There’s little that Vanessa Amsbury O’Connor won’t take on, and most of the time she takes on a lot with a lot of zest.
Vanessa has been our administrative assistant since 2005, when some UU friends urged her to apply. The best thing about her job is people, she says, and she adds that people are also the worst.
“I won’t give you any specifics, but the best thing about people is that they’re human, and the worst thing about people is that they’re human.”
Vanessa has a lot of energy, an abundance of interests and more than one passion – like dancing, for example. At a recent Wednesday night spaghetti supper, she appeared at the church in time for a plate heaped with pasta and greens. Then she slipped into a pair of black strapped high heels – something like four-inch high heels – and she joined member Randy Avis upstairs in the Parish Hall where the first ballroom dancing lesson was about to begin.
“Dancing is a huge part of my life,” Vanessa says.
Hiking is also huge to her, as is gourmet cooking and knitting. She loves to garden and she says that she loves interior design, and kayaking and bicycling.
“My absolute favorite is back-country hiking. There’s nothing like packing up and walking into the woods,” Vanessa says.
Brought up in the picturesque ocean-side community of Edmonds, Washington she graduated from Western Washington University with a bachelor’s degree in biology. “My first job was as a naturalist in Costa Rica,” she says. “I was really a glorified tour guide. I took people into Corcovado National Park and showed them the flora and fauna. It was wonderful.”
Vanessa a short time later worked for the state of Washington’s Department of Natural Resources. One of a team tracking the spotted owl, she says, “I did ten hours of hiking day and night. I fed them, and looked for their nests and, basically, I ran through the woods after flying owls. I did this until I was pregnant with my first child.”
When her oldest child was six months old, Vanessa moved to New Hampshire. “I was on a hiatus from work then.” In a few years she had had her second daughter.
Then, in 2005, she was divorced and looking for a job and a place to live. Friendly with UU members Anne and Ward Stoops, she heard from them our church needed to hire an administrative assistant. They urged her to apply, and since she had once worked as a paper store manager, and in Edmond’s municipal offices during high school she decided to try.
Today, Vanessa divides her work time between administrative responsibilities and the church’s accounting. She is hired to work 23 hours a week but Vanessa finds that it’s easy to stay much longer.
“Twenty three hours quickly catapults into many more,” she says.“I am the seamstress that keeps all of the threads together, though sometimes I drop a few stitches.”
Vanessa also teaches Our Whole Lives, the UU youth sexuality course that is more popularly called OWL, and she works part time at Scott Farrar Assisted Living.
