Mendenhall honored
It was always hard to track Judy Mendenhall’s comings and goings in High Point. But with a new transportation terminal named after her, it may get a bit easier.
She was the city’s former mayor and council member, president of the High Point Chamber of Commerce, and executive director of the High Point Substance Abuse Coalition. She even found time to serve as the business manager for the North Carolina Shakespeare Festival and the director of development for Westchester Academy.
This month, she will bid farewell to one of her most challenging roles, president of the International Home Furnishings Market Authority, a non-profit group that oversees services to one of the state’s largest economic events the International Home Furnishings Market in downtown High Point.
But her service to High Point isn’t quite done. She will serve on a part-time basis with Open Door Ministries, a non-profit shelter in High Point. Mendenhall will work with the group’s finances.
City officials decided her contributions to the city shouldn’t go unnoticed, and named the transportation terminal on Commerce Avenue - which she lobbied state and federal legislators to put in place – for her namesake. Shuttle buses, taxi services and even school buses will be able to use the new Mendenhall station, which was completed last October.
“When I told my youngest granddaughter in New Hampshire about it, she said ‘Take a picture and send it to me, because no one believes how important I am up here,’” Mendenhall quipped at a recent High Point Economic Development Corporation board meeting.
--written by staff writer Sue Schultz