Superior Woman--Spring 2021

FAITHFULLY
optimistic
BY DALE HEMMILA
Optimism is the faith that leads to
achievement. Nothing can be done without
hope and confidence.”
~ Helen Keller. ~
If there ever was a quote to sum up the time you spend talking to
Mary Tavernini Dowling, well, Helen Keller hit it right on the head.
In the midst of heading up a $5 million fundraising campaign, she
remains upbeat and confident, and convinced that optimism, faith
and some well-learned business acumen will carry the day.
Currently, Tavernini Dowling is chief executive officer of
the Hospitality House of the Upper Peninsula (HHUP). The
organization, formerly just known as “Beacon House,” now manages
21 hospitality rooms in the UP Health Systems-Marquette hospital,
the hospital gift shop, coffee shops in the hospital and in the Peninsula
Medical Center, and a cancer patient wig salon.
Of those ventures, the hospitality rooms are the focus of most of
Tavernini Dowling’s attention, as is the planning, construction and,
most importantly, fundraising for a new hospitality facility with a
familiar name: a new Beacon House.
The “old” Beacon House was a converted hotel near the former
Marquette General Hospital. It housed 36 overnight hospitality rooms
for patients who were receiving treatment or family members visiting
patients at Marquette General Hospital.
When the hospital was sold and renamed UP Health Systems,
the buyer decided to build a new hospital across town. That led
to the sale of the old Beacon House and a decision to build a new
Beacon House adjacent to the new hospital. With a new design
and an opportunity to offer even more amenities than the previous
establishment, a fundraising goal of $3 million was set to begin the first
phase of construction. This is where Tavernini Dowling and Beacon
House intersect and it turns out she was the perfect person for the task,
bringing enthusiasm, energy and years of business savvy into play.
Tavernini Dowling has always been someone who can’t sit on the
sideline. Her first business experience came as a teenager working at a
local retail shop. The Cat’s Meow on Third Street in Marquette offered
distinctly styled women’s clothing and accessories and gave Tavernini
Dowling a chance to get involved in sales.
“When I was in high school I fell in love with The Cat’s Meow,” she
said recently while tracking her business career history. “I was 16 when
I started working there and I just enjoyed everything about it, I loved
the clothing, I loved the fashion shows and I talked the owner and my
dad into letting me go to Chicago first and then New York to do the
buying for the store while I was still in high school.”
With a love of fashion and a convivial personality that lent itself to
selling, she found that her try at college following high school wasn’t
right for her and she decided to carve out a different career path.
“In the first year I realized I was not ready to be a student again,” she
recalled. “I really wanted to be out in the world; I wanted to keep that
ball rolling, all the things that were happening with The Cat’s Meow. I
had saved enough money to make an offer to buy the store, so when I
was 19, I bought The Cat’s Meow.”
But for Tavernini Dowling The Cat’s Meow was just the first step in
building a business career that would take her away from Marquette
for a time and expose her to a corporate world where she gained more
valuable business experience.
“I kept thinking there is so much more I don’t know; everything I
SPRING 2021 SUPERIORWOMAN.NET 13