Designing Woman

When Betsy Godfrey was growing up in Spartanburg, S.C., she enjoyed playing house. But to this determined little girl, playing house meant driving nails and sawing wood-not dressing dolls and arranging tea parties. "I was just nine or 10 years old," recalls Godfrey, today an internationally known interior designer. "I told my friends, 'I'm going to build a house some day.' Well, I don't think they believed me."

Godfrey did build houses, becoming perhaps the first woman in Central Florida to hold a residential contractor's license. And she helped other builders sell their houses through creative interior merchandising, a concept that she pioneered.

Along the way, Godfrey helped to found the Southeast Builders' Conference, won hundreds of awards and established herself as something of an interior design icon. Her projects have included luxurious homes, opulent clubhouses and spectacular resorts. She has even outfitted over-the-top motor yachts for well-heeled private clients in Europe.

"The best part of my business has been the chance to work with some of the same customers I worked with years ago, and even some of my customers' children," says Godfrey, who travels around the country and around the world to keep abreast of design trends. "That's what keeps me interested in going along."

It's a lifestyle that would have seemed unlikely for Godfrey when she first came to Orlando in 1961. "I married very young and had never worked outside the home," she recalls. But after a divorce in 1966, the suddenly single mother of three needed a job badly-and she found one with Duncan Construction.

"I was doing secretarial work," Godfrey recalls. "But I was really more interested in the construction process."

In 1969, Godfrey was hired as a secretary by Herb Ross of H.J. Ross Homes. Ross, an innovator who later became president of the Home Builders Association of Metro Orlando, had recently been to California and had observed how effectively West Coast builders used elaborate interior design to help merchandise their models.

"Nobody was doing that here," recalls Ross, now retired and living in North Carolina. "So I gave Betsy the latitude to take that idea and apply it to our projects. In fact, she really refined the concept of interior merchandising and set a standard in Orlando."

Although Ross and Godfrey were a dynamic duo in business, their brief marriage failed. Still, they remained friendly and Ross was supportive when Godfrey decided to strike out on her own-not as an interior designer but as a homebuilder. She earned her contractor's license in 1976 and shortly thereafter formed Baywood Homes with her brother, Richard Forbis.

"Usually, women in our industry were given the 'girl stuff,' like customer relations," says Godfrey, who was then the only female builder in Orlando. "But I think all that mattered is that I got the job done."

Indeed she did. Baywood built in upscale neighborhoods such as Orange Tree and Bay Hill, and found success with affluent buyers who appreciated the company's cutting edge floorplans and attention to detail.

Godfrey also joined the Home Builders Association, where she was told that the National Association of Home Builders prohibited women from becoming "Spikes," which is a designation given to top membership recruiters.

"I said, 'Okay, I'll just write a letter to national,'" Godfrey says. The rule was changed, and Godfrey not only became a Life Spike but was also elected to the local association's executive board. She then began to ascend the leadership chairs, but missed the opportunity to become the group's first female president when business responsibilities forced her to decline the post.

Nonetheless, Godfrey still found time to become a founding member of the Southeast Builders' Conference and to establish the organization's prestigious Aurora Awards for design excellence.

In 1984 Godfrey phased out of building to concentrate exclusively on interior design, working for private clients and major developers. In subsequent years she won countless awards-including an unprecedented three Golden Auroras-and established a satellite office in Naples, an affluent city in Southwest Florida.

Eventually Godfrey moved her entire operation to Naples, and for the past nine years worked almost exclusively there while tackling intriguing assignments in California, Colorado, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Washington, D.C. and Italy.

Late last year, however, Godfrey Design Consultants returned to its roots by opening a new office in Winter Park. Daughter Lauri Godfrey now works with her mother as senior designer, and the two have found that their sometimes differing sensibilities result in wonderful collaborative efforts for their clients.

"My style tends to be less is more," says Lauri, who spent three years with Marc Michaels, a prominent interior design firm also located in Winter Park. "Her style tends to be softer and warmer. Together, it really works."

Lauri says working with her mother-and traveling with her to exhibitions, conventions and assignments-means she is constantly learning, not only about design but also about relationship building.

"There are so many clients out there who think Betsy hung the moon," she says. "I really respect and admire that."