Over the years, Joanne Dufilho has been the first point of contact for many people who reach out to HCDP.
During COVID, HCDP’s phone was configured so that it also rang on Joanne’s mobile. The arrangement worked so well that Joanne continues to serve as an answering service any time that the office is unstaffed or extremely busy.
Until a few weeks ago, Joanne also oversaw all of HCDP’s office staffing, handling the training and scheduling of a large group of volunteers. “I think I had that role for five years,” she said. “It was a good way to get to know our people and keep up with opportunities, and of course I’ve had lots of interesting phone calls. If one happens to be a little hostile, I try to smile and thank them for calling. Sometimes that makes them stop and think. One man even said, ‘Well, well, thank you for being so polite.’”
Originally from Texas, Joanne has a doctorate in experimental psychology from the University of Houston. She ended up in Western North Carolina in 1976 after she and her former husband fell in love with the mountains during a camping trip.
“At that time, there were no available houses in Asheville, so we looked for a nearby town large enough to have a newspaper and that’s how we discovered Hendersonville,” Joanne said. “I’ve been here almost 50 years now and I still love it. I love how everywhere you look, it’s just so pretty.”
Over the years, Joanne has worked for an oil company and taught college. She also worked for Mother Earth News in Hendersonville and, after that, she and some colleagues started Back Home Magazine, which was published from 1990 to 2015.
While Joanne was always a reliable voter and was always interested in global affairs, especially since her brother was killed in WWII, her shift into being an engaged Democrat happened gradually. “Looking back, I knew my parents were Democrats—my dad’s name was Grover Cleveland Hall—but in my first job I was surrounded by Republicans and just went with the flow for a while. I didn’t have a lot of curiosity back then! But issues began to catch my attention and over time I changed to become more and more involved with the Democrats.”
Joanne’s top issues are keeping our Democracy intact and protecting the environment. “I feel about both of these just as strongly as a person can. If we lose our environment, nothing else will matter. And if we lose our Democracy, I don’t know what will happen. I think we’ve taken democracy for granted for far too long.”
An interesting fact about Joanne is that she was in Dallas the day President John F. Kennedy was shot, filling in on a bridge game for a woman who went to watch the parade. Decades later, the country is in a tumultuous position once again.
“The situation right now is scary, but in the past few months I’ve seen more enthusiasm than I’ve ever seen. People are calling, saying I want to DO SOMETHING. I have hope because I have seen that the pendulum always swings back, and a lot of good people are working for good things. We’ve got to keep working. To do otherwise would be to insult the people who’ve come before us and sacrificed so much for us. We can’t say, “Oh well, things just got too tough.” We have to keep going and I think the way our volunteers keep growing is how we’re going to do it.”
While Joanne has had to give up managing the office to focus on a few health issues, she continues to share HCDP’s message. She uses her strategically placed front lawn to display a large sign throughout the year and recently she placed a long row of brightly colored candidate signs to go with it. She smiled as she looked at them under a bright blue October sky. “Yes, I like that,” she said. “They brighten up everything.”