My Catlow Connection

For the first years of my life, the Wright Marshall Catlows were family friends in Trout Valley, Cary. My parents were close with Jan and Wright Catlow, and we did the things that family friends do. Below is a birthday party at the Catlows, with daughters Diann and Chris in the back, and my sister Karen (center front) and me (lower right, stuffing cake in my mouth). Martha Anderson, on the left, is a lifelong friend. Our moms, Connie [Murphy] and Jan, would take turns watching each other’s kids, so the other couple could get away for a vacation.

Jan and Wright moved to Winter Park in the mid-1960s to buy and run Beaver Ski Chalet and Guest Ranch. I hadn’t connected with my Catlow friend Diann until 2014, for our Special 2015 Sesquicentennial Edition. We hadn’t spoken for 50 years. Chris, her sister, had passed away. I, too, had lost my younger sibling.

For this issue, I reconnected with Diann and flew to Colorado to see her. The second leg of my flight, a regional jet out of Denver, could not land due to wind shear near the ground. Ironically, Diann and her husband Tim saw my plane circle overhead a few times while walking their dogs near the airport. Our flight zipped back to Denver over the snow-covered Rockies, and Diann and I settled for a Zoom call a few days later. It was great to catch up.

Our cover story celebrates a century of theater and entertainment from the vision of Wright Raymond Catlow back in the mid-1920s and looks forward to another hundred years thanks to Julianne and Brian Long and the Catlow 1927 Foundation.