Remembering Carrie Elisabeth (Wicks) McGarry
May 23, 1980 to July 1, 2026
By Anthony Chase
Buffalo's theater community lost one of its own this summer. Carrie Elisabeth Wicks McGarry, Carrie Beth to everyone who loved her, CB to the friends who knew her longest, died suddenly and unexpectedly at 46. I knew her personally, across the theater chapters of her working life, and I am still absorbing that she is gone.
Those who knew her tell the same kind of stories: an appetite for adventure, an eye for design, a gift for making a room feel more alive the moment she walked into it. She had a reputation for being funny, warm, and completely unafraid to be silly, and for a laugh that pulled everyone else into whatever joke she was in on. Among her closest friends she picked up the nickname “Tiny General,” equal parts affectionate and accurate. When Carrie Beth took over a room on her best days, she could set it ablaze with talent, smile, and heart.
She trained at the Kiptom Dance Center and then at the University at Buffalo, where her teacher Tom Ralabate remembers spotting the spark in her early: a rare combination of intelligence, curiosity, and focus. She earned her B.F.A. in Music Theatre with a dance minor in 2002, graduating summa cum laude as a University Honors Scholar, and danced as a featured soloist with UB's Zodiaque Dance Company. She trained for fifteen years in classical piano and seven in harp.
From there her career took her onto the road and onto some of this region's most storied stages. On the national tour of 42nd Street (2005 to 2006), she served as Female Swing, and understudy to Lorraine, as well as Dance Captain, which meant she was responsible for keeping the choreography intact across a seventy-city tour, teaching it to new cast members as they came aboard, and rehearsing the company back into shape city after city. She went on to play Zaneeta Shinn in two additional national tours of The Music Man. Closer to home, she built a run of credits at Artpark Mainstage: dance captain again on Swing! (directed by Lynne Kurdziel-Formato), Anybodys in West Side Story (directed by Bro. Augustine Towey), Virtue in Anything Goes (directed by Lynne Kurdziel-Formato), Patty Simcox in Grease (directed by Lynne Kurdziel-Formato), and a member of the ensemble in Blood Brothers (directed by David Grapes). And in 2008, she shared a stage at the Tralf with Grammy winner Terrance Simien and, according to some, stole the show.
Once her performing career wound down, she earned her M.A. in Arts Management from UB in 2008 and began a second calling. From 2007 to 2012 she was Development Coordinator at the Irish Classical Theatre Company, where she surpassed the company's contributed revenue goals five years running, while concurrently teaching as an adjunct instructor in UB's own Arts Management program. She sat on the Greater Buffalo Cultural Alliance's Steering and Planning Committees and helped lead the fight to restore government funding to thirty-three Erie County arts organizations. And this past fall, having recently moved back to the Buffalo area, she applied to lead the Irish Classical Theatre Company as its next Executive Director, writing that she wanted to honor the legacy of her friend and mentor Vincent O'Neill.
In Phoenix, where she also raised her children, she co-opened 9 The Gallery with her then-husband Sean McGarry and, later, co-founded FunWow LLC, curating more than sixty-five exhibitions over seven years and helping create pop-art pieces that traveled as far as Coachella and into private collections across three continents. Among those who knew her through that gallery a common theme emerges: that no matter how busy or hectic things got, she always made time to talk.
But by every measure, the center of Carrie Beth's life was her two children, Pepper and Soren. Those who knew her say her care for them was effortless and dutiful, full of warmth and quiet dedication, the kind of attention to detail that let her kids simply be kids without worrying about how things would come together. If you were in her circle, you were in her heart, and she showed that love through deep care and generosity, right down to handmade holiday gifts and gourmet treats for the people around her.
My own last memory of her is a happy one: her birthday celebration at the Richardson Hotel, an evening she and her partner, Christopher Young, hosted with real generosity and warmth, marking both her birthday and their love for each other in front of the friends closest to them. Javier and I will always treasure the pair of Faberge-style eggs she gave us that night, referencing a private joke between us, and one more small proof of her eye for beauty and her generosity.
Carrie Beth is survived by her partner, Christopher Young; her children, Pepper and Soren; her mother, Sharon; and the enormous circle of family, friends, students, and colleagues she gathered across a lifetime that touched a Buffalo dance studio, national tour buses, an off-Broadway green room, a theater office on Main Street, and a gallery floor in Phoenix.
A Celebration of Life will be held Monday, September 21, at 5:30 p.m. at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Lipsey Auditorium. Free parking will be available in the AKG underground garage.
Those unable to attend in person can join by Zoom:
Meeting ID: 827 5821 3373
Passcode: 440584
As Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote, in the line Christopher chose for her memorial: “I am a part of all that I have met.” Rest well, CB. Buffalo theater, and everyone lucky enough to know you, is better for having had you in it.
