Billie Foster Welcomes One And All

By Frank Ruggiero

To many, Billie Foster is the face of Boone Town Hall.

Always there to meet and greet, she welcomes visitors, town residents and a fair share of flatlanders to town hall, often the first impression such people receive of local administration.

Foster has worked for the town as an administrative support assistant for nearly five years, for which she assists all administrative officials at town hall, writing letters, editing, answering the telephone, greeting the public, answering questions and giving directions.

Always there to meet and greet, Billie Foster welcomes visitors, town residents and a fair share of flatlanders to town hall. Photo by Mark Mitchell

And that’s to name a few of the responsibilities Foster shoulders with naught but a smile. “It’s one of the better jobs I’ve had,” she said. “I really like meeting people, trying to help them.”

And that includes people from across the globe. “They think it’s a beautiful area around here and want to know how to get to certain locations,” Foster said. “I had one gentleman from France come in one day, and he could speak very little English. I could speak a little bit of French, so we had a good time trying to converse.”

When it comes to directions, visitors couldn’t find a better source. As a Blowing Rock native, Foster’s rather familiar with the area. She lived in Blowing Rock up through college. She attended Appalachian State University and earned a bachelor of science degree in English and education in 1967, followed by a master of the arts degree in the same subject in 1969. She also completed several post graduate courses in developmental education at ASU.

However, the next 30 years would take Foster off the mountain and into a variety of classrooms. Though holding two degrees at the time, she went back to school, but in a different capacity.

From 1967-68, she taught at Wilkes Central High School and then entered the North Carolina community college system. She taught a variety of English courses at Surry Community College in Dobson and McDowell Community College in Marian, before moving to Charlotte to work with the Burroughs Corporation as a systems writer.

There she put her writing skills to a different use – documenting software and writing a user’s manual for the Burroughs Hospital Information System, which Foster said was the largest such system at the time. This task was made difficult by the source material – a seemingly endless tome of near-indecipherable technical terminology and jargon.

She worked at Burroughs for a year and a half, before returning to the classroom. “I really enjoyed teaching. Of all my jobs, I guess I enjoyed teaching the most,” she said. Catawba Valley Community College in Hickory was her next venue, and she remained there for 11 years, teaching developmental, vocational, technical and college parallel English and reading courses. On the side, she also taught psychology and human relations courses.

Foster’s talent in human relations pays off quite frequently at Boone Town Hall, especially when assisting curious foreigners. She has a particular affinity for Englishmen and for good reason. In 1990, an impulsive move found Foster in Wales, having sold all her possessions and belongings to journey overseas, where she married a Welshman.

“It was a life change,” she said. “I’m so glad I did it; I really enjoyed the experience.”

As a newcomer to Great Britain, Foster was denied employment for the first six months, but she eventually found work at a baker shop. “So, I could learn their terminology, their customs, currency,” she said. “I worked with down-to-earth local people.”

Foster soon became a favorite among her coworkers and customers.

“People there loved my southern accent, and they thought it helped business,” she said. “People would come in and say, ‘Talk, talk, we just want to hear you.’ But I told them the same thing.”

In Wales, Foster worked at the University of Wales in Newport at its branch library, then the Alltryn branch and finally the Caerleon, which is the university’s major branch. There, she worked as senior library assistant, where she managed the circulation desk and the journal section.

She remembers one particularly charming comment from a professor, who professed his love for “Yanks” because of their optimistic nature. Her nationality, as well as her southern accent, came in handy on more than one occasion, including one of a rather disturbing nature.

“I had just gotten home one night, while my husband was at work, and the phone range,” Foster recalled. “It was this man who said, with heavy breathing, ‘I’m watching you now through the window and you don’t have any knickers on.’ I said, ‘What are knickers?’ And he hung up on me. That was one way to get rid of him.”
After five years, though, Foster’s marriage ended, though she doesn’t regret anything. To her, it was still quite the experience. She and her husband traveled considerably, visiting such exotic places as the Canary Islands, located off the northwest coast of Africa, where the Saharan winds would blow.

Apart from her experiences, though, Foster returned to the United States with nothing to her name. She moved back in with her mother in Blowing Rock, and neither had a car. This meant she walked to work at the Meadowbrook Inn.

“I had to walk everywhere I went, but I developed a positive attitude, which I keep today,” Foster said. “I decided you could do anything if you have to. If you look at the positive side, things aren’t so bad. I got in good shape, walked everywhere I went – the grocery store, work.”

Cleaning rooms at the Meadowbrook wasn’t an easy job, but Foster saved up enough money to purchase a small car and find work in Wadesboro as director of development education at Anson Community College. This lasted only four months, though, as her mother grew ill and Foster returned to Blowing Rock to care for her.

Her subsequent return to the High Country found her working for WAMY Community Action as a welfare and work case manager, helping welfare recipients find jobs in the community and means to overcome poverty.

She then moved to Grundy, Va. to work for the Appalachian School of Law, traveling throughout North Carolina and Tennessee to recruit potential law students from four-year colleges. Of all the places Foster moved, however, none compared to home.

After working at Weber Hodges Realtors for two years, she came to work for the town of Boone, during Velma Burnley’s run as mayor. Foster intends to stick around a few more years, at least until retirement, when she plans to write a book. There is something, though, from which she’ll never retire.

“My philosophy is to be kind to people, to remember that they’re having problems every day, just as we all do,” Foster said. “Our job is to make life just a little bit easier for people. If I can help with people, I try to do that, and I try to keep that positive attitude going. You’re only as happy as you want to be.”