Background and Personal History:  Tia is a Master Beekeeper, serves on the board and is the Senior Coastal Representative of the NC State Beekeepers Association. She founded Crystal Coast Beekeepers, a chapter of NC State Beekeepers seven years ago. The club began with eight people interested in beekeeping who were meeting at our little, just-started Down East Library, and as of the present time the club has grown to 74 members. Today, Tia serves as the public relations/publicity/membership chair for her chapter. Most of her history comes as a result of being a lifetime gardener who got into beekeeping due to lack of pollinators!

Born and raised in Roseland, NJ, Tia was a super tomboy and spent most of her time in the garden with her dad. In 1975, when she married George, the two moved to his hometown, Metuchen, NJ where Tia grew a small vegetable garden in the only strip of ground available on our 40X100 lot!  They lived in Metuchen for 20 years before making the big move to Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands, BWI.

Tia’s family is very proud of the home they had designed, well suited to the environment—a simple concrete block 1000-sq ft building with no glass windows; only screens and shutters, a hip roof to catch as much water as possible, a 20,000-gal cistern, a graywater cistern, solar water heat, among other projects. After amending the sandy (coral) sand, she had a surprisingly good vegetable garden—her tomato plants grew to be 10 feet tall! Tia’s family lived there for two years but, missing the USA, moved to Williston in 1998. 

As for career, the majority of Tia’s working life was as a paralegal with various law firms in all three locations. Subsequently, here in NC, Administrative Assistant at BP, Amoco Marketers Association, and finally Coastal Representative of NC Community Foundation before retiring at age 62. Retirement is busier that working was!

Now Tia is a librarian at the Down East Public Library. This library started about 7 years ago when a group got together and decided the Down East needed a library. It was volunteer-ran then, and the books—as well as everyone’s time—were all donated. The library quickly grew in popularity, needed more room and moved three times before finally settling where we are now.  It will be two years this month that the Carteret County Commissioners deemed to fund us as a county library and we are now part of the Craven-Pamlico-Carteret Library System.

Current Projects:  Mentoring “newbees,” giving the NCSBA Master Beekeeper Program Certified Beekeeping Course, working with Friends of the Down East Library, tending 3 of 5 acres (yard, back and front; meadow; vegetable garden; beeyard—leaving the 2 acres of woods alone!)

More Places to Find Me on the Web: 

www.NCBeekeepers.org

www.crystalcoastbeekeepers.com

Facebook (both “Tia Douglass” and “Down East Library”)