Joan Biers:

I live in a small town in Pennsylvania 30 miles northwest of Philadelphia. It's the county seat and it's a vibrant town. We have wonderful library, three museums, one an art museum, a good movie house, so it's a cultured but not snooty town. I own an old house that was designed by a locally prominent architect and I can walk to everything. We are home to Delaware Valley College and we have lovely parks, one with a large lake for sailing. 

I have one son who lives about 9 miles away. I eloped the week I was to go to college (in 1960). My son was born 2 years later and when he was small I went back to college. Not a prestigious school.-Trident Technical College in Charleston, SC, Electronic Engineering, but I continued on at Villanova up here in Pennsylvania. 

Over the years, I worked in the engineering departments of large corporations-- Remington that ultimately became Unisys  and Decision Data (computer peripherals), Bridgeport-Textron (Computerized Numerical Controls), Astea International (Enterprise-Wide Software Applications), Environmental Tectonics (Aircrew Training Systems and the Disney "Mission Space" ride), and finally BAE ( Geo-spatial Information Systems). 

Now that I've retired, I took a part time job in a shop here in town selling silk dresses and beautiful jewelry. I do the window displays and I go to New York on buying trips.  I enrolled at Penn State University where I specialized in Asian cinema and other theater arts. Quite a change from engineering, but I love it.

I'm the Museum and Volunteer Coordinator at the Doylestown Historical Society. I give private tours at the museum and talks at big family reunions, Rotary, and assisted living facilities. People in this town have been nice to me and I like to give back. I've been a volunteer at the local hospital, giving snacks and hope to patients in the cancer infusion room. I also volunteer to teach adults to read and I have volunteered at the county prison teaching inmates Personal Decision Making, one-on-one.

 I took up Soaring in 1980 and became a member of the Philadelphia Glider Council. I prefer the "seat of the pants" flying of sailplanes over power planes. My son also developed a love of flying. He keeps his plane at our little local airport and has tried unsuccessfully to talk me into moving to Alaska (where flying is a necessity). When not in the air, I like to hike the Pennsylvania and New Jersey sections of the Appalachian Trail.