She was raised in Winston County, she isn’t Catholic, and her first career choice was banking — not schooling. But for 35 years, Joyce Nix has played the most vital of roles in helping put Cullman’s St. Bernard Prep School on the map, and in establishing and expanding its still-growing reputation, both regionally and nationwide.

“I’ve kind of been here from the start, from the baby steps we took in the early days,” says Nix. “I’ve pretty much grown up with this thing since the beginning, and I’ve gotten to see this thing grow and become what it is today.”

As St. Bernard Prep’s Director of Marketing and Public Relations, Nix is the axis around which most of the private school’s promotional and fundraising activity revolves. She came to St. Bernard on the ground floor, beginning her career as the school itself found its way.

“I kind of created my own position, and the work has evolved as we’ve grown,” she says. “This system we have here has been good to me. I’d never stayed with a job for more than two years until I took this one, and I think the reason I’ve been able to stay on board with this one is because I kind of made it up as we went.”

Nix is a living example of the maxim that no good idea goes unpunished. Thirty-five years ago, as the brand-new St. Bernard Prep School cast about for ways to fund its startup effort, Nix hit on the idea for a community-facing arts and crafts festival; a weekend-long affair that drew guests both locally and from out of town to the beautiful St. Bernard Abbey grounds for food, music, creativity, and a fond determination to return the next year. Proceeds from the event could go a long way toward paying for school programs — if it could even get off the ground in the first place.

Chances are you know that festival pretty well: It’s the Bloomin’ Festival, which will mark its 34th successful year when it kicks off on Saturday, April 21. Though she’s eager to tell you how many people are responsible for its early and continuing success, the Bloomin’ Festival was Nix’s creation, and to this day its fortunes are directly tied to her leadership.

Spend some time inside the pleasant blast radius of Nix’s relentlessly energetic and upbeat personality, and it becomes obvious that St. Bernard has found a uniquely qualified person to shoulder the burden of coordinating and promoting its biggest annual fundraising (and awareness-raising) event. When things go right, Nix deflects the credit to the many people and local sponsors involved in pulling it all off. But when things go wrong, well…this was all her idea in the first place.

“Oh, absolutely, that happens every time!” laughs Nix. “It’s definitely my fault if something goes wrong. It’s always the director’s fault with anything that goes bad. You do have to be a people person, and you definitely have to be a duck too — you’ve gotta let that water just roll off your back. You can’t take anything personally. And when someone comes to you with a better idea, well, you just tell them to knock themselves out!

“But,” she adds, “who would have thought, 34 years ago, that the Bloomin’ Festival — this little bitty arts and crafts fair — would have turned into one of this area’s most popular events?

“When we first started, man, I got out on the road; I went to craft fairs and more craft fairs. We would talk to the vendors — I mean, I would drag my whole family through this, literally burning them out on craft fairs — but we would tour the shows, talk to people, and ask them: ‘What do you like about these shows; are you happy; do they treat you right?’ And then, we’d fix the things they didn’t like. With the Bloomin’ Festival, we tried to get right what other craft fairs seemed to be getting wrong.”

It’s an approach that’s paid off. “I’ve got vendors who’ve been with me a long time now. They come back here and they tell their friends. You can go to so many craft fairs and just find commercial products; things that you can find anywhere. We don’t bring in those kind of items; those kind of vendors. We try to keep ours as handmade and original as possible, and our people appreciate that.”

With the springtime Bloomin’ Festival an established and reliable success, Nix and St. Bernard — who are clearly getting good at this festival thing — have turned their attention to this region’s other event-worthy time of year: the fall. Beginning last year, St. Bernard launched a second annual festival; a September event with a different focus and a different feel — but one, Nix hopes, that will grow to take its place alongside the Bloomin’ Festival as a must-attend piece of the local event calendar.

“This past year, we also took on another festival with the Blues and BBQ Festival,” says Nix. “So while I’m working on Bloomin’ now, I have to process applications for the Bernard Blues and BBQ Fest. And as with the Bloomin’ Festival, we like to keep things ‘quality’ over ‘quantity.’

“Actually, the Blues and BBQ Fest happened more by popular request. We have had vendors for years asking us to do something in the fall, and it was kind of a last-minute thing when we put it together last year. Of course we would have a hurricane blow through in our first year, and a lot of people in the community ended up helping with that. But a lot of hurricane victims were in our area, and they actually came out and enjoyed the festival. Everyone has raved about the entertainment and the food, and just the quality of what we had. We just hope this year that we can fill it up with more vendors and grow it, just like our spring festival has grown.

“And the food,” she adds — “It’s good.”

While Bloomin’ Festival wouldn’t exist without Nix, she’s quick to credit the St. Bernard community for going all in each year to assure its ongoing success.

“I work for some good people. Father Marcus Voss, Father Joel Martin, Father Linus Klucsarits — they are all great. They’re supportive,” she says. “I just think we have a good team in place here, and these kids — they’re super. Their parents are so involved in what we do, whether it be with athletics or with the Bloomin’ Festival, and we could not do this without them. It takes all of us pulling together to make it happen every year.”

Whether at the Bloomin’ Festival or at Blues and BBQ, Nix plans to stick around to help guide and grow St. Bernard’s rich contribution to the Cullman area’s cultural fabric.

“To me, these events are something a family shares together,” she says. “It’s really about having that kind of hands-on, one-of-a-kind artist come here; the kind of thing you just don’t get everywhere you go. It’s fun; it’s entertaining; and being able to watch craftspeople work is part of the experience itself.

“I’ve gotta admit — I love it. It’s good stuff.”