I’m a Jersey girl, born in Jersey City, raised in Palisades Park, graduated from Leonia High School and earned a BS Mechanical Engineering in 1961 at NCE, now New Jersey Institute of Technology.

I held engineering and engineering management jobs with DuPont in Aiken, South Carolina; Western Electric at the Hawthorne Works in Chicago, Illinois; Southern Bell Telephone in Atlanta, Georgia; AT&T HQ in Basking Ridge, New Jersey and took an early retirement package from AT&T in 1989... all of this is ancient history. I learned a lot and did my very best, but was very tired of being a low-level, or any other level, corporatist. 

Eventually my now late husband, Attorney Donald A, Ronayne, and I moved to the Eastern Shore of Maryland where he practiced law for ordinary people and I continued to be his typist. He had a BA from Yale and a JD from Stanford. We were comfortable with Don’s reasonable fees, our SS checks and my pension.  He was a very smart, diligent, ethical attorney who worked very hard for his clients and was much less interested in fees.  It was fine with me because he was providing affordable, first class legal services to clients who needed them and I was doing my civic activities and animal rescue with Chesapeake Cats and Dogs.  Eventually I ran for and won a term as a Queen Anne’s County Commissioner (more ancient history).  It was the best and worst job I ever had!