Listen to the interview here!
Dorothy Lehman Hoerr
Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece. Welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I have Dorothy Hoerr with me. Hi, Dorothy.
Dorothy Hoerr: Hello.
Toni: Welcome to the Get Inspired! Project.
Dorothy: I’m glad to be here. Thank you.
Toni: Dorothy, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Dorothy: I am a freelance writer and college English instructor. I teach part-time at a number of different schools. I mostly teach writing courses for new students. As my community involvement, I am President of the Board of Berks Ballet Theatre.
Toni: Thank you for being here. Let’s go into the first question. What does inspiration mean to you?
Dorothy: For me, when I think of inspiration, I think of so many people in Berks County who are doing so many amazing things. There is really so much good work that’s being done in our community every day. I think of people like Al Boscov who have given so much to the community. I think of our dancers at Berks Ballet Theatre – these young men and women who come into the studio for hours upon hours every week, and the dedication and the hard work that they put into it. When I look at that, to me that’s what inspiration means. You can see the inspiration in them, and you can feel it when you’re around them.
Toni: When you say that you can visually see it, what is it that you see?
Dorothy: I think what you see is you see a certain look in their faces. It’s concentration, but it’s joy at the same time. It’s a kind of happy focus. You see this a lot too in people who are working in the community when I hear about the various achievements that people have had. For me, when I see somebody that’s doing that kind of work in the community, it always makes me think, “Wow – look at that great thing. How can I take some piece of that? How can I do something like that in the involvements that I have?”
Toni: That’s a great lead-in to the second question. How do you put that focused happy into practice here in Berks County?
Dorothy: For me, I feel like I look around for a need. To me, it’s kind of like the intersection of inspiration and need when I see an organization that has a need for something that maybe I can fill or think I can even learn to fill.
For one example, when I went through the Leadership Berks Program, I graduated in 2012, and I helped to start the event Cocktails and Classics for the Reading Public Library. There was a need for a fundraising event. My team and I had a project to do, and we put together the synergy and started this event that’s now in its fourth year and going on to raise more money every year.
The same thing really with BBT. They needed help, and I felt like it was something that I could do. To me, I think putting inspiration into practice is really just about looking around you and saying, “Where is there somewhere where there is a need that I can help with?” That sort of willingness to say, “Let me see if I can help you with that.”
Toni: Is the need obvious?
Dorothy: I guess it isn’t always. Maybe it’s not obvious to everybody, but I think to the person who has the right inspiration to do it, it’s obvious to them.
Toni: That brings me to for yourself. It has to be your own personal perspective. What are you drawn to?
Dorothy: I think I am drawn to – and I don’t know if this fortunate or unfortunate – but I’m drawn to the underdog. I’m drawn to the causes. Certain causes get a lot of traction and a lot of people flock to them and say, “I’m going to give my time to this.” I’m usually drawn to the causes that aren’t drawing all the attention and all the people. I think it tugs at my heart, and it makes me think, “People should know this. People should see this need, and they should get involved with this more.”
Toni: Thank goodness you notice those things, right? That’s fantastic. Who in Berks County inspires you?
Dorothy: I think that I am most inspired by all of the people in the Leadership Berks Program. These are just average people going about their jobs. They have very busy lives. They have kids. They have careers. They have all the things that everyone has. Yet at the same time, they make the time to give, and really above and beyond. They don’t just go out and say, “Here I am. I’ll do a little of what I can.” Leadership Berks graduates will always do whatever it is that’s asked of them.
I’m fortunate right now to have a Leadership Berks team that we’re working with at Berks Ballet to help us with our marketing. We just had a meeting last night. We needed a truck and a driver and they said, “Okay, let us help you with that.” Anything that you need. That’s really inspiring to me, because again it’s that willingness. You see a need and the willingness and the motivation to go forth and to try to do something about it.
Toni: It’s actually putting into practice what someone else is inspired by, and going out and helping them.
Dorothy: Yes, exactly. It isn’t even necessarily our own personal inspiration that we say, “This is important to me,” but it’s seeing the importance of it to someone else and saying, “Wow – that really matters to them and I can help, so I’m going to do that.”
Toni: You’ve made that really clear that those types of people inspire you. Anybody else, Dorothy, in Berks County that inspires you?
Dorothy: I guess I had mentioned Al Boscov. A couple months ago, I went to a Leadership Berks event where he spoke about his life and his father. It’s amazing to hear his story, because his father was such an inspiration in his life and such a motivating factor to him that he said that much of what he does is for his father’s remembrance, and to keep alive the kind of generosity that his father exhibited.
I think and I hope that we all have somebody somewhere in our life that we want to do that with. Somebody that motivated us or inspired us that we think, “I want to give to remember that person and to honor that person.” He was just amazing. That interview with him was just amazing.
Toni: That’s fantastic. What do you want your legacy to be?
Dorothy: Well, that’s a hard question, I think, to think about a legacy, because even though I’ve been teaching for 13 years and I’ve been writing for I don’t know how many years, and so certainly I think that I want my legacy in my students to simply be that they felt that someone cared. I think that’s the most important thing in a teacher. They may or may not learn all the things that I’m trying to teach them, but if they feel like one person really listened and really cared, I think they’re going to take that with them wherever they go and whatever they do.
In my community service, I think that’s harder to think about a legacy, because I feel like even though I’ve been doing some things for a few years, I feel so much like I’m still just getting started. Maybe we always feel like we’re just getting started. I know that the Cocktails and Classics event, I would love to see that go on to continue to be successful and continue to grow.
When we talk about Berks Ballet and we talk about legacy, we really think about our founder, Carol Ennis, who founded the company and led it for over 30 years before her retirement. I think all of us who are involved in the Ballet, a lot of our focus is to continue her legacy, to continue her dream and to grow it, and to keep it alive and healthy.
Toni: Thank you so very much for doing the work that you do, and also being part of the Get Inspired! Project.
Dorothy: Thank you for having me.
