photo by John A. Secoges, Secoges Photographics
Cathy Wegener grew up in Muhlenberg Township and spent many weekends enjoying our region’s parks and historic sites with her family. As a young girl on those Sunday drives, she had no idea that her career would involve preserving some of those very places. Now superintendent of interpretive services for Berks County Parks and Recreation, Wegener has been with the park service for 33 years – and still loves both history and the outdoors. When she’s not at the Berks County Heritage Center, she likes to lose herself in the beauty of Orlando, Fla., where her daughter Chelsea lives, or Lake Opincon in Ontario, Canada, where her extended family has been vacationing for more than 50 years.
Q: You have such a unique job – what led you to it?
After graduating from college, I worked for a year as an activities director at the old Berks Heim building. At the time, my goal was to work for the National Park Service at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. I didn’t do that, but I have worked at a national historic site – the Gruber Wagon Works – for 33 years.
Q: How did you transition from leading senior activities to interpreting history?
My mom was activities director for a local nursing home in the 70s, so I grew up surrounded by therapeutic recreation, and it is a big part of what I studied and what I do today.
Q: So your family – your father’s interest in history and your mother’s work – influenced you as a young person?
Yes, and when I was in high school I took part in a school project at Nolde Forest. We spent afternoons there in an environmental education program. I got to work with Harold Yoder of the Berks County Historical Society. It was my first taste of [museum] cataloguing, which came in handy when I graduated from college because it was my task to catalogue 19,000 objects from the wagon works. Way before I ever thought I’d do this as a career, it was a school friend in that Nolde program that told me about Penn State offering a park and recreation degree. That information led me to University Park and to my current role.
Q: So it seems you were meant to do this. Is there a favorite part of your job?
I feel so lucky to love what I do; it would be hard to pick favorites, but some of the things I like most are the people I get to work with – my colleagues and our volunteers. They are all so dedicated and happy to be there, and that is so great. I also really like watching the seasons change and setting up the holiday lights at Gring’s Mill each year. Actually just the surroundings I work in, the beauty of this area, is just breathtaking no matter the time of year.
Q: What’s happening for you during these cold, gray days?
We are actually quite busy planning for warmer days – festivals, history day camps, events – and by the end of February everything will be lined up. We are closed until May 1st, but we’re hard at work with volunteer training, working on our collections, park maintenance and gearing up for spring. So my mind is on warm, sunny days, which helps when the weather is not so nice, but the park – the scenery – is beautiful whether it’s green or covered in white.
