The Vivacious Dori Heller
It’s now time to introduce one of the lovely ladies who works here at Meadowbrooke, and a no better place to start would be with the vivacious Doreen Heller. Dori has been with Meadowbrooke since the very beginning, even more so, if you consider she is the sister of Denise Bear. She began doing the bookkeeping at the start of the business in 1995, but also attended the first wholesale show that year in Atlanta with Shawn. The show was so successful, she ended up packing and shipping gourds that summer out of the very hot trailer at the Park Place farm much to Dori’s dismay. After her short career as a shipper, she continued to do the bookkeeping and shows as well as to help with the phones during the summer.
Things changed up a bit the following year when she had her first child leaving her focus mostly on her first job, cutting her time at the shows back. Over the next several years, she had her second child and kept her focus at Meadowbrooke doing the books while she raised her two wee ones. After her kids were a little older, Dori returned to work full time eventually taking on the job as full time retail store manager over the past couple of years. You can usually find her at the front desk, a cheerful hello as you come in the door. Of course, she can’t keep to doing one job and still heads the books as well as the store and open houses.
Over the years, Dori has been an invaluable member of the Meadowbrooke family. Besides her talent with numbers, she has a kind, sweet personality and loves being involved with the open houses, special events, and retail at the farm. She also has an excellent eye for the development of products and helps her husband, Todd, with some design work throughout the year. Even with all she does with the Meadowbrooke family, she also has two very active teenagers. One who has soccer tournaments all over the East Coast during the year and the other plays both volleyball and basketball, which adds up to many, many miles on the family car as well as adventures on the way to and from. Her husband, high school sweetheart, and partner in crime has been by her side for over twenty-eight years and apparently does most of the driving.
She also has a garden which she enjoys working in, but only if it’s not too hot, in which case she tends to her love of a good book inside an air-conditioned house.
When I asked Dori what she would like to do most in her spare five minutes of time every week, she giggled and said she would love to be at the beach, under a nice big umbrella reading a book until she fell asleep.