Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece, and welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I have Jane Althen with me. Hi Jane.
Jane Althen: Hi, Toni.
Toni: How are you doing today?
Jane: I’m good, how are you?
Toni: I’m doing great. Jane, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Jane: I am first a wife and mother. I have two daughters; one in grad school and one in college. I was trained in education. I taught for six years before I had kids. A couple of those years were here in Shillington at the Governor Mifflin Intermediate School.
I did not go back to teaching after I had my children, and as they got a little older I started to volunteer and became a community volunteer. Most of my volunteer work has been involved with the Mifflin Community Library for about ten years with them. I worked on a capital campaign with them which we just recently paid off. Also, for about five years now I’ve been involved with the Reading Symphony Orchestra, and some other things, too.
Toni: Okay, great. Jane, tell me, what does inspiration mean to you?
Jane: Inspiration is whatever makes me get up and get going in the morning. Whatever makes my feet hit the floor and think, “Okay, I’m going to get this done today.” I get inspired by people in my world, people in my life, my husband, my kids, the people I work with in these different organizations. Also, just the fact that at heart I am an educator and the things that I’ve chosen to be a part of, it’s important to me that they have education components to them as well.
Toni: So that’s really your lynchpin, is education.
Jane: Yes.
Toni: Are you inspired by that world?
Jane: I am. I do believe that an educated society benefits everyone. The thing I love about the library is that it’s free and equal access to everyone, every walk of life. It doesn’t matter where you come from – you can walk in and get a library card and borrow a book, use a computer, or whatever you need from the library.
I get very inspired when I stand in the library, especially knowing that it came from four stacks in the Mohnton Borough Hall several years ago to just over 8,000 square feet in the center of Shillington now.
Toni: Wow!
Jane: It’s always a bustling community center. We often think now that everybody has a computer at home, and that’s not true. A lot of people need that service of having the computer to go and apply for a job or work on class work if they’re taking courses, or whatever it might be. We have a wonderful children’s section there that does a lot of great activities for the kids. I draw a lot of inspiration for that. I think, “All that work was really worth it.” I still am involved in a golf tournament that we do once a year for the library to raise money. I know it’s always going for a great cause, and that feels good.
Toni: That’s so cool, because you were involved in that from the beginning and you got to take an inspired thought from a group and see that whole thing come to fruition. It must be quite satisfying to see that.
Jane: It is. It’s very satisfying.
Toni: Can you give me some other examples of how else you might put the times that you are inspired into practice here in Berks County?
Jane: I’m also inspired by music. I grew up loving music. I have two kids that played music coming up through school, and my oldest daughter is making it her profession. I saw what the Reading Symphony Youth Orchestra did for both of them, and that’s about the time that I got involved with the Symphony.
Actually, my husband was asked to be on the Board first, and he was overwhelmed with things at work and he just wasn’t making the meetings like he thought he should. When he told them he needed to go off, he said, “I have somebody for you.”
I said, “Thanks, honey!” I was pretty busy with the library at that point.
I’m really glad that I did take that leap of faith and go on the Reading Symphony Board. It’s a great bunch of people that really care about putting quality music on for the county. I think the Reading Symphony Orchestra is a gem. We’re so lucky to have that caliber of music here in Berks County. We have a wonderful music director, and the musicians are all very dedicated. We have a very dedicated Board as well.
Some of the things that inspire me there are I get a lot of inspiration while I’m sitting at a concert and I say, “Wow – everything that everyone has been coming together to do over the past month (or whatever it is) to bring this concert to everyone …” it’s very rewarding to sit there and watch that happen.
I also like that there are education components to the symphony, that we have the Reading Symphony Youth Orchestra, that we have the Orchestra Zone, which is helping kids in the city to stay involved in music. We’ve noticed that in the Youth Symphony there weren’t a lot of kids from Reading itself, and so that was the point of developing that program so that more kids could get involved in this youth symphony. A lot of kids drop out of music right after eighth grade, so the point was to give them private lessons in junior high when kids that might not have the means to have the private lessons, and hopefully keep them interested into high school and be able to step into the symphony orchestra.
Toni: Wow. You can hear it comes full circle for you, the whole education piece, you’re involved in the organization that provides a wonderful education outlet for people and children in the city, and then also the full circle moment very similar to the library where you watch all the moving parts of a show come together, and you’re sitting in the audience and enjoying that and being inspired by that. That’s really neat how that comes together for you. Who in Berks County inspires you?
Jane: Besides my own family, back to the Mifflin Community Library, there were a group of ladies that saw a need. That’s what always gets me excited in the projects that I pick to be a part of. People that see a need for something, and they make it happen. I’m not necessarily that person, but if you have a vision and you inspire me, I’m there. I want to be a part of that. There were a group of ladies, and one of those was Denise Curran. She’s an amazing woman who saw, as I did when I first moved here, that there was not a library in Shillington – but she did something about it.
I shouldn’t say there was none. There was a small library, and I’m not even sure where it was, but I don’t even think a lot of people knew it was there. I don’t know exactly because I moved here in 1988, so I don’t know all the history of some of these things, but I think it was over in Kenhorst, maybe. Denise got it started up at the Mohnton Borough Hall – four stacks of books. I would take my kids there when they were little. One of those stacks was children’s books.
I saw that they were trying to raise money and build something bigger, and they ended up buying the Ibach’s Pharmacy Building in Shillington, and they moved in that space, and quickly outgrew that, and then went across the street to the bank that was there, bought that, and then they needed to expand the bank. That’s when I moved in on things with my husband. We helped to head up that campaign.
I was so inspired by their vision. Denise was just amazing heading that up. She was the one that actually asked us to get involved, and we just couldn’t say no. We thought this was something that our community needed, and they had a great start on it. We thought, “Let’s finish it.”
Toni: And you did.
Jane: Yes.
Toni: How about that?
Jane: With a lot of help, a lot of people along the way.
Toni: Anybody else in Berks County inspire you?
Jane: There’s a lot of people on the Board that inspire me. We just had our Executive Director take another job to be closer to his daughter, so we had to get a new Executive Director. We started with a search last spring that I was involved in.
This was a really big undertaking. There were so many people that were working full-time that were all invested in finding the best person to run the symphony. I was very inspired by their dedication and obvious love for the Symphony. It was a few months where we were all chipping in and filling in where things needed to be filled in, and that inspired me. It was like, “We’re all in this together.”
Now we have a great new Executive Director, Jon Mosbo who’s doing great things and bringing a lot of new excitement to the group.
Toni: So the people that inspire you in Berks County are the people who have a vision, come together, and get it done.
Jane: Exactly.
Toni: Fantastic. What do you want your legacy to be?
Jane: This is a very heavy question.
Toni: It is.
Jane: I guess I just want to think that I’ve made a difference. That’s what everybody wants, right, to think that maybe something they did along the way touched somebody or made something better, made life a little better to be a part of our area.
Mostly, I want my kids to end up being great people and doing things that they love and being resilient, and all those things that help you get through life. I don’t know … I guess I just do what needs to be done and hope that somewhere along the way maybe I’ll inspire other people.
With the Symphony, I feel that there is a joyous weight on my shoulders. We’ve been in existence for 102 years, and never had a break. Some symphonies will come and go and come back again. The RSO has been continuously playing for 102 years. I think of all the people that took to keep it going all that time. They had to really have had a love of classical music and bringing that excellence to Berks County. I think now, “Here I am on the Board, and we are entrusted with keeping that going.” I think it honors their legacy – the people that came before us – to respect that.
Toni: What a great answer – to be part of something that honors the legacy of others, and to have that be part of your legacy. People get tripped up by that question, but, “What do you want your legacy to be?” doesn’t mean after you’re gone – it can mean while you’re living. You are living your legacy. You are volunteering, you are bringing things to fruition, and you are helping another legacy to stay alive as well. Congratulations to you.
Jane: Thank you. Hopefully, it will inspire others to take it over at some point. That’s the thing – you want to just keep that going another 102 years.
Toni: Right. Keep moving it forward. Thank you so much for being part of the Get Inspired! Project, Jane.
Jane: Thank you, Toni. It was a pleasure.
Toni: Take care.
