Member Bio

I was born and raised in a small town on the Delaware River, Riverton, New Jersey. Dennis O’Toole and I were married there in 1965. We lived in Cambridge MA, Providence RI, Washington DC, Williamsburg VA, and Portsmouth NH before moving to New Mexico in January, 1999. We have spent at least part of every summer since 1970 on Block Island, RI. I taught pre-school and elementary school classes, but mostly focused on raising our three children and on community volunteer activities emphasizing early childhood development and education. In the 16 years before moving to Santa Fe in 2014, we lived on a remote ranch in Monticello Canyon northwest of Truth or Consequences. The ranch was 13 miles up Alamosa Creek from the village of Monticello, off the grid, with cottonwoods, orchards, grassy fields, and, most importantly, pueblo, Apache, and 19th century Hispanic sites. We coordinated archaeological research on the four largest pueblo sites from 1999 to 2011. The dates of occupation span from 800 to 1400 AD. The resulting artifact collections and associated reports now reside at the Hibben Center at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. The research project being completed, we decided to move to a less remote location. Since I was already on the board of The Nature Conservancy and we’d grown to love the piñon-juniper upland environment, we chose Santa Fe. Indivisible SOS gives me an opportunity to learn more about and participate in various aspects of state and national politics.