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Today's Featured Biography
Karen Johnson Rieley
Hi, everyone! It is great to be able to read about how some of my classmates are doing. Thanks for getting this site going.
After graduating in 1976 with a degree in marketing from Virginia Tech, I joined Armstrong World Industries (the floor and carpet people) in Lancaster, Pa., for two years in employee communications, and then I was transferred to work as a marketing rep for the company in Jacksonville, Fla. By then, Wayne (BHS Class of 1971, as you probably remember), had gotten a degree in architecture and gone to work for a small firm in Princeton, W.Va. He followed me to Jax and went to work for Saxelbye Architects where he eventually became a vice president. We married on March 24, 1979, so we're about to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary!
In 1982 I went to work for the Arts Assembly of Jacksonville where I was manager of The Florida Theatre, a 1926 movie palace turned into a performing arts center. I left that to work for a couple of years as communications director for United Way of Northeast Florida. That set my career in public relations and I've done that ever since.
Some of you may remember that my mother died of breast cancer in 1984. My sister, Kim, was 12 that year (others of you may remember that my mother was 9 months pregnant at our high school graduation and Kim was born a week later!). My dad didn't feel he could take care of her alone, so she came to live with Wayne and me that summer and we took care of her from that point on. Our own daughter, Austin, was born on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1986, when Kim was 14.
In 1990, Kim graduated from The Bolles School, an independent elementary and secondary school, where I worked as director of communications from 1988 until 2000 and where Austin attended from kindergarten through eighth grade. Kim graduated with a degree in elementary education from Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga., in 1994, and has lived in the Atlanta area ever since, with her husband, David, an electrical engineer graduate of Georgia Tech, and their now three-year-old daughter, Elizabeth.
In August 2000, Austin and I joined Darlington School, in Rome, Ga., because I was hired to be the school's director of communications and marketing. Wayne was supposed to follow shortly, but commitments at Saxelbye kept him until December 2002. It was a tough couple of years for us. We had never been separated since we first started dating back in January 1971, except for the two years I lived in Lancaster. It was especially hard for him to live alone in Jax. But, we saw each other about every other weekend and he finally took a position here in Rome, Ga., as a senior project manager for Adams Project Management Consulting, where he managed large hospital construction management projects for owners across the United States.
He liked the work and the people a lot, but he wasn't inspired. When Lutheran Social Services of Northeast Florida, with whom he had served as a volunteer board member for about 10 years, asked him to become its executive director, I encouraged him to pursue it. Austin graduates in May and moves on to Lenoir-Rhyne College in August, so we're at last free of making decisions related to children's schooling. He began work back in Jax on Jan. 5, and Austin and I will join him when my contract ends here at Darlington at the end of June. By July all of us Rieleys will be back in Jacksonville, Fla., and we're thrilled because we have 20+ years of friendships, our church family, and work connections there.
Lorna Schwichtenberg Jones, the only classmate with whom I've stayed in regular touch throughout all these years, noted recently that we're living out the predictions in the book, Future Shock, and she is right. I would never have predicted that Wayne and I would go through as much change as we have since high school. I'm glad to say we've not only survived but prospered through it all, but I confess that at nearly 50 years of age I'm ready for some stability!
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