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Catherine Meloy, CEO of Goodwill of Greater Washington and The Goodwill Excel Center, is host Andy Ockershausen\u2019s guest in this all new episode of Our Town, and who Andy calls \u201ca wonderful wonderful friend.\u201d Andy recalls welcoming Catherine to Our Town in 1983-84 and prompts her to start at the beginning . . . her life before Washington, DC.\n\n\n\nCatherine was born in Camp Lejeune North Carolina. Her Dad was a Marine for 25 years, and now lives in St. Louis where he and her Mom decided to retire to be close to their parents, Catherine\u2019s grandparents. Andy and Catherine discuss her emotional attachment to the military, and how she loves living now in Annapolis, a military town. \n \nCatherine attended high school and college in St. Louis. She tells Andy, that \u201cwe had to pay for our own college at that time . . .and at the end of my Sophomore year I owed $10,000 in college debt .\u201d I dropped out \u201cbecause I just hated owing people money.\u201d Afterward, Catherine went to work for the St. Louis Cardinals as an usherette, then went on to work in the club's executive offices for announcer Mike Shannon and the coach, Joe Torre. Catherine and Andy spend a minute or two recalling other great announcers such as Harry Caray, Jack Buck, and Bob Costas. \n\nAfter the Cardinals, in 1976-77, Catherine went to work for the Sheraton Jefferson in St. Louis, at a time when there weren\u2019t many women in executive positions. As luck would have it, they had a few women that were earmarked for their executive training program and she was one. Catherine moved to Kansas City. While there she attended an annual Sheraton meeting and saw the man who would eventually become her husband although neither of them knew it at the time because they didn\u2019t even know each other. Catherine recalls \u201cI did not know him. He walked from the back of the room to the front of the room just to be on this panel and I thought to myself if I ever meet that man I\u2019m going to marry him. Little did he know.\u201d A year later at the annual meeting in January in New York, Catherine and David Meloy met, fell in love, and the rest is history as they say. We encourage you to listen in to how this came about. It is a relationship truly made in heaven.\n\nCatherine moved to Boston to be with David and decided then to leave the hotel industry altogether. Catherine tells Andy, that after leaving Sheraton, she \u201cwent door-to-door looking for a job and went to WEEI . . .and did the craziest thing . . . I just went into the radio station . . . and said I wanted to speak to the general manager . . .the general manager came out . . . I think he was so surprised that somebody would just knock on the door and say \u2018here I am how about if I come work at this radio station\u2019 . . . and he said anybody's got this much gumption you\u2019re on I could start on Monday.\u201d\n\nCatherine and Andy discuss her stellar radio sales career starting at WEEI in Boston with the yellow pages on commission. Despite her fear of failure, she stayed with it and it turned out great. Catherine and David moved to New York and she was able to transfer to CBS stations there. Then on to Denver where in short order she was promoted to General Sales Manager. Catherine and Andy met after she and David moved to Washington. She worked at WBAL in Baltimore initially and then was recruited as National Sales Manager by Tony Reneau at WMAL. At the time (1983-84), Catherine was delighted to be working in the community in which she lived. \n\nCatherine and Andy reminisce about meeting each other for the first time and how it just felt right to Andy to hire her. Listen in and you will clearly understand a shared mutual love for WMAL and the good old days when relationships with the advertisers and the audiences were so important and really what mattered.\nCatherine left WMAL in 1986-87 and moved to Alexandria to work for WCXR classic rock and then WGMS classical music which later became Sports Talk 980.