Meet our Members - Valentine's Day Edition | A Story on a Couple that Believes in Serving
Sunday, February 5, 2023

TWO FOR THE ROAD

From Manhattan’s Lower East Side to the mountains of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, to sunny St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands and currently North East Georgia, Cathy O’Gara and Ed Sternberg have enjoyed 52 years of marriage and successful careers.


 
Cathy, editor of Pics ‘n’ Vids, has been a Rotarian since the mid 1990’s, with the Rotary Club of St. Thomas II as her mother club. Ed, an Assistant Governor in District 6910, had a grueling career schedule, first as a chef and restaurant general manager and afterwards as a commercial kitchen designer. The pace prevented him from becoming a Rotarian until after he retired.

Now they both members of the Rotary Club of Union County. Ed, a past president, has also been Foundation Chair. Cathy helps with public image and writes a regular Rotary column for Blairsville’s North Georgia News.

Cathy was still in college studying fine art at New York City’s Cooper Union when they first wed. She was fortunate to be granted a semester of independent study that allowed the couple to travel to Paris, where Cathy was a copyist at the Louvre and Ed took a course at Le Cordon Bleu; and to visit Cathy’s ancestral Irish homeland where she completed a project on the 9^th century Book of Kells. Back in New York city, Ed was chef at several posh restaurants on the Upper East Side while Cathy finished her degree.

They moved on to Massachusetts, but after a few years of living in snow country the couple decided to try life in the tropics and St. Thomas suited them very well. Ed started his island career as head chef of the venerable Bluebeard’s Castle Hotel and went on to manage L’Escargot Restaurant, a popular 250 seat eatery on the island’s Main Street. Along the way, he had developed concepts about what a commercial kitchen needed to run efficiently. When the opportunity to work with a Florida-based company doing sales and kitchen design throughout the Caribbean arose, Ed took it. The 1980s saw a surge of hotel growth in the Antilles and in addition to numerous area-wide projects, he designed or renovated the kitchens of almost every major hotel and numerous restaurants in the Virgin Islands.

In 1979, Cathy launched a graphic design studio, AdPro. The company was, until 2017, the longest-operating advertising service provider for islands’ tourism industry that relies heavily on print advertising. She was a founding member of the Advertising Club of the Virgin Islands and served as the Caribbean Liaison of the American Advertising Federation for eight years. In addition, her company was noted for producing publications ranging from the University of the Virgin Islands’ preforming arts center’s programs and advertising to one-off publications such as visitors guides and booklets. In 2002, Cathy jumped at an invitation to edit one of the island’s tourism magazines: Destination/USVI. For almost 20 years, she served as editor for this full-sized glossy from Ralston Publications that distributes an annual 240,000+/- copies to travelers boarding direct St. Thomas flights on American and United Airlines.

Cathy also made time to follow her dream as a painter and offered regular exhibitions of her art work. For many years she was part of a group of women artists at the Island Art Studio located in an historic building in a residential area of downtown St. Thomas. A few of Cathy's paintings are highlighted in this article.

Today, Cathy and Ed are enjoying mountain life and being Rotarians. They’re happy to be serving their community and proud to be part of the good work that Rotary does throughout the world.