HCRTA Secretary Nona Van Den Berg says, I am originally from northeastern South Dakota. My education began in a small country school, one teacher of course. My parents usually boarded the teacher, so perhaps that is how I ended up in education. After graduation from high school I attended South Dakota State College, as it was then called; tried out several majors before settling on History and English with a minor in Education. I also picked up a few credit hours in Library Science. I taught 2 years during which time I met and married Lowell. He graduated from South Dakota State College four years later. During that time our first two children were born. I also switched from high school teaching to Circulation Librarian at the college. After Lowell graduated we moved to the University of Michigan where he earned his Masters.
After his graduation from University we moved to beautiful Ohio, Cincinnati to be exact. I have to tell you I loved the trees, there were so many in our area of South Dakota. We also added two more children and I did not work outside the home again for 16 years. As the children grew older I decided to return to college, Wright State; and get my Masters; this time in K-12 media. My first job was Elementary Librarian at Greenfield. When funding disappeared I ended up in Rainsboro as a Junior High History/English teacher then back to Greenfield as a reading teacher. My final position was Librarian at Fairfield, where I retired in 2007.
At 80 I have three children, eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. All but two live in Ohio. One grandson and great-grandson live in Germany. I am happy to be unemployed, free to travel, visit the children, or just read a good book