Weaving Tapestry is women's work.

• Author: Grooms, Vicki
• Position: Tapestry Group LLC - Sharon Decker - Biography

Sharon Decker is a preacher's daughter, former beauty queen, mother, executive and now an innkeeper and business owner. When people ask her if women can have it all, she says sure. "Just not at the same time." She left a job in August as president of Tanner Holdings, the planning arm of Tanner Cos., a Rutherfordton clothing manufacturer. Her reason, she says, was to follow her heart to a new business.

Decker, 48, a former Duke Power executive who chaired the Charlotte Chamber in 1998, spent nearly $1 million to buy and renovate the town hall and firehouse, built in 1925, and two other buildings in downtown Rutherfordton, about 70 miles west of Charlotte. She used them to start The Tapestry Group LLC, which offers retreats, seminars, consulting and other services for women struggling with competing pressures. She, her husband, Bob, and four children have lived in Rutherfordton since 1999, when she became president of Tanner's Doncaster division. The centerpiece of Tapestry is The Firehouse Inn, where the four beds are made with Italian linens and some rooms have gas fireplaces.

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Decker says Tapestry is more akin to a religious calling. "There's a work life. There's a personal life. There may not be a spiritual life. I look at life as a tapestry. It has threads. Some are broken. Sometimes colors work or don't work. But in the end, it's a beautiful piece of work."

One of three daughters of a Baptist minister, she was Miss Gastonia and graduated with a...