To my family, friends, fellow REALTORS® and members of the community, thank you for supporting me these past two years as the Morgantown Board of REALTORS® President. As President, you are tasked to write a weekly article for the Dominion Post. The topic is of your choice but must be at least 500 words. I am honored to have served a two-year presidency, being the first in the history of the Board to have two terms. What that also means is that I wrote 104 articles, approximately 52,000 words and many different topics. I was often surprised and humbled when people would tell me they read and enjoyed my articles. I want to thank each of you for your kind words and support.

In 2020, Covid struck our community, and everything shut down. We were fortunate to be considered essential workers thanks to the West Virginia Association of REALTORS® lobbying for us with the Governor. This allowed us to continue representing our buyers and sellers in all their real estate transactions. We had to figure out how to use Zoom for our meetings and how to adapt to new ways of listing and showing properties. REALTORS® love to meet people. We are very social, love to talk and we all come together to serve our community. This, however, was difficult when Covid shut the world down. For 2020, we learned new ways and when asked for a presidency “redo”, I agreed. 2021 gave us the opportunity to do more, do better and to catch up on the things we couldn’t accomplish in 2020.

I would not be where I am today without so many people in my corner of which I must give thanks. To my Board of Directors, thank you for pivoting with me as we traveled new paths to accomplish our goals to support the Morgantown Board of REALTORS® and our community. I consider each of you a friend and I wish you all the best. To my office, you also dealt with my many phone calls, meetings and events as I fluttered around the community. Thank you for keeping me upright.

To my family, especially my husband, thank you for supporting my craziness as I sat down every Thursday night to draft my articles when they were due Friday morning. Topics were suggested, many which I had already covered, but the input was appreciated. You never doubted my ability to accomplish anything and always went along with my adventures. Love to you!

There is a special person that I have had the honor of emulating for the last 48 years and yes, I just told my age. My mom has been in real estate for over 45 years. She achieved Emeritus status with the National Association of REALTORS® and is an amazing woman. She has taught me to be honest, gracious and hard working. She is my Broker and my friend. Thank you, mom, for pushing me to be my best, always.

I wish my successor, Mr. Brian Haufe, the 2022 Morgantown Board of REALTORS® president the best! Thank you for the redo and for supporting me these past two years!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and I wish you all a Merry Christmas! Remember to ALWAYS do good things!

Stephanie Lemley, 2021 MBOR President