You’re never too old for that regular check-in from Mom.
Just ask Brandy Rominger and Kathy Rodman. It’s a built-in part of the daily routine for the mother-daughter pair.
“I clock in, and I come through (her office) and I say, ‘Hi Brandy,’ and I go,” says Kathy, a server at the Spring 8 restaurant which is a hop, skip and a jump from daughter Brandy’s concierge desk in the French Lick Springs Hotel lobby.
With close to 1,700 associates, French Lick Resort is almost like a little community unto itself, so it only makes sense that our resort family is full of several real-life families. We’re spotlighting a couple of those, in the spirit of French Lick Resort’s “Celebrate Mom All Month Long” initiative that begins today, with specials such as Mother’s Day brunch, Moms Play Free golf weekend and interactive wine events on top throughout the month of May.
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| French Lick Resort is full of mother-child associate tandems, including Kathy Rodman (left), who came to the resort restaurants at the urging of her daughter Brandy Rominger, who works in concierge at French Lick Springs Hotel. |
In Brandy’s case, the family ties apply to the branches of the family tree above her and below her as well.
Her two college-age sons lend a hand around the resort when they’re home from school. And Brandy has surely imparted the same wisdom with her own children as her mother did with her.
“When I was growing up, my mom always worked in some type of management,” Brandy recalls. “When I was a little girl I used to be able to go to work with her a few times, and I’d watch her interact with people. She always told us when we were little, ‘A good manager will outwork their best worker.’ You’re going to be here before them, you’re going to stay after them, and you’re going to do everything you can do to accommodate them. You’re going to take care of them; they’ll take care of your business.”
Kathy finishes the thought: “And I told her, ‘You don’t ask anyone to do anything that you wouldn’t do yourself.’”
Later in life, it’s been the daughter dispensing the advice for mom to follow.
When Brandy and her sisters began having children, “we realized that our mother could take better care of our children than any daycare could. So we convinced her that she needed to quit her job and open her own daycare.” And that’s what Kathy did for the next 17 years.
When Kathy decided to retire from the daycare gig, her daughters laughed. They knew retirement wouldn’t last, considering the type of vigor that their mom had to burn. They were right — she lasted about two weeks before that work itch resurfaced.
“That’s when I told her, come to work here at the hotel. There’s a lot of women that are retired, a lot of school teachers come over here and just work banquets on the weekends,” Brandy says.
Again, Kathy followed her daughter’s lead when she started at the resort 3½ years ago. Since Brandy was a food and beverage manager at the time, she was technically Kathy’s superior and provided those little nuggets of wisdom — such as how to carry those enormous circular trays without hurting yourself (or dropping something).
Even now, Brandy says, “I’ll make rounds to come through and check on guests and see how they are, and I go through her venues and say, ‘Hi mom.’ And freak the guests out a little bit, because they can’t believe she’s my mom. It’s fun with the guests, they get a kick out of it a lot of times, just because they say she doesn’t look her age, I don’t look mine. When my son’s in there, that really gets ‘em … they kind of think it’s funny having three generations here doing what we do. It’s kind of fun.”
The family mash-up has also been going strong for Glenda Barber and Daniel Schoenfield, who’ve merged for nearly a dozen years of service.
The family mash-up has also been going strong for Glenda Barber and Daniel Schoenfield, who’ve merged for nearly a dozen years of service.
Their paths overlap only occasionally during the work day. Maybe when Glenda, a scheduling manager at the resort, goes to the mail room behind where Daniel’s stationed as a front desk agent at French Lick Springs Hotel. Even so, those were the fleeting moments that left Glenda with that empty nest feeling with her son gone recently.
“Daniel went to school last year so he was gone a lot of last year, and I was all excited about him going until he went,” Glenda says. “It’s really weird I don’t see him all that often, but I know he’s upstairs. It is, it’s really great to know that he’s there and I can run up and just see him and say hi.”
That may have been the type of simple pleasure Glenda envisioned a few years ago. She went back to school for her master’s degree, was working in California and was more than 2,000 miles away from where Daniel was living in North Carolina when she floated the idea by him: I’d kind of like to end up where you’re thinking about ending up.
Not surprising, considering how deep those family bonds extend.
“I actually used to own my own business and Daniel, he would work with me,” Glenda recalls. “Daniel was probably 5 when he started making flower arrangements at our flower shop. And by the time he was in high school, he was able to run the shop, answer the phone, help teach someone else their algebra and do his own all at the same time. He’d run my shop for me when I was out of town on business. He grew up on business.”
“Everything I know about business, that’s pretty much all education I’ve gotten from her. It’s been really important in my job to have a good work ethic, and I definitely get that from her,” Daniel says.
“She’s very strong-willed; I like that,” Daniel adds, drawing a chuckle from mom. “She’s sort of been like a single mom to me so she’s been able to handle that aspect as well throughout her life. I wouldn’t have been able to do so much in my life without her.”
That’s worthy of a generous Mother’s Day gift, don’t you think?
Thinking of the possibilities that are just on the French Lick Resort property alone, Daniel has a few potential ideas.
“I’d probably do a few things. I would definitely treat her to a nice little spa package, I think she definitely deserves to relax. It’d probably be fun to go horseback riding together, a nice trail ride. She likes the outdoors, so that would be fun to do together. And then of course a nice steak dinner at 1875, probably.”
When you put it that way, the thought of spending Mother’s Day where you work is a pretty nice proposition.
“From a mom’s point of view, it’s glamorous,” Glenda says. “It would make mom feel glamorous: inside, outside, just the whole combination. It would be a glamorous Mother’s Day.”