I was born in Amarillo, Texas. We lived on a ranch east of Nara Visa, NM and the hospital in Amarillo was the nearest "big" hospital to the family ranch. When my parents divorced, my brother and I went to live with our mother and stepfather in Alaska, and then New Jersey, but we spent each summer on the ranch with our father and paternal grandparents. When our mom died, we returned to the ranch and lived there through high school graduation.
There was no school in Nara Visa, so we traveled to Logan, NM for junior high and high school. While in high school I participated in all extra and co-curricular activities. I lettered in all girl sports, some boy sports (team manager) and was a cheerleader in my junior year. After graduating high school as the class valedictorian, I went to NMSU on a scholarship. While attending school there I met Les Miller, a young man who graduated from Carrizozo, NM. We married in 1979 (26 years ago) and lived in Las Cruces until we moved to Fort Sumner this July.
Les and I have two children, Stephen and Mary. Stephen (23) graduated from NM Tech in May of 2005 and is working as an electrical engineer for the Navy at China Lake Naval Base in Ridgecrest, CA. Mary is twenty years old and is a junior at NMSU majoring in French, English and Linguistics. Both of my parents are deceased and we are very close to Les' folks, Bill and Nancy Miller of Bayard, NM.
I am a certified special education and drama teacher, as well as school administrator. I am also a Nationally Board Certified Teacher (NBCT) as a middle childhood generalist. I know I am the only superintendent in NM who is nationally board certified, and I may be the only one in the nation. I began teaching in the Las Cruces Public Schools in 1988 and became an administrator for that district in 1996. I was a special education coordinator and the director of technology for that district, and have now moved on to the superintendency in Fort Sumner. My bachelor's and masters' degrees are from New Mexico State. I have been an adjunct professor for both New Mexico State University and Clovis Community College, teaching graduate courses in education, technology and grant writing
Growing up and graduating from a rural school in New Mexico