Mary Lou Hagen:  

Life Hi to all my friends and teachers from NP! You may remember that I moved the summer before my senior year from Wallingford to Richmond, VA. I was not happy to move because in the four years I was at NP, I was very happy and had many friends. Everyone at NP welcomed me, a shy girl from Virginia with a funny accent, and made me feel right at home. Thank all of you for that! I did not have a happy senior year in Richmond because no school could compare to NP and no friends or teachers could measure up to all of you. However, there was a silver lining to the dark cloud. I moved in across the street from a young man who was in college at Virginia Tech, Bo Hagen, and we began dating. I went to Radford College, which is 20 mintes from Va. Tech, and we continued dating on and off until we married in August of 1971. Bo and I moved to Roanoke, VA, which is actually where I grew up before moving to PA. I did my student teaching in Roanoke County while he taught Math there. I was fortunate to get at job teaching elementary music in the middle of that year and taught for two and a half years until the birth of our twins, Amy and Steven, in 1974. I "retired" from teaching to raise the kids and taught piano lessons at home. We had our third child, Mary Katherine (Katy) in 1980 so I stayed home another five years. When Katy went to Kindergarten, I did a half year's leave of absence at her school doing music. The next year, I did a part time teaching job three hours a day at a local junior high school. I then substitued until I felt the time was right to return to teaching. After turning down several full time positions, I was finally offered the job I wanted: part time elementary music, at the school I had student taught at years before, Green Valley Elementary School. I started there in 1989 teaching three days a week. When the twins went to college, Va. Tech of course, I went to full time teaching and picked up another school. It was very busy doing tw...Expand for more