THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 19, 1994 TAG: 9406190039
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY PERRY PARKS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940619 LENGTH: CAMDEN
At 19, modeling to put herself through school, McKecuen stood idly on the set of a local television talk show in Wilmington, waiting to film a live clothing commercial.
{REST} The guest had just launched a parachuting jump school, and after discussing how great the experience was for men, he was asked whether women could learn the practice.
``I could teach anybody,'' the instructor boasted just before pointing to McKecuen. ``I could even teach her.''
``The camera swung around,'' said McKecuen, now 49, and she was challenged to learn parachuting on film.
She was afraid even to fly.
``I said, 'Oh, I'd love to, no problem,' '' McKecuen said. ``Then the camera swung back to them and I said, 'Oh my God, what have I done?' ''
What McKecuen did was what she always does: Grab challenges by the throat and beat them into submission. She made three parachute jumps in the next two months, perhaps a prelude to the leaps she has taken for the last 30 years.
``I just had determination,'' says McKecuen, whose leadership of the Watermark Association of Artisans earned her a prestigious MacArthur Foundation fellowship this week.
The five-year grant recognizes people with high levels of creativity and accomplishment. Its recipients are given the freedom to do whatever they please with the money.
Watermark is a Camden-based crafts cooperative whose members buy a $75 share of stock that entitles their products to worldwide access through wholesale shows, slick catalogs and contracts with major companies. The business last year sold about $700,000 worth of goods.
Most of the group's 740 members, a third of whom are active, are poor and depend on the cooperative for their income. Watermark and its nonprofit training arm, NEED, run by McKecuen's husband, George, have helped a number of its members find financial independence.
The McKecuens, sought after by similar organizations and national leaders from around the world, have shared their knowledge through frequent travel and a unique Watermark-based internship program.
McKecuen fell into her Watermark job in 1981 the same way she had fallen from airplanes nearly 20 years before. A local potter, she was a member of the young cooperative's board of directors as it began to crumble.
Watermark, then operating in an old train station in Elizabeth City, was $60,000 in debt and earning only $20,000 in retail sales. The formula convinced a federal adviser and most of the board that the best option was to pack it in.
``It really offended me because I thought that while we had a sufficient amount of problems, we had not been given an opportunity to make it run,'' said McKecuen, smoking a cigarette in her spacious office at the 5-year-old Camden headquarters on Route 158.
``It was something I really felt could work.''
The board told McKecuen that if she felt that way, she could go ahead and run it.
So McKecuen closed her pottery shop, quit her part-time teaching job at College of The Albemarle and threw security to the wind to make Watermark work.
She started by expanding the cooperative's scope, launching a wholesale operation to enhance the stagnant local retail sales. ``I felt that we needed to get the products into the national and international market and bring new money into the area,'' McKecuen said.
It took three years to get out of debt, but the organization began to grow and has tackled challenges in McKecuen-esque fashion. Those who have worked with her agree that McKecuen knows how to get things done.
``She just took every asset of Watermark and enhanced it,'' said Katherine Wassink, a former longtime Watermark board chairwoman. ``She's a very flexible person. If A doesn't work, then B or C will.''
McKecuen, who speaks with a candid directness, says the attributes that most help her on the job are her salesmanship and negotiating skills. She's also very calm under pressure.
One of the dozens of stories that rush from McKecuen's rapid-fire memory is a discursive tale of her business trip to Russia late last year.
McKecuen says she had more than one hair-raising encounter with heavily armed members of the Russian mafia, the last of which ended when a pair toting machine guns drove off with her luggage.
She tells the story as though it were a trip to the market, and she says a friend noted at the time that she didn't seem very upset. McKecuen said there really wasn't much she could do about it.
``As a general rule, my policy is - no problem,'' McKecuen said. ``There are very few things that can't be fixed.''
But there is something that gets to her.
``I get really upset at injustices,'' she said. ``I get upset when political figures let themselves be led around for unjust reasons.''
A quote from the Bible mounted on the wall behind McKecuen's desk reflects the philosophy: ``If you want peace, work for justice.'' She said Watermark is living up to the standard.
``I think it's working for justice, as best as it can,'' McKecuen said. ``We're one of the top economic development projects in the nation. There are a lot of things we're doing right.''
``I'm not the Mother Teresa type,'' she added. ``But I do think that people should have the opportunity to have a job, to have self-esteem. . . . People aren't asking for a lot.''
The McKecuens are an accommodating couple, accustomed to lending a hand wherever a hand is needed. In February they hosted more than 70 peace activists in their home when the group, in town to witness a trial, could find nowhere else to stay.
McKecuen says she is not political, but she has a hand in a number of influential and controversial groups. Among them is the president's National Policy Forum, for which she serves on a small business and entrepreneurship council.
She counts among her friends famed feminist Gloria Steinem, and she has received several awards from women's groups. It was during a conference in Long Island, N.Y., of Steinem's Ms. Foundation that McKecuen learned of her MacArthur Fellowship on June 9.
``I just started giggling,'' said McKecuen, who got word by phone. ``For two days I couldn't stop laughing.''
With the $300,000 award, McKecuen's world has changed from a place where everything is possible to a place where everything is even more possible.
One project she hopes to launch with the funds is a program to train small social and economic-development groups to seek grant money and foundation support for their efforts.
Some of the money also will go toward the McKecuens' retirement, a benefit they have not received through their Watermark employment. The security will help, McKecuen said, but it won't change her work habits.
``It's not going to change it at all,'' McKecuen said. ``I love what I'm doing. I wouldn't quit for the world.
``It's not as much a lifestyle change as it is an inward change.''
McKecuen, who hasn't had time off since 1988, did say she might take a vacation. by CNB