Donna Boles is a teacher, musician and world traveler whose family has a tradition of grandparents taking their grandchildren on overseas vacations. This year, she took her 10-year-old grandaughter, Jillian, to the Galapagos Islands. She will share their experiences with the club.

Donna was raised in Indiana, where her parents emphasized serious study, music, travel and sports. She has degrees in Cello, French, English, Education and High School Administration.

She says her best job was as a cellist in the Birmingham Symphony and her last (and hardest) job was teaching French at Hillcrest High School. After raising children at home for 10 years, she worked at the Arts Council of Tuscaloosa doing children’s programs, and she is the current president of the Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra board and active with the Opera Guild and the String Quartet Society. She will teach a course on musical theatre in the fall and one on Shakespeare and the opera in the spring for the Osher Lifelong Institute at the University of Alabama.