Mary Brookes and Heather Williams: Working at Celebration ’90

Manager of Volunteer Services, Heather Williams, and Office Manager, Mary Brookes, talk about how they are feeling about their work with Celebration ’90 within days of its opening.

Interviewer: “How’s the job been for you? What’s your experience?”

Williams: (laughs) “Ah-ha-ha…”

Interviewer: “How’s it been? Has it been all pleasure? Pain? A combination of both?”

Williams: “The job for me has been a combination of pleasure, pain, frustration, joy.  Uhm…it’s the best job. Because to me it isn’t a job, it’s something that I do with a great deal of love because I just, I really believe in Celebration ’90 and what we’re trying to do here. So. But, yeah, organizationally, you certainly are going to run into, you know, various problems. Scheduling and, and you know, all of a sudden we realize we need three extra people all of a sudden. Or ten extra. Or we’ve switched locations. You know, the daily stuff and getting it all organized is, can be frustrating, but it’s a frustration that is far outweighed by the fun.”

Brookes: (deep sigh) “I am in total burnout. I don’t know whether to murder a person that walks around this corner next or start to burst into tears.” (Mary laughs) “It’s pushing constantly.  But it’s going to be fabulous. It is going to be an experience of a lifetime, and this morning I woke up with that reality for the first time – that this is going to be absolutely magnificent. Nothing will beat it.

It’s something that if somebody had said to me two or three years ago ‘We want you to take this job and do it’ I would have said ‘I can’t do that. There’s no way I could do that. I’m not qualified and this city’s not ready for it.’  And I’m really glad to prove it wrong on both points.”