I will never forget the day that I met her. I hadn’t been on the job at United Way for more than a week and was twenty years old. I sat down at a table with about forty people to talk about the future of Chattanooga’s children, and the person leading the conversation was Mai Bell Hurley. As the session began, she reminded the group that there were just two rules at her table: “Be hopeful” and “Be helpful.”
Mai Bell Hurley is pictured in this March 2015 file photo.Read more
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Mai Bell was a force of nature. With unrelenting tenacity, uncompromising values and deep love for her hometown, she helped to shape a once downtrodden city into the vibrant place that it is today. There are few transformative projects and organizations in the city that don’t have Mai Bell’s fingerprints on them. The Walnut Street Bridge, the Tennessee Aquarium, Coolidge Park, the Waterfront, the Southside, United Way, ArtsBuild, the Chattanooga Symphony and countless others were-over time-the beneficiaries of Mai Bell’s dedication to Chattanooga.
Born in a time and place where gender roles were quite traditional in the business and civic world, Mai Bell helped blaze a trail for female leadership that led to board rooms and public office. A tireless advocate for many who couldn’t represent themselves at places of power in the City, Mai Bell conducted her self with grace, humility and keen intuition. Chattanooga today is a “thirty-five year overnight success” in many ways because Mai Bell and a small number of her contemporaries decided that the fate of their hometown was not to be left to chance.
I believe that legacy isn’t about buildings with your name on them or the amount of money that you amass in a lifetime. Legacy rests in leaving the world a little bit better than you found it. If this is true, the legacy of Mai Bell Hurley is one rarely equalled. Her loss marks the end of an era, but her influence echoes everyday in the hearts and hands of each of us who had the chance to learn from and work with her.
– Josh McManus is a former Chattanoogan now working on the revitalization of Detroit. He worked with Mai Bell Hurley at United Way of Greater Chattanooga, Allied Arts (now ArtsBuild) and CreateHere from 1998-2011.