A WARM WELCOME Story Idea Submitted by Ronica Reid, Director of Sales, Cedarhurst of Nicholasville
How Gene Beard and Ellie Embody the Heart of Cedarhurst of Nicholasville
From the moment visitors step into Cedarhurst of Nicholasville, they’re greeted by two of the community’s most beloved ambassadors - Gene Beard and his four-legged sidekick, Ellie. Gene, a retired creative mind who spent his career working for Hallmark and pioneering trends in the Christmas tree industry, has found a new passion in his golden years: helping others discover the warmth of his Cedarhurst home. Gene’s journey to Cedarhurst was shaped by a lifetime of bold decisions, beginning with the moment he walked into Hallmark’s headquarters and simply asked for a job. “I felt the place was so large, they must have room for me somewhere in the corporation,” Gene recalls. And they did, placing him in a new product development. Later, he worked for Papercraft in Pittsburgh,
developing everything from Cabbage Patch Kids wrapping paper to the best-selling ‘Christmas is Love’ design that graced countless gifts. His career took him across the world, from designing decorative paper to overseeing the production of artificial Christmas trees in China. For the last 25 years of his career, Gene worked with Puleo International, a family-owned company led by a father and his three sons. “Those years were the highlight of my career,” Gene says. “Tony and I spent weeks on end developing artificial Christmas trees, fiber optic villages, and outdoor products.” But for all his career successes, Gene’s greatest pride isn’t in a design portfolio - it’s in his 46 years of sobriety, achieved “one day at a time.”
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