News

Dot Marlow shares 'a remarkable life'

By Emily Stanley, Published: June 23, 2015

Ever since she read Norman Vincent Peale’s Power of Positive Thinking at age 14, Dot Marlow has tried to live one of the book’s themes — “If I think I can, I can.”

Her belief in that inner power continued to propel not only her life but also the lives of those around her toward success.
“I am not a remarkable woman,” she said at Mainstay’s Remarkable Women event at the organization’s Dandelion Café Thursday night, “but I have had a remarkable life.”
Tanya Blackford, executive director of Mainstay, describes the event as “bringing women together to share stories and hear stories and listen and learn from each other.” After the event, some of Mainstay’s clients remarked that Marlow had been the most inspirational speaker yet.
Born the seventh of eight children in the midst of the Great Depression, she grew up in knowing hardship, hard work and tithing. Her mother taught the children to give 10 percent of all that they earned to their church and to do so joyfully.
When she was a child, Marlow would sneak into the church to practice preaching, during a time when women were not allowed to be ministers in the Methodist Church. Still, she aspired to a career as a director of Christian education. While she never realized that dream, her extraordinary career and community accomplishments broke boundaries and blazed paths for women who came after her.
In her introduction of Marlow, Mainstay board president Elizabeth Moss called Marlow “one of the greatest philanthropists, and most giving, faithful, courageous people I have ever met. She has been a pioneer in this county, she was one of the first women to blaze trails professionally for us.”
At the height of her banking career, Henderson County boomed with industries like Rockwell and General Electric. Marlow landed Rockwell’s account for Northwestern Bank and had the company sponsor a kickoff for United Way. When Northwestern merged with Union Bank, the new managers looked at records from recent years and found she had brought in so much business that they had no choice but to name her a vice president.
“Dot Marlow was such an influence on women in banking,” said Peggy Denny, a co-worker whom Marlow mentored. “I started as a teller with Northwestern Bank and she was such an inspiration that I eventually became an executive vice president with the bank, and I credit a lot of that with people like Dot Marlow. It is important for people to help people, and women to help women.”
Her pioneering achievements did not stop at the bank doors.
“She was the first person who was a woman to serve on the Community Foundation board, she helped found Pardee Hospital’s Chaplaincy Board,” Moss said. “She has done just more things than I could ever communicate to you briefly.”
From her early work with the Hendersonville Junior Woman’s Club to the Community Foundation, Marlow has served her community tirelessly.
“Times were hard, but there have always been organizations, and there have always been people that are there to help and give a helping hand with that,” she said. “I feel like every non-profit that we work with adds so much to our community. It gives it the balance that we need. Everybody has within themselves a light, and it will shine if you work hard enough to do that.”