photo by Gray's Studio

Cherie Norman

Advertising Manager for Hastings and two-year Amarillo resident

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When Cherie Norman was a little girl, her father used to take her and her sister, Courtney to the Hastings store in Amarillo to rent a movie when the girls visited every other weekend. Now, twenty years later, she’s the Advertising Manager for the company and living a life she never imagined.

“Being a small town girl and wishing I were a big city girl, I moved away as fast as I could and drove nine hours to College Station to go to college,” laughs the 26-year-old Dimmitt native. “When I graduated, I planned on moving to Austin or Dallas, or anywhere besides Amarillo.”

Cherie graduated from Texas A&M University with her Masters in 2007, and in the midst of the program, Cherie worked on a consulting project with Hastings, which is when she met her future boss for the first time. He asked if she’d be interested in job in retail and Cherie respectfully declined. However, without a job in sight after graduation, she returned to Dimmitt to live with her mother and teach.

“I felt lead to come home, though I never thought that would happen. Here I was being humbled,” she recalls. “There were three things I said I’d never do: move home, teach and manage a budget. There I was doing two of them.”

Little did Cherie know that the third never-do item would soon be sitting in her lap. An old professor emailed her in May 2007 about an opening at Hastings and Cherie promptly responded. Within the week, Cherie was hired as the Advertising Manager at Hastings, which meant she would be moving to Amarillo and managing the budget for their 153 stores nationwide.

“I immediately thought, ‘I don’t have to drive an hour to church. I can eat where I want and shop where I want. I’m moving to the big city! This is the life!’” she laughs.

Cherie quickly learned that you never know what life is going to bring you. The town she swore she’d never return to has ended up being the exact place she wants to be.

“I think Amarillo is full of surprises,” she says. “I wanted to be cultured. I wanted to learn about arts and entertainment, and I wanted to go to museums, and I used to think that only existed in big cities. The truth is we have all of that here. I don’t think most residents know how vital art is in our culture. There are some very talented people living here.”

Through her work at Hastings, Cherie has been able to play an active role in the things she loves most, whether it be the Museum of Art, the Opera or a program she helped start through the public library, Amarillo Reads.

“People assume there’s nothing here, but if you invest in the community, they invest back,” she says. “You can be blind or you can be open. It’s your choice to go out and discover, and I have the intention to discover what’s in Amarillo beyond what I perceived it to be.”

by Jennie Treadway-Miller

Jennie was a columnist for the Chattanooga Times Free Press for eight years prior to moving to Amarillo in 2008. She is an avid reader, runner and writer.

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