away at the mechanics of running a 16-room hotel, a breakfast service, a little bar. I struggled mightily learning how to manage staff. I peered out the window each morning to make sure the breakfast cook’s car was in the parking lot. I learned spreadsheets and bookkeeping from my accountant, Gemma, without whom I would surely have failed. 

We moved out of the inn years ago, and Helen and Charlie are in college. We have survived a legal battle to protect our name, housing students during Covid, and a fire that closed down the Main House for 13 months. But I have created the hotel that has lived in my mind’s eye for as long as I can remember. It’s beautiful and warm and twinkling and inviting. Its walls could speak of love and hard work and long days and sleepless nights; an amazing staff who have stood by me for years; memories of weddings and memorial celebrations and baby showers and retirement parties; and regulars who come to stay or to enjoy a meal again and again. 

I am grateful for meaningful work. I am grateful for work that I love. I’m honored to have been a part of so many big moments in our guests’ lives–a Bowdoin commencement, a proposal, a refuge during a pandemic. It may not be shaping lives like I hope I did at Loyola, but I know I am creating joy. And that’s enough for me.