Music background

Kathy has been performing since her pre-teen years.

I grew up singing. My mother told me I used to sit beside the living room speaker of our living room stereo and memorize the songs to the children's records she would put on for me. I would love to sing all the songs to "The Sound of Music" pretending to be Maria Von Trapp out in our yard. My first public performance was singing a song at my grandmother's funeral when I was 11. Later, I sang in our church choir and taught myself to play the guitar. By the time I was 15, I had begun writing my own songs and singing them for church, at school and at retreats. I had been asked to sing my first wedding by the time I was 18 and have been doing weddings ever since.

In addition, Kathy has been a volunteer liturgical music minister for two years in college, and then at St. Ann's Catholic Church for six consecutive years. During this time, Kathy continued to write songs and began a recording project of her own original music that was completed in 1996. After the completion of "The Vaults of Heaven", Kathy offered evening music retreats, which were a program consisting of spiritual reflections, journal writing for the participants, interspersed with Kathy's songs through out. She also performed for Campus Crusade for Christ, coffee houses throughout the triangle and at Young Adult summer weekend conferences. Kathy has been asked to sing for other diocesan functions such as the Ignited By Truth Catholic Conference, Handicapped Encounter Christ retreats, the John 6:35 retreat praise & worship band, the Young Adult Encounter Christ retreats, in addition to dozens of performances at area Christian churches, civic clubs and funerals over the years.

Kathy began studying the viola when her eldest children began taking violin and cello. They performed for church services as a string trio; in addition, Kathy would sing with the strings for weddings and other functions. After the birth of her 5th child, she gave up the viola to focus on her young children. Now, her daughter is studying cello performance and her son, a junior in high school, is a violinist in the Triangle Youth Philharmonic, The NC Symphony Young All Stars, and the Higher Octave Violin Choir from the Meredith College string program. Her younger children are also learning musical instruments.

Kathy has been a regular cantor at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Raleigh for the past 13 years.

Education

Kathy has a bachelor's degree in Speech Communication/emphasis on Speech Disorders from North Carolina State University.

She received a Master's degree in Speech-Language Pathology from East Carolina University. For her Master's thesis, Kathy conducted a normative study of middle aged and geriatric aged men in order to determine whether there are age-related changes in certain acoustic variables in their voices.

Kathy worked as a Speech-Language Pathologist for 5 years before she and her husband decided to home school their children.