Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece. Welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I have Tammy Gore with me. Hi, Tammy.
Tammy Gore: Hello, Toni. How are you today?
Toni: I am great. How are you today?
Tammy: I’m doing wonderful. It’s a beautiful, sunny fall day.
Toni: It really is gorgeous outside, isn't it?
Tammy: Yes, it is. I love it.
Toni: So, Tammy, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Tammy: I am Tammy Trotman Gore. I am married to Bob Gore, a wonderful man. We’ve been married for 15 years now. I am also the mother to two beautiful young girls that we adopted from China. I have a 13-year-old and an 11-year-old in eighth and sixth grade, so that keeps me moving.
Toni: Yes, I would imagine.
Tammy: And I wear many hats, like all women. We wear many hats. In addition to wife and mother, I also am a professor at Alvernia University where I’m currently teaching macroeconomics. I received my Ph.D. from Alvernia and am now teaching there. That’s a lot of fun. I’m also the Executive Director of the Northeast Berks Chamber of Commerce. We have about 270 members. We’re growing and doing a lot of interesting things. I’m also the Mayor of the Borough of Fleetwood, and I am the first female mayor that they have ever had in Fleetwood. That’s been a lot of fun identifying myself in that role.
Toni: Congratulations! Talk about a lot of hats! You certainly are wearing a lot of really cool hats.
Tammy: I love them all, yes.
Toni: That is fantastic. Let’s go into the Project. What does inspiration mean to you?
Tammy: I knew you were going to ask me this, and I’ve been thinking and thinking. You might as well just ask me, “What’s the meaning of life?” because it’s so hard to answer. Inspiration I think is being pushed to a desire to raise to a higher level. I think that when you are inspired, you want to be and do something more than has been done previously.
Toni: Do you find that inspiration comes first, and that is the push?
Tammy: Yes. I think inspiration comes from many different places and sources. It could be a book that you read. It could be a beautiful sunrise or sunset. It could be the smell of salt water when you’re at the beach. It could be people in your life and other people that you aspire to assimilate to. I think inspiration comes from many sources, but I think that’s what then pushes you to a higher level.
Toni: What does the push feel like?
Tammy: The push in my little world is that I want to do more. I want to take on something that hasn’t been addressed, and I want to do it bigger and better. You just want to do more.
Toni: How do you put that, when you’ve experienced that and you’ve been inspired, and you obviously based on all of these hats that you wear and the things that you do, you have been pushed. How do you put that into practice here in Berks County?
Tammy: I put it to practice in many ways, and not always noticeable ways to a wide variety of people, but as mayor, I get to do it continuously because I work behind the scenes, and I try to make connections happen. I try to look for grant monies. How can I make our community better without burdening our local taxpayers anymore than they already are? That’s one way that I am inspired to do more, and it’s behind the scenes. It’s not always visible.
The Chamber – I aspire to bring in new members and to do more professional events and activities for the Chamber and bring in good speakers so that other people feel inspired to do more.
I think teaching is the ultimate in using your inspiration, because you never know how you’re going to influence a student to do more. I think you pass it forward. You pass it on to the next person, and hopefully they are inspired and then do something better and greater.
Toni: Do you think that you have been inspired so often that it continues to motivate you to create and do and live this inspired life to do for others?
Tammy: I don’t know if I can define it. Like I said, it doesn’t really get a lot of praise or attention. It’s not why you do it. You just want to do more. I’ve just been very blessed in my life that I had the opportunity in these different roles to do something.
Toni: We’re lucky that you are so inspired to do things. I love the fact that you don’t look for the recognition, that you’re able to say it’s behind the scenes, and you just do it. When you’re inspired, you just go do it.
Tammy: It’s a passion, and it fulfills me. It’s very selfish, it really is, because it fulfills my needs and my desires. I do it because it’s what makes me feel good.
Toni: Who in Berks County inspires you?
Tammy: There are so many people that inspire me. I normally look to women, because I just think women do so many things. So much of it is without recognition. There is nothing harder than parenting children, but women do it, and they take care of their husbands and their households and the schedules.
I’m inspired by so many women, but if I had to put a name on it, it might not be a name that you’re aware of, and if not, you need to meet this woman. Her name is Janet Peters.
Janet Peters inspires me. She’s really my muse. She is in her 80s now, but she was the Vice President of Vanity Fair. She started out as a model and worked her way up through the company of Vanity Fair and became a Vice President. This was many decades ago, so she was a woman ahead of her time. She would leave for work. A limousine would pick her up at her strawberry farm in Fleetwood on Monday mornings and take her into New York, where she would live during the week and come back on the weekends.
She inspires me because she’s been retired now for some time, but she has more energy than any five women I know. I don’t know how she does it. She just keeps going. She gets up between 4am and 5am and reads six newspapers every morning.
Toni: Oh my goodness!
Tammy: She reads The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. She calls The New York Times her “Bible.” USA Today, the local paper … she’s just so informed. Then she clips out articles that make her think of people, and she mails them to them. It’s always something that’s insightful and very personal and makes you a better person for having been exposed to it. She just inspires me.
Toni: Wow – and she keeps doing for others, doesn’t she, by sending these articles of reference and so forth. It sounds like she’s a woman who really lives her life.
Tammy: She lives her life to the fullest. She goes all day long. She’s very involved in the church, in the Rotary. It’s all about giving. Everything she’s involved in is about giving. She refers to the elderly people that she takes to their appointments and their hospital visits and that sort of thing. She’s always taking care of the community.
She’s my inspiration. I wish I had her energy at my age that she has in her 80s. She’ll probably kill me for saying she’s in her 80s! But she is, and she’s proud of it. She’s just beautiful on top of it.
Toni: My goodness … when I do these interviews I listen to the similar characteristics of what inspires you and your definition of that, and then who inspires you. When you are inspired and the work that you do is very similar to this woman that you’ve described that inspires you, and that’s pretty cool when that happens.
Tammy: I guess you’re right. I never really thought about it, but yes – just in a different way.
Toni: Absolutely. What would you like your legacy to be?
Tammy: I think my greatest opportunity for a legacy is what my children end up doing, and that seems like a really pat answer, but you put so much into your children and exposing them to different opportunities, hoping that something will inspire them and that they will be your legacy, what they go on to do.
If I look at Fleetwood, my legacy would be, I hope, that we have a community that is prosperous, that has a downtown business district that is invigorated and draws people in, that when people go through Fleetwood they say, “What a beautiful community,” or, “What a charming community.” I’ve been working very hard on the redevelopment of Fleetwood with the redevelopment authority here in Berks County. When I look at Fleetwood, I see a beautiful community, but I also see what more it can be. That drives me. I just really think Fleetwood can be a destination for people.
When I think about the Chamber, I hope that I leave behind an organization that truly helps businesses succeed and strive to be better, and that it can be said that I had something to do with it, that the membership has grown, that businesses are responding to the initiatives that I’ve created. I hope that I make some difference. I hope it’s said when people look back that I made a difference somewhere.
Toni: People tend to think that the legacy question is about when they’re no longer here. What’s interesting is when listening to everyone answer this question, there tends to be more people who are living their legacy now. It sounds as though you are living that legacy by the work that you’re doing. I thank you for that, and I thank you for showing up for the Get Inspired! Project.
Tammy: Thank you so much, Toni. It was fun talking with you today.
