Stanford takes Main St. reins:Leaves teaching job to preserve downtown history
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A teen living teacher at Warren County Middle School, Stanford will leave her position after the school year to pursue her affinity for local preservation and history, following in the footsteps of exiting Director Dan Gray, who is returning to his native England.
Stanford will lead the Main Street program and work under a 15-member board of directors that has a following of more than 100 members. She begins her duties officially July 1, but will work unofficially throughout June.
To understand how Stanford got to this point, those following the progress of Main Street since its inception in May, 1999 must remember the initial efforts of the historic preservation group Heritage Alliance, which is credited with starting the Main Street program here.
Before that, Stanford lived in Murfreesboro for a time and noticed that a Main Street program there turned a diminished downtown area into something to be proud of.
Upon moving to McMinnville in 1994, she became interested in local preservation and later contacted then-Heritage Alliance President Cliff Davidson about the possibility of starting a similar program here.
At that time, Davidson and member Rachel Killebrew were discussing the downtown park and they contacted the national and state Main Street programs to become participants. After McMinnville officially was accepted as a Main Street community, Gray was hired by Heritage Alliance’s strong recommendations in September, 1999.
Stanford has attended national and state Main Street training, has worked on Main Street’s board of directors since the beginning, and is the past president of Heritage Alliance. When the job opened, she initially didn’t consider herself a candidate for the position, which pays between $25,000 and $30,000 per year.
“At first I didn’t really think about it, but I just decided I would try for the job and they picked me,” she said. “I have always had a great love of preservation. My husband and I restored the Northcutt plantation in 1995 or 1996. I always believed historic buildings are worth saving.”
The construction of the farmers’ market this summer and getting phase one of the massive revitalization project for downtown formally approved are two of the main projects Stanford will face from the start.