Friends Cove native Nancy Harclerode says she was proud that her education merited her 10 cents above minimum wage when she was hired as a general ledger input control clerk at Hedstrom Inc. Bedford plant in 1974. Nancy was hired for the bookkeeping department, earning $130 a week. She and her husband had returned to Bedford after she earned her Associate Arts Degree in Computer Science and Accounting from a small business college in New Castle. It was at the height of the 1970s recession and about one in four Bedford County workers were unemployed.

Nancy's story in the last 28 years has been a classic tale of moving up in an organization - she parlayed her clerk's position into a job as a junior accountant, then senior accountant, then general accounting manager until 1998 when she became the plant's Financial Controller, a position she holds today. As controller Nancy and her team are responsible to record and pay all expenses, record and collect all payments, process payrolls, maintain the fixed asset and general ledger systems and analyze all balance sheet accounts.. When she started at Hedstrom Nancy says she didn't have her sights set on a management position. "My supervisors saw my potential and gave me great opportunities," she says. Making a commitment to succeed is key to success in a career, she believes. "It's not an 8 to 5 job, there are some long hours and you must be willing to go the extra mile."

Nancy says her job is made easier by the quality of the employees in her department and throughout the plant. "I spend more time with the people here than I do my husband, so it's great that the environment here in Bedford County produces such a high quality work force." Nancy often compares her experiences with colleagues in metropolitan areas. "One difference is that there is much higher turnover in cities. Workers in metropolitan areas are much faster to leave one job for another when they run into problems," she says. "Here they tend to stay to work out problems. And like any relationship, when you work at it the relationship gets better." In addition, she says, "Our people build closer relationships with each other - there's a culture here that says ÔI care about the people around me,' that I sometimes think is lacking in many other places. That kind of ethic definitely makes Bedford County a great place to work - and to live."

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