Work: Retired Professor of English
Spouse: William
2 Children
2 Grandchildren
Info update 04/20/2022

After high school I went to UMD for a year and then finished college at the U of M. From there I went to Claremont Graduate School in California for my Master's and after that taught English at Western Illinois University for four years. At the University of Massachusetts I worked on my Ph.D. in English and also taught freshman English as a teaching associate. I met my future husband Bill there, and we spent many idyllic days hiking through the New England woods and biking along little roads. After four years we moved to the Washington, D.C., area so Bill could go to graduate school. A big attraction was nearby Chesapeake Bay. The first thing we did was buy a 25-foot sailboat that we could sleep on. We spent our first summer cruising around the bay, swimming off the boat, and crabbing. I got a job teaching at what is now the College of Southern Maryland and taught there for thirty-seven years, until retiring three years ago. Now I do a little tutoring with Northern Virginia Literacy Council.

The big joy of our lives has been our children. Myra was born in 1976 and Steve in 1980. Unfortunately our baby Kevin, born in 1984, died after two weeks. For many years we were immersed in the kids' activities, especially swimming. When they got older, we went canoeing and kayaking on many of the rivers of Virginia. After somewhat difficult adolescences, they finished college and have very good jobs in the area. Myra is married and has two little boys. We love being grandparents.

Our interest in Irish music morphed into an interest in bluegrass music and then the old-time mountain music of Appalachia. About ten years ago, we started going to the Old-Time Fiddlers' Convention in southern Virginia, where the old-time songs originated, and now we spend a week there each summer. Although Ruth Austin and I had been planning our trip to Europe since the tenth grade, I ended up going with my sister Kathy. With Europe on $5 a Day and Eurail passes clutched in hand, we got off the plane, reassembled our bikes, threw on the saddlebags filled with two extra outfits (dresses!), tin cup and tin plate, and rode into Paris to start our three month grand tour of Europe's youth hostels and cheap pensions. Ever since then, I've had a yearning to travel.

When the kids were young, our vacations were mainly spent visiting our relatives in Minnesota, Florida, and Boston (could be worse), but as we grew older, we realized that we should travel while we could. We took some great birding trips to southern Texas and Arizona and went to the national parks of Utah and to Native American sites in the Southwest. Lately we have gone to Malta, in the Mediterranean; to Turkey, where, like Dave Wagner, I especially liked Ephesus; to Morocco, where we rode camels to see the sun rise over the Sahara; to Greece, where we marveled at the beauty of the sculpture, to Guatemala, where we climbed the massive Mayan ruins, and to Costa Rica, where we saw about thirty kinds of hummingbirds and, with a guide, slogged through the jungle far from any paths.

My main pastime for about fifteen years has been working as an archeology volunteer with Fairfax County. I've dug at numerous prehistoric and historic sites, including Mt. Vernon, which we live near, and also have had the chance to dig at two of the most important sites in the country, important because they're so old, 13,500 and 16,500 years old. Even reading and thinking about archeology is exciting to me.
Despite some health issues in the past-cancer and a stent for me and a heart attack for Bill-we are in good shape now and lead a good life, close to our family, in a place with lots to do, and near a city that's perfect for political junkies like us.