Resident Renee Capetta shares her story of settling down in her second home
By: STEPHEN FINN
The Sun
Renee Cappetta was a long time coming to Palmyra, but now that she’s here to stay, she couldn’t be happier. Given her life story, one could call her a citizen of the world, but Renee always knew she was meant for America.
“It was the happiest day of my life,” said Renee, recalling the end of a long fight to stay in the country she had come to love.
Renee teaches music at The Guitar Guild and Academy of Musical Arts located at 329 Cinnaminson Ave. Her father Robert, a lifelong musician who saw a need in the area for a music school, founded the Guitar Guild in 1977.
Renee’s parents met in Rome where she and her twin sister Marrissa were born. Robert moved his new family to Hainesport, but after only six months the new couple split up. Renee’s mother was unhappy living in the states so Robert relinquished custody of his two daughters and they went with their mother back to her home country of Australia.
“It almost broke his heart, but he knew that was what was best for his family,” said Renee.
Robert went through a tough time after he lost his family and remarried twice. Laura, his third wife, convinced him he needed to reach out to his estranged children, which he eventually did.
Renee was 27 when she received a call in the middle of the night.
“Dad didn’t know anything about time zones, it was like three o’clock in the morning,” said Renee. Her then partner told her someone claiming to be her father was on the phone. When Renee picked up, her father announced he was coming to visit.
After reconnecting, their visits became a yearly event. The Guitar Guild had been established for some time by this point, and Robert began insisting that Renee eventually take over for him.
Initially she turned him down, as she was already an established music teacher with students of her own. She was head of the classical guitar department at St. Hilda’s Anglican School for Girls in Perth, Australia.
She started thinking of Palmyra as a second home.
“Had I more presence of mind I think I would have realized my feet kept bringing me back here,” said Renee.
In 2015, she was due to leave for another of her visits when she received news her father had collapsed. When he went in for treatment, doctors discovered he had cancer.
Renee rushed to be with her father. After three weeks in the hospital with his daughters by his side, he passed away on Oct. 11 of that year.
“It was a terrible shock, so unexpected,” said Renee.
As an Australian citizen, she was only allowed to stay in the country for three months, so she eventually had to cross the border into Canada for a time before she could return to Palmyra. It was during this time she began to pull the music school together again. She still wasn’t sure whether she was staying or not but felt a responsibility for her father’s legacy.
Part of her grieving process was to keep busy, so she got to work repairing the school. It had aged a good deal since her father’s original renovations and there was plenty of work to be done bringing it back to life.
Before long, her father’s old students started reaching out to her wondering if she would take over their lessons. Although she wasn’t allowed to work in the U.S., she agreed to continue her father’s lessons provided any money that came in would go toward the renovations.
“This just felt right, so I made the decision to stay,” said Renee. “This is where the real battle began.”
She contacted a visa lawyer and began the long process of applying for citizenship.
“In the meantime, we had an election and everything went nuts. The state department, the immigration department, no one knew what was happening,” said Renee.
She submitted her paperwork at the beginning of 2017, and what is supposed to take six to eight weeks to process ended up stretching over a year. Meanwhile, Renee was still leaving every three months and her savings were drying up.
“I didn’t know if I’d be able to stay,” said Renee. “With the new administration, it was just chaos, everything was in disarray and no one knew what the rules were.”
Despite the seemingly insurmountable obstacles, she was determined to stay.
“I kept saying ‘I’m American! I know my accent is all dodgy but I’m a bloody American and this is my school!’” said Renee.
She finally received word that her first level of security had finally been cleared and she returned to the U.S. to await her interview with Homeland Security.
“That was the worst one. I was detained for half a day and grilled and questioned,” said Renee recalling the interview process.
After she was released, she was still unsure of what would happen next. She finally received a call one afternoon informing her she was to be sworn in as a citizen the following Tuesday. A day Renee would come to call “the happiest day of my life.”
“I was always a fish out of water in Australia, people could always tell. I always identified as an American first,” said Renee. “I’m home, I’m finally home.”
Renee currently resides at the Guitar Guild where she continues her father’s legacy bringing music to Palmyra. She is active in her community and recently helped pull together Palmyra’s first Porch Walk festival where many of her students performed outside of local homes.
If you are interested in taking lessons with Renee, contact the Guitar Guild at (856) 786–1234.
