<p>When asked to describe herself, ocean educator Brenda “B.J.” Ramer naturally turns to the sea when looking for the right metaphor.</p><p>”Most people are like plankton; they go with the flow,” Ramer said. “I’m like a humpback whale. I go against the current.” </p><p>Case in point: when she decided to open her Team ECCO Ocean Center and Aquarium in downtown Hendersonville in 2009, Ramer said many people thought she was nuts. “Why do we need to teach about marine life in the mountains?” they sneered.</p><p>Ramer didn’t bother answering the naysayers directly, because she knew the answer was too complex to articulate with a snappy one-line comeback. Instead, she let the results speak for themselves.</p><p>”People might fuss and say, ‘What’s the point of having it here?"” she said. “But I don’t have to justify my purpose, because the kids who spend time here — as volunteers, as interns, as visitors — they define my purpose. The people whose opinion matters most to me are those under 5 feet tall.”</p><p>This year, Team ECCO’s 14th year as a nonprofit, the aquarium hosted more than 10,000 visitors and offered educational programs to 3,200 students from the community on topics such as coral reefs, marine invertebrates, sharks, rays and turtles. </p><p>Along the way, Ramer has nurtured hundreds of local kids as interns and volunteers. Many go on to major in marine biology or other sciences in college. By using students to help run the aquarium, Ramer hopes to inspire them to find their own path in life, whatever it is. </p><p>”For me, it’s about being able to share my passion and maybe not share it verbally, but also instill a spark somewhere in them,” she said. “I don’t look for all these kids to grow up to be Jacques Cousteau. Maybe they will, but even those that don’t will learn accountability, responsibility and that you only get out of your community what you’re willing to give to others.”</p><p>Ramer has given back to her community in many capacities over the years. Her service includes stints on the boards of the Henderson County YMCA, Healing Place and Flat Rock Playhouse, where she and her husband, Tom, co-chaired the YouTheatre building campaign. </p><p>She’s also been a charter member of the Hendersonville Jaycees and long-time participant in Hendersonville’s Business and Professional Women’s Club. Most recently, Ramer was appointed by city council to serve on the Henderson County Tourism Development Authority.</p><p>”My real goal (on TDA’s board) is to be a voice for local tourist attractions there, because it’s so focused on putting heads in beds,” she said. “They sometimes forget that without the attractions, there’d be no means for putting people in accommodations.”</p><p>Fellow TDA member Kathy Kanupp said Ramer “brings a modern, up-to-date perspective to our board. She’s here for the youth of the county, so she stays in touch with Facebook, Twitter and other social media. She brings a real freshness to the board.”</p><p>Working with the children of local families, Ramer agrees one of her goals on TDA’s board is to inject a “younger feel into the county.”</p><p>”When we moved here 30 years ago, it was a retirement place,” she said. “That’s no longer the case. Young families are moving here. Our schools are exploding. So I try to be a fresh voice, a questioning voice that says, ‘Why not try something new?’ Just because we always did it a certain way doesn’t make it the only way.”</p><p>Allison Romstadt, a long-time Team ECCO board member, said Ramer has always been one to think outside the box. </p><p>” ‘No’ is not a word in her vocabulary,” she said. “You can’t tell B.J. no. She was recently turned down for a grant, and her response was, ‘I built this business from the ground up in my kitchen. We’ll figure out another way.’ “</p><p><b>Work ethic</b></p><p>Ramer developed a reputation for tenacity and alternative thinking long before she arrived in Hendersonville. Growing up in Toronto, Ohio, she was the first female in her high school to take drafting class. </p><p>She worked a series of toilsome jobs throughout her youth, including cleaning houses, picking strawberries and sweeping out the local steel mill where her dad worked. </p><p>”That how I paid to finish college,” she said of the steel mill gig. “My parents had a strong work ethic, and they passed that onto me.”</p><p>Originally interested in teaching deaf children, Ramer earned a bachelor’s in special education from the University of Cincinnati in 1981. She earned a full scholarship to Vanderbilt University, where she completed her Masters in Education in 1982 and student-taught at the Tennessee School for the Blind. </p><p>A year after marrying her high-school sweetheart, Tom, Ramer and her husband moved to Hendersonville in 1983 with nothing but their “degrees, two cars and some furnishings.” </p><p>Ramer got her first teaching job at Bruce Drysdale Elementary, but later moved to special ed programs in Etowah Elementary and Hendersonville Middle School.</p><p>In 2001, she was working as a “itinerant teacher” at Hendersonville Middle when she had an epiphany. She’d gotten involved with a program called Oceans for Youth, a nonprofit designed to promote underwater education. Ramer had also recently fallen in love with snorkeling and scuba diving in coral reefs. </p><p>”I thought, ‘How can I tie this new love I’d found into my other love, which is teaching?’ ” Ramer recalled. “When you’re under the water, you really understand who your higher power is. It just moved me very, very deeply, and trying to connect that passion to working with kids became important to me.”</p><p>Team ECCO was thus born in Ramer’s kitchen, with dreams of “taking children to science instead of science to children.” </p><p>In September 2001, Ramer led her first trip of 25 students to Florida to swim with manatees. It was the first of many excursions she would lead to saltwater destinations from the Southeast to the Caribbean. </p><p>Kanupp said the community is blessed to have someone so passionate about oceans in their midst. </p><p>”She has such a great love for these animals that it’s phenomenal, and she’s found a way to pass that passion onto her visitors and volunteers,” she said. “How many people do you know that would stay up all night with a sick stingray? She really has some salt water running through her veins.”</p>
Brenda Ramer: A voice for ocean life, experiential education
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