Dan Thomas of WSMV Channel 4

A meteorologist takes charge to make his neighborhood safer

BY MATT MASTERS

Franklin resident Dan Thomas is known around the region as a meteorologist with WSMV News 4, Nashville’s NBC News affiliate, but in his own community of Franklin, he’s also known as one of the people responsible for helping to bring sidewalks to a large number of Franklin residents.

Franklin’s Fieldstone Farms neighborhood is home to around 7 percent of the city’s population, and while sidewalks have been present on many residential streets, the community’s main thoroughfare which connects homes with a school and walking trail has, until recently, been without sidewalks.

“I was often seeing people — pedestrians, kids on skateboards, bikers — going along down the main thoroughfare where people [in motor vehicles] would go 40, 45 mph,” Thomas says.

This concern over safety for his family and those of his neighbors sparked Thomas to work with his Home Owners Association to see what they could do to improve their neighborhood.

The group’s efforts then led to an agreement that was formed with the city of Franklin to take on the project, splitting the roughly $600,000 cost between the two groups for the approximately 2 miles of sidewalk.

“One of the big concerns is not just that you have straight-aways that people speed on, but you’ve got Amazon drivers like you’ve never had before,” Thomas says.

Thomas said he was just one of many people in the HOA and the city who worked together in the name of safety, and that willingness to work together, Thomas says, is one of the great things about the Franklin community.

“It underscores why we came to Franklin,” Thomas says. “It’s welcoming; it’s supportive — We’re all on the same page on wanting to make our community better. The residents are part of the team with the leadership that runs the city, so it’s just fantastic — it couldn’t have worked out any better.”

Thomas says that since the project was completed, he’s been approached by numerous neighbors, including Dena Divito, who has lived in Fieldstone Farms since 1999.

Divito said that the sidewalks have “empowered” her 16-year-old special needs son who has made his trips between his home and the local park safer.

“His bike and that park are a big part of his life, and now with the sidewalk he’s just made a racetrack and he’s able to go to the park safely and kind of take the long route, and he really feels like he’s the king of Fieldstone now,” Divito says.

The project took about 18 months to complete, and Thomas credits his past experience working with HOAs coupled with his experience serving eight years in the U.S. Air Force with giving him the attitude and responsibility to help his community in every way he can.

“In the military I learned that if you see something that can be improved, don’t talk about it, just get it done,” Thomas says.

“Now you can see people just enjoying the sidewalks,” Thomas adds. “Children are safer, drivers are safer because they’re not driving down the street and looking into the sun and wondering if someone is on the street beside them as they go 40 mph down the street.”

“I’ve been here a long time,” Divito says. “And I’ve seen more people out on those sidewalks over the past four months than I have in the last 20 years, so people are really enjoying them and they’re really adding to the activity level of the residents here in Fieldstone.”

Leaving a legacy of pouring into others

BY JOHN MCBRYDE

As he has grown in his career over the past couple of decades, Erin McAtee can point to one or two mentors who have made a lasting impact on both his professional and personal life.

Now the director of operations for the Franklin-based Narrow Gate Trading Co., the business side of Narrow Gate Ministries located in Hickman County, McAtee still recalls the valuable lessons he has learned from those influential leaders — lessons not so much of profit but of people.

They’re part of his DNA.

“I’ve had one or two notable leaders in my life who truly poured into me and helped grow me and care for me, and they just impacted me very deeply,” McAtee says. “And that desire has grown in me to do that for others and to pass that along, and to develop a culture where that’s as important — really, more important — than the bottom line.

“I’ve had to make the decision that I’m going to care more for that than just driving the bottom line. At some point, caring for people and spending time in leadership development with your team costs you something. It will cost you time that you could be spending pushing marketing, doing tactics, being strategic. It does cost you something to invest in people, and I guess I’m saying that it’s worth it.”

McAtee came to Narrow Gate in October 2020 with the idea to add coffee roasting to the operation’s lineup that included woodworks and leather goods. He and his wife, Bethany, had met with Narrow Gate founders Bill and Stacy Spencer, and eventually convinced them to absorb their E&B Coffee Roasters business they had started in Nolensville.

In time, McAtee was asked to go beyond coffee beans and also become leader of Narrow Gate’s leather and wood interests. This would include leading and helping to inspire those served by Narrow Gate Ministries, troubled young men in their late teens to early 20s who go through the program as a way to seek a new direction in their lives.

“Erin didn’t realize it, but he was an answer to prayers that we had,” says Don Lawrence, chair of the company’s board of directors. “We quickly transformed that from just moving a coffee company into Narrow Gate to us having an influential leader.

“He’s tasked with managing those three areas with three different product lines and three different operational structures, all while meeting the needs of these young men who are coming [out of the program] and ready to get out into the world.

“If you look at what he pours into them on a daily basis, not only professionally but personally, serving them and being there for them on so many other levels than just business, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody else in Williamson County that has more influence. These young men are better husbands, better fathers, better workers, better contributors, and we’ve seen that over and over again.”

McAtee has an entrepreneurial spirit that dates to his childhood, when at age 6 he made and sold bracelets to friends and classmates and later “made a living” selling candy bars in junior high school. But if his motivation for running a business as a youngster was simply to make some spending money, he realized a higher calling as his career got on track after college. He learned how to balance the goal of making a profit with the importance of being an inspiration to his employees.

“I care about quality a lot, and I care about being very good at a craft,” McAtee explains. “But there’s more to life than that, a lot more. The thought of being part of an organization that’s transforming lives of young men and still be excellent at craft got me very excited. I thought that’s something I could do for a long time and be very content. It’s a lot more than just growing a business.”

When he and Bethany opened their coffee shop in Nolensville, one of the first employees he hired was someone he met over the phone. Ben Lyons moved to Tennessee from Orange County in California, where he was a barista. McAtee taught him how to roast coffee, and Lyons now oversees operations for Narrow Gate Coffee.

“I think Erin is an exceptional leader,” Lyons says. “We interact very well together. A lot of how I lead has come from Erin’s influence.”