Janice Moor walked the entire parade route during Friday's Roy Martin Delta Band Festival, waving all the way.
At the beginning, the executive vice president of the Greenwood-Leflore County Chamber of Commerce, and its first female president, made sure the floats were lined up correctly and checked on the trophies. Then, skipping ahead, she was there, still smiling, to greet the paraders at the end.
The walking, though, was only part of the work Moor put into the event. On Thursday, she was already charting out how the day would be: "I'll be getting up about 5 o'clock in the morning, and I'll probably get home around 7 in the evening - another 12-hour day in the life of a chamber director."
At the end of this month, Moor will put in the last of those long days. The eternally optimistic director is retiring from a chamber that its members say is drastically more inclusive and focused on carrying Greenwood and Leflore County into the future than the one she took over 14 years ago.
Chamber members and community leaders say Moor will be missed.
"She has dedicated herself to being absolutely the most wonderful chamber director we could ever have," said Pat Verhage, who worked as membership director under Moor during the 1990s. "She works long hours, long after 5 p.m. She works on weekends. And she tries to make everybody happy. She's just very much a lady."
Moor's help in reviving an interest in downtown Greenwood as an engine for economic development has built a strong tie between the chamber and local political leaders. Her diplomatic presence has been important in that mission, says Mayor Harry Smith.
"Janice is organized, talented, very patient, and she knows who to go to to get things done," he said. "She's just gone the extra mile, and she's been courteous to everybody in a job I think would be difficult to be courteous with everybody all the time. I know I'll miss her."
Said Robert Moore, president of the Board of Supervisors, "I've never seen her in a down-spirited moment. She's always very cheerful, very positive, and the work she does in the community speaks for itself."
Moor, a Kansas native, began doing that work for the chamber as a volunteer in the late 1960s, when she and her husband, Marion, ran an insurance business. She started out in the Tourism Committee, which did a scaled-down version of the kind of work the Convention and Visitors Bureau takes care of now.
"We used to go up to the Welcome Center in Hernando," she said. "We would take catfish and cook it and hand out little bits and pieces to tourists, and we would talk about how we were the center for catfish in the Delta and they needed to come. It was very, very primitive compared to what we're doing now."
But even then, smiling was part of Moor's routine.
"We would come back with our faces tired from grinning with all our Southern hospitality."
Moor's involvement with the chamber continued, and in 1985, she was appointed the organization's vice president, a position that put her in line for the presidency.
"That was kind of a shock," Moor said. "I wasn't all sure if the chamber was ready for a woman president. It was breaking tradition big time."
Jack Johnson III, who was then the chamber's president, said there was no such trepidation among other members, though. Moor's nomination was the natural next step, he said.
"I had worked with Janice on a number of community things and political things, and I recommended her to be president, and she was the first woman to hold that position," Johnson explained. "And she did it like she does everything else - a super job."
In 1989, two years after her year as president, Moor came on full-time with the chamber as assistant director. That year, she and then-Executive Director Jim Sharkey pushed through a 1 percent tourism tax, which established the Greenwood Convention and Visitors Bureau.
The following year, Moor was promoted to executive director.
Moor began to take a second look at downtown Greenwood, which at the time was a ghost of the bustling business center it once was.
One of the first steps on the way to revitalizing downtown was the founding of Main Street Greenwood in 1995, an accomplishment Moor says she is particularly proud of.
"It's eight years old and has just accomplished amazing things in that eight years," she said.
Moor was instrumental in bringing the organization to Greenwood, said state Rep. May Whittington, who was Main Street Greenwood's first executive director.
"Everybody thought it would never work, and businesses were fleeing from downtown," Whittington said. "We had to prove it was something that was being done in other cities and that it could be done here with all the beautiful old buildings downtown."
Whittington credits Moor's "easy manner and elegant style" for pushing the idea through.
Arance Williamson, a Greenwood city councilwoman, says she was inspired by Moor's vision. Williamson was part of the group that researched the Main Street organization to decide if it was right for Greenwood.
"She was dedicated to the revitalization of the downtown area because she knew the potential that it held," said Williamson. "She also knew that revitalization was the key to bringing back Greenwood financially because the heart of the city is in the downtown area."
Main Street went right to work channeling community-development projects and funds into downtown, among them the historic-district street signs and the facade grants. Since then, an array of locally-owned shops, restaurants and businesses have relocated downtown or restored their existing buildings there,. including The Alluvian, Viking Range Corp.'s renovation of the old Hotel Irving.
With Williamson and other black leaders included in the project, the chamber's once all-white membership began to change under Moor in favor of racial diversity.
Moor said she and some of the members realized this progression was necessary after she took the Leadership Tomorrow class for a visit with then-state Treasurer Marshall Bennett. Moor recalled the exchange:
"He said, 'You've got a very big problem here.' And we said, 'What problem? We don't have a problem.' And he said, 'Everyone in this class is a white male.' And it had never occurred to us this wasn't what we needed."
At that point, the chamber began to actively become more diverse, Moor said. And in 1991, the organization won a statewide award for its Greenwood-Leflore Together project promoting racial reconciliation.
"That has been one of our primary goals, really seeking that out, and it has been a hard job because for so many years we were not that embracing," she said. "So that has been a real big focus, making sure everybody knows they're welcome."
The black membership has continued to grow and become more active. Robert Moore says he sees much more diversity among the chamber's committees. However, he said, the progress is not finished.
"There's diversity, and it's out front," Moore said. "Blacks appear to be taking a more prominent role in the chamber.
"At the same time, there is a lot of room for improvement in terms of blacks chairing committees and serving as president of the chamber. I've never even heard of a black being considered for president."
Despite the work left to do, Moor has done her part in moving the chamber forward, he said.
"Janice has been a catalyst for bringing African Americans to the table at the chamber. I've been extremely satisfied with her performance and the work she has done for the community."
Moor credits a growing relationship with Mississippi Valley State University for the recruitment swing.
"Valley is very important to our community," she said. "They have a lot of leadership capacity and influence in our community. So we're pleased with that."
Moor is quick to deflect all the praise heaped on her to the chamber's volunteers.
"The chamber could not be done without volunteers, their dedication and willingness to give their spare time and the ideas they come up with," she said. "This chamber is volunteer driven. I just think Greenwood has a great volunteer attitude."
That spirit has guided the chamber to take a more activist role in educational issues, this year beginning a course to foster young leaders starting their junior year in high school. Chamber members have taken other efforts into their own hands, choosing to manufacture the city's Christmas decorations for about $35,000 instead of buying them for $100,000, she said.
And the volunteerism was responsible for Friday's parade, the grand finale of Moor's involvement in chamber-sponsored fanfare. Moor's description of the festival could just as likely be turned back around to fit her.
"It's a festive, upbeat event," she said. "But, you know, everything's good. There's not really anything negative in the chamber. But it's nice to go out on a jingle bell day."
