Biography for

Sharon (Miller) Topping

After graduation, Sharon attended Muskingum College for two years, transferred to Michigan State, and graduated in June, 1965, with a B.S. in Education.

Much of Sharon’s life has been defined by her work. In the fall of 1965, she returned to the classroom as a fourth grade elementary teacher and quickly determined that teaching was not what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.

She then joined IBM and began a career in Information Technology. Initially she taught secretaries how to use IBM computerized typewriters and dictation equipment. She often thinks how Miss Heinemann’s one semester typing class made this possible! Sales calls, demos, and sales presentations soon followed giving her marketing experience. After five years, she requested a transfer to the Data Processing Division. She attended a year long internal training program to learn programming, operating systems, and computer hardware, and became a systems engineer. For almost 24 years, she continued receiving training as she worked with more complex operating systems and new hardware and software applications that provided a constant challenge.

In 1992, Sharon decided to take an attractive IBM early retirement package and broaden her technical skills to non-IBM products. For the next 16 years, she did interesting and challenging work in the distributed processing environment for two major Cleveland area banks as an in-line manager and project manager. Retired since 2008, she feels fortunate to have worked in the information technology world for almost 40 years and to have seen the technological changes that have occurred.

Sharon has been married to her husband, Ned, an industrial engineer, for 39 years. She enjoys her husband’s company and still finds him to be a fascinating individual even after all these years. They have lived in the same house in Bay Village for 37 years and often joke that they have too many antiques to ever move! They enjoy maintaining the house and have done a lot of homeowner projects over the years while maintaining the authentic colonial craftsmanship of the home.

Sharon has an international family because she considers AFS student, Nico Hardt (’74) who lived with her parents after her graduation to be a brother.  She and Ned have visited his family and friends in Germany and Nico’s family has come to Bay Village. As a purser for Lufthansa airlines, Nico flew all over the world but would request Detroit flights so Sharon and Ned would drive up to see him. He made over 30 trips to Detroit before retiring last year!

Sharon and Ned have done a lot of traveling over the years – both for business and pleasure – and were often fortunate to combine the two. Their travels have taken them throughout the states, Canada, the Caribbean, and Europe. Retirement now finds them content to stay close to home with their orange cat, Rocky, and take short trips to bed and breakfasts.

Sharon’s interests include cooking, gardening, antiquing (especially refinishing 1920’s oak furniture), interior decorating, sailing, camping, and spending quality time with friends. She looks forward to seeing everyone at the 50th reunion.