Byrd Street's 2024 Citizens of the Year
Ellen Wessel and Dan Hornick honored for their work on behalf of community
Hilary Holladay
Dec 31, 2024
As 2024 draws to a close, Byrd Street honors two Citizens of the Year for their remarkable dedication to the greater good: Ellen Wessel, a tireless community volunteer whom a close friend describes as an “ethical humanist,” and Dr. Daniel Hornick, the extraordinarily focused and forward-looking superintendent of the Orange County Public Schools.
Ellen Wessel: The “ultimate civic-minded person”
Let’s start off with Ellen Wessel, 73, who grew up in White Plains, N.Y., and New York City and lived in northern Virginia before moving to Orange in 2006. In the 1970s, just a few years after graduating from college, she cofounded Moving Comfort, a pioneering women’s athletic wear company. As a competitive long-distance runner, Wessel was determined to fill the gap in comfortable, stylish clothes for runners and other female athletes.
Wessel told me that she and her business partner, Elizabeth Goeke, complemented each other well. Goeke “was the merchant. I was the missionary or the messenger. She loved selling; she loved design. She was an entrepreneur driven by the fun of it, the joy of bringing products to market. I was more excited about motivating people.”
Moving Comfort’s slogan—“A fit woman is a powerful woman”—resonated with a great many women and girls. However, Wessel said that her male colleagues in the athletic wear industry sometimes took it the wrong way. For those assuming that power meant domination, she explained that “power can be for good, not dominance.” That’s a credo Wessel continues to live by.
Four years after the two women sold Moving Comfort, Goeke moved to Orange County to run a B&B with her husband, Jay Billie. At that point in her life, Wessel could have lived pretty much anywhere, but she, too, chose Orange County because she wanted to be near her close friends. When Billie found a house on Little Skyline Drive that he thought Wessel would like, she trusted his judgment, bought the house and happily embraced Orange County’s rural beauty.
Instead of settling into an early retirement, she took a position at James Madison’s Montpelier as executive assistant to the estate’s president and CEO, and often ran to work instead of driving. She retired from Montpelier in 2018 and increased her involvement in community service. She credits her mother, the late Yvette Wessel, with inspiring her to work on behalf of others: “She was always doing something or coming up with a new thing to do for the community. The older I get, the more I see how much she influenced me and how I spend my time. She was my biggest influence.”
Kat Imhoff, former president and CEO of Montpelier, knows Wessel well. The two have stayed friends since their time working together and meet up every month for a hike. Imhoff said that Wessel is “such an understated person” that it can take a while to find out about her considerable accomplishments in the business world, but the pleasures of being around her, including her sense of humor, are quickly apparent.
In her view, Wessel is a role model, especially in this fraught era. “She’s an ethical humanist,” Imhoff said. “She tries not to stay in her bubble and puts herself in situations where she gets to know a wide variety of people in our highly polarized and siloed world.”
Elaborating on the challenges of working across the aisle in one’s daily life, Imhoff said, “I think it’s really hard. It requires a degree of empathy and kindness that I know I don’t always have. I think Ellen spends a lot of her time figuring out how to interact with people in a kind and compassionate way, whether she agrees with them or not.”
Imhoff added, however, that Wessel does not hold back when her foundational principles are on the line. “She’s very passionate about democracy and not willing to put up with any prejudice. She’s fierce in that way. But it would be unfair to make her sound like she’s not fun. She’s fun, she’s adventurous—she’s going alone to Tanzania” in the coming year.
Among her volunteer activities, Wessel is communications committee chair of the Orange County African American Historical Society (OCAAHS), program chair of the Rotary Club of Orange, treasurer of the Orange County Democrats and co-chair (with Sunithi Gnanadoss) of the Women’s Diversity Forum. She also does a weekly shift at the Love Outreach Food Pantry in Orange.
OCAAHS President Bruce Monroe has known Wessel a long time and considers her a dear friend and an asset to the county.
“She made the effort to introduce herself to the neighbors, creating connections and fostering a sense of community.” —Bruce Monroe
He wrote, “I met Ellen soon after she moved to the neighborhood where I grew up and where my 94-year-old father still resides. She made the effort to introduce herself to the neighbors, creating connections and fostering a sense of community. On her early morning walks, she would kindly pick up the morning newspaper from the end of our driveway and drop it off at the kitchen door. My father adores her for that and her many other kind deeds. Additionally, she actively participates in community clean-up efforts at the historic Fisherman’s Lodge Cemetery. Ellen is always ready to assist in any way possible, consistently making valuable contributions to our community.”
They have gotten to know each other well in their collaborative work for OCAAHS. “As president, working alongside her has been an absolute pleasure. I have witnessed firsthand the passion and commitment she brings to every endeavor. Her leadership is truly inspiring, and I am deeply grateful for her dedication,” Monroe said. “Ellen and I have worked together on voter registration drives, restoration of rights and other initiatives to encourage citizens to engage in their communities and participate in civic life. She is a strong advocate for human and civil rights and is equally passionate about the protection of animals.”
Like Monroe, Jamie McConnell has gotten to know Wessel, a fellow Rotarian, over many years. He wrote to me, “Ellen Wessel has been our neighbor and a cherished friend since she moved to Orange, along with her constant sidekick, Bug, a Jack Russell Terrier. Ellen has been, and continue to be, the ultimate civic-minded person as both neighbor and close friend.”
McConnell said, “Aside from all of her community activities, Ellen is a great leader and an interesting person partly due to her extensive travel and inquiring nature. She is always ready with a great book recommendation (or five!). The arts, travel, family and fun seem to be her stock in trade.”
Though she acknowledges that Orange County is much more conservative than the places where she previously lived, Wessel likes living in a small community where she’s constantly running into people she knows, and she fervently believes in the values of the civic organizations she supports. But, conscious of the risk of becoming insulated, she intends to keep seeking out people whose views differ from hers: “I just become more and more aware of all the gray. I’m fine with the ambiguity.”