Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 5, 1993 TAG: 9305050239
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
That was after Hurricane Hugo put the finishing touches on the deterioration that had begun two years earlier with the fall of Jim and Tammy Bakker and the PTL Club television empire they had built.
"The insurance adjusters came in and advised the bankruptcy court that it wasn't worth trying" to repair hurricane damage that literally knocked the power off, Williams said. So, even the last few employees finally had to leave.
Nevertheless, Williams says, she never lost her faith in the concept of a resort that catered to Christians - for church and business meetings or just a family vacation or reunion.
"I knew eventually it would come back," she said in a recent interview. "I stayed in the [Charlotte, N.C.] area when there might have been opportunities elsewhere" so she'd be around when the place reopened - as it did last June.
Now, Williams is back at her old job, marketing the resort to the nation's motor-coach tour companies, but for a new boss - New Heritage USA.
This time, the 2,200-acre resort on the North Carolina-South Carolina border is being run like a business - a for-profit business - Williams said, by a "very focused, professional" company owned by Christian businessmen "who just happen to be Malaysian."
The business emphasis means market-driven rates for hotel rooms, in the shops and for the water park - which opens May 22 - where Jerry Falwell took his famous fully clothed ride down the water slide. That's a change from the Bakkers' reliance on donations, offerings and tithes, which the new owners say they will never accept.
Hotel rooms start at $45 a night at the bunkhouse - group accommodations often used by youth at the resort's farm - to $79 a night and up at the Heritage Grand Hotel. There is a Victorian-style bed-and-breakfast, where the 11 sleeping suites cost $114 to $130 per night. Entrance to the water park costs $8 for ages 12 and younger; $12 for adults.
The $3 daily parking fee the new owners charged last summer has been dropped.
But while the emphasis is on business - president Yet King Loy has said he expects to turn a profit by 1995 - the Christian commitment remains, Williams said.
"Our mission, first of all, is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ." A sign behind the Heritage Grand Hotel's front desk declares "Jesus Christ is Lord."
It is a declaration that was obscured by the controversy surrounding the Bakkers' lifestyle. Yet the stigma has begun to lose its grip, Williams believes. "Those issues come up less and less."
"I think we all learned a lesson out of it. We have to be accountable. We have to look to the Lord. No man is perfect.
"Keep your eyes focused on Jesus - he is the standard."
Williams was raised a Southern Baptist in Roanoke's Calvary Baptist Church. She graduated from Cave Spring High in 1970 and Elon College in North Carolina in 1974.
She married in 1974 and soon came back to Roanoke to live. She worked for the Virginia Employment Commission and, from 1976 until 1978, as a news and weather reporter for WSLS-TV.
Then, "the Lord led me to the hospitality industry" and a job in public relations and marketing for American Motor Inns, where her husband also worked.
In 1985, her husband was transferred to Charlotte, where she got her job with Heritage USA, initially as a greeter for tour groups.
She always had hoped to put her skills to work in a Christian setting, said Williams, who also sings in a professional Gospel trio called the Tokens. "I never felt as fulfilled as when I worked there . . . at the center of God's will."
She eventually joined the choir and became a member of the Bakkers' church, the remnants of which now meet in Charlotte under new leadership.
The religious focus at New Heritage USA is interdenominational, rather than having the distinctively Pentecostal flavor of the Bakkers' affiliation with the Assemblies of God denomination, Williams said.
Ten denominations are represented on the New Heritage staff. Interdenominational religious services are held Sunday mornings and Tuesday evenings. There are open communion services in what is known as the Upper Room every day.
Williams said the idea is to attract Christians of all stripes, as well as business groups, such as Amway, that are looking for the clean-cut, no-tobacco, no-alcohol atmosphere the resort offers.
New Heritage - though not operating at the peak it reached in 1986 - is on its way back up, Williams believes. Some dates for the summer already are fully booked, she said, by folks eager to use the resort's meeting and recreation facilities. These include the reconstructed boyhood home of evangelist Billy Graham.
And there are hundreds of full-time residents - many of them retired couples - who live on the resort grounds, as well as occupants of time-share and other rental property.
The television network is gone - sold to California evangelist Morris Cerullo - so the resort doesn't get the free publicity it did in the old days.
There remains "a tremendous challenge ahead," Williams said, to let people know New Heritage USA is open and ready for visitors.
But she approaches that as a mission.
"I know that the end product of a group coming through will be a wonderful, meaningful experience for them."
by CNB