{"id":3894,"date":"2011-05-06T12:03:04","date_gmt":"2011-05-06T19:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=3894"},"modified":"2014-01-25T18:10:34","modified_gmt":"2014-01-25T23:10:34","slug":"flying-high","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=3894","title":{"rendered":"Flying high"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bill '68 and Nancy Moncrief, owners of the Candlelight Inn<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When William Moncrief \u201968<\/strong> and his wife Nancy announced their plans to open a bed and breakfast at the Jersey Shore, no one was particularly shocked. Sure, it was a big change from their 9-to-5 careers in Washington, DC, but Bill’s family and friends already knew he was a man of many talents: Navy pilot, technology management expert\u2014why not add innkeeper to the list?<\/p>\n

His kids began buying him books on the B&B business as Christmas and birthday gifts, and before long, the Moncriefs had traded in the \u201crat race\u201d (Bill\u2019s words) of DC for the serenity of a North Wildwood, NJ, inn. And they\u2019ve done so with great success; earlier this year, Bill and Nancy were named Innkeepers of the Year by Select Registry Distinguished Inns of North America.<\/p>\n

While Bill says running the Candlelight Inn isn\u2019t all glamour and glitz\u2014he spends plenty of time unclogging toilets, replacing air conditioners, and servicing hot-water heaters\u2014he also has some remarkable stories from over the last 12 years.<\/p>\n

One of his favorites involves a couple who mentioned during check-in that their minister had made the reservation for them. The wife had suffered several consecutive miscarriages, and they\u2019d been going to counseling to try lift the resulting cloud of depression. Bill offered up some extra TLC, and \u201csure enough,\u201d he says, \u201cnine months later, we got a letter with a photo of a baby that had been conceived while they were here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in the late 1960s, long before his career as an innkeeper began, Bill was on a very different path. A science major at TCNJ, he had signed a contract to teach in Hammonton, NJ, after graduation. Then, in January 1968, \u201cmy friendly neighborhood draft board told me that I wouldn\u2019t be teaching\u2014I would be in the Army,\u201d he says.\u201cThe morning I graduated from college, I enlisted in the Navy, and a few days later, I got my draft notice. I\u2019d beaten it by just three days.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Bill says he wasn\u2019t sure he\u2019d even make it through flight training, \u201cthe next thing I knew, I was flying planes for the Navy. I liked it, so I ended up staying for 20 years.\u201d In that time, he was deployed a handful of times\u2014to Bermuda, Sicily, Iceland, Scotland, and Latin America. \u201cThey were paying me to go see all these places,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was pretty incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

During those 20 years, he also spent time teaching at the U.S. Naval Academy and earned a master’s degree in computer science at the Naval Postgraduate School. After Moncrief retired from the Navy in 1988, a contact from his military days called to see if he\u2019d be interested in becoming network director at the Bicentennial Commission in Washington, D.C. And that\u2019s how William Moncrief\u2014a teacher-in-training turned naval officer turned technology expert\u2014went to work for former Chief Justice Warren Burger.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a very smart individual and a great listener,\u201d Bill recalls of working under Burger. \u201cHe was different from any manager I\u2019d ever had. We could be in an hour-and-a-half meeting, and he might say 20 words at the most.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a year with the commission, Bill went on to work at Georgetown University, an international law firm, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Along the way, he and his wife often traveled to California wine country, staying in\u2014you guessed it\u2014bed and breakfasts. After talking to a newly minted pair of innkeepers on one of their trips, owning a B&B started to sound more and more enticing to Bill and Nancy. In 1985, the Moncriefs purchased the Candlelight Inn, and have been living out their dream ever since.<\/p>\n

Bill says his workdays couldn\u2019t be more different from the ones he spent in the corporate world. \u201cI didn\u2019t have too many people calling me to say, \u2018Thanks, my computer\u2019s working well,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cThey talked to me if there was a problem, and they usually didn\u2019t talk nicely. Here [at the inn], people really appreciate what you do for them. They say, \u2018Thank you\u2019 all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What could a Navy patrol plane and a cozy bed and breakfast possibly have in common? They\u2019ve both been piloted by alumnus William Moncrief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":3895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-corner","category-may-2011"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}