Story by Gay Lyons with Submitted Photography
Casey Fox, Director of Development for the Big Ears Festival, went from performer to librarian to fundraiser, a role she said she discovered was “a good fit for me.”
The Crossville native acted at the Cumberland County Playhouse from fourth grade through high school. After high school, she worked there as a professional, playing the role of Denise in “Smoke on the Mountain,” a well known Playhouse production, performing on the road, including a performance at the Bijou Theatre.
“During that time I got to learn banjo, mandolin and upright bass,” said Fox. “I already played guitar and sang and danced.”
Fox continued doing community theatre while majoring in medieval history at Tennessee Tech. She came to Knoxville to attend graduate school in UT’s medieval program. “But I realized academia was not where I wanted to be,” she said.
In 2009, she moved to New Orleans for a couple of years. “That’s where I started working in libraries,” Fox said. “I was always bookish and loved libraries. It was an interesting time to go there. The library branch I worked at had been destroyed by Katrina in 2005, so it was in a trailer. I saw what an important role libraries play in a community. People were checking out books, but they were also applying for FEMA. It was a community center.”
In 2010, Fox returned to Knoxville where she was Children’s Room Assistant at Lawson-McGee Library and went back to graduate school to earn a Masters in Library Science.
Fox met her husband, Jesse Mayshark, while working in the Children’s Room. “When he ‘photo bombed’ a photograph I took in Krutch Park in January 2011, I recognized him as the cute dad in the Children’s Room,” she said. “I assumed he was married, but then I saw that he was a participant in the Friends of Literacy’s Bachelor Auction and realized ‘that cute guy’s single,’ so I emailed him. After we communicated for a while he asked me out for drinks at The Public House. We got married in February 2014–on the same day as our first date.”