Fairhope, Alabama
WEEKLY 'TEA FOR TWO' PROGRAM
Sherry Lea Botop spoke at the museum recently before a large crowd (and one dog named Oscar) about how she found her way to the city -- and her current job as its community development director.
She said she was born in New Orleans and grew up in Baton Rouge; but her parents frequently took the family for stays at the Grand Hotel ... and she thought Fairhope would be a "dream place to live" someday.
After graduating from LSU (she began there at age 15) she took a job in Birmingham where she worked for a bank creating philanthropic programs for the community -- and then in Los Angeles and New York City managing "donor dollars" for various charities.
Her parents were visiting her in New York in 2001 where she was living with her two "little babies" when terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center on September 11th; but her parents "refused to leave me there" so the entire family packed up and moved to Fairhope in 2002 where they lived across S. Church Street from one another for the next few years, with the children beginning at the Organic School and K-1. She taught ballet at a local dance studio downtown, she said.
HURRICANE KATRINA A TURNING POINT
Hurricane Ivan damaged their house in 2004 and the family sheltered at St. Lawrence Church during Katrina the following year, but she "had a feeling something was different about this one" since the eye was headed to her hometown New Orleans -- so she commandeered a church bus and headed west to "see if we could help." That bus rapidly filled with evacuees, so she retuned with four more to get almost a thousand sick and injured people out and re-located to four different states (click).
During the recovery process, she became friends with Mississippi's then-Governor Haley Barbour and began working raising money for the Architecture for Humanity non-profit and the Community Design Studio in Biloxi (click) -- which eventually constructed over 400 fortified homes in the area -- commuting to work from Fairhope for four years; but, after learning her father had cancer, she resigned and took a job closer to home at Mercy Medical.
After her father passed away and her mother moved back to New Orleans to become a nun, she was offered the interim CEO position for Architecture for Humanity in Washington DC (click) and then moved later to the American Architectural Foundation -- with an office near the White House where she worked with both the Bush and Obama administrations as well as various charitable foundations.
From its website: "The American Architectural Foundation (AAF) is dedicated to the vibrant social, economic, and environmental future of cities. In the past decade alone, AAF has worked directly with local leaders through more than 500 city engagements. During this time, AAF has served every major metropolitan region and most second-tier cities in the United States. All told, it has provided design leadership training and technical assistance to hundreds of elected officials, public-private partnerships, education leaders, business leaders, and other key local decision makers in the design process."
In the summer of 2016, she received a call from Kelly Lyons about her twin sister running for Fairhope's mayor ... and another call later about a job opening with the city, which she accepted after interviewing with the mayor and council president Burrell, she said.
CURRENT GOALS
She described her job-situation today as "a little tense" but using her experience to help maintain Fairhope's quality of life by "being careful how we grow" and addressing related issues like sewage capacity and storm water management.
Botop mentioned two main goals:
1. Get feedback from residents to keep up with their needs and address them promptly.
2. Be good stewards of tax dollars and use them appropriately.
Botop said her previous resiliency training (recovering from disasters) helps; and she has begun evaluating how all city departments use available funding so as to to be "as efficient as possible."
She added the city has always had "great employees" -- and the ones in place now are highly qualified to do the job as well.
QUESTIONS FROM CITIZENS
Afterwards, she fielded a wide range of questions from the audience about airplane noise, utility capacity, traffic congestion, the possible use of Auburn's property as parkland, accomplishments during the building moratorium, and the sometimes-rocky relations between the mayor and city council -- among others.
An out-of-town retreat for the mayor and council to "foster better relations" has been proposed: "If I can evacuate dying people (from Katrina) maybe I can get this to work too ... or maybe I am in over my head this time!"
"We all want them to get along," she added.
WEEKLY 'TEA FOR TWO' PROGRAM
Sherry Lea Botop spoke at the museum recently before a large crowd (and one dog named Oscar) about how she found her way to the city -- and her current job as its community development director.
 |
| 'Oscar' relaxing on the floor. |
After graduating from LSU (she began there at age 15) she took a job in Birmingham where she worked for a bank creating philanthropic programs for the community -- and then in Los Angeles and New York City managing "donor dollars" for various charities.
Her parents were visiting her in New York in 2001 where she was living with her two "little babies" when terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center on September 11th; but her parents "refused to leave me there" so the entire family packed up and moved to Fairhope in 2002 where they lived across S. Church Street from one another for the next few years, with the children beginning at the Organic School and K-1. She taught ballet at a local dance studio downtown, she said.
 |
| 2005 photo |
Hurricane Ivan damaged their house in 2004 and the family sheltered at St. Lawrence Church during Katrina the following year, but she "had a feeling something was different about this one" since the eye was headed to her hometown New Orleans -- so she commandeered a church bus and headed west to "see if we could help." That bus rapidly filled with evacuees, so she retuned with four more to get almost a thousand sick and injured people out and re-located to four different states (click).
During the recovery process, she became friends with Mississippi's then-Governor Haley Barbour and began working raising money for the Architecture for Humanity non-profit and the Community Design Studio in Biloxi (click) -- which eventually constructed over 400 fortified homes in the area -- commuting to work from Fairhope for four years; but, after learning her father had cancer, she resigned and took a job closer to home at Mercy Medical.
After her father passed away and her mother moved back to New Orleans to become a nun, she was offered the interim CEO position for Architecture for Humanity in Washington DC (click) and then moved later to the American Architectural Foundation -- with an office near the White House where she worked with both the Bush and Obama administrations as well as various charitable foundations.From its website: "The American Architectural Foundation (AAF) is dedicated to the vibrant social, economic, and environmental future of cities. In the past decade alone, AAF has worked directly with local leaders through more than 500 city engagements. During this time, AAF has served every major metropolitan region and most second-tier cities in the United States. All told, it has provided design leadership training and technical assistance to hundreds of elected officials, public-private partnerships, education leaders, business leaders, and other key local decision makers in the design process."
In the summer of 2016, she received a call from Kelly Lyons about her twin sister running for Fairhope's mayor ... and another call later about a job opening with the city, which she accepted after interviewing with the mayor and council president Burrell, she said.
CURRENT GOALS
She described her job-situation today as "a little tense" but using her experience to help maintain Fairhope's quality of life by "being careful how we grow" and addressing related issues like sewage capacity and storm water management.
Botop mentioned two main goals:
1. Get feedback from residents to keep up with their needs and address them promptly.
2. Be good stewards of tax dollars and use them appropriately.
Botop said her previous resiliency training (recovering from disasters) helps; and she has begun evaluating how all city departments use available funding so as to to be "as efficient as possible."
She added the city has always had "great employees" -- and the ones in place now are highly qualified to do the job as well.
QUESTIONS FROM CITIZENS
Afterwards, she fielded a wide range of questions from the audience about airplane noise, utility capacity, traffic congestion, the possible use of Auburn's property as parkland, accomplishments during the building moratorium, and the sometimes-rocky relations between the mayor and city council -- among others.
An out-of-town retreat for the mayor and council to "foster better relations" has been proposed: "If I can evacuate dying people (from Katrina) maybe I can get this to work too ... or maybe I am in over my head this time!"
"We all want them to get along," she added.
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