Katherine Hill:  

It's been a long strange road to where I am now. After graduation, I attended North Adams State College in the Massachusetts Berkshires for one semester, Ramapo College in Mahwah for one semester. I didn't like college much. My mother said I either had to get a job or go to secretarial school. I never touched a typewriter except in Mr. Colwell's typing class at Lakeside, but it sounded better than getting a job. So I went to Katharine Gibbs School in Montclair. Funny thing is, Tina Kajah, who graduated in 78 and lived on my street was also going to Katharine Gibbs, so we carpooled. It was actually pretty fun. After Gibbs graduation, I worked for Kelly Services until during a temp job at Union Carbide in Wayne, I was offered a full time job with them. The only thing was that the job was at their division headquarters in East Hartford, Connecticut. So I packed my bags and went to Connecticut. After a few years at Union Carbide, I got fed up and left taking a job at Mazak Corporation (they made large computerized milling machines and lathes for industries) just up the road. There I met a really cute guy from Erie, Pennsylvania who was taking a class to learn how to program our machines. One thing led to another and I packed up my bags and moved to Erie in 1985. Got married soon after that. After a few years, my cute husband decided he wanted to have girlfriends on the side. Well, I wasn't all that happy with that situation, so I moved out and got a divorce. It was friendly and honestly, I was ready anyway. He re-named me "Kate" and I've gone by that ever since. At the time, I was working at one of Erie's largest advertising agencies. The owner's son had an up and coming band named X-it and my friend and I began doing bookings and travel arrangements for them and pretty much became their chaperones. Their lead singer, Pat Monahan, later went on to be the lead singer of Train (Meet Virginia, Drops of Jupiter, etc.). Anyway, we worked closely with the band and got to be friends with the guys from Starlight Productions who we hired to do sound and lights for the band. They were from Jamestown, NY, about an hour east of Erie. I started dating the lighting guy, moved to Jamestown and got married. A year later in 1992, my daughter Kyla was born. She's an awesome kid and I love being with her. Right after I moved to Jamestown I got a job with the Chautauqua County Department of Social Services. The Welfare office has a high rate of burnout and after a year, I was ready to get out. Lucky for me, a job in the office of the County Landfill (yes, the dump!) opened up and I worked there for 6 years. In 1997, I was in a pretty serious car accident and had a mild brain injury. I went through a year of out-patient rehab. It took a long time for me to accept that I wasn't going to be the same person that I was before and to accept the new me. Funny thing is, I graduated near the top of our HS class and always thought I was pretty smart. After the accident, I found that I had a really hard time concentrating on anything and had a bit of short term memory loss and a complete loss of organizational skills. I couldn't play my violin anymore and learning any new instrument was next to impossible. I did find, however, that I could suddenly draw and paint and write. The rehab doctor figured that I had that talent before, but my "technical" side of my brain was stronger and overshadowed it. Now that my "technical" side is so diminished, my "artistic" side is all I have left! I've learned to love that side of me. I was having a bit of trouble multi-tasking at the office job at the Landfill, so I transferred down to the County Highway Department as a Senior Project Coordin...Expand for more