Lori Fickling isn’t lying when she says her college years were a blur. Don’t get her wrong; she was a model student and proudly walked the graduation stage in front of a crowd of supportive family and friends with a degree in business administration and marketing in her hand. But she also blew through those days of higher education faster than a squirrel on an energy drink.
“I figured, ‘Why not?’” Fickling, 66, said with a laugh. She did back-to-back summer semesters at UNT, then known as North Texas State University, and plowed through her fall and spring class schedules to finish in two and a half years.
“I couldn’t wait to get out into the world and make a difference, not because I thought I would be great or anything but because I wanted to be impactful.”
Anyone who knows Fickling would argue that she is the definition of great and impactful, whether her modest personality will allow her to admit it or not. And she achieved both by doing the one thing she didn’t do in college — planting her flag and sticking around for a while.
A native of Pleasant Grove in Dallas, Fickling moved to southern Denton County in 1979 and never left.
Since then, she has lived many lives and worn even more hats — all while endearing herself to a community that has always seen her as one of its own. Fickling is a past president of the Flower Mound Chamber of Commerce, a post she held from 1996 to 2006, and the current president of the Lewisville Chamber of Commerce, where she’s been since 2018. Beyond the chamber life, she has served on several nonprofit boards. She also held a smattering of careers, including time as a local interior designer, newspaper owner, and the Chief Development Officer for Communities in Schools of North Texas. She was also the Director of Economic Development for Denton County and is a 30-year Rotarian and founding member of the Cross Timbers Rotary Club.
But just as many residents, business owners, colleagues, coworkers, and dignitaries simply know her as Lori — a devoted wife, mother, grandma, sibling, and friend with an adventurous spirit and passion for people.
“I’ve been here so long that I’ve got friends who swear they graduated with me. And I love that. I want people to feel genuinely connected and know I care for them,” Fickling said. She and her husband, Mike, have been together for 29 years and have a blended family of three children and five grandkids. They live in Double Oak and are also members of Northview Baptist Church in Lewisville. “You could take me five miles down the highway, and I might not know anyone. But it’s different here. I’ve invested my entire adult life into this community.”
She added, “When I think back, I often wonder if that’s made me incredibly boring or super dependable.”
A CALL TO SERVE
One thing that Fickling’s short but productive college career proves is that she’s never been afraid to work. That mentality hasn’t changed over the years. The oldest of four girls born to Hal and Betty Redfearn, Fickling was a working woman as soon as she turned 16. By the time she graduated college at 20, she was married to her first husband, living in Lewisville, and commuting to Dallas for her job as a commercial lending account executive. When she quit that job to help her husband grow his local auto dealership, she couldn’t help but pursue a real estate license on the side.
Over the next 15 years or so, she successfully learned how to manage commercial and residential real estate and ended up at Ebby Halliday. It was the early 1990s, and she was entrenched in the community, having built quite a name for herself as a volunteer at the Lewisville Chamber and later as a board member with the Flower Mound Chamber.
She ultimately was hired as the Flower Mound Chamber president and, despite that being a full-time job, teamed up with her new husband, Mike, and long-time friend Donna Hernandez to publish a 28-page, tabloid-size newspaper called The Messenger.
“Donna started The Messenger as a direct-mail newspaper to Flower Mound, Highland Village, and Double Oak. One of my college electives was journalism, so I did some of the writing and all of the editing. Mike wrote, we had a layout person, and my mom sold ads,” she said. “I was proud of that paper. We didn’t know anything about anything but wanted to make a difference in the community.”
By 2006, after 10 years at the Flower Mound Chamber and the sale of The Messenger, Fickling left to start her own interior design business, which she did for the next four years. But her commitment to making a difference in the community was far from over. She went on to spearhead events and fundraising for Communities in Schools of North Texas for the next three years. She was then tapped to work for Denton County, first in then-Commissioner Andy Eads’ office and later as the Economic Development Director for Denton County. Not long after, she was asked to make another familiar career shift.
“Out of nowhere, Denton County Commissioner Bobbie Mitchell told me in early 2018 that there’s an opening for president at the Lewisville Chamber of Commerce and that I should apply,” Fickling said. “I said, ‘I don’t think I can work for a chamber again.’”
‘I’D BE CRAZY NOT TO GIVE IT A TRY’
Ask Fickling what she thinks about her job as the Lewisville Chamber of Commerce president, and she’ll tell you with absolute sincerity that she loves this job and can’t imagine working anywhere else. She is a graduate of the Institute for Organization Management, a four-year program and certification from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. More importantly, she loves the people, the energy, the constant idea-sharing, and the forward-thinking.
She lives for the networking, camaraderie, visions for the future, and endless relationships. But in 2018, Bobbie Mitchell had her hands full trying to convince Fickling to even interview for the position.
“I loved my time with Flower Mound, but it was hard work. There wasn’t a lot of technology available to handle the things we can do now in the blink of an eye. Doing our jobs took longer. On top of that, I was raising a kid, running a newspaper with my husband and friend, volunteering in the community, and at different times over those years, had two nieces and two foreign exchange students living with us,” Fickling said. “That said, I can look back at my entire life and see where God put me in places that prepared me for where I’d eventually end up. So, as I sat there with Bobbie Mitchell, I knew I’d be crazy not to try it.”
Nearly seven years later, it would take an army to get Fickling to leave. The Chamber life means that much to her.
“Lori is probably one of the most loving and caring people I know,” said David Hodges, director of member and community relations at the Lewisville Chamber. “How she treats people is contagious — it makes all of us want to do the same thing. She certainly wasn’t born in Lewisville, but she dug her roots in and has stayed here.”
Nina Hernandez agreed. She’s the director of communications and events at the Chamber.
“I don’t think people understand how great of a listener she is,” Hernandez said. “We’re always going, going, going, but she will drop everything she’s working on and listen whenever you walk into her office. That’s important because she doesn’t have much extra time on her hands. That said, she makes time work for her and others.”
LIFE ISN’T EASY, BUT IT’S WORTH IT
Fickling seemingly always has a smile on her face. Her husband, Mike, fell in love with that smile from the second he saw her picture in an Ebby Halliday advertisement all those years ago and asked a friend who worked with her, ‘Who is that?’ He insists that what you see at events and in public is exactly who his wife is. She’s honest, loving, truthful, quick-witted, and optimistic. Even when she’s crying or tearing up over the most minor things, it’s usually nothing more than happy tears.
“If she’s got a decision to make, she may ask my opinion or talk to her dad, but she’s always going to do the right thing,” he said. “I don’t know very many people I can say that about. She makes me a better person.”
But Fickling’s life hasn’t been without its share of tragedies.
While she says she has five beautiful grandkids, the firstborn is in heaven — lost to an accident at 10 months old.
In 1991, her brother-in-law and Lewisville High School graduate, Marine Corporal Albert “Big Al” Haddad, was a casualty of the Persian Gulf War.
In 2021, she lost her mother to COVID-19 after a month in ICU.
That heartache will never disappear. But she finds strength in her faith in God and a life blessed with great friends (some lifelong), a loving, close-knit family, and a community that continues to pour into her daily.
“I want people to feel good when they’re around me. I want to be impactful,” Fickling said. “Someday, I’ll sit on a beach and take it all in. But right now, I can’t imagine being anywhere else or with any other people.”
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