Mary Gleason

Not many people will tell you they've worked 24/7 careers with a smile on their face and a twinkle in their eyes. Mary Gleason is one of them. Sitting at her home with a bird's-eye view of St. Thomas off the patio and 6-year-old toy poodle, Scampi, by her side, Gleason recounts a trailblazing career in the island's hotel industry.

Hospitality, however, wasn't this Windy City native's first calling. Gleason took a job in the music industry after graduating from the University of Chicago and worked a few years in New York. Then fate, in the form of a friend's summer vacation offer, led her to St. Thomas. A month into the trip, and still telling herself it was only going to be a short stay, Gleason landed the position of secretary to the iconic general manager of the Bluebeard's Castle Hotel. "It was a small property at the time and I lived on site," Gleason says. "So, I ended up doing a little bit of everything. Welcoming guests by day and calling the plumber at 2 a.m. Holidays were only busier. But what I enjoyed most was that no two days were ever the same."

Six years later, the long hours enticed Gleason to try a 9-to-5 job. She soon missed the hotel industry's energy and joined the Food & Beverage team at the Marriott Frenchman's Reef Resort when it opened in 1972. She quickly discovered that the hotel had a unique asset: a banquet room. "There was really no place else for groups to meet at the time," says Gleason, who pioneered the island's meeting planning trade.

Service has long been the name of the game for Gleason. She recounts how she and her staff always did their best to cater to customer requests. For example, when a major corporation wanted the company's logo painted on the marquee at the hotel's entrance, it was done. Gleason did agonize over telling a group that they didn't have 10 "suites" available, only to find out it was a party of 10 easily-accommodated "Swedes." However, when one group wanted to set up an above-ground pool in the main ballroom and another asked if they could run small motorized race cars around the banquet area, Gleason says, "We had to draw the line."

Over her nearly 40-year career, Gleason has literally traveled the world, jetting to Japan, South Africa, Morocco and New Guinea, just to name a few locales. However, she has always made time back home to blaze other trails and for yet another type of service: community service. She was the first woman to hold the position of region vice president of Skål International USA, a group of travel professionals, and the first woman in the northern Caribbean district of Rotary International to serve as club president. Her pride and joy accomplishment in Rotary is the Baby Think It Over teen pregnancy prevention program.

Today, Gleason has converted a spare bedroom into a home office and consults, or as she says, "opens doors," for a number of different business professionals on the island. It may not quite be a 24/7 lifestyle, but she concedes, "I enjoy staying active."