By R.V. Baugus
After some 48 years of dedicated service to the world of public assembly venue management before his retirement in February 2020, it is fair to say it takes something out of the ordinary to pull the wool over the eyes of Courtney Dyer, CVE. That being the case, score one for Jim Finch, CVE.
“I was shocked,” Dyer said in recalling when Finch phoned to tell him that he was the 2023 recipient of the Convention Center Lifetime Achievement Award, which will be presented to Dyer at VenueConnect in Pittsburgh. “I was like, do you have the right person? There are plenty of worthy people out there. Why me? I was very humbled by it. I wouldn’t have put myself in that category. There is a lot of strong leadership in IAVM and over the years I have gotten to know them.”
It was somewhat natural that Dyer was taken aback by the good-news call from Finch, who serves on IAVM’s 
Convention Center Committee. Dyer, after all, took a break from his retirement to return to the Virginia Beach Convention Center to help on routine audit work, something he was very familiar with from his time at the venue. As his work wound down, Dyer said that the position was open and he thought that Finch was calling to inquire about the job.
“I have been helping on the audit until they find a replacement,” Dyer recounted. “When I saw the number come up on my phone and Port St. Lucie, I thought, that’s where Jim Finch is. I wonder if he is calling about the job. He said, you might know why I’m calling. I said, I think I might and when he said it was about the award, I said, well, that’s not what I thought!”
Dyer is especially well known for service in his beloved Region 5, where he has served on just about every position on the board, on committees, and hosted a couple of region meetings and a couple of mid-manager meetings over the years.
“I have tried to involve as many people as possible in positions on the board that’s going to guarantee it keeps peopled engaged, informed, and moving the organization forward,” Dyer said. “It was a great learning experience to host a meeting and I’ve helped others do it. I have gained a lot of perspective from a lot of people in Region 5.”
Dyer is that extremely rare individual who has worked his entire career in the same town he was born – Virginia Beach. He began in 1972 “pouring Cokes and popping popcorn at the snack bar at the Municipal Auditorium at the Virginia Beach Dome, the Virginia Beach Civic Center.”
Dyer spent 25 years working his way up to general manager at the Virginia Beach Pavilion before spending another 15 years as general manager at the convention center. He is proud of the opportunity he had to serve on the design and construction and working with the ownership team when the convention center was being built.
“I represented the owner and built this $206 million facility,” he said. “I’ve really enjoyed my career and had an opportunity to run a performing arts theater that was part of the Pavilion. I had an opportunity to run a soccer stadium for a few minutes as an ancillary thing when I was building the new convention center. My IAVM experience helped out in all of those areas, and all of those areas helped me get my CVE.”
Dyer’s career, thus, covers several venues with one employer. Again, this is very rare in a profession that contributes mightily to U-Haul shareholders.
“That’s kind of unusual today,” Dyer said. “I did spread that around with a number of different venues. I guess between the three buildings, the theater and the stadium, I got exposed to a bit more. I’m kind of a hometown guy. I was born and raised here, commuted to school, drove back and forth and say I tried to squeeze four years into seven. I was working full-time and went to school part-time.”
As for Dyer’s “first” retirement in February 2020, it was only natural to wonder if that was due in any part to the COVID-19 pandemic that took off one month later. It wasn’t.
“I told my boss a year before that my time was up here, I’m almost done,” Dyer said. “The retirement party they had for me was one of the last events (before the pandemic). We didn’t know it was coming. My last day in the office had been sometime at the end of January.”
The hometown hero gets to take one more major curtain call in Pittsburgh when Dyer gets an award where the word “lifetime” is appropriate within its title. Dyer has given a lifetime to the world of convention centers, and it is now only fitting that world give back to Dyer and all he has meant to it.
