PENSACOLA, Fla. — You’d be hard pressed to find someone who has quietly and humbly touched as many lives is as many ways as Carolyn Appleyard has.
She’s just non-stop making things happen — like an Angel In Our Midst.
Small in stature and always out of the limelight, Carolyn Appleyard’s imprint on the community is indelible. We started with a look at the Pensacola Children’s Museum.
“In the late 80s, the Junior League of Pensacola adopted a project, a children’s hands-on museum,” Appleyard said. “A group of us studied museums all over the country. We had consultants come here. We visited other museums, and ultimately went on the third floor of what was then the TT Wentworth Museum. At the time we worked on this, I had a two-year-old. Now I’ve got a great, my youngest grandchild is two years old.”
The Museum is about to undergo a major exhibit change thanks to a grant from Impact 100 of the Pensacola Bay Area.
Appleyard is a founding member of that organization that has awarded more than 17 million dollars to non-profits over the past 21 years.
“This local Impact is the largest in the world,” Appleyard said. “I’m not sure how many there are, but we’re over 1000 women. Joined together, those energies, those dollars, that interest, those experiences make things happen.”
Carolyn has always been good at finding her place and bringing her expertise to a project. Like when an editor was needed for the Some Like It South Cookbook.
“One of the Junior League projects I was involved with early on was a cookbook, an award-winning cookbook,” Appleyard said. “I’m not a cook, as my family would tell you, but I helped organize the recipes for that, and we had a good time doing that.”
The money raised funded a lot of needed projects in the community.
Whether it’s from the ground up or steadying a ship during a leadership change, Carolyn never needs to shine.
She tries to make her mark and pass the torch; ready for where she can make a difference next. Her brother Ray Palmer just watches in awe.
“She’s good at establishing and building a base for a great idea, being able to structure it, and then handing it off to others and letting others take it and run with it,” Palmer said. “Then she’s off to something else to do. If she has a downfall, maybe it’s an attention span, that ‘Okay, I got that one going and rolling and now I have to go focus on fixing something else.'”
“Short attention span? I don’t know. That’s a good question. I don’t know, some therapist could probably help me with that,” Appleyard said.
Appleyard has researched and launched innovative projects like the Little Free Libraries you see all around the county.
She co-chaired Rebuild Northwest Florida and helped get thousands of families back in their homes after Hurricane Ivan.
“I learned all kinds of things about the community, about FEMA, hurricane response, and recovery,” Appleyard said. “I’m not saying you’re called to do it, but there’s a burden on you when you can do something like that to help. Everybody found a way to help and be involved in that.”
School Board Chair, Patty Hightower was on the Escambia Children’s Trust when Appleyard volunteered to serve as Interim Director. That was no small undertaking.
“I don’t know what we in this community would do without people like Carolyn Appleyard working in the background,” Hightower said. “Not usually out front, but working in the background to identify what will make a child’s life better, a family’s life better, and a community’s life better.”
Carolyn ran Habitat for Humanity during a transition, and the list goes on and on. She doesn’t care to try to recall, it’s not important.
Palmer says with all of that, there’s the biggest role his sister fulfills.
” We are still just a family and we have had the challenges that families have,” Palmer said. “Financial challenges, health challenges, and people that have had marital problems, or whatever it has been, there’s been one rock and that rock has always been Carolyn.”
