For over three decades, one of the secret engines of Charlotte Latin School has been a pair of twin sisters working in facilities. Fay Lucas (on the right in the photo above), who has been at Latin for 33 years, is the Custodial Supervisor; Kay Rigo (a half-hour younger), who has been at Latin for 38 years, is the Events Coordinator for Set-Up. “Nothing happens on campus without the presence of Fay and Kay,” says Head of School Chuck Baldecchi. 

One tangible sign of their presence is the plaque with their names on the side of the Beck Student Activities Center (dedicated by the Foley family in 2020), adjacent to the current location of the Hawk Shop. But their impact on Latin extends much further: every day, the sisters not only keep the campus running, they do so with unfailing good cheer and commitment to excellence. Their remarkable tenure will come to an end this summer when they retire. “I’m grateful they dedicated their careers to Latin and changed a lot of students’ lives,” Baldecchi says. “We’re going to have to hire two or three people to replace each of them.”

In conversation, the sisters still enjoy each other’s company and cherish the lives they’ve lived, intertwined with Charlotte Latin. “From the outside, you don’t always see how deep the connections are,” Lucas says. “We might not have a good cover of a book, but we have a fantastic story inside.”

Do you have a favorite time of the year at Latin?

Fay Lucas: Probably fall, with the excitement of a new year: new students, new energy, new friends to make. And I love football too. 

Kay Rigo: I’m not going to lie — I love it when it’s the busiest, so probably April and May. It’s hard, but it makes me appreciate myself and how well I can do something. There’s many days I come in here thinking, How in the world are we going to get all this done? But when we walk out at the end of the day, we got it done.

What have you learned in your time at Latin?

Kay Rigo: I learned how to come out of my shell. I had always been quiet, in the background, and coming here, I had to step forward and interact more.

Fay Lucas: This place brought out the best in Kay.

Kay Rigo: Thank you. Now I’m too far forward — I have to rein myself in.

Fay Lucas: I’ve grown a lot here. I wasn’t as shy, but I’ve learned so much just by asking questions. More than I ever guessed — it’s true that any question is really not a dumb question, especially if your mind is throbbing and thirsting for it.

What are your plans after retirement?

Fay Lucas: A lot of time together. Even though we’re here together every day and we work out of the same office, we have different job duties. We’re going to have a lot of sister time together, and go back home for a little bit to take care of some of our siblings. We’re the youngest of six siblings that are full siblings, plus we have a younger half-brother.

Kay Rigo: We were raised by our grandparents. 

Fay Lucas: Our father died when we were 18 months old. And our mother died when we were, like, seven. We didn’t have the richest of upbringings, we didn’t have the poorest of upbringings, but we had some of the wisest. Our grandmother was a real stickler. We were always cleaning, and if we didn’t do it right, she’d say, “Once a task is first begun, never leave it ’til it’s done. Be the labor great or small, do it well or not at all.” Kay and I used to say, When we leave this house, we ain’t never going to clean again. So for us to be here in these jobs is ironic. But as I grew, I realized that it wasn’t ever about that one task, it was about every task that we tackled in our lives.

What were you like when you were in school?

Fay Lucas: We’re from a small town called Aberdeen, Ohio. Growing up, we were very sports-oriented: baseball, softball, track. Our school was small, so it didn’t offer everything Latin does, but we played any sport we could.

Kay Rigo: We weren’t very different growing up. We were always into the exact same things: we had the same style and the same likes and dislikes. When we started wearing glasses, she asked me to help pick out her glasses. Of course, I picked out what I liked. So then when I picked out glasses for myself, they were very similar.

How do your jobs overlap?

Fay Lucas: It’s hard to do one without the other. When you set up for an event, almost all of them involve food, so there’s cleanup along with that. I started in custodial for seven years in Lower School, and they used to ask me, “Hey, can you take a table over there?” At the beginning, it was once a week, but now it’s as many as 10 events in a day. Some can be as small as a table with 15 chairs, while others have a hundred tables with linens plus three tables for food. It’s a major operation that many people at the school don’t even know about. We used to rent tables and chairs for so many events, but when I realized how much money we were spending every year, I said, “This is crazy.” That’s how we grew our inventory — events like commencement led the demand, but then the whole school benefited from it.

Tell us something about your sister that most people wouldn’t know.

Fay Lucas: She’s a dynamite little package — and a little package of dynamite. People say, “Oh, she’s the sweet one.” But I get to see the explosions.

Kay Rigo: Fay has so much wisdom and smartness and drive — she can accomplish so much more than people realize. And I will tell you, from day one, Fay is nothing but all about Charlotte Latin School. I’m blown away by her because she doesn’t know how to stop. Retirement might be a little difficult for her.

The two of you must have been mentors to a lot of employees. 

Kay Rigo: Sometimes personalities in a department don’t click, but we still work together and get the job done because that’s what it’s about.

Fay Lucas: One time in my department, I was seeing some things going in the wrong direction, with people not getting along. As a leader, I said, how can I fix this? I went back to my grandma and her wisdom: when me and Kay fought and were mad at each other, that’s when she made us pull the closest together. So I thought, if this one’s complaining about that one and that one’s complaining about this one, I’m going to make them work together to see what the other one’s doing. They actually ended up becoming best friends.

How often do you get to connect with students?

Fay Lucas: Daily. I’m not a teacher or an administrator, but I’m still a parent, a mom, and a grandma. We’re watching out for these kids.

What do you do for fun when you’re not here?

Fay Lucas: We both love craft projects — and especially travel.

Kay Rigo: I love the water. I don’t have a favorite vacation place: I just like the experiences that I’ve had in those situations.

Fay Lucas: I lived in Georgia for six years and I never went to the beach, but when I came to North Carolina, Kay took me. One of my favorite trips was when we went to St. Andrews State Park on the Gulf Coast of Florida. When we came up over the sand dunes, with the mangroves and the birds, it was like a picture you see in a magazine. 

Why did you stay at Latin so long?

Fay Lucas: It was the families and the relationships that we built with everyone along the way.

Kay Rigo: The kids grew up, left, became adults, and now we’re seeing their kids.

Fay Lucas: We keep hearing everybody say, “You guys know so much. I don’t know what we’re going to do without you.” And it’s true, but there’s been a lot of teachers who have passed through these walls where people said the same thing. We’re going to try to leave as much knowledge as we can behind. We want people to put as much greatness as they can into everything that they do, the same way we did all these years.