A Labor of Love: Carnegie Hall’s Cathy Rennard
By Greg Johnson
There’s a hurricane of activity at Carnegie Hall these days: four performance series, three art galleries with rotating monthly shows, a dozen classes and workshops ranging from ukulele playing to pottery throwing, educational programs for the schools, summer day camp, partnerships with groups like the Greenbrier Valley Chorale, Lewisburg Literary Festival and West Virginia Jazz Orchestra, fundraising events like Taste of Our Towns and the annual Gala. There’s even a remake of the Ivy Terrace looming on the horizon.
The calm in the eye of the hurricane is self-described “hometown girl,” Cathy Rennard. A White Sulphur Springs native and Greenbrier East graduate, Cathy has served as Carnegie Hall’s president and CEO since 2021, tasked with preserving its past, juggling its present and envisioning its future. Over the past four years Cathy has emerged as an energetic and visionary leader, building on four decades of work by her predecessors, Charlie Goddard, Vivian Conly, Susan Adkins and Sara Crickenberger.
Kasadi Shock, second winner of the All-Things Pumpkin Contest, receives the 2024 Golden Pumpkin Award from Cathy, created by stained glass artist Lynda Weischowsky.
Today it’s hard to imagine Lewisburg without Carnegie Hall, but in the 1970s and early 1980s the town’s grand old lady was an idle, deteriorating building in desperate need of lots of TLC. A few imaginative souls suggested turning the historic structure into a regional arts center, planting the seeds for the arts-related programming that’s been sprouting and blossoming ever since.
Every year Cathy, her talented staff, and the Hall’s board of directors consider the year ahead and tackle the chore of raising the $1.4 million it takes to keep things going. It’s a daunting responsibility, made even more challenging by the ever-fluctuating state of public and private funding for the arts.
“ We have an incredible team of people working here, and an amazing board of directors who believe in our mission. The board and the staff are in total synch...
I’m lucky to work with such talented, dedicated people, who make it all happen...”
Although she’s proven herself up to the job, little in Cathy’s background suggested she would end up as the executive of an arts organization, except that she’s always been a lover of the arts and a student of leadership. The daughter of White Sulphur Springs dentist Frank Collins and the late Gail Crickenberger Collins, as a teenager her artistic efforts were primarily dance-related. She choreographed her high school’s productions of Oklahoma, Funny Girl and Anything Goes, and returned to the school in later years to lend a hand with How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, a cooperative production between Greenbrier East and Greenbrier Valley Theatre. At Otterbein, a Methodist-affiliated university near Columbus, Ohio, she continued to dance and kept busy working part-time in her aunt’s advertising agency.
She met her late husband Schuyler (pronounced “Skyler”) through her work at the advertising agency, and they eventually returned to the Greenbrier Valley to raise their four children, Christy, Jen, Mike and Amy. Today they range in age from 29 to 42 and have produced 7.5 grandchildren, but they were much younger when Schuyler had a serious horseback riding accident and sustained a head injury. He suffered complications from it for the next 14 years, and he died in 2013.
Cathy’s entrepreneurial instincts inspired her to launch her own interior design business, Cathy Rennard Interiors, which she had for ten years. She was looking for something with more of a sense of mission and purpose when she left decorating behind and went to work for Rhema Christian Center. She was a member of the church’s leadership team, assisting Stewart Farley, the founder and lead pastor. She wore many hats at Rhema, working with the faith-based radio station, the life center, women’s ministry, and the low-income apartment complex the church bought and managed. She was ordained and conducted church services.
Her life took an unexpected turn with the 2016 flood that devasted White Sulphur Springs and many other West Virginia communities. It was a life-altering event, and as a White Sulphur Springs native she wanted to help with the recovery. She left Rhema and went to work for West Virginia Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster (WV VOAD), a nonprofit. For the next five years she ran the local case management team, and worked in Greenbrier, Pocahontas, Nicholas, Webster, Fayette and Summers Counties, and then throughout the state. Her responsibilities expanded to include training, managing grants, recruiting volunteers and supervising construction projects.
The recovery work was winding down when her sisters told her about the CEO position at Carnegie Hall. One family member in particular kept encouraging her to apply, so she did, submitting her resume the last day the board was accepting applications. To her surprise, she was called for an interview, then a follow-up interview, and then offered the job. She started at Carnegie in 2021, when arts organizations around the country were cancelling their seasons because of the pandemic, out of fear that events that brought people in close proximity to one another would lead to mass infections and even deaths.
Carnegie Staff at An Old Hollywood Gala at The Greenbrier, Back Row, Left to Right: Philip McLaughlin, Jr./Marketing Director, Harmony Flora/Education Director, Cathy Rennard/President/CEO, Sally Bray/Development Director; Front Row: Stella Blue Neeley/Development Associate, Sheila Hutchinson/ Box Office Manager, Mary Leb Foster/Performance Director, Jill McClung/Finance Officer, Teri Hartford Education Associate/Volunteer Coordinator/Office Manager
“After I went to work, we decided to open that year with the Ivy Terrace concerts because they were outside and people could distance,” she relates. “We continued to have things on the lawn until October. After talking with the mayor and city manager and hospital administrator, we decided not to have T.O.O.T. We went on to have a successful mainstage season. In fact, our only problem with COVID came in the summer of 2024, after our joint production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame with the Greenbrier Valley Theatre and Greenbrier Valley Chorale. The show was a success, but it had a large cast and literally dozens of them came down with COVID after it closed.” Despite that ironic postscript, she’s very much looking forward to collaborating with Barbara Lutz and the Chorale, and Courtney Sussman-Frye and GVT on future productions.
Rhythm of The Dance performance 2023. Photo by Sheena Pendley
Carnegie Hall tends to be a busy place, but these days it’s busier than ever. There are four performance series—the mainstage season, pianist Barbara Nissman’s stellar classical music series, the popular Ivy Terrace summer concerts, and the Second Stage series in the Old Stone Room. Intended as musical performances or “edutainment” in a more intimate, informal setting with beverage service, the Second Stage events have sometimes proven so popular they had to be moved to the mainstage. “It’s not quite the same when you lose the intimacy,” Cathy observes. “But we’re not going to turn people away.”
Audience members who come to the hall for a performance see a beautiful old building and a show, but many leave unaware of all the classes and workshops taking place, and groups meeting there regularly. The youth programming is especially impressive.
Cathy and Buck at Dancing With The Stars in Charleston, photo by Don Ryan
“For kids we have a link-up with Carnegie Hall in New York,” she explains. “Every year they put out a musical score and we give it to the 5th grade music teachers. They teach the students to play it on recorders. Then in the spring all the 5th graders in the county come to the Hall and they accompany a live orchestra. This year the orchestra was made up of members of the West Virginia Jazz Orchestra, community musicians and some of the high school band students. The high schoolers were really great with them, greeting the young kids when they came in and showing them their instruments. We also send teaching artists out to the schools to do stem projects that correspond with a curriculum called Carnegie Classrooms, and we have a program called Spotlight on Schools where we bus students in for performances. We host a different grade every year. And there’s “One Night Only,” when we invite young musicians in the area to perform on our stage. It’s a juried show for middle and high school students, and they have to apply. For young visual artists we have an annual show called Creative Youth, where we feature student artwork. And, of course, there’s Kids’ College in the summer, with everything from pottery to cooking classes.”
Cathy and her staff were busy overseeing the usual flurry of activity in May when Carnegie Hall’s sewer drainage suddenly stopped working. Diagnostics failed to reveal the source of the issue, which led to tearing up much of the brickwork on Ivy Terrace and running a new line. “In the process we had to cut through a boulder the size of an SUV,” she says ruefully. “Our board decided to look at the problem as an opportunity. Instead of putting things back just like they were, we have a chance to rethink the layout and come up with a more attractive, flexible design. We’re consulting with architects TAG Galyean and Jerry Janiga, and landscaper Josh Polan, the former owner of Riverbend Nursery, to develop a plan. We’re in the early stage, and the project will probably have to be phased.”
When she’s not dealing with complex schedules and giant boulders and fundraisers, Cathy still finds time to enjoy life. Her father, three sisters and brother all live in the same White Sulphur neighborhood where they grew up, and where she resides. She describes the scene as happy chaos, with family members constantly coming and going from each others’ homes, and large gatherings for meals. She’s engaged to Buck Edwards, who has proven himself by adapting to the chaos. Buck is retired but stays busy cooking and catering barbecues. Beyond serving up his famous chicken, he is a passionate servant of mankind and recently won a statewide award for Volunteer of the Year from WV VOAD. They enjoy traveling around the state, visiting State Parks and waterfalls. And she’s learning to fly fish! “I’m not very good at it,” she admits. “But someone told me fishing’s really just an excuse to be in a beautiful place. I agree.”
Many things about Carnegie Hall are a source of pride for her, and she attributes the successes to her team and board. “We have an incredible team of people working here, and an amazing board of directors who believe in our mission. The board and the staff are in total synch, which isn’t always true in nonprofits, but it is here. I’m lucky to work with such talented, dedicated people, who make it all happen. Carnegie Hall is a strong organization. I really love working here.”
