ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
Across America, homes and businesses are filled with the sights and sounds of Christmas, and in the nation’s capital, the White House is decorated with much color.
Each year, people apply to have the opportunity to fill the White House up with holiday flair, and among those getting the opportunity to do that this year is former Liberal resident Amber Welch.
Welch’s family owned the former Bears & Hares store in downtown Liberal, and she grew up working for the local business. After graduating from Oral Roberts University, she started her own business with her mother in Tulsa, Okla. – Amber Marie & Company – which is similar to Bears & Hares.
Before she started that company, though, Welch said like any other college graduate, she wanted to see the world, and she felt the best way to do this was to work it. So she traveled the country in a truck and trailer doing retail shows for about 12 years.
It was then Welch said she wanted to get off the road and settle down, and loving the life Tulsa offered, she would begin her store there.
Amber Marie & Company has two retail locations, a warehouse and a Web site, ambermarieco.com, and Welch said the business is a lifestyle store and brand.
“What that means is everything under one roof to have a beautiful lifestyle,” she said. “We have furniture to clothing to jewelry to home decor, seasonal and gifts. We carry a broad range of a lot of different items, a lot of similar brands to what my mom had when she had Bears & Hares. It’s fun. I enjoy it. I love what I do, and I work really hard on it.”
Welch said she learned of the opportunity to decorate the White House through a friend who had done it last year. After hearing about the application process, this summer, she began checking the White House’s Web site to see if applications were being taken yet.
After seeing applications were open and amidst running her business at all hours, Welch had initially forgot about applying, but it would later come back to her.
“It’s midnight or so, and I’m laying in bed on my phone, and I see the application process is open,” she said.
It was there Welch filled out the application and had sent in some pictures of her work, including some from winning a national commercial decorating contest.
After applying, though, Welch said she got busy with work again, and seeing if she was accepted was again initially forgotten.
“I hadn’t thought a lot about it because I was so busy getting the stores ready for Christmas,” she said.
It was in October when Welch said she remembered to check the White House site to see if she was accepted.
“I went in, and I literally searched in my e-mail ‘White House,’” she said. “It popped up with an official e-mail from the White House from the First Lady saying I had been accepted and inviting me to come in November to decorate the White House.”
Welch immediately booked her flight and hotel in Washington D.C., and after initially keeping the news secret, she called her brother, Eric Welch, and her mother.
Having run Bears & Hares, Welch’s mother naturally wanted to come on the trip too, and Welch said she had booked a flight for her too.
Welch was naturally excited and honored to be chosen among this year’s applicants.
“When you submit your application, you talk about your family, and you talk about your history,” she said. “My dad was a Vietnam veteran. I talked about that in my application and what that meant to me. My grandfather was an immigrant. He came over from Czechoslovakia on a ship when he was 7 years old. I talked about what that meant to me.”
This year, around 12,000 people had applied to decorate the White House, and Welch was one of 145 people from 47 states and territories chosen.
“I’m really fortunate I was able to be one of the volunteers to come in and decorate,” she said.
As for what she would be doing at the White House, Welch said she did not learn that until she got to Washington.
“They don’t tell you,” she said. “You don’t really get a lot of information. You don’t know what the theme is. Everything’s very tight lipped. You don’t know what you’re going to be working on.”
The White House is traditionally decorated the week of Thanksgiving, and those who are chosen can either decorate the first half of the week, the last half of the week or the entire week. Because of her retail business and to help prepare for Black Friday sales, Welch chose the first half of the week.
Welch also learned of the theme and colors of the White House decor when she arrived in the nation’s capital.
“It’s a lot of wonder,” she said. “I was wondering what we were going to do, and I wondered what colors we were using. Do we use real trees or fake trees?”
In addition to honor and privilege, Welch said being chosen also sent her thoughts back to her family.
“All I could think about was my grandfather having the men’s clothing store,” she said. “He used to win national awards for his window displays. I thought ‘How proud would my grandpa be to know I went into retail, and how proud would he be to know I went to the capitol and to the White House to decorate?’”
Welch said those chosen are assigned to groups, and each group works on a different room in the White House.
“When you get into your groups, everybody introduces themselves, and we talk about why we applied,” she said. “Mine was to honor my father and his service in the military as a Vietnam veteran.”
As she was meeting people from her group, Welch said several of them were active military,, and she said everyone chosen comes from all walks of life.
“They take people of every scope and scale,” she said. “You didn’t necessarily have to be a decorator, designer. There were very few designers, and it was more people who were everyday Americans who serve our country in some capacity.”
Welch said for her emotionally, meeting several Gold Star family members was her biggest moment.
“We had a Gold Star mother in our group, a Gold Star sister, a Gold Star niece and a Gold Star son, and when you hear their why and their feeling of patriotism for wanting to be there and to honor their loved one who had passed, it was a feeling of ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t deserve to be here. These people, they deserve to be here. They’ve given and paid the ultimate price of losing a loved one,’” she said.
Welch said this drove home the privilege and honor to work with people who had paid such a sacrifice.
“It brings it all into scale of thinking about your forefathers and the founders of our nation and what great sacrifices they made so I have the freedom and the ability to come in and decorate the White House,” she said. “The fact of the matter is the White House celebrates Christmas time.”
Welch’s group worked in the Blue Room, which is the home of the official Christmas tree of the White House.
“It’s the round room that looks out onto the lawn where you’ll see the president get into the helicopter,” she said. “You can see the Washington Monument. You can see the Jefferson Monument from the White House.”
The tree Welch’s group worked on was also the official Gold Star Christmas tree of the White House.
“When I found that out, I went and cried and hugged the necks of the Gold Star family members who were working on that tree with us,” she said. “I thought what a way to honor your loved ones in their name and their honor as you’re decorating a Gold Star tree, putting Gold Stars on that tree in their honor.”
Welch’s group did the prep work on the tree such as getting ornaments, bows and ribbons prepped to go on the tree later in the week.
Each year, Welch said the First Lady meets with in-house designers, some who have been at the White House for years starting in the spring.
“They come up with all the themes of what they want to do on the trees, and it’s our job to carry out her vision,” she said. “They have some story boards that tell you what colors are going to be used and what the theme is, the inspiration for the tree. You get to see all of that, and you start working on the tree. Our tree was a unique tree. It came from Michigan. The tree smells like citrus. It smells like oranges.”
Welch said decorations from the tree come from all states and territories and include such things as state flowers and state birds.
“It literally represented every state and every territory of the U.S.,” she said.
Coming from a rural area, Welch was humbled by the experience.
“When I left the White House, as I was walking back to my hotel, I thought, ‘Here I am this girl from a small town in Kansas, and I got to volunteer and decorate at the White House,’” she said. “I thought ‘How cool is it that from your roots, no matter where you’re from, you can do anything.’ That’s such a cool story, cool testament that from the plains of Western Kansas all the way to the White House. How encouraging is that for anyone to dream big and to think from your roots, you can go anywhere.”
Welch praised the support she got from people in Southwest Kansas in her time in the area.
“I went to Seward County Community College, and they’re so supportive of your dreams and encouraging you to build on your dreams and encouraging you that you could literally do anything,” she said.
Welch said her experience there, put her ahead of many others in her thinking and confidence as she went on Oral Roberts.
“I attribute that to going there and having people who built up and supported me in college,” she said. “When I came back from college and started our business in Liberal, the people of Liberal were so supportive. People from Liberal come to our store right now in Tulsa and are supportive and follow us on social media. Having that family and that base of people who have supported you from the very first days of having a literal garage sale.”
Welch credited the $500 she got from that garage sale for building her business with two store locations, a thriving Web site and social media.
“The people of Liberal gave me that boost and helped me start as a launching pad so I could launch into the Amber Marie & Company brand I have right now,” she said.
Eric is now a filmmaker, having directed the Christian movie, “Beautifully Broken,” and with Amber now having helped decorate the White House, the Welch family has had some brushes with fame. Amber, though, credits her parents with making her and Eric strong, independent people with a drive, fostering and nurturing their dreams and encouraging them to do anything possible.
“We could be anything we wanted to be,” Amber said. “Both of my brothers help out in the business. It’s a family business. Mom and I may have started it, but everybody at some point gets roped into it. My dad works with me and takes care of a lot of things. He fixes everything for us.”
With his filmmaking experience, Amber said Eric even helped make a video about her decorations.
“My brother, Chris, is a huge supporter,” Amber said. “He’s always talking to me about business deals and what to do. We’re a close knit family for sure, and we help each other out in whatever we’re doing. I’m really fortunate about that.”
Amber’s excitement was beyond measure, and she said in addition to decorating the White House, hearing the stories of others involved in the process made it all worthwhile.
“I would do it again in a heartbeat to meet the kind of people I met and to hear their stories and to hug the neck of the Gold Star families who were there and thank them for their service, ” she said.
Amber likewise feels very blessed with supportive family and customers and amazing employees.
“From Liberal, Kansas, to Tulsa, Okla., our customers and our communities support their small businesses, and without that support, we couldn’t thrive,” she said. “It means the world to me to know we’re here, and our business exists because we have the support of the communities.”
Among other things this holiday season, Amber said she is thankful to live in a great nation with the freedom to own businesses and thrive.
“I’m thankful for the people and the relationships that have helped build our brand,” she said.
