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| February 2018: Grace at the Kitson Arts Alliance Valentine's Day celebration where she serves as board secretary. |
Please describe your career.
I am semi-retired as of early 2016. I was a customer-service representative for eight years for TMG Health, an internationally known provider of back office operations for the Medicare/Medicaid health plan industry. Previously, for 17 years I was a news reporter, photographer and copy editor for several daily and weekly newspapers in Northeastern Pennsylvania. I received 10 individual and team first- and second-place awards from the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association during that time. I also taught high school (German and earth science) for 11 years. As board secretary of the Kitson Arts Alliance (KAA) in Tunkhannock, I produce written copy for our website, tourism publications and a newsletter. I’m also listed with KAA as a Native American beadwork artisan and traditional Native American Storyteller and freelance multicultural educator. (My family is of Lenape descent; I am affiliated with the Accohannock Wolf Clan of the Delmarva Peninsula.) I sell my beadwork and tell stories at Native American cultural festivals in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland, and vend at area craft shows. I also use my writing skills volunteering for the Wyoming County Emergency Management Agency, on its public information team and its Local Emergency Planning Committee.
Where have you lived since graduating?
Where have you lived since graduating?
I live in Tunkhannock PA, the county seat of rural Wyoming County, northeastern Pennsylvania. Previously I lived in several small rural towns in Luzerne County PA, the home of the infamous “Kids for Cash” scandal involving corrupt Luzerne County juvenile court officials in 2009. I actually had moved there right after graduating from Wilkes College – just in time to lose everything in the 1972 flood caused by Tropical Storm Agnes. I also lived for a summer at a resort in Kent County, southeast England, participating in an international work exchange program, and used my foreign language skills as a German and Russian interpreter. .
What was your sense of community in your class/in the school at NPHS?
I enjoyed working with the faculty and staff in many capacities with school publications, stage productions and office work, but wasn’t too close to many classmates.
What experiences in high school, positive or negative, helped to shape you as a person?
What was your sense of community in your class/in the school at NPHS?
I enjoyed working with the faculty and staff in many capacities with school publications, stage productions and office work, but wasn’t too close to many classmates.
What experiences in high school, positive or negative, helped to shape you as a person?
It feels like a miracle that I even survived my terrible toxic teens, both at school and at home, thanks to harassment by certain classmates about things that were none of their business. Continually laughing at or picking on someone is a form of abuse and bullying, which can leave lasting scars on a person’s soul. People who are “different” do not “deserve to be picked on.” I have also learned to be strong, that to be “different” is not a mortal sin, and those who tormented me had absolutely no idea who I really was or what I had to survive. Some of these experiences helped make me a more understanding teacher and very much more aware of how students’ personal lives affect their school work. And I learned to speak up for myself.
What is your fondest memory of your years at NPHS?
I saw education at NPHS as an intellectual buffet restaurant.I really enjoyed having so many opportunities to take a wide variety of courses and participate in the many extra-curricular activities: Drama Club and dramatic honor society (National Thespians) productions, both on stage and backstage; the Senior Play with a small character part and as assistant student director along with Cathy Lynd; National Honor Society; producing the news segment of “Canuck Corner” (the school radio show on AM radio station WCTC) during my junior year; many positions withTunlaw and the NPHS News Service, published in the Courier News; the literary magazine Canuckling; office assistant; reading the morning announcements and the German Club.
What was the craziest or stupidest thing you did in high school?
What was the craziest or stupidest thing you did in high school?
Now it can be told: in 8thgrade,a friend who shall remain anonymous and I set off a bunch of small string-mounted “popper” firecrackers in front of Ms. Hanson’s classroom door during change of classes. We then disappeared into the crowd in the hall and never got caught.
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| Official graduation photograph from Wilkes College in 1972 |
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