Cathie Meetre is Greenbelt’s 2024 Outstanding Citizen, as announced at the Labor Day Festival’s Opening Ceremonies on Friday, August 30, selected for her contributions toward preserving three iconic Greenbelt institutions. She applied her superb organizational skills, keen intellect, passion for learning and tenacity with liberal doses of humor and humility to address major challenges faced by the Greenbelt News Review, the Greenbelt Farmers Market and the Greenbelt Co-op Supermarket.
Getting Here
Born and educated in England, Meetre taught math in Newfoundland, Canada, from which she was lured to Greenbelt in the 1970s by future husband Rick Meetre, whom she met during his Newfoundland vacation. They first encountered the Greenbelt spirit living in a Springhill Lake apartment in 1973, where Rick said they received the News Review and “were impressed by the community spirit clearly displayed in the paper – which we did not forget.”
They began raising their daughters Lisa Psaromatis, Sarah Liska and Jenny Meetre while Meetre began contributing to her new community. Five decades later she is still at it.
Early contributions included the GHI Nominations and Elections Committee, Labor Day Festival Committee and as a Girl Scout Brownie troop leader. Some remember her as a babysitting co-op member. She was a Greenbelt Nursery School aide and St. Hugh’s School math teacher before working at Goddard Space Flight Center. Earning a computer science master’s degree while at Goddard, Meetre organized the efforts of contractor scientists, mathematicians and engineers on NASA missions and wrote contract proposals for her employer and later for clients of her own small business.
Organizing is a constant theme in Meetre’s life. News Review Editor Mary Lou Williamson said she has a “knack for finding wrinkles in a system and wanting to make it work better.” Also ever-present are her wonderful writing skills, dry British wit, generous hospitality and the boundless energy that keeps her going with her many activities, interests and large family.
Greenbelt News Review
After earlier stints, Meetre rejoined the News Review in 2011 and was elected president of the board of directors in 2015. Readers may appreciate the News Review on their doorstep every week, without knowing what it takes to make that happen. Amid challenges in 2015, including increasing production costs, Meetre led the board to think about the paper as a business.
She applied business experience, technical expertise and energy to update electronic capabilities for the paper’s production and business functions. She identified the risks of out-sourcing the paper’s layout, leading to bringing the layout process in-house. This offered paid work to Greenbelters, made production more efficient and reduced the late-night hours some volunteers had been working. Meetre’s technical skills offered ways for staff to work remotely during the 2020 pandemic lockdown, and the paper never missed an issue for Greenbelters who appreciated the comfort of getting their weekly community news throughout that difficult time.
When much of Greenbelt East abruptly lost doorstep distribution of the News Review in 2022, Meetre noticed. It took her some time and a bit of finagling, but the weekly newspaper returned to those doorsteps.
Meetre led the move from black-and-white to color printing at a lower cost with a new printing company. Since the paper depends on ad revenue, she created electronic tools to smooth the transfer of ads to the layout team and reduce errors in ad accounting, along with tools to manage billing.
She established – with others – the Greenbelt Archive Project to preserve in a digital archive the deteriorating paper issues published since 1937. Meetre formed a 501c(3) nonprofit to seek grants and secured funding, office space, equipment and University of Maryland Libraries’ support. Past and current issues of the Greenbelt Cooperator and Greenbelt News Review are now accessible online to social historians, urban planners, Greenbelt residents and anyone interested in this iconic planned community.
Meetre is always looking for grants and writing proposals, a theme echoed in her Farmers Market and Co-op service. Williamson said she gathers ideas and presents them well. Other News Review examples include a Covid recovery grant to address financial losses and a 2024 grant to upgrade the website for easier maintenance and to better enable advertisers to size, price, submit and pay for classified and display ads online.
Williamson said that during Meetre’s tenure, the board became more cohesive, actively contributing to understanding challenges, deciding how to address them and acting on their decisions. She described Meetre as ensuring everyone can contribute their ideas. Meetre demonstrated this during a 2023 profile of the News Review, saying, “Innovative ideas are successful only because the staff is brave enough to try them. … All the staff provide leadership, since our democratic nature means anyone who suggests an idea can be a leader.”
Meetre’s service has ensured an attractive, readable newspaper, reduced the effort and cost to produce it, increased its ability to attract and retain volunteers and enables all Greenbelt residents to see themselves in their community newspaper. She has positioned the paper to continue serving Greenbelt for the next 87 years and beyond, with independent local news to equip city residents for informed public debate and decision making, the backbone of democracy.
Farmers Market
Meetre used her organizational skills to improve the Greenbelt Farmers Market operation in its early days and served as board member and treasurer from 2013-2021. She obtained county occupancy permits annually, wrote grant applications, organized accounting, digitized the market layout (for occupancy permits and weekly market planning) and wrote News Review stories to entice shoppers. She opened her house for business meetings and still honors volunteers with a yearly party.
Co-op’s Leaky Roof
In 2018, Meetre, Greenbelt Co-op Supermarket board member Dorrie Bates and volunteer Steve Skolnik, understanding the dire condition of the Co-op roof, created the Rays on the Roof project to provide a new roof with a solar array. Meetre promoted the project in the News Review, raising over $400,000 in matching funds from Co-op members to qualify for a $350,000 state grant. The array began operating in early 2021, producing electricity for the store, dramatically reducing its utility bills and offsetting nearly 1.3 million pounds of carbon dioxide, not to mention avoiding spending thousands of dollars to replace food and merchandise damaged by rain pouring through the roof. The project enabled the Co-op to become more financially secure and helped Greenbelt retain one of its most important businesses in the heart of the city.
Spare Time
In her spare time, Meetre doesn’t stop organizing. She’s known for renovating houses, organizing group ski vacations and planning international biking trips with Rick, not to mention the marching kazoo band in 1980s Labor Day parades. She coordinated a 2020 effort that sewed and distributed thousands of free Covid masks. She loves cooking and socializing, hosting volunteer appreciation parties, Christmas dinners, New Year’s Day open houses and regular dinners for family including three daughters, 14 grandchildren, three great-grandchildren (with another on the way) and in-laws. Not stopping there, she has started taking piano lessons in recent years.
Appreciation
Consider the breadth of Meetre’s contributions and the scope of her impact. Between the News Review, the Farmers Market and the Co-op, her efforts may have touched every Greenbelter. Beneficiaries know little of how the Farmers Market came to be available for them, what it took to fund Rays on the Roof to preserve the Co-op’s service to Greenbelters, or the business and technical acumen it takes to ensure they can read the News Review into the future. Meetre downplays her role, describing her activities as team efforts in which others were key to success. But thinking about the vision, leadership and hours this amazing woman has donated to these causes, and the passion, enthusiasm, humor and modesty she brings to them, makes it easy to agree that Cathie Meetre is an Outstanding Citizen of Greenbelt.
Meetre was further recognized by proclamations presented by or on behalf of Greenbelt’s mayor and city council, Prince George’s County Councilmember Ingrid Watson, the Maryland state legislative delegation and U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen. These were accompanied by gift certificates and gifts from Cedars of Lebanon, East Pearl Asian Bistro, Generous Joe’s, Greenbelt Barber and Stylist, Greenbelt Co-op Supermarket, Greenbelt Exxon, Greenbelt Liquors, Jersey Mike’s, New Deal Café, Silver Diner, Three Brothers and Wood’s Flowers and Gifts at the ceremony, which was sponsored by the Greenbelt Rotary Club, Chesapeake Education, Arts and Research Society (CHEARS), Franklin Park owner Fieldstone Properties, The SPACE and Prince George’s Community Federal Credit Union.
