Neighborhood leaders lost a trusted ally in their ongoing fight against poverty, blight, gentrification and political irrelevance Friday when Eileen Rehberg, the longtime United Way of Greater Chattanooga director of community impact, retired.
“It has been my honor to serve you,” Rehberg wrote Everlena Holmes, the former Glenwood Neighborhood Association president who’s worked with Rehberg for years to support and develop leaders throughout Chattanooga’s mostly Black neighborhoods, last week. “I leave with the spirit of those efforts that shaped our community as well as what can be accomplished, working together.”
Rehberg, who came to the United Way in 2010 after working five years at the now-defunct Ochs Center for Metropolitan Studies, plans to move to upstate New York.
After the news began spreading, an email chain between neighborhood leaders and community activists revealed a shared sense of loss and achievement.
“I have never met a person as committed to community work as you, especially in helping others to develop underserved neighborhoods by not only providing them with the data needed but being there to address any questions or concerns regarding the data,” Holmes wrote Rehberg. “I and the neighborhood leadership, especially in East Chattanooga, will truly miss you.”