The Woman Who Said Yes Remembering Janice McNair

I met Janice McNair through opera, of all things. Our husbands were both on the board of the Houston Grand Opera, my Bob eventually following her Bob into the chairman’s seat. In that world of galas and green rooms, I got to know a woman who had achieved more than most people dare to dream, and yet somehow remained completely, disarmingly down to earth. She graciously opened her home to more worthy causes than I can count and gave her time as generously as her resources. That was Janice: gracious, warm, and never, ever the one trying to be the center of the room. 

Years later, when I created Recipe for Success, Janice was already shepherding the Robert and Janice McNair Foundation, funding a wide spectrum of good works across Houston andback in her North Carolina hometown. In our early days, every dollar Recipe for Success Foundation had, came from Bob and me or from the proceeds of fundraising dinner parties we threw. We hadn’t proven anything yet. We were an idea with a mission and not much else. After a few years of testing and proving our approach, we were ready to expand. I finally worked up the nerve to approach Janice before anyone else. 

She said yes.  

She made a meaningful gift that year, and then she renewed it, year after year, long after the ask had stopped feeling like a risk on her part. A decade later, when I envisioned a children’s cookbook, I went back to her with my new idea. Again — yes. Her support funded all the recipe testing and research behind “Eat It! Food Adventures with Marco Polo.”  The book went on to win thirteen publishing awards and became the foundation of a year long themed curriculum for our Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education™ program, which has inspired thousands of kids to make healthier food choices. If you’ve noticed that Marco Polo is our theme for Seed-to-Plate this coming academic year in many dozens of classrooms, that thread runs straight back to Janice. She is, quite literally, the reason that story exists. 

When we built Hope Farms, Janice was excited. She grew up in a rural community and loved gardening and farming. She decided to underwrite the entire Children’s Garden design and build, start to finish. It’s one of the first places where children at Hope Farms put their hands in soil, and every one of them owes that experience, in some small way, to her.Despite her protestations, I insisted on putting her name on it. 

The checks mattered, of course. But what stayed with me was the way she kept pulling people into the work. She encouraged her granddaughter to get involved, and Holly joined our board. She asked me to help leaders in her hometown build something like our cooking and gardening programs for their own community and I did. Because you don’t say no to Janice McNair, and because by then I understood exactly why she asked. She and Bob never forgot where they came from, and they spent their lives pulling the people and places of their past forward with them. 

What I keep coming back to is this: Janice never made herself the story. She had every reason to — the resources, the standing, the platform, and she used none of it to draw attention to herself. She used it to quietly direct the action from just offstage, funding the things that mattered before anyone else believed in them, and then stepping back so the work could speak for itself. 

I think about that a lot, especially in a field where so much philanthropy comes with a name on the building and a seat at the head table. Janice taught me, without ever meaning to teach me anything, that the most powerful giving is often the quietest.