I met Angela at Chili’s where we had lunch and the interview took place. She is a lovely, accomplished young woman, very new to AAUW…sort of. (I’ll explain the “sort of…” shortly.)  The first things I wanted to know was: How new to AAUW was she? Did she recently move to our area of Bucks County? And why wasn’t she listed in our Directory? She explained that she only became an AAUW member in January after obtaining her Bachelor’s degree in accounting. She had thought about joining prior to that, when she only had an Associate degree, but decided to wait until she had a Bachelor’s like most every other AAUW member. She didn’t want to be one of the few members with only an Associate’s degree.

Now here is where the “sort of” comes in.  Angela explained that she grew up in Lower Makefield and was the recipient years ago of an AAUW $300 scholarship. As a result, she has been grateful to AAUW ever since. Also, she is one of those rare people who constantly is thinking about what she can give back to society. That’s how grateful she was for the AAUW scholarship (and other factors as well.) Thus, many years later, once she joined AAUW and Harriet Freidenreich and Kathy Quinn asked her to take over as Chairperson of a Scholarship Committee because Harriet was retiring from the chairmanship, Angela readily agreed. Angela feels it will be a good fit for her as she will be dealing with finances, which is right up her alley.  In addition, she will be assisting Kathy with AAUW accounting needs from time to time.

Angela is one very busy lady. She works full-time as an accountant, attends the University of Scranton full-time on-line so she can obtain a Master’s in accounting, and is planning to test for her CPA. She also has three children, a daughter, Skyler, who is 21, a son Matthew, who is 14, and a second daughter, Elora (or Ellie), who is 10. Given all this, one can understand why in her world there is no such thing as free time. Thus, the question as to what special interest(s) she has and/or what she does in her spare time, is just silly. There is no spare time.  We were only able to meet today because this week she is on vacation.

Angela did admit that many years ago she liked to work with pottery. She explained that there was, and possibly may still be, a pottery studio in the back of Tyler Park. It’s where she would work on her pieces and have them fired in the kiln.

I asked Angela a two-part question: what she would wish and have materialized on a personal level and what she would wish and have materialized in general. Her answer showed her sincere concern for others. Her personal wish was assurance that her children would be “ok” as adults. Her other wish was for a long, happy, healthy life for her best friend who has survived breast cancer.

We talked about what makes Angela happy. She likes always to be busy. She likes to try new things. And she likes to be involved. I asked what she wished people knew about her. Her altruistic answer was quite different from most of the answers I’ve received from this question: She wants to make life better for others.

Angela had a very unusual job (for AAUW members) in the past. She was a volunteer firefighter. Yes, a firefighter!  When she explained that she started when she was about sixteen, I didn’t understand how someone so young could be permitted to do that. She explained that she was allowed to do everything a firefighter does except to go into a burning building. When she was eighteen, she finally was certified to actually fight a fire. She did that job for about 6 years at local fire departments, until her growing young family made it too difficult to continue.

Angela has a suggestion regarding the scholarships AAUW awards, which will be discussed at the beginning of the 2019-2020 season. Apparently, AAUW currently gives these particular scholarships to high-school girls who were accepted to four-year colleges. Angela has brought it up to the committee that there is a great need as well for students to receive them who plan to attend two-year colleges, then transferring to finish their four-year degree (like she had to do in her own past because of limited finances).

My last question was the usual fun one: If a chef would make her any dinner she wanted, from soup to nuts, for free, what would it be? Angela decided it would start with a Caesar salad, then filet mignon (medium-well), potatoes and corn. For dessert there would be cheesecake.

It was a pleasure meeting and chatting with Angela. She will be an asset to our organization.