Originally from the Missouri Ozarks, she moved to Guam in 1980 when her husband came to work at NASA’s satellite tracking station. The University of Guam asked her husband if he could repair the planetarium projector, and she began accompanying him. She learned how to operate the instrument and gave shows for students while working as the biology lab tech at the Science Building.
The university eventually replaced the planetarium’s system in the early 1990s and she learned how to run the new one as well. They hired her as the planetarium coordinator when the new system was purchased in the early 1990s, a job she held until the planetarium closed in 2012. By then she had written more than 100 astronomy shows for the general public.