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LaRenda Bradfield, now Scarbrough, grew up in the
fast lane and has remained there. As director of the
Carroll County Chamber of Commerce she operated at a
whirlwind pace to bring the county to the forefront of
industry. One of the organizers of the local United Way,
she has helped bring $1.2 million in services to the
people of Carroll County over the past 15 years. As
owner/broker of Scarbrough Realty Company in
Huntingdon--now in its 11th year--she continues to "sell
the county" to prospective homeowners, most of whom,
these days, she says, come from out of state.
The daughter of Aaron and Ruth Bradfield, LaRenda
arrived in McKenzie from Jackson at the age of four,
owing to her dad's employment at the Milan Arsenal.
"The reason I'm not afraid of hard work is because of my
parents," she says. "I helped make a garden and picked
cotton in my grandparents' cotton fields. I was always
excited when I could get paid three dollars to pick a
hundred pounds of cotton even though it took all day."
Rounding out her work ethic, she learned from her mother
and her maternal grandmother, Estella Williams, an
appreciation and love of nature.
"Grandmother taught me a lot about flowers and
gardening," she says. "I also enjoyed picking up eggs
and helping her milk the cow--that was a wonderful part
of my childhood; that ability to be close to my
grandparents."
Pulling peanuts and picking watermelons were just some
of the activities LaRenda enjoyed during "wonderful
summers" on the farm of grandparents Estella and Glennie
Williams. Her paternal grandparents--Phillip and Nannie
Frances Bradfield, in Henderson County--also lived in a
rural area, which provided rich experiences during
LaRenda's growing years.
In McKenzie, along with her parents and brother, Dan,
LaRenda lived about a mile outside of town where the
athletic youngster enjoyed playing sports with other
children from the neighborhood.
"We played it all," says LaRenda, who pursued her love
of sports throughout her school years and on into
college.
Her second love was music, a passion she credits to
"Granddaddy Bradfield" who often sat on the front porch,
singing old gospel songs using the do-re-mi method
taught in church singing schools. Her dad's brother,
Uncle Roby, could play the piano by ear, something
LaRenda also had a strong desire to accomplish.
"All my friends started taking piano lessons in the
second or third grades," she says. Her mother declined
to allow such an early start in the discipline. However,
so intent was LaRenda upon taking lessons that she sold
Christmas cards over several years to raise the funds to
buy her own piano. In the fifth grade she was able to
start taking classes.
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LaRenda as a senior at McKenzie High School, Class
of '65.
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Within a couple of years, most of her early bird
peers had dropped out of classes, while LaRenda
continued for nine years. By the eighth grade, she was
playing piano during Sunday School and the following
year began organ lessons under Mrs. Robert Hearne. She
was assistant organist at First Baptist Church by the
time she was a junior in high school and also played at
weddings and for revivals held in country churches.
She played saxophone in the high school band and was a
majorette for six years, during junior high and high
school. She won a talent contest in high school singing
"Your Cheating Heart" and was active in 4-H public
speaking contests and demonstrations.
"I think that, as well as playing the organ and piano in
front of people, really contributed to my ability to
relate to people," says LaRenda, "and at 4-H camps I was
able to hone my people skills. I loved meeting the
people of West Tennessee; I made a lot of friends when
I'd go to 4-H functions."
And she was a member of the school's basketball team.
"Basketball was my first love," she says, "I've always
loved sports and that has continued. I just loved to be
outside playing softball, basketball, and tennis."
She eventually obtained her degree in education with a
major in health and physical education and a minor in
music, but in the meantime, when she was a senior in
high school, she met Hugh Scarbrough, native to
McKenzie, who was attending optometry school in Memphis.
"One summer while I was working at Frank's Dairy Bar,"
she says, sheepishly, "he started hanging out at the
Dairy Bar and I thought it was because he was good
friends with Frank."
It was a couple of months before he worked up the
courage to ask her out, their time together then limited
to weekends when he could come home from school.
LaRenda enrolled at Bethel College immediately after
graduating in 1965 in the top-ten of her class, then
transferred to UT-Martin in the fall. She had completed
one year when the couple married and Hugh graduated. He
began his practice in optometry as an Army officer,
serving first in San Antonio, then Fort Polk, Louisiana.
"During those years I worked for the Army," said LaRenda,
who was employed as a civilian clerk or secretary. The
nearest large town was 65 miles away, she says, and the
closest college too far away to attend classes.
For pleasure, they traveled throughout the Southwest.
Trips to New Orleans and Mexico plus an Astros game in
Texas are among her favorite memories of the era.
Discharged after two years, the two relocated to
Springfield, Tennessee, where Hugh set up practice and
LaRenda attended classes at Austin Peay.
"I studied a lot of music there and was a member of the
Austin Peay choir," she shares.
In 1970, an opportunity to open a practice in Huntingdon
brought the couple back to Carroll County.
"Our parents were happy to see us back," says LaRenda,
who finished her last year of college at UT-Martin and
did her student teaching in physical education in
McKenzie.
She laughs upon recalling, "I was teaching modern dance
while I was pregnant."
Mary Margaret was born September 15, less than a month
after LaRenda's graduation on August 26, 1971. Three
years later, on August 13, 1974, Brad was born.
The Scarbrough family: LaRenda and
Mary Margaret, Hugh, and Brad.
"I spent those years from 1971 to 1979 mostly staying
home with the children," said LaRenda, who did some
substitute teaching and volunteer work as well. In
addition to being a member of the Huntingdon Garden
Club, she served on the executive committee for the
Carroll County Sesquicentennial celebration.
During this period, around the time Mary Margaret
entered kindergarten, she also established the
children's choir at Huntingdon's First United Methodist
Church, a group that has remained active long past
LaRenda's six year tenure as its leader.
And she served as the church's full-time organist, a
paid position. "Over the years I played for many
weddings and funerals, beauty revues, just whatever,"
she says. "Whenever I could be of service, I did that."
She continues playing today in a part-time, volunteer
position.
She was a member of the Huntingdon Beautification
Committee when the town became the first in Tennessee to
be presented with the Governor's 3-Star Community award
for economic and community preparedness, a status that
continued for the county as a whole.
When Brad started school, LaRenda began working for the
Carroll County School Board as assistant director of
community education. The program, made possible by a
grant, provided special interest classes in areas such
as cake decorating, smocking, landscaping, and exercise
classes "before the days of aerobics."
She was also assistant coordinator for the teacher
center, another grant program. She coordinated teacher
in-service training with superintendents and principals
countywide.
When the grants phased out, she began working with Hugh
as his part-time office manager. Later, she was asked to
assume the position as part-time executive director of
the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce. In September,
1984, she took on the 20-hour per-week position at five
dollars per hour.
"After two plants closed (Brown Shoe Company and Wilker
Brothers in McKenzie) all at once the job became a
full-time job, trying to replace these," she says.
Fifteen new industries located in Carroll County during
her five-year tenure as director of the chamber, along
with eight plant expansions, including Norandal's first
expansion, bringing 1460 new jobs to the county. She
also was instrumental in the creation of the Carroll
County Airport.
Under her direction, the chamber established a Small
Business Resource Center, which provided free
information and materials, counseling, and start-up
services to small business owners and regularly
presented seminars including Cash Flow Management,
Getting Your Dollar's Worth from Advertising, Computers
for Small Businesses, and Dynamic Selling.
During this time, chamber membership swelled to more
than 300 by 1988 and the budget grew from $25,000
annually to $60,000 in 1989.
She made recruiting trips to various states including
Connecticut, St. Louis, and Cleveland, Ohio. While in
Cleveland, she paid a courtesy call to Norandal's North
American home office, inviting them to move their
headquarters to Tennessee.
"I don't know that I had any influence on it, but it did
happen," she says.
The organization sponsored an annual industrial
appreciation banquet with 300 people in attendance,
hosted a display at the governor's conference each year,
established the Carroll Countian of the Year and
Business Person of the Year awards, and laid the
groundwork for Leadership Carroll County, says LaRenda,
adding, "I would personally see to every detail."
Her in-depth management of the organization finally led
to burnout and she resigned the position in 1989.
"I was just tired, but I enjoyed my time with the
chamber," she says, adding that with the NOMA (later
Murray) plant having just located in the county and with
her daughter graduating that year, it seemed like the
opportune moment to step down.
"After that, I had one good restful year," she says,
quickly backtracking after recalling that after six
month she had assumed a volunteer role of fundraising
campaign chair for the United Way, and organization she
helped organize in Carroll County after being contacted
by Norm White, now regional sales manager of CSI in
McKenzie, about starting a chapter.
"I was chairperson for the first fundraising campaign
and raised about $60,000," she says.
She has remained a member of the board over 15 years,
twice serving as chair of the fundraising campaign which
now brings in more than $100,000 in donations each year
to help fund a variety of programs in Carroll County, or
which serve Carroll countians from other locales. She
represented Carroll County on the United Way of West
Tennessee board for seven years, serving on the
executive committee as secretary, and assisted the
citizens of Dyer County in organizing a United Way
program.
"I just think that shows we're an aggressive community,
by our participation, and it's just helped so many
people with utility bills and allows people, companies
and businesses to give one time and help many
organizations through one united effort."
Through United Way, LaRenda says she has met "so many
wonderful community leaders and learned a lot about busy
people giving unselfishly of their time back to the
community."
Her own efforts were rewarded in 1989 when she was named
Carroll Countian of the Year and more recently when she
was inducted into the United Way of West Tennessee Hall
of Fame on January 24 this year.
She served on the Carroll County Board of Education from
1990 to 1998 and was a paid consultant with the
Huntingdon Industrial Board from 1991 to 1997. She was a
member of the first WestStar class in 1990 and one of
the founding members of Carroll Arts, an organization
that promotes the arts among citizens of the county.
She served on the Civil Service Commission for several
years prior to being appointed in November 2004 to fill
the unexpired term of Frank Burns on the Carroll County
Commission.
"I've enjoyed serving on the commission; the people have
been very supportive," she says.
She became involved in her current occupation when she
decided to take a real estate class simply to become
more informed, then, in 1991, began selling properties
with Maddox and Kelley Insurance and Real Estate. In
1995, she opened Scarbrough Realty company, located at
20130 East Main in Huntingdon.
"It's very hard work and long hours," says LaRenda. "On
the plus side, I felt like I had been selling Carroll
County when I worked for the chamber and could do the
same thing in my own business. Many times before selling
property to people from out of town you have to first
sell them on the community. Luckily, Carroll County
sells itself."
People fall in love with the region, she says, because
of its climate, abundance of land, natural beauty,
excellent road system and taxes, plus the friendliness
of its people.
"I like to think I have some influence on them thinking
we're friendly," she says.
When she is not busy with her various business and
volunteer pursuits, LaRenda enjoys hiking--she's hiked
the Great Smoky Mountains and Land Between the
Lakes--and boating while visiting her cabin on Kentucky
Lake. She and Hugh also enjoy traveling and have been to
Alaska twice on cruises. Always a sportswoman, LaRenda
loves Titans football and Vanderbilt basketball games.
Mary Margaret is a graduate of Vanderbilt with an MBA
from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. She
resides in Boston, Massachusetts, where she is a
business solutions consultant.
Brad, an outstanding football player in high school,
graduated from UT-Martin and received his law degree
from the Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham,
Alabama. He practices law in Brentwood, Tennessee.
"I'm so glad I was able to stay home with them during
their formative years," says LaRenda, "They are my
greatest accomplishment." |
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