Cathy Strong knows how to enjoy life

1970s State Desk reporter Cathy Strong is one broad who knows how to have fun.

That's Cathy on the right in the attached photo, as winner of the Best Hat award at the Otaki Race Meet in New Zealand. Otaki is about 40 miles from Wellington, where Cathy created the masters program in journalism at Massey University's campus, and about the same distance from the village beach home Cathy has a few miles from Wellington.

Cathy has snowboarded (good enough to be an instructor although she did crack her ribs doing that once) and water-skiied and kayaked (and gotten serious sunburn) in New Zealand, and she has joined another former 1970s State Desk reporter, North Canton Hoover High retired teacher Pam McCarthy, in a hot tub at their Boston reunion a few years back.

She slipped on a stairwell in 2009 and broke her foot during her three years teaching journalism in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. UAE is a federation of seven independent states in the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula.

She survived a 6.5 earthquake in Wellington, New Zealand.

She's been to Kenya and Tonga, and given journalism seminars in Taiwan.

She marries off her daughters and collects grandchildren, in that order. 

Cathy's daughter, Rebecca, and husband Dion, have three daughters and a son. Rebecca and Dion were married in 2005 in the tiny historic Pukekaraka St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Otaki, the town where Cathy won the Best Hat award. 

The church in Otaki is the oldest church in New Zealand and combines the Maori culture of 1850 and the Catholic culture of the French Marist missionary priests.

Rebecca is a hydrographer and lieutenant in the New Zealand Navy and her husband, Lt. Dion Hewson, is also a lieutenant in the Navy.  

Cathy and former husband Percy Strong also have daughters Amanda and Penelope. Amanda married Jeff Shima near Waiouru, New Zealand in 2013. They have a daughter. Penolope is an administrator at a Boston law firm  who will wed international patent attorney John Pint originally from Minnesota in about a month.

 
Cathy also is an excellent host, entertaining former BJ photographer Don Roese and his wife Maryann at her New Zealand home for a week or so, then flying up to Auckland to meet retired BJ State Desk assistant editor John Olesky and another former 1970s State Desk reporter, Paula Tucker, to take them on a tour of Auckland before Paula and John began their 3 weeks in New Zealand and Australia.

If you want to phone Cathy, her New Zealand office number is  021 2172112. Don't be surprised if you get her VoiceMail. This is one busy broad!