How We Got Our Start
Hello, my people! My name is Shelly, and I have been in the hospitality industry for over thirty years. I must say, it has been quite a ride. I often tell my guests, “If you love what you do and do what you love, you will never spend a day at work.”
In 1982, I was a college student majoring in History with a minor in Education. At that time, there was a shortage of African Americans in government jobs across the United States. As a student focused on completing my education, I thought, “This is not my problem.” One day, my college professor approached me and asked me to take a federal application test. I told my professor, “I am not going to take this test.”
Several times, my college professor came to me and asked me to take this test, and several times I told him no. One day, I arrived at his office, and he put the test in front of me, saying, “Shelly, I think this may be good for you. I want you to take this test.” To keep my college professor away from me and to stop him from bothering me about it, I decided to take the test. I took it, and the rest is history. I passed with flying colors and was told that I scored extremely high, somewhere in the top 10%. Still, this didn’t impress me because I was focused on graduating from college.
I was assigned to a federal park in Washington, D.C., as a seasonal Park Ranger Historian Interpreter. When I arrived in Washington, D.C., I decided that I wasn’t going to stay. I had already made arrangements to quit the job. Once I got there, I discovered that my new friend was a snake—Sherman the snake. I called back to my hometown, informing my college professor that I had a problem and was planning to leave. My college professor informed me that I couldn’t leave and that people were depending on me to stay and make the best of a bad situation.
To make a long story short, I stayed on the job and made the best of a bad situation. Thirty years later, I’m still on the job, still in the hospitality industry. I must say that I have had grand experiences and a great life.