Social movements and change come about through the collective efforts of committed groups, and no one person can claim credit for their success. But it is not an exaggeration to say that Nashville might be a less hospitable city had New Yorker Tom Negri and his Colombia-born wife Ines not attended service at the Cathedral of the Incarnation on West End Avenue one Sunday in 1996.
Negri, who started his career in the hotel business as a desk clerk at the Loews Drake in New York when he was just 19, had moved steadily upward in the company, relocating several times. When he was asked to consider the newly available top position at Loews Vanderbilt, he flew down to get a feel for the city he had only visited before.
"We walked to the Cathedral for mass, and Father Fleming's homily was all about change and how moving is good," Negri tells the Scene, remembering. "I felt like he was talking right to me and Ines. We really felt like it was a calling to come here."
Now, after 16 years in Nashville, Tom Negri is ready for change once more. On Monday, Loews Vanderbilt Hotel announced that Negri will retire on Jan. 31. He broke the news to his 200-plus-member staff and invited guests at the hotel's holiday party five days before. He did not invite his sons, he says, because "I knew I'd be crying my eyes out. I love this job, but I've had three back surgeries in the last 18 months, and when I retire I want to be able to walk on the beach, not roll on it."
Nashville was a pleasant change for the family who had also lived in Washington D.C., and Maryland, though one thing struck him. "I remember thinking it was not as diverse a community as I would have liked," Negri recalls. "But that's all changed. Nashville is a much more diverse and worldly community than it was 15 years ago."
Some of the credit for that must go to Negri, whose professional commitment to providing hospitality walks hand in hand with his personal passion to welcome and support all. More than 40 cultures are represented on the staff of the hotel, and Negri renamed the employee cafeteria in the basement the Crosswinds Café in recognition of those immigrants and their cultures.
"The potlucks we have there are pretty amazing," he says with a laugh.
He has served on nearly 20 boards and action committees, including Habitat for Humanity, the Nashville Convention and Visitors Bureau, the YWCA, Conexión Americas and the Nashvillle Area Chamber of Commerce, as well as taking a leading role on Nashville for All of Us, the initiative to defeat the "English Only" bill driven to a special election by Metro Councilman Eric Crafton in 2009.
"We worked together on Nashville for All of Us and the important issues in organizing the community to fight the 'English Only' amendment," says Renata Soto, co-founder and executive director of Conexión Americas. "Loews was the headquarters for that campaign, it's where we were born and met every week.
"Tom has made Loews a great resource for many organizations, a place for people of all walks of life to come together. A lot of us in the immigrant community and the nonprofit sector will tell you that we consider Loews Hotel another community center in Nashville."
At-Large Councilwoman Megan Barry, who was also involved with Nashville for All of Us, sits on the Advisory Board of the Tennessee Immigration and Refugee Rights Coalition with Negri. With him, she has had countless discussions on the most cooperative ways to move Nashville forward as a united community.
"He is at heart a hospitality guy who creates a welcoming place for everyone," Barry says. "The night the council passed the nondiscrimination ordinance [in 2009], he made a place for us to come celebrate together. He has always seen Loews not just as a gathering place for high-ticket black-tie events but for everyone. His social conscience and his work are inseparable."
Charlie Strobel, founder of Room In The Inn, says he has never known Negri to say there is no room in his inn. "When Tom is presented with an issue, his first response is always, 'How can I be of help?' " Strobel says. "He leads by serving. He lives his faith and truly believes we are one community."
What's next for admitted workaholic Negri is unusual: rest. "My wife and I will go on a cruise, we'll travel to Colombia, to Italy where my father was born," he says. "I'll be resigning some boards, but will still be very involved in the Nashville community."
He'll certainly be in Nashville on May 23, when he and Nashville educator and community activist Avi Poster receive the Peggy Steine Memorial Award for Human Rights Collaboration from CommunityNashville. The event will be held, of course, at Loews Vanderbilt.
Poster and Negri — who come from vastly different backgrounds — have long worked side by side on social issues and became fast friends as a result. "I don't know anyone in the corporate world who stood for social justice with the strength of conviction that Tom has," says Poster, a retired Chicago middle-school principal. "He has always marched to a different drum, but he puts a tie on and looks nice and dresses in a tux when he needs to. He's been able to negotiate life like that and walk in both worlds and has done it with grace and great humor.
"He presents what he believes in a framework that is acceptable to others, even if they don't agree. I've been at tables with Tom where the business world sits with labor unions, conservatives with left-wingers, and they spoke justice together because Tom was the link. He frames whatever he is advocating in such a way that every side can see the efficacy and value of it. He is always representing the voices of the unheard in such a way that those listening could see the value through their own lens. He is a bridge builder and a good model for others in business to engage in not just charitable boards, but boards that influence policy and make a real difference in people's lives. His impact on this community is profound and lasting."
Someone had to say it. Tom Negri certainly never would.
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