Honorary Chairs

Catrine McGregor’s father, who was her mentor, her hero and her best friend, was a career Air Force officer. He taught her a profound respect for the men and women who have sacrificed their lives for our freedom. She is proudly serving as Honorary Chairperson of the National Afghanistan & Iraq Freedom Reigns Memorial as a thank you to her father, friends, and thousands of other Americans and coalition troops who have served in all branches of the Armed Forces.

McGregor’s exciting childhood was certainly instrumental in forming her love for people and adventure, key elements to her current incarnation as a Producer and Casting Director, author, radio talk show host and speaker. Born to an Air Force officer and a French mother, Catrine spent much of her childhood in France and Germany, where she became fluent in both languages and has also retained a working knowledge of Spanish, from summers spent on the Costa del Sol.

Much to her delight, Catrine’s family moved to Los Angeles the summer before she started college at Loyola-Marymount University.

A French major, Catrine’s work was often done more quickly than that of her classmates due to her being a fluent speaker, so she befriended the students and professors of the film department. Receiving her BA in French at the age of 19, Catrine continued her studies at Loyola-Marymount University, while teaching school full time at Beverly Hills Catholic School, where she taught Laura Dern and Bridget Kelly, whose famous father, Gene, encouraged her heavily to pursue her passion for the entertainment industry.

Two days after graduating with her dual Master’s Degrees in Film/TV and Education, Catrine was hired by Disney to produce the first training tapes made for the walking characters at Disneyland. From there, she worked on an array of projects as a freelance Producer, including two fascinating projects which sealed her yearning to work in the regional market. One film was a docu-drama – a look at the future called ‘Jupiter Menace,’ the other was a whimsical 3D project produced for a Six Flags Theme Park called ‘The Power Plant’ in the Baltimore Harbor, which filmed all over the country.

A relationship and love of the mountains took Catrine to Utah, where she worked as Vice-President of Development for Osmond Studios. She was asked to cast a film which famous local resident Robert Redford was producing, and Catrine’s casting company was launched with the film ’Promised Land,’ starring four unknowns at the time, including Meg Ryan, Kieffer Sutherland and Tracy Pollan (Michael J. Fox’ wife). Over the course of the next ten years, McGregor casting was involved in many exciting projects, including four IMAX films that took her all over the West, beautiful Zion Canyon and Kanab in Southern Utah, and breathtaking Hearst Castle. It was an IMAX film for Academy Award winning director Kieth (not a typo!) Merrill in the gentle Ozarks mountains that led to Catrine to move to Southern Missouri, where she continued to work as a casting director (in LA mainly), and where she began to develop a real, legitimate resource company for regional people just breaking into acting.

Catrine’s work continued to take her back to LA, and in 1996, she moved back and began actively casting. One of her favorite projects was an animated feature produced by NASA to encourage America’s youth to choose the sciences as a career. Some of the actors who participated in the project were John Travolta, James Earl Jones, Anne Archer and Tim Curry.

In 1999, Catrine was approached by the Utah based firm Access Software to return to Utah to produce and cast their extremely popular interactive game Tex Murphy. She did, and it won her two Cody Awards – the electronic media version of the Academy Award. McGregor Casting also continued to thrive, and Catrine, along with her partner Jeff Johnson, cast many wonderful projects – many for the Disney Channel – ’Luck of the Irish’, ’Double Teamed’ and ’Hounded’ to name a few. But her most memorable films – by far – were Salma Hayek and Danny Glover’s directorial debuts, ’Maldonado Miracle’ and ’Just a Dream,’ respectively. A member of the prestigious Casting Society of America (CSA), Catrine was also nominated to an Artio Award for her casting of the ’Firestarter’ TV pilot.

The year 2003 brought her to North Carolina to be near her aging parents. During that time, Catrine focused on being with them and taught acting seminars all over the country. She continued to develop her regional actors’ resource during that time as well. After the passing of her father in in 2005, Catrine resumed casting and has since become active in the North Carolina scene, but still continues to cast in LA. Catrine Through CatMac Productions, McGregor is in development on a Christian teen oriented film called As a Family, to be directed by actors Todd and Jimmy Bridges and on a wonderful horror/sci-fi film entitled Son of Shadows. CatMac Productions is also partners with Production Services in Paris, France and Idea Media in Lagos, Nigeria, which has several projects in development, including a street magic TV show entitled Abracadabra.

Captain Woodall has been a firefighter for the City of Raleigh, NC for over 24 years. He has received Firefighter of the Year honors twice in his career. Captain Woodall is the Chief of Operation’s for the North Carolina Fallen Firefighters Foundation, an organization that raised funds for and commissioned a life size memorial for the firefighters that died in the line of duty in North Carolina. After September 11, 2001, he was the official Liaison from North Carolina to New York. He worked with NC Commissioner Jim Long and the State Fire Marshals’ Office assisting fire department families after the World Trade Center tragedy. Since then he has been to New York 43 times.

In addition, Captain Woodall has been singing Elvis music most of his life. For the past ten years he’s been singing as a professional Elvis tribute artist. He’s written lyrics geared toward fire safety using familiar Elvis music. Andy gives back to the community by singing in hospitals, burn centers, rest homes, MDA, Lions Clubs, and assisted living communities. He has sung for the fire department families of FDNY that lost loved ones in the World Trade Center. He did this at Shea Stadium on July 4, 2003. He has performed on Bahamas Cruises and twice entertained the wounded troops at Walter Reed Hospital.

Dave Speicher is a Navy veteran. He is a freelance web designer, photographer, and self-proclaimed jack-of-all-trades. He is also, first and foremost, a true American Patriot. He proudly served six years in the United States Navy during the end of the Vietnam War years and beyond. One of his sons served with Marine Corps in Iraq and another with the Air Force in Afghanistan. His father was in the Navy during the Korean War, his uncles fought in both theaters of World War II and his paternal grandfather fought in France during World War I – the war to end all wars. He is also a not too distant relative of Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Dave’s great-grandmother was a Lewis.

Dave is a recent transplant to the Raleigh, NC area after living in St Charles, MO for several years. He was born in Indianapolis, IN where he lived for five years. His family then moved to Puerto Rico where he spent those important formative years. It was in PR that he developed a love for the ocean, art, and music which have guided him since. Speicher lived in Louisville, KY for several years, graduating from high school before joining the Navy in 1972. Several duty stations included Florida, Okinawa, and Scotland. Since then he worked in Information Technology for more than 20 years and has lived in KY, FL, MO, and now, NC. His goal is to eventually make it back to the beaches of Florida and perhaps even live on a boat. Dave is married to Lisa, and they have one “baby”, Shadow, a 14-year-old deaf and blind poodle.

Speicher became involved in the Freedom Memorials project as a way to honor a close friend, Pam Coakley, and her son, Sgt William Patrick Rudd, who was killed in action in Mosul, Iraq on 10-05-08. Sgt Rudd led a successful raid to take out a high-ranking Al Qaeda leader when he sustained small arms fire and died soon afterwards. Patrick’s sacrifice for America, and all of America’s fallen heroes, must be honored and remembered for generations to come.