Good People
5questions Story and photo by David Moore
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ecky Hallman wasted no time high-tailing it out of town after finishing Guntersville High School, packing her few possessions and all of her youthful creativity with her. When she moved back in 2008 as Becky Scheinert, she unpacked not only a husband and far more possessions than she left town with, but also a broadened scope of creativity begging for release. She soon joined the Mountain Valley Arts Council, where creativity is a buzzword. A long-time board member, last year she served as president (again) during the group’s 50th anniversary. Becky was 15 when MVAC was organized, and the fledgling group of volunteers would soon have its first effects on her life and creativity. But more on that shortly. Her dad, Charlie Hallman, was an administrator with the Army’s correspondence program at Redstone Arsenal and raised herds of cows and a big garden on their farm in Warrenton. Her mom, Edith, taught English and typing at Guntersville High. “At one time she probably taught half of the town how to conjugate verbs,” Becky says. Along with her older sisters – Lucy Russell now lives in Aub, Germany, where she’s a retired historical musician; Vicki Robb is a retired real estate agent in La Jolla, California – Becky lived in a household that stressed education. “It wasn’t, ‘Do you want to go to college?’” Becky says. “It was, ‘When you go to college …’ And woe be onto us if we conjugated verbs incorrectly.” Later in college, Becky would mail home letters only to have them returned with grammar corrections Edith made with a red pencil. “She took a hard line.”
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s a kid, Becky loved to read …
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FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2021
Becky Scheinert
With a life tied to creativity, it’s little surprise that she was drawn to MVAC especially when it came time to do chores on the farm. “I got into a lot of trouble for reading,” she laughs. “I read under the bed covers and in the barn and mimosa trees.” But Edith also encouraged creativity. In fact, she apparently passed on creativity genes to Becky, who produced art before she could spell. She especially enjoyed drawing detailed pictures of people, buildings, whatever – and Edith kept her supplied with drawing paper. “Mother did not allow her typing students at school to wad up paper with mistakes,” Becky recalls. “Instead, she made them drop paper in the trashcans flat so she could bring it home – instant art supplies! Just turn it over and there’s a clean sheet of paper to use.” Her sisters were older and her parents worked, so she was a bit of a young loner. “Growing up in a 50-acre cow pasture with few people to talk to sparked a welldeveloped imagination,” Becky grins. “I’d run away from my babysitter and go to the cow pasture. She would look out with binoculars to see where I was. She could usually spot my fuchsia umbrella.” For nine years Becky was in 4-H. As a sophomore in 1970 – with no premonitions of her future – she joined the Mountain Valley Singers, the formation of which was the first big project of the newly founded Mountain Valley Arts Council. As a teen at Guntersville High, she found it all too easy to stay out of trouble. “I was a straight up kid. No one invited me to fun parties or the get-introuble parties. I was a teacher’s kid. “When I graduated from high school, I looked around and wondered why people were crying,” Becky adds. “When I left town, I was not looking behind me.”
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t Auburn University, Becky struggled with all the options she had for a course of study. Creativity pulled her toward “pure” art, but her practical side
looked ahead to landing a job. She ended up with a BFA in visual and commercial arts. After graduating in 1976, she did freelance advertising for various ad agencies and worked for EBSCO Media in Birmingham. That lasted until the next year when she got a freelance job with an agency that was re-branding a company that bought a half-dozen Jack’s restaurants. Becky had marketing ideas about how to stand out from the competition. “They didn’t listen,” she says. “They told me not to worry about the marketing and, just paint some colors.” Ticked off, she returned to Auburn full time and earned an MBA. “I didn’t want to be a starving artist,” Becky laughs. “My favorite numbers have dollar signs.” Returning to Auburn is also how she re-met her future husband, Ken Scheinert. They had first met in a marketing class while she was an undergrad, but nothing came of it. As a graduate living in Nashville, he returned to Auburn for a frat party while she was working on her master’s degree, and they met again at a bar. They recognized each other and a year later, after earning her MBA, they married in 1978. Becky moved to Nashville with Ken where they both worked for South Central Bell. Their son Brett was born there; second son, Daniel was born in Birmingham after the Scheinerts moved in 1985 to nearby Shelby County.
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ecky worked in marketing for the former Lucent Technologies, but much of her creativity was funneled into their community … designing lobby decorations, programs and T-shirt logos for various programs, and singing in the Cahaba Chorale and at church. At home when the kids were small, she’d get a big piece of paper and markers and start drawing something. “Then I’d stop and pass it to the first
