Captured through the capable lens of National Road Magazine's Caitlin Fogle, these are the people who have made Greencastle, Indiana one of the most enviable small towns in the Midwest. Their stories are those of very human people: ambitious, visionary, determined, and eventually philosophical. If you don't appreciate what they've done for this town, then hop in a time machine and turn the dial back only a handful of notches...to the late or mid-'90's for example. When you come back to the present, you'll kiss the sidewalk on the courthouse square.
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photos by Caitlin Fogle captions by Donovan Wheeler
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Nancy Michael: While many others labored with Mayor Michael to save the city from the post-IBM apocalypse facing it in the late 1980's, it was under her twelve year watch that those seeds germinated. Under her caretaker-ship, those industries blossomed creating a business sector able to withstand the hardships which would come when the housing implosion in 2007-2008 threatened the community's stability.
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Mitch Myers: In reinvigorating a piece of property which has changed hands several times since the turn of the millennium, Myers has both given the community a stable business establishment, and he has offered a social and cultural hub as well. It is in the face of Myers that we see the power vested in the future of neighborhood companies appealing to local consumers.
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Gail Smith: Years from now, when people take their turn standing in line for the chance to take credit for spearheading Greencastle's most significant cultural transformation in history, the only name anyone will utter will be Gail Smith's. Even though the beast that we call First Friday has become something vastly bigger than one person, when it all started, it was in the hands of this one person. From a tiny, humble tea room with daytime hours to a downtown hub keeping thousands of would-be weekend commuters here in town for music and food: if anyone's earned the right to have street named after her, it's Smith.
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Greg Schwipps: Humble, effusive, affable, and eager to make friends. Greg Schwipps stands as an embodiment of the renewed efforts to bond the DePauw University sub-culture to the lives the rest of us live in the greater surrounding area. A small town native (Milan, IN), a DePauw graduate, and a Hoosier novelist, Schwipps can don a mortarboard and discuss Proust on a Thursday, and sit in a fishing boat on Friday with a cold beer in one hand and three-pound catfish in the other.
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Issac Loya: Nothing generated support and enthusiasm quite as passionately as our story of 30-year-old DePauw senior Loya, who returned to school after a long absence and finished his degree while honing his skills behind the microphone. Now living on the West Coast, his contribution to the city scene stands as a testament to the unifying power of both town and gown.
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Rhonda Brotherton: After taking the reigns of the family business twenty years ago, Brotherton successfully expanded The Putnam Inn into one of the signature landmarks in the Greencastle community. Arguably the hardest working person in Greencastle, Brotherton is also responsible for shaping a molding a generation of the community's young people into capable working adults.
