Carolyn Diane Hoskey Piper

Carolyn was born on September 19, 1939, in Hayward, California, but grew up in the town of Fremont. She was the first child of Louis and Virginia Hoskey. In the following years, she was joined by brothers Steven, Louis and Dennis. Upon graduation from high school in 1957, Carolyn became employed at the NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, as a mathematics aid in the Unitary Wind Tunnel Division. While working at Ames, Carolyn met Bill Piper, an employee of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory (NOL) in Silver Spring, Maryland, who was assigned a project that required testing in the Ames wind tunnels. After a brief romance, Bill and Carolyn were married in June 1961. Upon moving to Maryland, Carolyn renewed her NASA employment by joining the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, but shortly transferred her employment to NOL as a computer programmer. In July 1971, Carolyn resigned her work at NOL to become a full time mother to baby Jennifer.

Carolyn had many skills and interests. The special skills she honed over time included hand crafts such as quilting, sewing, knitting, crocheting, needlework, painting, and chrismons. In addition, Carolyn was an excellent cook and baker, finding joy in cooking up tasty dishes for her friends and family. Her interests included reading, particularly books on Christian topics. She also greatly enjoyed travel, particularly her many travels across the country to visit her family in California, sometimes by car and sometimes in their Cessna airplane for which she was navigator.

After moving to North Carolina in 2004 to be closer to Jennifer and their new grandchildren, Daniel and Kelly, it became important to find a new church. Their search for a church led them to PHBC which became their new spiritual home. As a member of PHBC, Carolyn formed many close friendships that were of great importance to her and remained with her the rest of her life.