1. Intro & Passion
Welcome to The Weldon Advocate Podcast
I’m Andy Whitby
This Podcast will explore many topics related to Downtown Weldon Revitalization through tourism.
I have been an Advocate for Downtown Weldon for many years.
I have a passion for Making it Happen and “I’m Excited About Weldon”
This Blog/Podcast will explore topics on how Weldon can benefit from tourism development and the economic impact it could have on our small town.
I will have interviews with community leaders and influencers in Economic and Tourism Development.
I’ll also talk with those that are “Making It Happen”. Those that have started tourism related businesses and are working together with a vision of making Weldon a tourism destination.
I’ll also gather stories from some of our local businesses and what they have to offer.
You’ll also get the hear some stories from Weldon’s history and a vision for Downtown Weldon.
A goal of the podcast will be to inspire others
- to believe that it can happen,
- to encourage others to start tourism related businesses
- to make investments in the sites to see and things to do
- to promote what we have and
- to encourage people to visit.
I would like to start by telling a story of how I developed this passion for Downtown Revitalization and Tourism.
But before I tell you about that, I would like to mention that the Weldon Advocate Podcast is sponsored by
The Halifax County Convention and Visitors Bureau. As the lead agency of Tourism Development in the County, we appreciate their support and our efforts to create more tourism opportunities in Weldon.
The Weldon Advocate Podcast is also brought to by
The Downtown Weldon Flea Market. Located in the heart of Downtown Weldon at 221 Washington Ave and Open 10am to 4pm Daily. The Downtown Weldon Flea Market has several vendors and a building full of great treasures. So visit the Downtown Weldon Flea Market and do some Treasure Hunting, Where You Never Know what You’ll Find at the Flea Market.
221 Washington Ave in Downtown Weldon. Open Daily 10am to 4pm.
So now to the story of how I developed this passion for Revitalization and Tourism.
My wife Angel, who is from Weldon and I had recently moved back to Weldon from a period of time when we were in retail management living out of town.
We were living in a rented house on Elm Street.
But Angel wanted to live in “one of those BIG houses on Washington Avenue”.
I told her that if we did that we would need to make some money from it.
We had stayed at some bed and breakfast inns that were located in big old house like the one in Weldon and B&B seemed to be growing popularity. Never mind the fact that we did not know how to run one.
As we looked around, we met Susan Woodall Pettibone. She had inherited the house at 500 Washington Avenue from her mother Sue Woodall and wanted to sell the house.
Susan told us that she had been a former Miss North Carolina and that several large receptions had been held at the house during her reign. We also learned that the house had been an apartments/boarding house at one time with some prominent residents living there.
Upon some research, we learned the house was built in 1913 by H.A. Harrell, a printer in Weldon. The house was located in an attractive Downtown Weldon neighborhood with two churches across the street and several other grand historic homes in the block. There was another unique feature of the property in that the street curbs on the corner in front of the house were curved. This was to allow for traffic to make its way around the statue that used to be in this location.
We shared our idea of having a bed and breakfast inn and Susan got excited. It turned out she was an owner of a bed and breakfast inn in Middleburg Va, a small town in the Blueridge mountains outside Washington DC.
We expressed an interest in buying the house and she went to work making it a Bed and Breakfast Inn adding private baths to each room, enclosing the back porch into a sunroom, adding a central air conditioning system and painting the house. The attic of 1000 sq ft was enclosed as living space for us to live in while guest rooms were on the 1st and 2nd floor.
Mrs Pettibone was a wheeler and dealer and a motivator.
Looking back, we didn’t have much say so in getting the house ready for the B&B. She did everything for us. So when we started, we had a house full of furniture, china and cookware. It was a ready to move into Bed and Breakfast Inn.
She wanted us to choose a name that coordinated with Historic Halifax and plan the opening date with Halifax day.
But this is where I insisted on a Weldon name. After a little research, and I mean little, reading the town page in the phone book, I played around with names and landed on “Weldon Place Inn”. Taking one of the early names of Weldon.
We set the opening date on Friday afternoon April 10th 1992.
I remember our banker coming to the open house and informing us that our loan had been approved. That was a good thing since we were now in business.
Here’s an odd and funny story of our 1st night in businesses.
It was that opening day, it had been a long exhausting day but we already had our first reservation. A local realtor had referred a pharmacist who was being transferred to Roanoke Rapids to stay at our new bed and breakfast inn for a few days while she looked for a permanent place to live.
She checked in and we thought she was getting settled in when all of a sudden she left in a hurry, expressing concern that the house was haunted because there was a picture on the wall vibrating.
Needless to say, that was a little unsettling that we lost our first guest to a ghost.
Upon some investigation I discovered what was causing the picture on the wall to vibrate, it was the way the new AC system had been installed. When the air handler was on, it caused a slight vibration of the house. We made repairs, and no more ghost like vibrations.
So we pressed on.
We soon begin to have guests on a regular basis. They enjoyed hearing about the history of the area and would often tell us about the potential they saw in Weldon.
Since we were in a tourism type business, I paid attention. I soon adopted the philosophy of “what’s good for my community will be good for business”.
I began to attend the county tourism meetings and shorter thereafter they asked me to become a board member.
Then over the course of time a group of citizens formed a committee to being some revitalization project. I’ll share some of those stories at another time.
I began to write a column for the Roanoke Rapids Daily Herald called The Weldon Advocate, and this podcast is an extension of that effort.
But this is when the passion for tourism development ignited in me. I saw the potential for Weldon and I believed in Weldon and believed the best hope for Downtown Weldon will be based on attracting tourists and the money they spend.
Y’all come back now and listen to some more stories of how we are working to making it happen in Weldon.