by Paul Gibb
Which of our members is a smiling, outgoing, musically-gifted person who found BVUUF in 2016 after election – and has never left? Who has had careers that include working for Microsoft, being a founder and leader of a theater company in Louisville, running a voice studio in her home, and teaching both theater and music at a middle school in Boulder?
Of course I’m talking about Amy Austin, whom we all have seen singing wonderful solos and leading hymns during Sunday services at BVUUF.
She was born in Syracuse NY. Her dad worked for GE and was transferred around the country, so the family spent time in California, Florida, and western Massachusetts. Interestingly, her husband Paul went to a rival high school and Amy attended football games between the two schools never knowing that her future husband was on the field.
Amy grew up in an alcoholic home and that has affected her whole life. Her mother got sober when Amy was 15 and was sober the rest of her life, passing away at age 63. She describes her mother as an extremely intelligent woman. “She was a really nice person, a great friend to have, very supportive, but not jovial and outgoing like I am.”
Her father, she says, was more outgoing than her mom and played clarinet, piano, guitar, banjo, saxophone and harmonica. He loved folk and bluegrass music. That’s one reason she loves to hear Pete Wernick play
Her childhood religion was Methodist, but when Amy was nine the family moved to Massachusetts. Her parents said they didn’t want to go to church anymore. Amy decided to keep attending and she walked a mile by herself to get to a Methodist church every Sunday until she was around 18. She says, “I always felt a call to be in a spiritual community. There have been times when I wasn’t in a one, but I always came back to it.” She and Paul were members of St. Ambrose Episcopal Church for many years, but Amy left because was looking for a spiritual home beyond Christianity.
Amy went off to college thinking she wanted to be a teacher, but didn’t care for it at the time and dropped out. She moved to California and became involved in the high tech business around 1980. In 1982, she became one of the earliest employees of Microsoft. Microsoft wanted her to move up to Seattle, but she decided against it. She says, “That was when I met Paul. If I had gone to Seattle I would have a lot more money, but I wouldn’t have Paul and all that money wouldn’t have been worth it. That was a good tradeoff for me.” She got a job in high tech sales, and she and Paul were married in 1987 and moved to Colorado because Paul wanted some place where he could start his chiropractic practice and they could afford to buy a house.
After having her first child in 1989, she decided to stay home with the kids and had her second child in 1994. That was when she got involved in theater and helped start the CenterStage Theater Company in Louisville, which is still running today. The first play she directed was the Wizard of Oz and her daughter Emily was Dorothy and her dog was Toto. She would continue a directing career for 25 years.
At the age of 47, she decided to go back to college and get a degree in music performance. This would eventually lead to her starting a voice studio and teaching music and musical theater at Summit Middle School in Boulder. She loved her work, but was getting ready to retire. Paul’s and Amy’s home was destroyed in the Marshall Fire in 2021, so she retired from Summit a semester earlier than planned.
How did she get to BVUUF? “I knew about BVUUF,” she says, “because a former music director there had asked me to sing there a few times as a guest soloist, and so I knew what the community was like. After the 2016 election I really needed to be around some like-minded people, and I cried every service I attended for the first couple of months. People were so kind to me. I joined in February 2017, got involved with the music the next fall and have really been involved in that. “I love BVUUF and am so grateful for the community and how it has brought me to a place where I feel there is hope.”
As for the Marshall Fire, here is what Amy has to say: “I was home with my dog. My daughter, her now fiancé and their dog were also there. We knew there was something going on, but we didn’t know how serious it was. My son drove over from his apartment in Louisville and told us we needed to evacuate. He had learned about the fire on Twitter. We left within a few minutes, but it never occurred to me that this fire would burn down my house completely. I did grab some pictures and take them out. I was sad that I didn’t get our wedding album, but the wedding is such a small part of a good marriage, so I have the good marriage even though I don’t have the wedding album. In one night, we lost our home, everything we owned, and I lost both my job and my voice studio.”
“I tend to be a person who always looks at both sides of a circumstance. Of course it’s been devastating to lose everything, but I’ve found that there isn’t anything that I lost that I can’t live without. I will say that I am so grateful for the Fellowship, because it became our only home right after the fire. Even after we moved around a few times, the Fellowship was where we could go where people loved us and supported us. I’m eternally grateful for that. People brought us dinner every other day for two months. It was such an incredible help. I’m so deeply grateful for this group of people who truly care for one another.”
Paul and Amy were fortunate to have good insurance, as well as support from friends, friends of friends, complete strangers, Louisville and Boulder County. Paul’s and Amy’s new house is under construction and will be a passive, energy efficient home with metal siding as a fire mitigation factor.
Published July 13, 2023
