By Tabitha Evans Moore
Editor & Publisher

It’s Tuesday afternoon and I’m headed up to Barbecue Hill at The Jack Daniel Distillery to learn a very particular skill from a savant — a four leaf clover finding savant.

Dianne Potts meets me with a broad smile and good vibes. She’s already hunched over a patch of clover.

“Come here,” she says. “I already see three.”

I squat down — trying desperately not to roll down the hill into a waiting corn delivery — and scan the plot.

“Look for a circle,” she instructs. “See the white part in each leaf? When there are four leaves, they create a perfect circle.”

I squint and concentrate. When I touch the grass, Dianne giggles, “You’re warm. Stay in that area.”

When I finally spot one, I yippee so loudly that part of her event staff turns to see what all the commotion is. I’m giddy with excitement.

Dianne Potts has that effect on people. The Shelbyville native, who now lives in Winchester with her husband, Ken, and their dog, Coco, has worked at Jack Daniel’s since April 2015 — starting as a temporary employee and never really leaving. Nearly 11 years later, she’s the Special Events and VIP Experience Supervisor, which means her job is to make people feel something. She’s very good at it. The four leaf clover thing is just one of the reasons why.

The exact date she found her first one is burned into her memory: April 18, 2013. She knows because she posted it on social media that same day, electric with excitement. Her sister, Dawn Rogers, had possessed the gift since her own teenage years — finding hundreds over a lifetime. When Dianne called to share the news, Dawn’s response was immediate.

“Your luck is about to change,” Dawn told her.

It did. A lot of wonderful things followed, including, she says with a smile, finding the love of her life. Since then, the clovers have kept coming — especially in March and April, what Dianne calls her “peak season.” On a single walk on March 9 of this year, she found 11 of them in about two minutes. Not a slow, careful search. A walk. She spotted one, bent to pick it up, and noticed several more clustered right around it.

Her boss, Homeplace Director Christine Poston, happened by during that particular haul. Poston had never found a four leaf clover in her life. Dianne shared the trick — look for that tiny circle formed by the white markings in the center — and within minutes, Poston had found two.

“I told her my luck must be rubbing off,” Dianne laughs..

Days after my four leaf clover finding tutelage, Dianne texted me excited. Her brother, Daryl Phillips — suffering a bit of four leaf finding drought so far this year — walked outside after speaking to Dianne, and boom, he found his first one.

“I guess we all have the gene,” she jokes.

Maybe Dianne’s just infectious in the best possible way.

Signs, Signs Everywhere There Are Signs

Her generosity is characteristic. Dianne doesn’t hoard her finds. She presses some in wax paper, photographs others, shares them on social media. But her favorite thing to do is give them away. On the same morning she found those 11, she handed one to a gentleman who mentioned he’d never found one in his fifty-something years on Earth. He also mentioned that his young grandson didn’t believe four leaf clovers were real.

“I told him to take that clover home and show his grandson proof that they really do exist,” she says. “I hope that little boy got a big giggle out of it.”

The number 11 carries its own weight for Dianne now. Her mother passed away a couple of years ago, and since then she’s noticed the number turning up everywhere — 1:11, 11:11, small appearances that feel like hellos. When she found 11 clovers that March morning, she didn’t chalk it up to coincidence.

“It made me smile and think, ‘That’s my mom saying hello.’ It just felt special,” she says. “I truly believe God has blessed me with this little gift. I don’t know why, but I’m thankful for it.”

At work, the gift is an extension of who she already is. As Special Events and VIP Experience Supervisor, Dianne’s whole job is creating moments people carry home with them. She’ll pull out a four leaf clover for a guest, tell the story behind it, and watch a stranger’s face change. It’s a small thing. It’s also not a small thing.

“Working in events, my goal is always to make sure people leave with a great memory,” she says. “I guess you could say I like to add a little ‘luck’ to their day too.”

When I ask if she believes luck is real, she doesn’t hesitate. Yes. But the things that make her feel luckiest, she says, aren’t clovers. It’s her husband — her lucky charm, she calls him — their kids and grandchildren, her family, her friends, and a job she genuinely loves.

“When I look at my life, I honestly feel like I have it all,” she says. “I’m very blessed.”

She has probably found more four leaf clovers on Barbecue Hill, she tells me, than anywhere else in the world — which feels right. There is something about this particular patch of ground — the whiskey smell in the air, the hill rolling toward limestone and barrel houses, a corn delivery waiting patiently below, turkeys strolling past — that seems to suit a woman who has made a life out of paying attention to the small, lucky things.

“Sometimes all it takes is slowing down and looking at the ground. You might be surprised what kind of luck is waiting right under your feet,” Dianne says.

I walked away from Barbecue Hill that afternoon with a handful of four leaf clovers and a new way of looking at grass. Both feel like gifts. •

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